Songs from the Violet Café

This is a fascinating book about Violet and the people who work in her cafe. It describes their lives and how they intertwine before during and after working for Violet. Life in Campodia was something I knew very little about and the descriptions of life there will definitely stay with me for a long time.

A boat is burned in a ceremony of letting go of memories.

Years ago a woman named Violet rows with a little boy over a lake. She leaves without the boy letting him stay with her old friend Hugo.

Different family stories unfold and at least one of the woman in those families is working at the Violet Cafe. They are all called troubled women.

I never read a book by Fiona Kidman before and at first I wasn't sure what to think about it.
The start was rocky, switching between characters and times.
When the 1963 storyline started I felt completely lost at first. The many new characters and the time jumps in their stories were so confusing.

But once I found myself into it and accepted that this would be an overall problem for me throughout the book I managed to focus on the storyline of the beautiful developed characters.

It is a beautiful story of troubled women who are finding their way and themselves in the work at the Violet Cafe.
It is a story of love and friendship and sacrifices.
Besides cultural, religious, generational and gender conflicts this book just shows how life can be.

Because of my issues with this book I am between 3.75 and 4 stars out of 5.
For the story definitely more a 4 stars, for the writing approach more the 3.75.

My review as posted on Goodreads:

I think the book was originally published in 2003, but through Netgalley and Aardvark Bureau, I was given the chance to read a forthcoming UK edition in exchange for an honest review.

Whilst I liked this book, I was also confused by it in places. There are so many characters to get to grips with. I found it hard to follow at times. Hence the three star rating.

The settings of Rotorua and Cambodia are beautifully described and provide both a sense of geographical location and a place in history. I liked this a lot.

On balance the disjointed feeling which I had at the start, never fully went as this book progressed.

However, although this isn't Fiona Kidman's best book in my opinion, I will certainly still look out for other books she has written.

With thanks to Gallic/Aardvark through NetGalley for a first taster of Fiona Kidman's writing.

It took me some time and flicking pages back and forth to fix in my mind a large cast of characters and complicated relationships between them, but I found this an engaging story. Interesting setting in New Zealand and Indochina too. I hope more of her books are to be published in the UK soon.

This is a book that spans several decades. It is about a group of women all of whom are emotionally damaged. It makes slow reading as it does not hang together well and there are too many characters suffering similar issues. All have a connection to the one cafe in a village as well as unknown connections to each other in some cases. I found it to be a difficult read.

Well written set of fictional pieces that almost gripped me - mostly for their well-observed characters but I did not always 'get' the situations or the dilemmas - it is entirely a matter of taste, but I was more aware of the good writerly qualities than engaged with the storytelling.

This book was wonderful. It was very well written, the characters were all immediately friends, the foreign landscapes, sights and smells, were just out the window. Hard to put down once started, "wonderfully thoughtful book, full of interesting history and culture." Best thing of all, a page turner, with thought provoking twists and turns in the story. 5 stars!

A solid and entertaining read that kept me turning pages.

The novel centres around a group of people who all come into the orbit of Violet Trench, who runs a café in the small town of Rotorua, New Zealand. Violet is a charismatic figure and nobody who meets her ever manages to forget her. There is a mystery in Violet’s life, but all the characters have their secrets and evasions and it is the gradual reveal of these that keep the reader’s interest. However, there are a lot of subplots and it’s sometime difficult to keep track of everyone, especially as the novel jumps around in time and place. The lives of all the characters continue to intersect over the years as though Violet’s influence continues to draw them back to each other. As a narrative device this works very well on the whole, but I feel it would have been a tighter, more coherent novel with fewer stories to tell. Nevertheless, it’s an often moving and sometimes gripping tale of love, friendship, family and loss, vividly evocative of the New Zealand landscape, and overall an enjoyable read.

Intriguing in the complicated dynamics of relationships.

I struggled at the beginning with this book as it seemed to jump about from year to year .I did enjoy the characters and found this a very engaging book if a bit confusing at times .

I enjoyed this book. It's a story of mothers, daughters, relationships, family.

This is a beautifully written book, set in New Zealand, which tells the stories of the girls who work in the Violet Cafe and how they came to be there working for the owner of the cafe, Violet Tench. Violet is an older woman and is a major influence on the girls who work for her. She is strict but fair and helps the girls find their way in the world.

The girls are considered to be “troubled” (or perhaps they were just a bit different and didn't quite conform to what was expected of a young woman at that time).

The book spans 60 years and starts with friends burning an old boat on the lake in 2002. We are then taken to 1943 when a woman with a young boy goes across the lake in a boat but returns without him.

