He Wants by Alison Moore

A while ago - a long while, actually - at the launch for Alison Moore's novel Missing, I picked up a copy of one of her previous books, put it on a shelf, and half forgot about it. I have quite a stack of my own personal books which tend to get neglected in favour of review copies, but this last month or so I've been trying to take time out to read them. So here I am, over a year later, to tell you about He Wants.

Lewis is a retired school teacher. He's had an uneventful life, and retirement is even less exciting. Now a widower, he still lives in the village where he grew up. His daughter visits regularly, bringing lunch that he doesn't really want, and making sure he's okay, but there seems to be little love or companionship between the two. This isn't the middle-age he wanted, in fact much of his life he seems to have just drifted along the easiest path rather than make active choices. With time on his hands, Lewis wanders through his memories, regretting chances he never took, wishing he'd done things differently. He's made to feel worse by the return of an old friend, Sydney, who seems quite glamorous in comparison - he's traveled and seen the world, and seems to have generally made a success of his life.

As with Alison Moore's other work, this is a gently-paced, quiet, contemplative story, focusing on the inner turmoil and hopes of her characters.

I read this at a point when I was feeling very low, and although, with its themes of loneliness, regret and missed chances, it's hardly what you might call a cheerful book, I found it soothing. It's not all doom and gloom though. There are many instances of Moore's wry humour, and the ultimate message is one of hopefulness. To me it said 'it's never too late; if you've got an unfulfilled dream, give it a go'

Top Ten of 2018

For once, I've managed to restrict myself to ten for my 'best of the year' list - all, in their own way, absolutely brilliant ...

Take Nothing With You - Patrick Gale (Tinder Press) - in his fifties, when he thought he was past the age of being surprised, Eustace finds himself falling in love with a man he meets on the internet, and diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening condition. Undergoing long solitary hours of hospital treatment he looks back over his life - the fumbling sexual misadventures of his teenage years, and his escape from a dull, repressive home life through music. Gale's writing is engrossing, intelligent, and compelling.

Missing - Alison Moore (Salt Publishing) How to quickly sum up a novel by Alison Moore? Not easy without giving away too much plot. Jessie Noon lives a solitary life, cut off from neighbours, friends and family. The story follows her trying to start up a new relationship, and fix the gap that has grown between her and her family. On the surface, little seems to happen; beneath it, everything does. Moore is wonderful at playing with words, at building atmosphere, and at creating characters that linger long after the final page.







Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie (Bloomsbury) a book club read which absolutely stunned me. In this story of love, politics, family ties and radicalization, Kamila Shamsie brings Sophocles' Antigone bang up to date, setting it in present day London, where Aneeka finds herself torn between loyalty to her twin brother Parvaiz (despite his extreme beliefs) and her lover, Eamonn, son of the Muslim Home Secretary. I read hoping for a happy ending, but not even today is there an easy way out of this dilemma.









Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkeviciute (Peirene) Based on actual events, this book is a gripping, moving account of the fate of Lithuanians forcibly moved from their homes during WW2 and 're-settled' in Siberia, in inhumane conditions with inadequate food or shelter. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, Dalia Grinkeviciute's account doesn't ask for sympathy, but faces the situation head on, doing whatever she needs to to survive.












From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan (Doubleday) Three very different men, whose lives are linked in only the slightest of ways, but for whom sorrow has crept up unexpectedly and engulfed them. Donal Ryan always has an amazing way with words, enabling the reader to walk in someone else's shoes for a short time, to experience their fears and hopes, and maybe find sympathy for them.

In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne (Tinder Press) A gripping portrayal of life on a run-down, inner-London estate, of the precarious balance between hope and despair in which its inhabitants live. It follows 48 hours in the lives of three teenage friends from different backgrounds, as outside events kick off riots and change these boys' lives forever. The writing is pacy, and 'in your face', capturing 'street-talk' in a way that feels natural and unforced. It's hard to believe this is a debut novel.










