Category Archives: out of things to read

The Monday Book: CALLING ME HOME by Julie Kibler

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Apologies for the failure-to-appear of Friday’s blog. We threw a party for friends newly married on Saturday, and that kinda sucked all the oxygen out of the weekend.

homeI plucked this book from our shop shelves one day and was glad I did. Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister asks her hairdresser Dorrie Curtis to drive her cross-country to a funeral. Why she does becomes clear as the book unfolds, hopping back and forth between Dorrie’s present-day relationship, and Isabelle’s just before World War II. It’s a tear-jerker for sure, but it also explores not just male-female relations, but friendships between women, and between mothers and daughters. Kibler’s writing is easy and fast, like a spring all flowing in one direction. Very few diversions, and nothing overly poetic to get in the way of a gripping read.

Normally I’m not a big fan of time-hop books but this one worked particularly well, making some subtle points about how the times, they may not be a-changing as fast as people think when it comes to race relations.

There are not many surprises in the book, and not all the characters are fleshed out, but Dorrie, Isabelle, the men in their lives, and Isabelle’s mother and Dorrie’s son are well-drawn. Which, as you will see, is enough to tell this tale with bittersweet dignity.

The Monday Book – Kind of

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The Monday book isn’t a book this time because Wendy is getting close to a deadline for HER current book, so Jack is doing this post and it’s a movie (because he hasn’t read any interesting books lately!)

I’m a sucker for memoirs and war stories so I was intrigued when Netflix offered me ‘The Railway Man’ – a movie based on a memoir of the same name by Eric Lomax. Lomax was from Edinburgh in Scotland and was captured by the Japanese army during the fall of Singapore during WW 2.

The movie apparently received mixed reviews when it was released, but I must say that I found it riveting. Lomax is played by Colin Firth and his wife Patti is played by Nicole Kidman – both, in my opinion, playing right at the top of their game.

The story is relatively simple. Lomax is fascinated by railways and after capture is sent to work on the notorious ‘Burma Railway’ (think Bridge on the River Kwai). He suffers terrible beatings and torture but remains focused on the railway he’s building. Finally, he survives the war but he is psychologically broken.

On his return, the only people he can relate to are other ex-POWs and he continues to be fixated on railways, traveling around the UK cataloging timetables and logging journeys. On one of these journeys he meets the recently divorced Patti and falls head over heels for her.

They marry and Patti sets out to rescue him from his self-imposed mental exile by becoming friends with his best friend who had shared the horrors of Japanese imprisonment.

That’s as much as I’m going to tell you, so you’re going to have to watch the movie or buy the book (which I certainly intend to do – films never have enough time to do it properly!)

My favorite scene, of course was a dream sequence where Colin Firth was knocking on a door in North Queensferry in my beloved county of Fife with the glorious Forth Rail Bridge behind him – the whole thing was worth that!

Four thumbs up – – –