There is a bit of a jump then to 1963-64 when we meet the girls who work for Violet:

Jessie who decided, on her 18th birthday, to leave the home where she lived with her mother, step-father and half-siblings. There didn't seem to be any compelling reason – she just left the next day;

Marianne who hadn't had contact with her mother since returning home unexpectedly one day and catching her boyfriend and her mother in bed;

Belle, the daughter of a preacher, who is engaged to Wallace a young, part-time preacher who had given her a ring on the day before her fifteenth birthday. It was agreed she could work at the Violet Cafe, washing dishes, until she was married but is now being pressured by Wallace to give up work;

Hester, the only child of widow Ruth who owns a bookshop. Hester had been engaged for five years to Owen but Ruth is not happy about Hester's engagement; and

Evelyn, the daughter of Freda Messenger and who is filling in at the Violet Cafe until she goes to university.

They all come from very different backgrounds and experiences but they are all connected through being employed by Violet Trench.

The writing is is very, very good. and although I have no experience of New Zealand in the 1960s, I felt as if I were there and could easily picture the people and places.

Then in 1965 everything changes following a devastating incident and the story jumps to 1980 and we're taken to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. At first I thought this was a very big jump forward in time but the story is so well written it all makes sense.

The books ends where it started - in 2002. I liked the way everything linked together and characters connected.

To be honest, I hadn't heard of this New Zealand author although I realise now that she is a highly acclaimed writer.

I loved this book! Review to come on Goodreads and my blog! 4 stars for Songs from the Violet Cafe!!

Women working at the Violet Café and the one thing they all have in common is they are troubled either by circumstances or bad choices. They all come together and form a bond because of their pasts and the glue that holds them all together is Violet Trench. This is a great story of human endurance against all odds and that sometimes you can find support and family in places you might least expect. I would like to thank the Publisher and Net Galley for the chance to read this ARC.

Ballad of a sad cafe?

This book was originally published in 2003. What the thinking is behind republishing and remarketing it I am not sure. But it did mean I could secure a second-hand copy at a reasonable price instead of having to endure it as an e-book which I loathe!! Fiona Kidman is a celebrated New Zealand author who I have not encountered before.

Firstly, I enjoyed it very much. The title alone conjured up a multitude of past ‘Cafe’ experiences that I hold dear - Bagdad Cafe, Fried Green Tomatoes at The Whistle Stop Cafe and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. (In fact, another Carson McCullers novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was also brought to mind by some of the descriptions and action within the Violet Cafe itself.)

And so, with a certain frisson of anticipation I settled into this book relatively easily and happily. The action takes place mostly in New Zealand but also reaches into the heart of Cambodia. Sitting here in leafy England I sometimes forget that Asia is almost no distance relatively from the Antipodes and I had to keep reminding myself of that to keep a perspective on the narrative.

Violet Trench is one of the main protagonists and obviously where the book and the cafe attain their title. She is a strong, autocratic woman and runs the cafe with a rod of iron. She employs several individuals, mostly women, who all have their own story. The cafe is the cement that binds them all together despite it crumbling in places. I guess their stories are the ‘songs’ of the title although there is some discordance among the melodic.

Whilst I really did enjoy the book I did find it a little disjointed. There was much switching between time frames and characters. I frequently had to refer back to remind myself who was who and when was when. (Another plus for reading the physical book. What a drag it is trying to do that with an ebook?!) It struck me several times that it was very much like reading several short stories with the cafe being the link between the characters whose stories were told. I think Ms. Kidman is very comfortable with the short story format as she has had several volumes published. And maybe I am making that sound like a criticism? Forgive me, I don’t mean to.

The writing is accomplished, economic without being sparse. There is no overload of description but all that needs to be conveyed is done so with eloquence. The characters are a troubled bunch overall; some are difficult to warm to but I found myself engaged with them and keen to follow their histories. Violet herself seems to place everyone at arm’s length including the reader and in contrast Jessie draws us towards her.

This isn’t merely a discourse on the lives of a cafe owner and her employees, the net is cast wider than that with some food for thought of what happens to a country in conflict with itself and people in conflict with themselves.

I’m seeing it as a four-star read because for me the disjointedness did grate a little but there is far better about this book than bad. It will be interesting to see if republication propels the novel into a wider realm.

Whizz

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

This book follows a number of characters who work at a Cafe in New Zealand. A lot of the ladies are 'troubled' and the book ambles through the decades and spends time in Cambodia. I will admit that I found the rambling quite difficult to follow at times and I was expecting a totally different read. I did find the settings in New Zealand and Cambodia fascinating and enjoyed reading about them.
I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read a book out of my comfort zone.

Somehow I found this slow and difficult to read, so I began again 2 weeks later and this time liked it better. I enjoyed the descriptive, the setting especially as I have been to New Zealand and loved it. Set before I was born life was clearly different for women. This book sweeps across continents. A powerful story, I love her style of writing, sensual descriptions of love and food etc.

I want to read it again, slower, to take in more but I encourage women especially to read it. You will be swept along too.

This was a cute read. I enjoyed it. Thanks for the chance to read it.