Rook [Kindle Edition]

Jane Rusbridge has followed her excellent debut novel: The Devil's Music with this exquisitely written and thoroughly enjoyable second novel 'Rook'.

Nora, a cellist, has returned to Creek House, her family home in Bosham, a beautiful village on the West Sussex coast, where she attempts to put incidents from her recent past behind her. Nora's mother, Ada, an emotionally fragile and somewhat embittered woman, is not entirely welcoming, and instead of giving her daughter the love and support she needs, she immerses herself in her own fragmented memories and imaginings of the past, as she wanders in her overgrown garden where the scent of her French cigarettes mingle with the enticing aromas of the sea.

With the need to put her past behind her, Nora fills her spare time by running along the creek paths leading to the sea with the sound of cello concertos reverberating in her mind, and by volunteering to help with village life. One day she finds a half-dead baby bird, and feeling a connection with the bird's injured state and needing a project, Nora immerses herself in nursing the young bird back to health. And while Nora is occupied with her injured bird, other events occur which provide further distractions when a film crew, headed by a rather charismatic documentary maker, arrives in the village to make a film about an eleventh century king who is believed to be buried under the floor of the parish church. Bosham, we discover, has important and fascinating associations with the past and, as tales of ancient battles, rivalries and burials are revealed, Nora and Ada find themselves confronting difficult issues from their own pasts that are very painful to deal with.

Jane Rusbridge has portrayed the beauty of the natural surroundings at Bosham and along the Sussex Coast wonderfully, and this is a superbly crafted story by an author who has a talent for evoking a real sense of time and place and of reminding us of the rich seam of history lying quietly, yet powerfully beneath the present day. A brilliantly observed, atmospheric and sensually written story and one that deserves more than one reading, so it's a novel to keep on your shelves for further future enjoyment and to share with others.

5 Stars.

This is a stunning book - spare, tender, beautiful prose, telling a multi-layered story which delivers no easy answers. The characters are minutely drawn, and the setting is evoked with luminous and atmospheric language. As a 'local' - I happen to live in the village where the book is set - I'm very impressed by how exactly Rusbridge has caught not just the look and landscape of the area, but the feel of the place too.

I loved this book, and my only regret is that I finished it too quickly.

After the wonderful, The Devils Music, I couldn't wait to read ROOK, Jane Rusbridge' second novel. I preordered it from Amazon and cleared the decks for its arrival. When it did arrive I tore it from the parcel and found this beautiful book, the front cover has a picture of Nora, standing amongst a building of rooks. yes building, I looked it up. Anyway there are rooks in the air all around her. Nora has returned home to Creek House next to the village of Bosham, on the Sussex coast. Nora rescues an injured rook and nurses him back to heath, she names him Rook. Her mother Ada lives in the house and is a bitter old woman with a secret. Nora has been away from home. She is a gifted cellist and while at collage, then performing, has had an affair with her older and charismatic teacher. Nora has secrets too. There is so many wonderful layers to this book, from the opening scene of a mid eleventh century battlefield to the same ground in the twenty first century and Jonny, an outsider who wants to make a documentary about King Cnut and an attempted archaeological dig in the little church of Bosham. The characters are all fantastically written and the family story of Nora, her sister Flick, Felicity and their parents is wonderfully revealed as the the book reaches its end. This has been a hard review to write, no matter what I say about ROOK, it couldn't with my limited skill, do it Justis. I think Jan Rusbridge is something special and we may look back in years to come and realise this. I hope she writes many more books and gets the acclaim she deserves today.

Footnote. you can also have a parliment of rooks, I like building.