The Truth about Archie and Pye: a mathematical mystery  by Jonathan Pinnock (Farrago) - an off-beat, quirky thriller. After a chance encounter on a train, Tom Winscombe finds himself in possession of a case full of mathematical equations that everyone (including the Belorussian mafia) seems to want, and they're not afraid to kill anyone standing in the way. It's fast-paced, funny, and you don't need to know anything about maths to enjoy it.










Elsewhere, Home by Leila Aboulela (Telegram) - a moving, thought-provoking collection of short stories dealing with the search for 'home' and the difficulties of migrants caught between two places that answer to that description, between the heat and vibrancy of Cairo or Khartoum and the dull, damp streets of Aberdeen or London, or, conversely, the old-fashioned, limited world of Africa and the modern, opportunity-filled one of Europe. Having chosen to leave, though, home can't really be returned to.





Shatila Stories edited by Meike Ziervogel - an ambitious project from the founder of Peirene Press, in which she and London-base Syrian editor Suhir Helal travelled to Beirut, to the Shatila settlement created for Palestinian refugees, and worked with hopeful, enthusiastic, but inexperienced, writers from the camp itself to develop the stories that go into this collection. Again a book that lets the reader into the lives of the people so often dismissed as mere 'numbers' in a news report.






Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield (Doubleday) This last choice is a sneaky inclusion, as it's currently only available in the UK as an e-book, and won't be available as a hardback till January 17th. It was too good to be made to wait a whole year though. It's a masterpiece of story-telling concerning a girl pulled out of the river Thames. Assumed to be dead, she miraculously comes back to life but then the search is on for her family - with several people claiming her as theirs she becomes the centre of a 'tug of love'.

Sunny and the Ghosts by Alison Moore

'Sometimes, when you open a door or lift a lid, you find exactly what you expected to find: coats in the coat cupboard, bread in the bread bin, toys in the toy box. And sometimes you don’t.'

illustrated by Ross Collins

review by Maryom 

Sunny's parents like old things - clocks and pianos, books and ornaments - so bought an antique shop, with a flat above where they live. Sunny helps in the shop by polishing mirrors, brass coal scuttles and copper kettles, out of which he always thinks a genie might appear. It isn't a genie he finds hiding among the old blanket chests and wardrobes, though, but a ghost ... then another ... and then a third is found locked in a cupboard! The ghosts all seem friendly, and hardly any trouble at all (unless you count playing the piano at night), but someone seems to be causing trouble in the shop. Books are thrown off their shelves, an ornament broken, dozens of cats let in to wander round the shop, sit on furniture and cushions, sleep in pots and pans. Sunny suspects there must be another ghost, a naughty one, playing pranks and getting up to mischief, but how can he make the ghost show himself, and then leave?

You'll probably have heard of Alison Moore as an award-winning author, listed for the Booker and such, but this is her first book aimed at a younger readership. 

It does share some characteristics of Moore's 'adult' novels - an interest in the meanings behind words and phrases, a brevity of words to describe people and situations, but it most definitely isn't a grown-ups novel dumbed down for children. It's a light-hearted and fun read, with line-drawings by Ross Collins bringing characters and situations to life, eminently suitable for children who find scary, hide under the bedsheets ghost stories just too frightening. The plot moves along quickly, and once Sunny finds one ghost, more seem to appear every day, popping up in all sorts of odd places around the shop. It's all jolly, apart from the puzzle of who, or what, is behind the trouble in the shop. Sunny's parents seem inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, and don't blame him for it, but I'm not sure they really believe his tale of ghosts either. With a little help from his spectral friends though Sunny manages to track down the trouble maker, and find a way to settle the problem. 

