the times | Saturday April 9 2022 saturday review 21
bestsellers
Paperback Fiction
1 (1) Still Life Sarah Winman
4th Estate £8.992 (2) Greenwich Park
Katherine Faulkner
Raven £8.99
3 (3) Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro
Faber £8.99
4 (4) It Ends With Us
Colleen Hoover
Simon & Schuster £8.99
5
(new)The Lamplighters
Emma Stonex Picador £8.99
6
(new)Better Off Dead
Lee & Andrew Child
Penguin £8.99
7 (6) The Seven Husbands of Evelyn
Hugo Taylor Jenkins Reid
Simon & Schuster £8.99
8 (5)Where the Crawdads Sing
Delia Owens Corsair £8.99
9 (9)The Magician
Colm Tóibín Penguin £8.9910
(new)Lean Fall Stand
Jon McGregor
4th Estate £8.99Hardback Non-fiction
1 (2) Why Has Nobody Told Me This
Before? Julie Smith
Michael Joseph £14.99
2
(new)Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir
Situation Hannah Gadsby
Allen & Unwin £20
3 (1) Feel Good Food
Joe Wicks HQ £20
4 (4)Butler to the World
Oliver Bullough Profile £20
5 (3)Queen of Our Times: The Life
of Elizabeth II Robert Hardman
Macmillan £20
6 (5)Otherlands Thomas Halliday
Allen Lane £20
7 (6)Taste Stanley Tucci
Fig Tree £20
8 (7)Shadowlands: A Journey
Through Lost Britain
Matthew Green Faber £20
9
(new)When the Dust Settles
Lucy Easthope
Hodder & Stoughton £2010
(new)Comedy, Comedy, Comedy,
Drama Bob Odenkirk
Hodder Studio £201
(new)Wild and Wicked Things
Francesca May Orbit £12.992 (3) Galatea Madeline Miller
Bloomsbury £6.99
3 (2) French Braid
Anne Tyler
Chatto & Windus £16.994 (4)The Atlas Six
Olivie Blake Tor £16.99
5 (5) Gallant VE Schwab
Titan £17.99
6
(new)Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?
Lizzie Damilola Blackburn
Viking £14.99
7 (7) The Paris Apartment
Lucy Foley
HarperCollins £14.99
8 (9)House of Sky and Breath
Sarah J Maas
Bloomsbury £16.99
9 (1) Run Rose Run
Dolly Parton, James Patterson
Century £2010 (8)The Man Who Died Twice
Richard Osman
Viking £18.99Hardback Fiction
1 (1) Putin’s People: How the KGB
Took Back Russia and Then Took
on the West Catherine Belton
William Collins £9.99
2
(new)Happy Mind, Happy Life
Rangan Chatterjee
Penguin Life £16.993 (2) Empire of Pain
Patrick Radden Keefe
Picador £9.99
4 (3)Wordle Challenge
Ivy Press £7.995
(new)Spring Cannot be Cancelled
Martin Gayford, David Hockney
Thames & Hudson £14.99
6 (4)Kleptopia Tom Burgis
William Collins £9.99
7 (7) The Power of Geography
Tim Marshall
Elliott & Thompson £9.99
8 (6)The Comfort Book Matt Haig
Canongate £9.99
9 (5)The Gates of Europe
Serhii Plokhy Penguin £10.99
10 (—)We Are Bellingcat Eliot Higgins
Bloomsbury £9.99Paperback Non-fiction
THE NUMBER IN PARENTHESES REPRESENTS CHART POSITIONS LAST WEEK. DATA SUPPLIED BY WATERSTONES FOR THE WEEK ENDING APRIL 2audiobook
of the week
The Embroidered Book
by Kate Heartfield,
read by Helen Keeley,
HarperVoyager,
19hr 4min
Retelling a long sweep
of history with a
magical spin has its
risks, including the time
it takes to explain the
mechanics of the spells
and the confusing
number of characters.
But the Canadian fantasy
writer Kate Heartfield
keeps the listener
charmed throughout her
tale of how the Hapsburg
sisters Charlotte (Maria
Carolina, the queen of
Naples) and Antoine
(Marie Antoinette, the
queen of France) inherit
a mysterious embroidered
book from a governess
and learn from it how to
wield power using magic.
Although forced to
live apart after they are
married off in 1768, the
sisters use portraits of
themselves as telephones.
However, the magic
comes at great personal
cost as rogue magicians
run amok.
There is impressive
depth to Heartfield’s
social and cultural
knowledge of the period.
She makes Antoine an
idealist interested in
philosophy, and the more
ruthless Charlotte a
patron of the painters
Angelica Kauffman and
Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun.
And Helen Keeley is an
exceptionally versatile
narrator, with a
pleasingly low-pitched
voice that rises
dramatically as needed.
Christina Hardyment
schoolboy with a school project. So far,
so normal. Until we learn it’s 1946 and
the project is real letters exchanged
between the boy and his Polish cousin
Bernard during the war.
Most of the rest of this beautifully
constructed historical snatch of the
Second World War — brought to life
by Michael Foreman’s touching
illustrations — takes the form of that
correspondence, starting in September
1939 and ending in September 1945.
The first letters are larky,
remembering trips to play footie in
“Vicky Park”. But by October of the
same year Bernie, a Jewish child whose
home is in west Poland, is writing from
a train bound for the east, having left
his parents behind. The Nazis are now
in the west and it’s deemed safer forBernie on the Russian side. In England,
Solly is evacuated to a farm in
Herefordshire and writes to Bernie of
sheep, chickens and his fears: “The
whole world seems dangerous now.”
Bernie is toiling in a work camp forMother Russia away from his family.
Come 1941, Solly rejoices that the
Americans have joined the war but is
worried that the Nazis are invading east
Poland, where Bernie is.
Bernie is sent to Italy to fight in the
Battle of Monte Cassino. Bernie’s last
letter to his cousin, the first written after
the liberation, is dulled by the lack of
news about his folks. Here the letters
stop and, back in 1946, Miss Drury,
Solly’s English teacher, and his
classmates have questions. I won’t spoil
the end but the cousins’ bonds endure.
The Royal British Legion receives
£1 from the sale of each book. It’s a
wonderful story and a good starting
point for a discussion about the
historical landscape that has led to the
present war.children’s book
of the week
Alex O’Connell
enjoys a wartime tale
told through letters
Please Write Soon
by Michael Rosen,
illustrated by
Michael Foreman
(7-11), Scholastic,
74pp; £12.99
Solomon is a north
London Arsenal-
supporting