Review of Into the Unknown: The secret WWI diary of Kiwi Alick Trafford no 25/469 – Ian Trafford

A personal account of WWI from the diaries of a Gisborne farm boy, shaped into a gripping narrative by the diarist’s grandson 100 years later.  Follow Alick as he moves from his last night on the farm in early 1916, through enshipment and training, then off to the battle fields of France and Belgium, occupied Germany and back home.

His treasured diaries covered the tedium, the mud, the fear and sorrow, the discomfort, the periods of leave and the letters from those back home. See the war unfold through Alick’s eyes and learn about his and his companions’ attitudes to the army, to female company, to the enemy soldiers, to the hospitality provided by people under pressure, to the war itself.

And after the drama and tragedy of war, comes the return home and the efforts required to make a living while remaining steadfastly silent about the traumas of those terrible years – an unseen fight that continued and affected the generations that followed.

Into the Unknown: The secret WWI diary of Kiwi Alick Trafford no 25/469

Ian Trafford

Penguin

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Stephen Litten

Alick Trafford volunteered to join the New Zealand Army, completing his basic training in Wellington in early 1916, before being shipped to France. He went through several rotations at the Front, starting as a private and finishing as a sergeant major, and being a bachelor, decided to participate in the occupation of the Rhineland when the Armistice was declared.

Alick kept a diary. Unlike most, he took it with him to the trenches, as this was against regulation. According to Ian’s recollection of events, his grandfather Alick believed the contents to be “dynamite.” While the author is credited as Ian Trafford, in reality he is more the editor of Alick’s diaries. I use the plural as a single diary was usually a small affair, suitable for daily notes, not essays on the quality of Picardy mud.

While Alick may have considered the diaries dynamite, time has softened the discourse he brings. We know about the mud, the shell shock, wounds, gas, and so forth. What is perhaps more shocking for the modern reader is the lethality of disease. Mumps and measles were both subject to quarantine, and in the latter part of the diary, he talks of the Spanish Flu, which was much worse than the recent pandemic.

Alick also had the misfortune of being wounded and spending much time in Britain recovering. He was able to visit a large number of relatives though.

I was initially put off by a claim in the foreword – the diary was illicit – but this is explained by Ian being loose with the truth. Keeping a diary in the trenches was illicit, but many men did. The Army was concerned about security (too much info on the page) and safety (distracted by writing it). That the men kept diaries is attested by the vast numbers in museum archives (and I’ve accessed quite a few doing research).

If you want to read a first-hand account of a Kiwi Digger, then you could do worse than read Into the Unknown. It gives a comprehensive guide to life of a New Zealand soldier, what he experienced both in action and inaction, on duty and leave, and attitudes to others. Alick Trafford is very much the average Kiwi. Not dynamite, but a damn good read.

Review of The Family Remains – Lisa Jewell

LONDON. Early morning, June 2019: on the foreshore of the river Thames, a bag of bones is discovered. Human bones.

DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene and quickly sends the bag for forensic examination. The bones are those of a young woman, killed by a blow to the head many years ago.

Also inside the bag is a trail of clues, in particular the seeds of a rare tree which lead DCI Owusu back to a mansion in Chelsea where, nearly thirty years previously, three people lay dead in a kitchen, and a baby waited upstairs for someone to pick her up.

The clues point forward too to a brother and sister in Chicago searching for the only person who can make sense of their pasts.

Four deaths. An unsolved mystery. A family whose secrets an’t stay buried for ever …

The Family Remains

Lisa Jewell

Century

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Jan Butterworth

A group out mud-larking find a black bin bag of bones and the police are called.  They are determine they are human and further testing reveals that they are 26 yrs old and belonged to a small-statured woman.  DCI Owusu leads the investigation to find out whose bones they are and how they ended up in the river…….

Lucy Lamb, her children and the dog have been living with her brother Henry, in his chic modern flat for over a year.  The Cheyne Walk house has finally sold and with her share of the money in her account, she’s started house hunting.  Then Henry disappears…….

After no contact for 25 years, Henry learns that his and Lucy’s old friend Phineas is working as a safari guide in Botswana and has changed his name to Finn.  After being told the Lambs have found his whereabouts, Finn disappears again.  Henry tracks him to Chicago and flies over to hunt down his childhood obsession..….

Rachel is the current wife of Lucy’s ex-husband, Michael. She thought she’d found her Prince Charming, but then he started to scare her. Traumatised by his violence and wanting to find someone who understands, Rachel tries to track down Lucy to find answers…..

