Six books this week! That's 4th to the 11th of November.
Three of these I'd read before - Animal Farm, Soldier Girl and A Hopscotch Summer. Hopscotch Summer and Soldier Girl are parts one and two in a series set in 1930s-40s Birmingham. The first book focuses mostly on Emma Brown, who ends up caring for her three younger siblings at the tender age of eight, when her mother develops post-natal depression. When a spot of marital-rape and shouting at her doesn't sort it out, her husband sends her off to her sister while he has an affair. I'm not totally sure why their getting back together is seen as a good thing.
In Soldier Girl Emma is in her late teens and gets married. However, the book mostly focuses on her friend Molly, who appeared in A Hopscotch Summer as a side character. Molly, who I've discussed in more detail here, was abused as a child but makes something of herself as an ack-ack girl in the army. I quite enjoy stories about life building - see Rose Madder - and there's another link with her being a Brummie. At first I was a little offended; the accents are very broad considering the main characters live in Nechells. On the other hand, this was the thirties; regional accents were broader then. Having now listened to something like twenty hours of this woman speaking (I'm midway through the third part of the series) I've gotten used to it.
Soldier Girl is my favourite one of the series, and not just because Molly is my favourite character. It's a very odd experience walking down New Street and hearing about St Martin's church being bombed.
Both Tommyknockers and The Great Gatsby were new to me, and I wrote more about each of them in the linked post. Perhaps I should have compared the two.
Finally, Murder in the Dark, a collection of short prose pieces by Margaret Atwood. I like that Atwood's idea of short is one or two pages, since that's close to mine. The best of them was one I'd read previously, Happy Endings which you can read online at Perdue.edu.
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