Your Blue Eyed Boy, The Muse and the Great British Dream Factory

My ninth Helen Dunmore novel and probably the least enjoyable. Your Blue Eyed Boy started out with great promise, but a lot of the first person memories of the back story are fairly boring. But then there are parts, mainly many long conversations that the author writes so well. Dunmore can really produce her best writing dialogue. The theme of blackmail was quite unsettling. I guess it was meant to, but it left my brain a little scrambled.

The Muse by Jessie Burton is a very enjoyable book. Possibly even better then The Miniaturist. I liked the alternating long chapters switching between 1936 and 1967, the former in the third person and the latter in the first. It doesn't take too long to guess the connection, but how exactly is only revealed slowly and tantalisingly. The writing is good: "This is why she spoke ..... with no fear of reprisal; she knew she was soon to be reprised entirely" as was the storytelling and construction of the plot. I don't normally read a book of this length (440 pages) so will look for some more.

I have been reading The Great British Dream Factory: The Strange History of Our National Imagination  by Dominic Sandbrook on and off since Christmas. I cannot pretend I read every word of this lengthy volume as I concentrated on those sections that were of particular interest to me. And there were plenty. I knew nothing about Tony Iommi and how he created heavy metal with Black Sabbath. The piece on J Arthur Rank (amazingly from Hull) was good, and the fact that 1946 was the only year the UK did better box office at the cinema than the USA.

Then there was Chris Blackwell, forming Island Records at 21, and sections on Tom Brown's Schooldays, Billy Bunter, Jennings and Biggles, all from my childhood. Also Harry Potter, James Bond, Coronation Street and a great pieces on Catherine Cookson and Agatha Christie. The bits on science fiction were interesting, I always loved the start of "The Day of the Triffids" when a man walks alone from his hospital bed, and H G Wells "War of the Worlds". I always regret not being allowed to watch "Quatermass" on TV when I was eight years old.

And lastly I loved the sections on "The Prisoner", Elton John, Andrew Lloyd Webber and finally Billy Elliott. The writer of the film Lee Hall never expected to construct the musical alongside his idol Elton John.