You do not need to have a scientific or mathematical background to appreciate this book by Ben Goldsmith, a doctor working in the NHS who is also the Guardian ’Bad Science‘ columnist. It helps to be curious about the incessant stream of articles or stories that seem to be compulsory nowadays in every edition of a newspaper, magazine or newscast confidently declaring  ’Miracle cure found’, ‘Salt will kill you’ (or, the following day, ‘Salt will not kill you’).

You might also like to know a little more about the basis (or lack of basis) to articles or advertisements on topics such as ‘3-day instant detox wonder’ and complementary or alternative medicine.

Some of these articles and claims do have a tenuous link to real scientific evidence, of course, but Goldacre’s book might surprise you about just how tenuous many of these links are, and just how exaggerated and imprecise most of these stories really are. His chapters on ‘Brain Gym’ and ‘Pill solves complex social problem’ deserve to be in your neighbourhood school science curriculum.

Not that Goldacre minds if you still disagree with his views even after you have read his book: as he says in his introduction, ‘you’ll probably be wrong with a lot more panache and flair than you could possibly manage right now’. Read it and judge for yourself.

Goldacre’s book is published by Fourth Estate, London 2008.

Davina is a qualified psychiatric nurse who has worked in the hospital setting and in a care home. She currently supports carers. Her little gem ‘Paving the Way’ is a companion for those who live with and care for people with a dementia.

In her introduction, she says, ‘This book is my small attempt at reducing some of the negative responses and turning them into the more positive elements’, and she does precisely that. With immense knowledge and experience and with a dose of gentle compassion, she explores the feelings of the carer and gives invaluable advice.

Respite for the carer is one of the areas she explores in depth, discussing the possibilities and the guilt feelings that surround it for the carer. Her suggestions of ways of prompting the troubled memory of the person are a delight. She lists ‘hordes of nostalgic collections’ that we have in our memories like ‘Black and white TV, Spam, flat irons, Singer sewing machines …’ and she gives useful addresses.

The little volume with enchanting hand-drawn illustrations, was self-published by Author House (who should have done a better job of proof-reading and spacing the text). It is available by post from the Author House Website: Paving the Way, Davina Green, ISBN 978 – 1 – 4490 – 1007 -2, and I thoroughly recommend it even to those of us who have already begun to go upstairs, then wonder what we went for!

Mistaken Identity

The clean, attractive cover with two pretty blond US university students smiling on it, is one reason for buying this text. The summary on the back cover is equally riveting. Mistaken Identity is not fiction. Unbelievable though it is, it really happened.

Five students were killed in a road accident in Indiana. We are given little information about the accident but we learn that Laura Van Ryn, severely injured and comatose, was taken to hospital, while the Ceraks buried their daughter, Whitney.

For five weeks, the Van Ryns and Laura’s boyfriend sat at Laura’s bedside in a darkened room, watching over their heavily bandaged daughter until she began to react to stimuli and, to her psychotherapist, declared that her name was Whitney.

The text takes us from the day of the accident to the present. It is written by the two families. To a European, perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of the work is the way that the faith and belief of the two families helps both of them to live with what has happened and come to terms with the tragedy.

God plays a large part in the novel – possibly a disconcerting presence for many who do not share such active faith, but certainly a help for both families who have remained friends even after the astonishing mistake.

December, Elizabeth H. Winthrop

Elizabeth J. Winthrop’s December is a thought provoking novel about an eleven year-old girl who has stopped speaking. We enter Isabelle’s world in December, in New England, as her parents, Wilson and Ruth, search desperately for a solution.

Isabelle’s school has allowed this artistic and musical adolescent to complete her assignments at home but can not accept this situation any longer. Ruth has given up her legal practice to cope with Isabelle but she is reaching the end of her patience.

We hear the story through the discussions of the parents, through their thoughts and the mind of Isabelle. We witness frequent family occasions in the kitchen and in restaurants where Isabelle is fed mouth-watering American childhood delights. With Ruth and Isabelle, we meet the helpless and tactless psychologist, the headmistress and the art teacher in the parent/child art class. The story is set against a wintery New England and New York landscape.

Like the three main characters, we are trying to pick up clues to explain Isabelle’s enforced silence – family stresses, a dying pet, the death of a squirrel. Even Isabelle is trapped in her own silence. We become as anxious as the characters to find a solution.

This is such an unusual novel. It is refreshingly different, revealing no villains but simply a normal family in the throes of a crisis. It is well worth reading.

The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce, Paul Torday

Those of us who were delighted by Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, a Richard and Judy summer read, were eagerly awaiting the publication of The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce, by Paul Torday.

In many ways, it lived up to expectation. The rows of bottles and glasses on the cover warned us what to expect. Indeed, Torday’s evocation of the hundreds of thousands of bottles that Wilberforce inherits is tantalising.

The story is almost back to front – but not quite. We begin at the beginning, when Wilberforce, by chance, wanders into Francis Black’s realm – his undercroft, where the wine is stored. We then work backwards in four sections.

The first section, presenting the final years, is a dramatic presentation of a dipsomaniac who can consume several thousand-pounds-worth of treasured classic wine in one day. We have hints that there has been an accident and that he has lost Catherine. We are told, very clearly, that he will not survive his alcoholism. Torday’s ability to chart the thinking of a man dying of an addiction is stunning.

