Ladies in Black by Madeleine St John

If you’re a fan of feel-good novels then you might like to try the enjoyable Ladies in Black. Originally published as Women in Black, this edition has been published to go with the musical and feature film, with the slightly altered title.

Author Madeleine St John was born in Sydney but moved firstly to the USA and then to England. This, the first of her four novels is the only one to be set in Australia.

Sydney 1959 and bookish sixteen-year-old Lesley Miles (renaming herself Lisa) has finished her school leaving exams. With the approaching Christmas rush and the New Year sales, Lisa has found employment at the renowned Goodes Department Store in the centre of Sydney.

Lisa is assigned to the Ladies Frocks Department where she meets Miss Cartwright the buyer, Miss Jacobs, Mrs Williams (Patty), and Miss Baines (Fay) who work in Ladies Cocktail. Just past the cocktail frocks is an archway with the sign “Model Gowns” and presiding over this rose pink cave is Magda “… luscious, the svelte and full-bosomed, beautifully tailored and manicured and coiffed…” Magda is all this and a continental!

Magda takes an interest in the childish looking Lisa and so the life-changing summer begins for not only Lisa but also Patty and Fay. Amusing, witty, and clever, be prepared to be transported back in time to the fifties!

Posted by VT

Catalogue link (book): Ladies in Black

Catalogue link (DVD): Ladies in Black

Sing Street

As someone who was a teenager in the 1980s, this was a hoot; my 16 year old daughter had a giggle as well.  The double denim, the big glasses and the perms, as well as music by the Cure, Duran Duran and the Clash - happy times!
Fourteen year-old Connor is having a tough time growing up in Dublin.  His Dad has lost his job and his parents are always arguing. It is decided he will have to move from his private school to the tough Catholic Boys local boys school.
Connor convinces a beautiful aloof girl  Raphina to be in a music video for his band.  Which would be great except he is not in a band.  So of course he starts a band with a group of misfits and advice from his drop-out stoner brother.
They avidly watch music videos and write songs in the style of whichever band they currently admire (as well as stealing their look/mother's clothes with great hilarity)
If you liked Irish music movies such as The Commitments and Once (a most excellent movie about a busker by the same director), give Sing Street a viewing.

Reviewed by Katrina 

Catalogue link:  Sing Street

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of curious photographs.

A horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

This book has been an unexpected hit with one of our book clubs. Weird but good seems to be the general consensus!

Catalogue link;  Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Sarah’s Key a film by Gilles Paquet-Brenner

Based on the novel by Tatiana de Rosnay, this is a moving film which links an event in Paris during World War Two with a woman’s discoveries around her husband’s old family apartment. In 1942, the Jewish Starzynski family are rounded up by the police for transportation to Nazi concentration camps. Thinking she will be back soon to free him, little Sarah locks her younger brother in a cupboard, setting in motion a train of events that will haunt her the rest of her life.

American journalist, Julia Jarmond, is living in Paris with her French husband, renovating an old apartment that has been in her in-laws’ family since the war. While researching a story around the arrest of Paris Jews in 1942, she stumbles on a link with the apartment and finds herself investigating what happened to the Starzynskis.

This is a sensitive drama that takes an aspect of the Holocaust and makes it very personal. Kristin Scott Thomas has that knack of portraying the emotions you feel as the story of what happens to Sarah unravels. There’s another amazing performance by young Sarah, played by child actor, Melusine Mayance, a rising star perhaps? Beautifully and atmospherically filmed.

Posted by JAM

Catalogue link: Sarah's Key, the movie
Catalogue link: Sarah's Key, the novel