Category: The Blog

I have been thinking for some time about the nature of this blog. I love having a space to reflect upon what I read but many of my writer friends are uncomfortable about writing reviews and I do understand their position.

I feel it is important to be honest about how I react to a novel, but at the same time criticising a contemporary is never easy. I don’t ever really say how much I acknowledge the difficulty of writing to begin with. Finishing a novel, a short story collection, a book of poetry, a graphic novel, these are all huge achievements and it is all too easy to reflect upon something created than to create something oneself. This is before I even begin to bring in taste (though hopefully, it’s pretty obvious by now what kinds of books I like, and that should make it easier for people to see where my reviews are coming from).

I have also made a conscious choice not to be overly personal in my reviews. I don’t often mention my family, or my own writing. I suspect I would get more readers if I did, but I have an instinctive desire to keep things at a distance. It might be more honest to talk about the number of times my reading gets interrupted by all the usual chores of being a 40 year-old married woman with a portfolio career, children, and a rather self-indulgent love of over-analysis. Perhaps people would like to read about what memories my reading evokes. Perhaps they would love an anecdote or two about how one of my young daughters (eight and six) read the current novel over my shoulder and made a witty remark about the prose. It is distinctly unmodern of me not to want to share all the nuances of my daily life with my blog. But, sorry folks, I just don’t think I can do it.

What I really want to express in this post is a note of apology to any fellow writers who feel my reviews don’t do their work justice. I know how hard writing can be and I try to acknowledge all the hard work whilst being truthful about what that work produced in my reading of it. I hope I would have the grace to accept similar truths from others.

 

Stronger Than Skin is an oxbridge novel that those who love to read about the hidden world of academic privilege will undoubtedly relish.

Mark has everything: a loving, attractive and pregnant wife, two wonderful children, a fulfilling job. But Mark also has a past and as he cycles home thinking of supper and the joys of family life, he sees the police at his front door and decides to cycle past.

So the novel begins.

We wonder what can Mark have done? Why doesn’t he simply turn himself in? Why doesn’t his wife know what he did? Continue reading Stronger Than Skin by Stephen May

Those of you who follow my blog, will know this is the second time I’ve snuck in a review of a book that I wasn’t intending to read next. You know how it is, you pick up a book just in passing and then get hooked. So here I am reviewing Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo instead of the planned Stronger than Skin by Stephen May which I will review in the next few days – I’ve started it and it’s a compelling read, sorry if you were hoping I’d review it sooner.

Stay With Me is a powerful book, transporting the reader to Nigeria. The narrative swaps between Yejide and her husband Akin, covering a time period from the early 1980s to 2008.  

It’s hard to write about the novel without spoiling the plot and Adebayo’s handling of time and information cleverly allow the story to unfold, teasing the reader with pieces of information about Yejide’s marriage and children in order to entice us further into the complexities of her relationship with Akin and their desire for progeny. Continue reading Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo

It’s 2011. Cairo is in the throes of revolution. Mubarak is no longer in power but the military have taken over and Mubarak seems likely to escape with his life.

Live from Cairo follows four main characters each struggling to find contentment whilst attempting to live in an increasingly unstable city. Continue reading Live from Cairo by Ian Bassingthwaighte

Based on a real murder that took place in 1836, The Unseeing is a cleverly crafted novel that explores and exploits the filters of human consciousness, its needs and its desires. Do any of us see clearly?

Sarah Gale has been convicted of aiding and abetting her lover, James Greenacre, in the murder of Hannah Brown whose body Greenacre dismembered and hid in different spots across London – the famous Edgeware Road Murder. For this, Sarah Gale will hang.

When various prominent figures petition for Sarah’s life, among them Mrs Elizabeth Fry, a young barrister, Edmund Fleetwood, is commissioned to investigate the evidence presented at the trial and to make a recommendation as to whether or not Sarah Gale should be spared the noose. Much to Edmund’s surprise, it was his father that suggested him for the commission. Continue reading The Unseeing by Anna Mazzola

This is a beautiful book, full of a sense of old magic muddled brilliantly into the mundane of the present.

Though the book’s title is the name of an old mining town, a close-nit community hit hard by the collapse of the coal industry and eventually forced to relocate due to the unstable nature of the land beneath it, the story is also about George, Beth and their son, Vincent. Continue reading Blackmoor by Edward Hogan

Our protagonist, only ever named Mr. Mahoney and usually not referred to by name at all, is a young man trying to make his way in the world.

His mother died when he was young leaving him alone with his sisters and father. His father is morose, beats his children and bemoans his hard labour on the land and their poverty.

The boy wants to be a priest, at least he wants to escape this world of his father’s making.

He wins a scholarship to a local school and then another scholarship to study at the university, all the time working through his complex feelings about the world and his place in it. As life throws different situations in his way, he learns not only about himself, but about the world outside of his father’s home. These experiences cast his home in a new light.

The Dark is recognisably Irish. There is something Joycean about it. In theme as much as in style: the son struggling against a boorish father; the meticulous play with style. For as well as precise language, a studied and emotive use of the passive voice, there is also a playful use of point of view. Continue reading The Dark by John McGahern

I really enjoyed this novel.

Based on real the real lives of Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson who were convicted of murdering Edith’s husband in 1922, Jill Dawson uses newspaper cuttings, historical records and extrapolated versions of Edith’s letters to present the history of Fred and Edie as Edith might have experienced it.

Aside from the historical documents, the novel is mostly written from Edith’s point of view, in the first person. Her account includes letters and diary-like entries about her affair with Fred and the death of her husband. The novel suggests she had no hand in plotting her husband’s death and that the letters read in court were carefully chosen to imply her guilt, withholding other letters that could provide alternative interpretations. I say suggests because Edie is mostly writing letters to Fred and in case the letters are read by others, or her other prison writings are, she doesn’t refer directly to specific events, leaving the accusation that she tried to poison her husband denied but only indirectly explained by her need for drugs to terminate her implied pregnancy.

Certainty of events is not something the novel offers. Instead Fred & Edie carefully unpicks the emotional climate of the time. Exploring Edie’s feelings enforces an exploration of society. Continue reading Fred & Edie by Jill Dawson

Jess takes care of her husband’s elderly relatives. His aunt, then his mother, and finally his uncle all live in Jess’s family home under Jess’s competent care.

Then, one night, her husband Jacob goes to the pub and never comes back. Did something happen? Did he have an accident? Where is he?

As Jess’s happy life of devotion begins to unravel, so does her sense of self. She felt happy, she was certain she was living the right god-filled life, but was she simply complacent, taking her husband’s care as read, devoting herself to him and his family as a way out of recognising the loss of being able to bear children? Did she devote herself to him in the way she should have devoted herself to God? Was she really suffocating, self-righteous, prim? Continue reading The Web of Belonging by Stevie Davies