Maryom's Picks of the Year

 I'm starting with a rather obvious sort of choice; Hilary Mantel's Bring Up The Bodies, the 'sequel' to Wolf Hall and the continuing political machinations of Thomas Cromwell. Not everyone's cup of tea but I loved it!








Next - two very atmospheric and very different novels

Archipelago by Monique Roffey  - a hauntingly beautiful story of loss and recovery set against the backdrop of the Caribbean

 and
The Book of Summers by Emylia Hall  - a wonderful evocation of long, hot Hungarian summers mixed with long hidden family secrets









Two historical novels both asking the question How do you define family - by birth or by upbringing?

Ben Elton's family-history inspired Two Brothers


and ML Stedman's The Light Between Oceans










 Two crime novels;
 The Calling by Neil Cross - spin off from BBC's Luther series; hard-hitting and violent, a story that left me reeling.

and the marginally cosier (though not by much) Vanished by Liza Marklund








                                                    


Three books that I'll rather loosely label as 'local'

David Calcutt's re-telling of the traditional tales of Robin Hood




Steven Dunn's rather too close to home thriller, Deity






and Edward Hogan's The Hunger Trace

For teens, YA and anyone really  - Celia Rees' This Is Not Forgiveness 

 a compelling, disturbing read that I couldn't put down 

For younger readers, the magical Wolf Princess by Cathryn Constable -  a wonderful, enthralling delight of a book set in an abandoned Russian palace in the depths of a snowy forest.

Ed Hogan - Author interview

Posted by Maryom

Today I'm extremely pleased to welcome Edward Hogan to the blog. For anyone who hasn't discovered his work yet, he's the author of two adult novels, Blackmoor and The Hunger Trace, and a teen story, Daylight Saving - all set very firmly in my home area of Derbyshire.

 I love novels where I can pin down a location - I grew up surrounded by DH Lawrence story settings, have checked Google maps to plot Isabel Dalhousie's walks through Edinburgh and ordinance survey ones to locate Iain Banks' Gallanach, a fictitious town set in a very real location. So when I thought I'd recognised the place down the road in The Hunger Trace, I had to ask....

 Did you set the story in actual physical locations or blend several places to create a necessary landscape?  The wildlife park is fairly obviously based on Riber Zoo near Matlock and there are lots of references in your novels to local Derby 'landmarks' (such as the neon Co-op cow that illuminates the sky line). It's not a secret that you grew up near Derby, but you've lived in other places too. Are they not as inspiring? Might a future novel be set elsewhere?

It's definitely a blend of places.  Some of the spaces are very real, but I could never work with a totally real village or town because I have a seriously bad sense of direction.  It's quite extraordinary, and I probably need to get it checked out!  I can't follow directions or maps, and I often remember streets the wrong way round.  Drum Hill Wildlife Park is based quite heavily on Riber Castle as a location, but none of the characters are based on those people associated with it.  The idea of a wildlife park on a hill, and the animals breaking free and roaming the village, was the first image I had for the book.  There were several animal escapes and break-ins at Riber in its later days.  I read about expensive tortoises being stolen, and rare deer being butchered and dragged off in the night, and wallabies breaking out.  I couldn't ignore that!  Eddie Hallam, who ran Riber in its early days, when it was more of a conservation park, really helped me with research.  He's incredibly knowledgeable about animals and animal welfare, and he asked me to point out that nobody in the novel is based on him!!
   In terms of Detton, the village in The Hunger Trace, it has a little bit of everywhere.  For the benefit of those who live in Derbyshire, that would be Little Eaton and Duffield, Belper, Morley Lane and Breadsall.  Matlock Bath is mentioned by name.  Some places are entirely fictional, too.  Once I've got the main locations, I tend to draw little maps and floorplans to help me get the space right, and conquer this confusion I have. 
   As for future novels, I've lived on the south coast for a while now, and I find that the sea is gradually making its presence felt in my writing.  But the voices I hear in my head are often Derbyshire ones.

In both The Hunger Trace and Blackmoor the plot twists round its setting almost inseparably. Which comes first, the story or location? Did one have to shape itself round the other? Did you think 'I want to set a novel in a wildlife park or a coal mining village' or did the story development necessitate such a setting?