Further stories are planned so this looks like being the beginning of quite an adventure for Sunny and the Ghosts.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Salt Publishing
Genre - children's ghost stories 9+

Missing by Alison Moore

review by Maryom

Alison Moore's latest little gem (less than 200 pages) follows Jessie Noon for a few weeks in winter - from late November to the start of January - as she goes about her life in the Scottish Borders town of Hawick. It's a life which feels strangely cut off and isolated, from neighbours, friends and family. For the past year she's been living alone with just a cat and a bizarrely named dog for company, after her (second) husband walked out one morning leaving a parting message in the steam on the bathroom mirror. As the story progresses, Jessie starts up a new relationship, tries to get in touch with her grown-up son, who she hasn't heard from in years, and to improve her relationship with her parents and elder sister, but something is missing. She's haunted and weighed down by a dreadful event from her past, which leaves her wandering around in a fog - able to concentrate on the tiny, mundane everyday things immediately around her but unable to see a bigger picture.

Jessie's story unfolds in two ways. As we follow her day to day (frankly quite dull) routine, Jessie slips, stream of consciousness-like, into random reminiscences brought about by the things she sees. These chapters are interspersed by sections set back in 1985, as events move relentlessly towards the tragedy which has shadowed Jessie and her family since.

The writing is wordy in the way that Moore's books often are - not in length but in playing with meanings. The power of words is central to the tale; a misunderstood instruction led to the dreadful event which plagues Jessie's life - ironic as she's a translator by trade, and spends hours, if not days, mulling over the subtle meanings of words, trying to find an exact English match for each one.
So I found myself, of course, thinking about 'missing' and all its various forms - a missing person, missing someone who's no longer in your life, missing your bus, missing your step, missing a turning, a near miss, or just missing out on life, as Jessie is. Her life has been irrevocably changed by a child going missing, and other people disappear from her life with seeming regularity, but smaller things also get lost - a jigsaw piece, items of jewellery, a jar of marmalade - and perhaps the finding of them towards the book's end marks a turning point in Jessie's life.
There's also a feel of things and people being in limbo - waiting for some dramatic revelation or event to give meaning and purpose to them. 

In part, it's a book in which little seems to happen but beneath that superficial appearance so much does. Moore's words hold the reader, building atmosphere and emotion, but then in a tender, heart-warming or -breaking moment there'll be a burst of unexpected humour to flip the mood around.
It may be short, but has plenty to get your (literary) teeth into and certainly left me with plenty to mull over.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Salt Publishing
Genre - Adult literary fiction

Keeping It Short - book event

 On Tuesday evening we went out to a book event at Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham - it's not the first time I've been to the shop, but it is the first time I've attended an event there, and I was impressed with how many people they shoe-horned into the available space. Unlike the large Waterstones store round the corner, Five Leaves don't have a separate room to give over to events so chairs were lined up in and around the books (this is quite handy actually as in any free moments we could browse the books on sale, mainly to say Oh I keep meaning to read that ... and that... and ... there's never enough time for all the books, is there?)
The event was entitled Keeping It Short, and featured four authors for whom the short story holds a special place;

Alison Moore, author of Booker listed The Lighthouse, whose short stories have been collected in The Pre-War House;


Megan Taylor, a local writer with three published novels and a short story collection (The Woman Under The Ground) to her credit;




Nicholas Royle, editor, university lecturer, publisher (Nightjar Press), competition judge and, when he can find the time, author of seven novels and two short story collections;


and Giselle Leeb whose short stories have appeared in various publications including Salt's Best British Short Stories 2017.

Things kicked off with the authors each reading one of their short stories - three of them having a certain ghostly/supernatural twist to them; Alison Moore's exploring ideas which reappear in her latest novel, Death and The Seaside while Nicholas Royle's was only finished that day and so is, as yet, unpublished.

After a break for complementary refreshments, the event continued with 'question time' - the authors fielding queries about how to organise time, how long is a short story and when does it become a novella.

The question about organising time is pretty universal but was put by Mother's Milk publisher and writer Teika Bellamy to Nicholas Royle with his many hats so had a special relevance. While the other writers were also drawn into the conversation it, fascinatingly, risked completely diverging into a discussion on postage costs!