There are four different threads that weave together seamlessly to tell a story.  Each is from a different viewpoint and it jumps from past to present events, explaining the back-story.    Chapters about past events include the month and year so you don’t get confused and it’s easy to tell whose viewpoint the story is being told from.

This book is the sequel to The Family Upstairs, a story about a house with a history, many secrets, and what happened to the family who lived there.  The Family Remains is a good standalone that provides enough background for readers that didn’t read the first book first but you really should.  It gives 4you a better understanding of the horrors the characters faced and how the experiences shaped them.

You know how some books end too soon and leave you wanting to know more?  With this sequel you get the chance to see how things turned out, as well as a thrilling new story.  It’s interesting to view the lives of the family after the hell they endured in the first story and how they dealt with the past. 

Though the last lines leave me hoping for another sequel.

Review of Mezcla – Ixla Belfrage

Everyday eating with special occasion energy – from the Ottolenghi protégé shaking up the food world.

In Spanish, mezcla means mix, mixture or blend, and is used to describe music and art as well as cooking. In her first solo book, Ixta Belfrage – loved for her foolproof techniques and inventive ingredient combinations – shares her favourite mezcla of flavours. These are impactful, fuss-free dishes to entertain your friends or treat yourself.

Includes quick, flavourful recipes, such as Chilli Roasted Oyster Mushroom Skewers and Giant Cheese on Toast with Urfa Butter, as well as dishes to spend more time over: Whole Roast Chicken Curry with Crispy Curry Leaves and Prawn Lasagne with Habanero Oil.

 Mezcla

Ixla Belfrage

Ebury Press

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Jacqui Smith

I have to say that this is a very striking book that stands out on the shelf – the bright fluorescent-orange cover makes sure of that. The contents are striking too; the book is full of plenty of creative and exciting recipes. The title ‘Mezcla’ means mixture, and this is just that, a mixture of recipes from a combination of cuisines; Italian, Mexican and the biggest influence, Brazilian. It works better than a lot of ‘fusion cuisine’ because they’re all what one could call Latin cuisines, born in the Mediterranean even if they grew up in the Americas.

Exciting is a good word. There is a lot of chilli here, and a fair amount of other spices so if that doesn’t suit your palate, this isn’t the cookbook for you (or for my long-suffering husband for that matter). There’s also a big emphasis on vegetarian and vegan recipes, though there are a number of fish recipes, and some meat dishes – including a Roast Chicken Curry I’m keen to have a go at.  There’s also a small but excellent dessert section where there is a Banana, Sesame and Maple Cake that I decided to try out for a party (it turned out nicely, looked like the picture, and was well-received).

This is not a book for a beginning cook; it is very much a book for the more experienced cook looking for something a bit different. The recipes are mostly not short, and some are fairly complicated, though they are well-illustrated, sometimes with step-by-step images.

 A bigger issue for New Zealand cooks will be finding some of the ingredients. It’s not just chilis, those are easy. It’s named varieties of chilli, from jalapeno to habanero, even some I’d never heard of. There are also several recipes for plantains – and those are rarely to be seen here, though you can substitute green bananas or kumara.

The most annoying thing for me about this book is the choice of fonts, especially the very small 1and light font used for the ingredient lists – it’s hard to read in anything but a brightly-lit room. It’s not just me, but everyone I’ve shown it to. This is a problem.

Still, I do expect to get some use out of this book, when I fancy making something a bit different. I’ll probably simplify things a bit for my family, and lay off some of the chilli. And if you’re looking to get more veg into the diet, and want interesting ways to prepare it, this may well be just the book you’re looking for.

Review of The Book of Night – Holly Black

In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences-but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone’s feelings-and memories-but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden-a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms.

And sometimes, it has a life of its own.

Charlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires.

But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie’s present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear-and at worst, non-existent. Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgangers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister-all desperate to control the magic of the shadows.

The Book of Night

Holly Black

Del Rey

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Jacqui Smith

I’m sorry, I’m not going to finish this book. It’s not a fun or entertaining read. Way too dark, too American, too alien (and not in a good way). I could not relate in any way to the protagonist (and what is this fashion for giving male names to female characters – it’s annoying and confusing).

It is a modern urban fantasy with a kind of dark magic associated with shadows that I thought sounded intriguing, but in the book, it did not make a whole lot of sense. Better world-building needed. This not the book for me, but your mileage may differ.