I suppose I do come up with locations quite early in the process.  With Blackmoor, I was really taken by this idea of a village with dangerous pit-gases bubbling up under the surface.  It seemed like such a rich metaphor for the 'return of the repressed' in terms of the characters and their secrets, and also for the unfinished political business of coal-mining.  I may even have overdone it a bit!  Location is often about a feeling, for me.  How does a place feel?  I guess, when you look at all the ancient stories, they're often about cursed kingdoms etc.  Maybe that's where it comes from.
   Also, the idea of community is very interesting to me.   

Your latest novel Daylight Saving is aimed at teens. Is this a permanent departure from adult fiction? Was it always intended to be a teen novel or did it just pan out that way? - after all, Blackmoor has a central teenage character but wouldn't fall into teen/YA fiction.

I am currently working on ideas for both YA and adult stories.  Daylight Saving was a pleasure to write because the idea just arrived in a real burst, and I wrote it quicker than I've written anything before or since.  I had my character, Daniel, and a girl coming out of the water at the sports holiday camp, and it was a case of unravelling the mystery.  I'd been reading quite a bit of YA, because there are so many interesting writers doing unusual things, so I was conscious, quite early, of the fact that it was a YA novel, but I didn't think too hard about that aspect.  I just tried to do justice to the idea and the characters, like I do with any book. 

Your motto is, according to your publishers web-page, Double Your Failure Rate. What do you mean by this? It doesn't seem a very positive attitude..

Ha!  It's quite positive, really.  It's sort of sales speak, and it's a bit tongue-in-cheek.  It's just a way to remind myself that writing a novel is a process, and you might have to do it wrong many, many times before you do it right, and that's fine.  Reminding myself of that helps to pick me up when I feel discouraged.

Blackmoor was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize and won the Desmond Elliot Prize. I've just heard that The Hunger Trace has been nominated for The Encore Award - aimed specifically at second novels. It must be extremely rewarding and exciting to see your work acclaimed in this way....

It's lovely, and I'm very grateful.  I've been extremely lucky to get published and get a bit of recognition, but I'm just a beginner, really.  Prizes will come and go, and it's important to remember that the main joy of being a writer, I reckon, is sitting at your desk and making things up.

Many thanks to Edward for visiting us today and taking time out to answer questions. I'm looking forward to his next offering - maybe a tale of Derby folk on a trip to the seaside?


To find out more about Edward Hogan visit his Simon&Schuster author page  
Read Maryom's reviews; Daylight Saving,  Blackmoor, The Hunger Trace,

Daylight Saving by Edward Hogan

review by Maryom

Daniel and his dad - and his pet tomato plant - are spending autumn half term week at a leisure resort deep in Marwood Forest. It should be a week of quality time spent together, playing sport and generally bonding - something their family is short of since mum ran off with her GP. Daniel would rather avoid all of these if possible and is quite happy when Dad decides to 'bond' with the young attractive women in the next chalet, leaving him free to do as he likes. Instead of joining in the regimented sports activites, Daniel just wants to hang out with Lexi, the rather strange girl he's met. Rather strange? very strange, at least! No one else seems to pay her any attention at all, her watch is going backwards and instead of fading, her cuts and bruises get worse.

*Slight Plot Spoilers*

Having read and been greatly impressed by Edward Hogan's two adult novels, Blackmoor and The Hunger Trace, I was curious to see what this his first Teen novel would be like. Daylight Saving is a compelling, fast-paced read - like Hogan's adult novel it feels like a deceptively simple story, until you start to pick up on the darker underlying threads.
Daniel, Dad and Lexi are all trying to come to terms with past events, accepting them being the only way to move on.The reader is aware before Daniel appears to be, that Lexi is a ghost and that something horrific must have happened to her. Now she's trapped in the limbo of Leisure World, forced into living over and over the events that led to her death. As the time arrives when the clocks 'go back' and everyone gets a chance to live that last hour once more, can Daniel find a way to save her, and himself?