The question about the length of a short story and Nicholas Royle's dislike of the term 'flash fiction' was, in it's own way, also fascinating and the general consensus amongst the four was that it was the content and not the length of it that defines the short story. Giselle Leeb had written a 2,000 word story which she called a novel.

A question was put to Nicholas Royle about the Manchester Fiction Prize and how a panel of just 3 judges managed to judge the many thousands of entries there are each year - this reverted to the subject of time management and was why the word count for submissions had been lowered from 5,000.

A truly fascinating and intimate evening that overran but who was clock watching? (Until after, of course)

Death and The Seaside - book launch

by Maryom


Although Alison Moore's latest novel Death and the Seaside was published on the first of this month, the launch party didn't take place till last Friday(12th), so that evening we drove over to Nottingham Waterstones for an evening of book-ish chat, nibbles and drinks. There we ran into quite a number of friends from Nottingham's writing community, several of whom we've met through Nottingham's bid for City of literature status, as well as, obviously, the star of the evening Alison Moore.

After a while for chatting and grazing the refreshments, the formal part of the event got underway with a reading from the second chapter of Death and the Seaside which introduces the main character, Bonnie Falls (if you've read the book, you'll know why that chapter, not the first). It's always interesting to hear an author read their own work, as they often place emphasis on a different word or phrase to my internal reading, and can throw a different light on the story. Hearing an early section of the book again, I was struck by how many seemingly unimportant things foreshadow events later in the story.

This was followed by a really interesting Q+A session. People are always interested to know about writers' habits, where and when they work, do they have a routine, a special notebook, but I was more engrossed in the questions revolving around the ideas that went into the novel itself.

Death and The Seaside is Moore's third novel; "a psychological thriller about life, art, and inescapable fate" being how I described it in my review.  It started life while she was in the coastal town of Seaton and working on The Harvestman; a short story, again set by the seaside, about fear, and how fear can actually attract danger. So some of the themes that went on to be developed in Death and the Seaside were already present then, and even Seaton itself figures in the novel.

Responding to prompts from the audienece, Moore went on to talk about the wider role of 'the seaside' in European novels - how it's a place that characters arrive at when in crisis, or at a pivotal point in their lives; the story being resolved either by death in the sea, or, having come to a life-changing decision, the character then returns to their 'inland' life. It's all rather contrary to our every-day view of the seaside as a jolly place for summer holidays.
All of this gave me a lot of food for thought. Firstly as in my review of Death and the Seaside, I'd concentrated on psychological manipulation and living up (or down) to people's expectations, rather than seaside-related symbolism, and also because I'd recently read Elly Griffiths' crime novel The Crossing Places which references an Iron Age belief that the places where water and land met and merged - tidal flats, marshlands, bogs - were special zones at which the barrier between life and death was thin.
They may not all be relevant in this case but I'm really hoping I can make time to re-read Death and the Seaside soon, with these thoughts in mind.

Death and the Seaside by Alison Moore

review by Maryom

As she approaches the age of thirty, Bonnie Falls' parents have made it clear that it's time she moved out, so she finds a cheap ground floor flat, where she tries to pursue her writing while holding down dead end casual jobs. She settles in, starts sorting out the previous occupant's left-behind junk, and continues working on her current story, about a young woman, Susan, who moves to the seaside, and discovers enigmatic notes being left in her attic bedroom. Then her landlady Sylvia Slythe begins to take an interest in Bonnie, dropping round at odd hours and suggesting they go away to the seaside together. To the reader, her motives seem suspicious but Bonnie seems to remain blissfully unaware...

Death and The Seaside is a difficult book to categorise - if I say 'psychological thriller' a certain highly dramatic style of writing and plot development is expected, and this is far from that. Maybe it's better to say that it's a study of failing and manipulation ... but that sounds rather serious and dull, so again doesn't quite fit.

