Keeping the Pages Turning

 In recent weeks my various online book related comments and sources had brought some controversy to my attention.  The Polari Prize; and John Boyne.  One of his works had been long-listed for this year's awards.  There was a bit of a rumpus.  Rather than accede to demands and remove him from the list the decision was taken to cancel this year's award completely.  And to concentrate on recruiting a 'more sympathetic panel'.  John Boyne was cancelled.

Ah, cancel culture.  His crime, it seems, was in failing to show sympathy and support for the cocks-in-frocks brigade.  All that brouhaha about men in women's toilets, sports teams and whatever.  The Supreme Court decision.  The ongoing fallout from lunacy peddled by Sturgeon and her Traniban, amongst others.

As it happens I'd had a John Boyne volume on the shelf for some years.  What better time to finally open it.  To read John Boyne.

Knowing my interest in matters Russian, from travel tales to the fate of the Romanovs, I'd been passed a copy of The House of Special Purpose some years ago.  It had remained unread.  I continue to review the library shelves at Peelhill, for a necessary cull  with reduced space in Portknockie.  What better time to finally read this one.

 

And what a fantastic tale he told.  A fictional account of life in the palaces, a love story, And so much more.  I had read much of events at the Ipatiev House.  There had remained for many decades speculation that Anastasia may have escaped the fates.  Boyne weaves his tale through the decades, of what might have been.

He left me firstly intent on reading the fourth and final volume of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's The Red Wheel, March 1917.  That one will be joining parts 1 to 3, in Portknockie.  More so though, he left wanting to find out more, and to read more, of the cancelled author.

It is always a joy to find an author that leaves you wanting more, in the ongoing quest for beautiful writing.  In John Boyne we have a master of his craft, a teller of tales, and with a long list of published works to be discovered.

Next up was, All The Broken Places.  This is the sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which I hadn't read though I did recall the film.  Written 20 years later, a lockdown project, Boyne takes us through the decades as they might have panned out for Bruno's sister.  And her guilt.

 

Another riveting read, pages turning.  He takes us to Paris, briefly to Sydney, and thence to London.  An old lady, and her neighbours, her family.  I'm not going to tell you any more of this one.  Just read it.  Spellbinding.

But I'll be reading more of John Boyne, happy to add to his book sales whilst the Polari Prize bows to to the howling to the moon and makes a fool of itself.  And I might even have a second read at The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht.  Boyne goes on my list of favourite reads of this year, twice already, whilst TWWWW featured on last year's list.  And deservedly so.