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Walker Books
Genre - teen, supernatural, thriller

 Buy Daylight Saving from Amazon

Blackmoor by Edward Hogan

 Review by Maryom

Blackmoor was a Derbyshire pit village until economics forced the closure of the mine and the resultant gas build-up in abandoned workings forced the demolition of a community - the people were moved out and buildings flattened.
 Teenager Vincent has grown up in the suburb village of Church Eaton, never knowing Blackmoor the place where he was born or his mother Beth who died there.  Vincent is a strange solitary boy not fitting in with schoolmates; his father George an over-protective parent with a not-too-hidden aggressive streak. Both have been shaped and changed by the events leading up to Beth's death - when Vincent starts a school project about the demolition of Blackmoor , he never expects to unearth things about his own past

Blackmoor was Edward Hogan's debut novel and although I enjoyed it, it feels less accomplished and polished than his second, The Hunger Trace. I don't want to give the impression, though, that this is a dull, badly written  book - far from it! Blackmoor is an absorbing exploration of things hidden below the surface of life - neither coal mines nor buried family history can be simply ignored and walked away from. Hogan takes the three strands of Beth's life, her son's and the mining village she lived in and weaves them intricately together.

 I come more or less from the area the novel is set in and loved Hogan's capturing of local dialect and landmarks -as I read, I could imagine myself following the characters' footsteps, seeing the sights they saw etc

One criticism I would make is about the cover illustration - it gives the distinct impression that this is a novel set in the past - early 20th century or maybe Victorian era - whereas it's actually set 'now' and in the not so distant past of 1980s.

Maryom's review - 4 stars

Publisher - Simon & Schuster
Genre - Adult literary fiction

 

Buy Blackmoor from Amazon

The Hunger Trace by Edward Hogan

review by Maryom

When David Bryant dies suddenly, his young widow Maggie is left struggling with the running of his wild-life park on an isolated Derbyshire hilltop. Seen by the locals as an outsider she has no one to turn to apart from Louisa, a reclusive falconer living in a cottage on the park who's loved David since she was a teenager and resents Maggie's presence. Maggie also has to cope with Christopher, David's eccentric, possibly autistic, teenage son from a previous marriage who also resents her. Christopher believes he can find the girl of his dreams through internet dating sites. Maggie and Louisa,meanwhile, find themselves vying for the attention of a 'male escort'... Can they all find a way clear of their troubles.

The Hunger Trace is a powerful, emotionally charged novel of people trapped by circumstances, love and their past. Isolated on their hilltop, Maggie, Louisa and Christopher are forced to depend on each other - even if they would rather not. Their actions are mirrored by the park animals which manage to escape only to be rounded up and brought back but also by Louisa's hawks who are drawn back to their handler through hunger rather than affection. Louisa is only a few short steps away from "crazy lady" - she's tied by the dark deep secret shared with David and now spends all her time with her birds, ferocious hunters rather than cute trilling songbirds. Christopher, too, is decidedly strange - moving between childlike in outlook and wise beyond his years

From its surreal opening with a herd of ibex roaming the Derbyshire countryside to an ending with floods of almost biblical proportions this is a novel that pulled me in and held me, waiting and hoping that these characters could find a way to work things out, come to terms with the past and move on. Yet it's difficult to say what exactly hooked me. It's curious that the cover quote comes from Hilary Mantel (OK, she's 'local') but on reflection, I think the story-telling style of The Hunger Trace is similar to that of Wolf Hall. The reader is immediately immersed in the novel's world but nothing remarkable seems to be happening. Time is needed to let the story evolve, for the bigger picture to become clear.

For anyone 'local' as I am, there's the added attraction of guessing the locations. The wild-life park is obviously inspired by Riber near Matlock but its name 'Drum Hill' comes from elsewhere in Derbyshire.

An excellent book from a 'new to me' author and someone I will be watching for in the future. Edward Hogan also has a teen fiction book called "Daylight Saving" which should also make intriguing reading.

Maryom's review - 5 stars

Publisher - Simon & Schuster
Genre - Adult literary fiction,

Buy The Hunger Trace from Amazon