There are themes running through it of the power of names, and suggestibility, with more than a hint of the old question 'which came first, the chicken or the egg?' Are our destinies fixed by our names, and others' perceptions of us? But of course, this is a story, and so the names are deliberately chosen to fit the nature of the characters.

Bonnie's life is one of missed opportunities. She appears to have been hampered by people's expectations - her surname 'Falls' for starters, or her parents' attitude that she is bound to mess up anything she attempts - and her susceptibility to outside influence - she's easily swayed by advertising or even just a passing comment from someone. It seems as if she is destined to fall, figuratively or physically; she has a history of both - abandoning her university course to settle for dull minimum wage jobs, and a childhood tendency to jump off piers.
 Sylvia, on the other hand, is sly with a snake-like hypnotism and menace - again a reflection of her name with its echoes of Slytherin house in Harry Potter, which led me to liken her actions to those of the Snake in the Garden of Eden. She's interested in self-fulfilling prophecies, suggestibility, and how expectation influences behaviour; Bonnie seems like an ideal candidate to study.
Tension mounts when we realise that Sylvia is not a hands-off observer but someone who likes to manipulate and see how far she can push her 'subject'. Can Bonnie kick against her conditioning, upbringing, and the inevitability of falling/failing to see where Sylvia's devious plans are leading?

It feels rather like a beautifully shot film, lingering over the tiniest of actions, but not necessarily letting us inside the characters' heads, so while Sylvia's history sheds light on her character, Bonnie remains enigmatic. I didn't know whether she was happy with her life, frustrated or just resigned to how things had turned out; she certainly seems emotionally detached from the world.

Read it with an eye looking for parallels between life and books, or glimpses of the relationship between author and character, and there are plenty. As Bonnie's story advances, so does the story she's writing about Susan. There are similarities between the two, emphasised and played on by Sylvia, but there comes a point where life and art go separate ways. Of course, the whole story is 'art' (and sometimes I feel my thoughts running round a Mobius strip while trying to review this book!)

The ending comes with a feel of a last jigsaw piece dropping into place, or one of those wooden mind-bending 3D puzzles that won't hold together without the last section; only at this point is the whole structure revealed. For me, it's a book that has more impact once finished than it did while reading.

So I've ended up with the thought that it's a psychological thriller about life, art, and inescapable fate - lets hope the author thought it was too! In another writer's hands, this would easily have turned into a high drama psychological thriller, Moore takes an altogether subtler approach, letting the menace slowly ooze out; I rather found myself wishing that she'd written Gone Girl ...

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Salt Publishing
Genre - Adult literary fiction

These Seven edited by Ross Bradshaw

review by Maryom

A couple of weeks ago, I went along to Nottingham Waterstones for the launch of These Seven, a collection of short stories commissioned by Nottingham City of Literature featuring authors with a connection to the city and part of its bid for UNESCO City of Literature status. Having heard the authors reading from their work I wanted to read more.....

The collection opens with a story from John Harvey, a crime author best known for his Charlie Resnick series set in Nottingham. Ask Me Now although featuring DS Tom Whitemore of the Public protection team, isn't so much a crime story as one dealing with domestic problems - but problems that could easily slip into abuse.

In Megan Taylor's Here We Are Again, two old friends are meeting up after several years apart. It's told in the first person and captures that expectant but nervous feeling of waiting for someone, when you hope they'll turn up but are afraid that they won't.

Brick's Simone the Stylite is a short graphic novel - Simone has always been a self-reliant person, with no need for masses of friends, but now maybe she's taken things to extremes by taking up residence in the tall Aspire sculpture at Nottingham university. From her vantage point, she sends out notes, little words of wisdom that inspire people. The university though seems quick to institutionalise her and even cash in on their famous hermit!

