Review: Living in the Past

Living in the Past by Jane Lovering
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Grace Nicholls is a school teacher whose husband Jamie tragically died of cancer two years ago, ever since she's (understandably) been sad and living life in a zombie-like fashion (although less brains for dinner, naturally). When her BFF Tabitha drags her to volunteer at an archaeological dig in Yorkshire during the school holidays Grace can't think of anything less fun. But despite herself Grace finds the monotony of the work soothing and her run-ins with the site director Duncan McDonald have a certain ascerbic charm, as does the bizarre group of people living over the hill, she can't decide if they are hippies or some austere religious group but Grace enjoys watching their 'back-to-nature' lifestyles.

Professor Duncan McDonald is very familiar with the dig site, his family has a holiday home close by, but his return is tinged with sadness and when one of the students goes missing it seems as though history is repeating itself, but the truth is so much more bizarre than he could ever imagine.

I bought this book over six months ago because I like Jane Lovering's books, read a couple of chapters and thought, 'nah' and put it aside. In a bit of a reading funk last night I picked it up again and raced all the way through it - which just goes to show that its often as much about how you are feeling when you read a book as it is about the book that you are reading.

I thought the premise of this book was made clear in the blurb, but obviously not, so I'm not going to spoil the plot by revealing it ahead of time. If your idea of a romance is a grieving widow trading snark with a dour Scotsman with no interpersonal skills then this is definitely the book for you, their insults made me chuckle out loud. Also I have recently seen the film The Dig about the finding of an Anglo-Saxon Burial Ship at Sutton Hoo, so this story of looking for a bronze-age settlement in Yorkshire was right up my alley, add in a little suspense and it was another page-turner from Jane Lovering.

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