It was inevitable that a novel featuring my three favourite historic figures (Diego Riveira, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky) should find its way into my supermarket basket. How glad I am that it did!


The Lacuna is a well-researched and beautifully written epic novel that captured my imagination and held my attention from its early pages. It combines modern and ancient Mexican history with modern US history and an anti-war message. It tells the life of Harrison Shepherd, an American boy growing up in Mexico, and later of his career and exile in the USA. His story is interwoven with that of famous artists Riveira and Kahlo, and the Bolshevik leader, Trotsky.


Chancing to meet Frida Kahlo in the market place one day, he offers to carry her basket, and not discouraged by her rather scornful reply, he follows her home – the start of a complicated life-long friendship and his first job in the Riveira/Kahlo home.


Shepherd makes himself indispensible as a mixer of the best plaster, a fine cook and a secretary. When the household takes in exiled Russian leader, Leon Trotsky, Shepherd becomes his main scribe and translator. His diaries give colourful descriptions of the vibrant personalities he lived amongst and of a life under constant threat of attack.

After Shepherd’s death, he makes his way to small-town American and establishes a new life as an author. He leads a reclusive life and tries as much as possible to be unnoticed, but his novels are overnight successes and draw a lot of attention from women (in which Shepherd) is not remotely interested) and from the media.

As McCarthy’s witch-hunt against Communism draws momentum, Shepherd comes under suspicion by his former association with Riveira, Kahlo and Trotsky and is drawn into an ugly legal battle.

Will he clear his name? You will just have to read this fascinating and entertaining story to find out.  Highly recommended.

It beggars belief to learn that once your cells leave your body, you are considered to have voluntarily given them up and they no longer belong to you.  This is as true to day as it was in 1951, when Henrietta Lacks, a poor young Afro-American woman was admitted to a hospital in Baltimore with an exceptionally invasive and aggressive form of cancer.

A biopsy was taken of these cells without her knowledge or consent.  At this time, human tissue culture was in its infancy and researchers struggled to keep the cells alive.  Yet, they found that Henrietta's cells not only lived, but thrived and multiplied and seemed nigh impossible to kill.  Soon, these cells, named 'HeLa' were being used in medical research experiments worldwide, and became big business.

In this book, Rebecca Skloot aims to tell the personal story of Henrietta, her life of poverty, her illness and death, and the way her death has contributed to huge advances in science.  She talks to the people who knew Henrietta, and to her family who were initially hostile and suspicious of her motives.  Despite the fortunes that Henrietta's cells made for those who controlled them, her family never received a penny and remained unable to afford healthcare.  The story exposes the racism and hypocrisy of the medical industry of that time.  Despite being a science book, it is very accessible and easy to understand and reads more like a fiction novel.  It is a book that enrages and inspires, and I recommend it to all.

Review
When it comes to coffee, I admit that I'm a bit of a Philistine.  I hate cappuccino, espresso, latte and all that Italian muck that has taken over coffee shops worldwide.  Given the choice, I'm much happier with a decent filter coffee, and happier still with a mug of plain old Nescafe.  I can't resist my local newsagent's bargain price and don't care that the jar may be written in Russian or Arabic.

Despite my unrefined tastes, I was drawn to the idea in Anthony Capella's novel of being able to define coffee its aromas and tastes.  The main character Wallis is pretty much blackmailed into working for Pinker's coffee shop, where he soon sets his sights on the owner's daughter, Emily and her father's money.  She accepts his proposal but before they can wed, Wallis is sent away to Africa to start a coffee plantation (a shrewd move by her father who hopes the playboy will be out of sight and out of mind there).  Once in Africa, Wallis promptly falls for a slave girl.

I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but this is a really fun, rollicking good read, frequently bawdy, and gives a flavour of life in Edwardian London as well as colonial Africa.  It is also interwoven with politics - Emily despite marrying a Liberal MP, is an active member of the Suffragettes.

Make yourself a cup of your favourite coffee, sit down and get stuck in.  You're in for a treat.

Please can you tell us a little about your childhood and background?
I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the oldest of three children. As a toddler, I was diagnosed as being profoundly deaf, the result of my mother contracting rubella, or German measles, during her pregnancy. As a child, I was fitted with my first hearing aid and enrolled in a special preschool for hearing-impaired and deaf children, during which time I learned to speak and lip-read with the help of my mother, who by that time had gone back to college to earn her master’s degree in audiology. I was mainstreamed into a regular classroom in the fourth grade and remained in the public school system until I graduated from Olathe (Kansas) North High School.