A Foreign Land by YA author Paula Rawsthorne looks at the plight of failed asylum seekers from the point of view of a young boy. Jay is ten and, with his mum, dad and young sister, has lived in Nottingham for six years. He can't remember his 'homeland' of Darfur but from what he hears it doesn't like the sort of place he'd like to visit. Then his family lose their appeal, and have to return to Sudan.....everything will be ok, won't it? things can't really be as bad as the News claims? Told from Jay's point of view, this is a timely reminder of the terrors that make people flee their own country in a desperate bid to find safety.

Alison Moore will be known to many as author of the Booker-listed The Lighthouse, but her short story is in a very different vein. In Hardanger, a dysfunctional family go away to Norway on a short break ....but there the story changes from one of personal relationships to something rather more in the ghostly or horror style.  The ending left a decidedly uneasy creepy feel behind it.

Shreya Sen Handley's Nimmi's Wall followed on this vaguely supernatural theme. A young Indian woman, recently moved to Nottingham, investigates the strange mist-shrouded wall at the bottom of her garden...and encounters some very strange people there.

The collection rounds off with A Time to Keep a story by, possibly Nottingham's most famous writer, the late Alan Sillitoe, about a teenager, Martin,who nurses a passion for books. In them he finds a world more appealing than his everyday one, but his cousin Raymond has decided its time to introduce him to the grown-up world of 'work'......

Although differing greatly in tone I loved each one, and I'm now intending to seek out more work by these authors.


Publisher - Five Leaves
Genre - short story anthology

These Seven - book launch

These Seven - and Sheelagh Gallagher

On Saturday evening, Nottingham Waterstones was the scene for a rather unusual book launch - with SIX authors coming together to help promote the short-story collection These Seven.

The stories were commissioned by Nottingham City of Literature, as part of its bid to become a UNESCO city of literature. It's very much a 'home-grown' product; the six new stories are from authors living and writing in the city today, all members of Nottingham Writers Studio, the seventh from the late Alan Sillitoe, probably Nottingham's most famous writer, and the collection is published by Nottingham publisher Five Leaves

David Belbin

After complimentary drinks and nibbles, and a chance to chat to authors we knew and some of the other guests, the evening quickly got down to the serious stuff - readings from the stories.

John Harvey

Brick

Megan Taylor

Paula Rawsthorne

First up was David Belbin reading from Alan Sillitoe's story A Time to Keep, followed by Megan Taylor with Here We Are Again set in Nottingham's Old Market Square, John Harvey with Ask Me Now, a crime story, and Paula Rawsthorne with A Foreign Land, a topical tale about refugees - all read just enough to tempt me to read more. The next author up, Brick, faced a problem - his contribution, Simone the Stylite, is a graphic novel, so not the easiest of forms to read aloud, but he managed well. Alison Moore's Hardanger took us on a dysfunctional family holiday and in Shreya Sen Handley's Nimmi's Wall, a family find something odd at the bottom of their garden.
Afterwards, Sheelagh Gallagher from Bromley House Library in Nottingham talked about how the bid for City of Literature had come about, and of projects for extending reading and writing into all areas of the community from schools and libraries to women's groups, public spaces and prisons.

Shreya Sen Handley

Coming from Nottinghamshire, but having lived in Derby for over 30 years, we're always a little torn between the two cities. This time though, they aren't competing against each other so we're happy to back Nottingham.

Alison Moore

There was time afterwards to buy a copy of the book  - and, of course, get it signed by all six authors while further nibbles and drinks were available. 

Click on the links to read more about the bid for Nottingham to become a UNESCO city of literature, more about the authors themselves, Bromley House Library

Waterstones are very active in promoting authors and their books throughout the country and you can very easily search for what's happening near you through their website.