The remaining three sections slowly take us back to Wilberforce’s past when, as an adopted child and mathematical genius, he made a fortune, met his benefactor and fell in love with Catherine. Our sympathy for him and understanding of his plight slowly develops. We begin to understand his desire to be part of the wealthy world he has strayed into. Magic touches, like the first name of Wilberforce, that has been kept secret from us, complete a dramatic picture.

This is a novel for wine lovers – or perhaps a warning!

before I die, Jenny Downham

It is a long time since I read such a moving novel as Jenny Downham’s before I die. Robert Collins in The Observer review says ‘destined to drive hundreds and thousands of readers to tears and to swift injunctions to all their friends to read it.’ I whole-heartedly agree.

How can a novel that includes so many things I disapprove of – drug-taking, sexual relations with strangers, shoplifting, driving without insurance or a licence to name a few - be so extraordinary?

Sixteen-year old Tessa narrates. She is in the same position as Oscar in Oscar and the Lady in Pink, suffering from terminal leukemia and aware that she has a limited time ahead of her. Yet Tessa is unlike Oscar in that she has a caring father and a loving younger brother, Cal, as well as Zoey, her brave friend.

Tessa’s despair is interspersed with lively episodes where she fulfils the activities on her list of ‘Things to do before I die’. We grow to love her as we share these experiences – and so does Adam. The end is inevitable, but it is difficult to read it through the tears. This novel is too good to miss.

Fish, Flesh and Good Red Herring, Alice Thomas Ellis

Cookery books are not generally as amusing as this one! Alice Thomas Ellis gives us three centuries of recipes and tasty titbits about food, sprinkled with a delightful handful of comedy.

Take, for example, the anecdote about Edgar and Gladys – he married her in haste when he was leaving for a remote part of Africa. When she joins him, he shows her round the bungalow and asks what she means to cook him for supper. Eggs were, he claimed, the only available ingredients. ‘But I don’t cook eggs!’ responded Gladys, who hated cooking, ‘but I could play you some Chopin.’  He threw her to the lions.

The male chauvinism of such a story is matched by the opulence of some of the menus. A menu for a 21st birthday party includes 30 roasted bullocks, 50 hogs, 50 calves and 50 sheep as well as, rather oddly, one leveret.

Five a day was simply not the rule. We are struck by the absence of vegetables in menus of the last three centuries.

Full of laughs and well worth reading, Fish, Flesh and Good Red Herring – A Gallimaufry, published by Virago, is nevertheless, a book to dip into. It will keep you laughing for a month, but would be difficult to digest in a single portion.

Carol Topolski’s Monster Love is extremely disturbing from beginning to end. Unfortunately, the central event is all too familiar. A child is abused, neglected and ultimately starved to death. How could this tabloid horror be the subject of a novel? And one of the current 10 best sellers?

Carol Topolski is a practising psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Perhaps that is why each of the narratives in the story rings so true. We hear the voices of the parents, the policeman who found the decaying corpse, the grandparents, a busybody neighbour and a host of others.

Each of them participated in some way in the horror and, for all of them, nothing will ever be the same again.

The picture is slowly fitted together and the horrible truth is that we understand even the evil couple who gave birth to Samantha. This book is gripping but not to be mistaken for an easy read. Don’t give it to your grandmother!

The death of a child is the worst nightmare for most mothers. Oscar has cancer. He has very few days to live and knows it, but his parents are unable to face the truth and share their grief with him. The elderly hospital visitor, the lady in pink helps Oscar come to terms with his death.

The lady in pink suggests that Oscar  should write a letter to God each night. Each letter will represent a decade, so that we find Oscar at the age of 110, exclaiming with delight that he is older than his parents now. The letters are a lovely way of coming to terms with harsh reality.

The lady in pink has the very touching final words on the morning Oscar dies.

Oscar and the Lady in Pink, translated from Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s original novel in French, is a world best-seller – understandably! It fits into the category of ’self-help’ without being patronising or mawkish.

There are copies in the outstanding selection of books in English at the La Combe Migros store in Nyon. What a surprise to find such well-chosen novels, best-selling crime-fiction and factual books at prices that are approachable.

We met an old friend at a barbecue and she spoke to me at length about the immense relief she is feeling and the wonderful new life her daughter is living after receiving a donor kidney. Her daughter suffered kidney failure and has coped with nightly dialysis for years. Our friend couldn’t speak highly enough about the people who are willing to leave an organ to save a life.

This set me thinking about texts that touch on this topic.

Jodi Picoult’s ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ is probably the most readable of them all. Would you deliberately conceive a second child in the hope that her genetic make up would be the same as that of your sick first child? Anna, the younger sibling, is one of the voices we hear in the novel. She is willing to prosecute her parents to stop them using her blood and bone marrow. Jodi Picoult maintains the tension and makes a very readable story of the debate – right up to the astonishing twist at the end.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go deals with the same issue in a far more subtle way. The students at Hailsham School are evidently privileged. Kathy H, the narrator, only slowly comes to awareness that she has been cloned in order to provide replacement organs. The reader moves with her into her desolate young adulthood.

The novels are very different, yet both are thought-provoking.