'A Tidy Ending' by Joanna Cannon

11 April 2025

The novelist Joanna Cannon seems to have a particular interest in the naive narrator. In ‘The Trouble with Goats and Sheep’ (reviewed here in January 2022) many of the novel’s chapters are narrated in the first person by 10-year-old Grace, and in 'Three Things About Elsie' (reviewed here in November 2023) the first person narrator is Florence, a woman in her 80s with failing memory, living in a retirement home. Joanna Cannon’s 2022 novel ‘A Tidy Ending’ similarly keeps the reader guessing about how much its protagonist really understands what is going on around her. It’s no mean feat to write a twisty thriller about a serial killer in the same gently quirky ‘cosy crime’ style as her previous novels without making it distasteful. ‘A Tidy Ending’ is intriguing, puzzling, creepy and cleverly plotted. 

Cruise from Malta

10 April 2025

We had a very enjoyable Mediterranean cruise last week on the P&O ship Azura, visiting Valletta in Malta, Athens in Greece and Heraklion and Chania in Crete. We particularly enjoyed our first visit to Valletta - a beautiful old town set on a plateau on a narrow peninsula with water on three sides. It's very pretty with some very grand buildings, all in a distinctive sand coloured stone, built in a grid system. In Athens we visited the Temple of Olympian Zeus next to Hadrian's Gate. This temple was larger than the Parthenon but only 15 of its 100 columns are still standing. There are good views from the site across to the Acropolis. We also visited the National Archaeological Museum which has an extensive collection of artifacts from ancient Greece, many dating from 3,000 years BC. From Heraklion we went to the Palace of Knossos - a fascinating archaeological site with some of the buildings reconstructed (in cement) by Sir Arthur Evans when he excavated the site in 1900. These reconstructions are gradually being replaced but they do give an idea of the scale of some of the buildings. Chania is a pretty town with a picturesque harbour but we didn't see it at its best, having arrived during a torrential thunderstorm. We had a lovely, relaxing cruise with good food, company and dancing.