The Red Room edited by AJ Ashworth

 review by Maryom

This collection of 12 short stories and a poem takes its name from the Red Room to which Jane Eyre is banished as a (supposedly) naughty child. The heavy, gloomy furnishings in it provoke horrific nightmares for her - but don't worry this isn't a collection of horror stories. Taking the Brontes lives and works as a starting point and set in various time frames from the nineteenth century to the present day, these stories jump off in totally different directions - some funny, some full of anguish and loss - old favourites re-imagined in new settings or with new endings, two fictitious incidents from Charlotte's life, a poem for Emily and the rather strange 'Shower of Curates' which defies categorisation but takes the first lines of all the Bronte novels and works them together with a bit of artistic license. For the most part it's clear which novel or incident provided the inspiration but, if in doubt, there are notes from the authors explaining what sparked their ideas.  

What did I think? Reader, I loved it! The echoes of the originals shine through but it isn't necessary to be a Bronte expert to enjoy these stories as they are complete in themselves. If, on the other hand, you're a total fan you won't find your favourites trashed and trampled out of all recognition. I thought some of the stories cast an interesting light on their sources, particularly on aspects that are swept over by film and TV adaptations in favour of a more romantic story-line - I'd like to go back and re-read Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre with some of these thoughts in mind.  My only quibble would be that, as rather tends to happen, Anne is ignored for her more famous sisters and maybe brother Branwell would have had a story of two to tell?

When we think of the Bronte family, we associate them with the parsonage at Haworth but they were born in Bradford, at 72/74 Market Street, Thornton. The Bronte Birthplace Trust is hoping to raise enough funds to buy this house and secure its future. This collection was put together with the aim of supporting their efforts and a percentage of the proceeds from this book will be donated to them by Unthank.

Contributors - Elizabeth Baines, Bill Broady, David Constantine, Carys Davies, Sarah Dobbs, Vanessa Gebbie, Tania Hershman, Zoë King, Rowena Macdonald, Alison Moore, David Rose, Felicity Skelton and  Simon Armitage

Maryom's review -  5 stars

Publisher - Unthank Books
Genre - Adult, literary fiction, short stories

Author Events - Nottingham

 by The Mole

 Last week was a busy week for us with two separate and very different author events being held in Nottingham.

The first event was Alison Moore, author of The Lighthouse which was, of course, Booker Prize short listed. The event was to cover the launch of her latest book The Pre-War House and other stories, published by Salt and nominated for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award 2013. The event was held on the ground floor of Waterstones which offers a cosy environment amongst the book shelves laden with their cargo of stories. When we arrived we were greeted by a glass of bubbly as this was, after all, a book launch. The audience was the usual mix of couples and after a brief introduction to her route into publishing - which started as many authors do, through short stories -she read a couple of complete stories from the collection, Jetsam and The Smell of the Slaughterhouse. She then followed this with a reading from the beginning of The Pre-War House. The Q&A seemed to focus, unsurprisingly, more on The Lighthouse and how she got published (a topic that so many of these events tend to raise). The book signing and one-on-one that goes with it ensued.    

Rachel Caine's event was the second event she had held at the store and so the larger, more formal location of the Sillitoe room was chosen. The event was to promote Fall of Night, the penultimate book in the The Morganville Vampire series. With most seats taken, it brought a smile to my face when I looked around the room and found less than 10 men in the room and most of them were accompanying their partners, although there were one or two that had come on their own. Rachel started by explaining her name. Yes, it's a pen-name but she explained she has also written as Roxanne Longstreet and Roxanne Conrad. She has written under a couple of other names as well but these she didn't mention. Rather surprisingly there was no reading but instead she recounted events along the way to getting Fall of Night published and how the first book came about. Although the emphasis was on The Morganville Vampire series she has written a few other series of books namely Outcast Season, The Revivalist and The Weather Warden. Neither Maryom nor The Mole has read any of her books (though our daughter has) but despite that the evening was very entertaining and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The last Morganville book comes out before the end of the year and she has another book out later this year in The Revivalist series. Clearly she is not only a great speaker and entertainer (everything was tinged with humour) but she is also a prolific author. After a Q&A which focusssed on The Morganville Vampires the book signing snaked slowly around the room and people left gleefully excited that THEY had spoken to Rachel Caine. Another great event from Waterstones.