Authors Electric

This month we have adult fiction with two novels featuring horses by best-selling 'Me Before You' author Jojo Moyes. The Horse Dancer Part romance, part adventure,  The Horse Dancer  takes its characters on a journey of heart and hoof from the back streets of London to a chateau deep in the French countryside. The story revolves around a beautiful horse called “Boo”, one of the Selle Francais breed used in an exclusive French riding school called the Cadre Noir (rather like the Spanish riding school of Vienna, except the horses are not the more famous white Lipizzaners). The horse belongs to Sarah, granddaughter of dedicated horseman Henri Lachapelle, who used to ride for the Cadre Noir but left France to marry an English girl and move to London. There, his life collapsed. His beloved wife died, and their daughter vanished from their lives shortly after giving birth, leaving Henri in charge of the baby girl. At the start of the book they share a tiny flat in the East End...

Last month I wrote about my impending trip to the United States for my nephew’s wedding and I am happy to report it all went ahead and a magical time was had by all. After writing my last blog I had high hopes that my travels would greatly enhance my creativity. However, I must confess, at the outset so much was exactly as I expected. Was this because I’ve been to the States before, watched copious amounts of US TV dramas that little surprised me or that an already highly worked imagination had already conjured up these locations while reading? Many places we visited reminded me of novels I’ve read in the past few years. As we wandered through the Washington art gallery, I couldn’t help but be transported to the pages of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Airy, expansive rooms with high ceilings housing the most exquisite paintings. They drew you in from afar revealing the most breath-taking details as you moved closer. How do artists convey the sheen of a piece of silk, the glint o...

My main method of escape from the doom-laden statistics and fear-mongering on the news these days is to disappear into the pages of a good book, preferably backwards in time. Jojo Moyes' Giver of Stars  is one of those books that 'came' to me, sitting on top of a small pile of secondhand donations outside the tea hut in my local park, where they are raising funds for restoring the tea house ready for a grand opening once this covid pan(dem)ic is over. I dropped a few coins into the collection tin and grabbed the book straight away, because I have read this author before and know she always delivers an intelligent and emotionally engaging story that I will probably enjoy. I didn't even know what this one was about until I started to read and realised it contained HORSES, one of my lifelong passions, and also BOOKS, which are another. The story is a romance of sorts, actually several intertwined romances, set against the backdrop of 1930s Kentucky, when intrepid women rod...

This quote from the classic prison drama The Shawshank Redemption has been running through my head during lockdown. Even if you haven't watched the film or read the Stephen King novella it's based on, you'll probably understand why. Here's a short reminder: Of course, the majority of us have not been locked up in a high-security prison for another man's crime, merely locked down in our own homes, some of us rather more severely than others. I count myself lucky I don't appear on any of the vulnerable lists, however from that first day back in March, when I stood knee deep in the freezing sea and imagined wading out to the horizon to escape the sudden and unexpected restrictions on my freedom, I've felt a little of what I imagine an innocent prisoner like Andy Dufresne must feel. "Get busy living or get busy dying" Andy says, the night before he disappears. His best friend in prison is worried about him, thinking this means he's come t...