When The Lights Go Out by Carys Bray

Chris and Emma's marriage is falling apart, their relationship being broken by something bigger than the two of them - the fate of mankind and the planet. Once they were equally concerned about the environmental catastrophe unfolding around them. Now, juggling home and work, Emma has adopted a more pragmatic approach to living, recycling whatever she can, and trying to make their resources (and income) stretch as far as possible. Chris, meanwhile, has begun to prepare for the end of the world, obsessing over climate change, stockpiling food and bizarre medicine bought online, and trying to spread his beliefs by preaching in town at weekends. 

As rain falls, the electricity mysteriously fails, and Christmas approaches, Emma begins to feel they can't go on in this way any longer ... and then Chris's mother moves in.

Carys Bray's third novel is the story of two people, once very much in love, but now drifting apart.. It's not down to the apathy that might sneak in to a long term relationship, but due to their different ways of coping with life and its challenges. Chris is exasperated by what he sees as Emma's abandonment of their ideals. Emma thinks Chris should concern himself with problems closer to home first, and worry about the wider world later.

As always, Carys Bray creates characters who feel real; believable and slightly flawed, they're people we can empathise with, even if we don't agree. Chris and Emma have a relationship full of love; they just choose to focus that love on different things, and express it in different ways. Emma is focused on family - the day to day hassle of providing food, clothing, and, above all, love. Chris has his sights on a longer, more catastrophic goal, and worries about how they, and anyone else, will survive when the environmental apocalypse comes.

Something I always like about Carys Bray's writing is that she isn't judgmental about her characters. It would be so easy to show Chris as in the wrong, especially when some of his actions seem a little underhand at times, but he and his ideas are presented with the same care, and given the same weight and respect that Emma's are. He and Emma may not agree, but that doesn't mean his opinions are of lesser value. They're attempting to cope with life's unpredictability in very different ways, but at the heart of both is love.

When The Lights Go Out has fallen victim to coronavirus lockdown, and now won't be published in physical form till autumn; meanwhile it's available as an e-book and audible.  I can't help but wonder what Chris would think about the situation we find ourselves in right now ... 

Maryom's review - 5 stars 
Publisher - Hutchinson
Genre - adult fiction,

How to Be Human by Paula Cocozza

review by Maryom

Behind Mary's garden, squeezed in between her road and the one backing on to it, is a wild wooded piece of ground - and in that wood lives a fox, coming out at night to sneak from one garden to the next, and scavenge through the dustbins. One day Mary comes home from work to find him on her lawn - and she feels that in some way they've made a connection, that she and this fox can be friends.

To be frank, I struggled with this book. I got to around the 10% mark without feeling any interest in it, and gave up. After reading a couple of other books I went back to it, read a little more, and still thought I'd not bother ... Third time was lucky though. The story had moved on to a point where Mary's creepy, manipulative boyfriend has re-appeared on the scene, trying to worm his way back into her life, and it held my attention more. Even so, overall it didn't grab me, and I'm puzzled why, because I feel it ought to have done.
The story unfolds from Mary's point of view, told in the third person but still seeing events through her eyes - and she doesn't feel like the most reliable of narrators. It's not clear at times whether things are actually happening or if Mary's imagining them, which left me a bit baffled.
At the same time, I think I took the story too literally - I saw a sad, lonely woman, possibly starved of human contact, indulfing in really bizarre behaviour - making friends with a fox in the way that some surround themselves with cats, deluding herself that the fox reciprocates her feelings and attachment, treating it as a pet or even a baby. She lets the fox into her house and cuddles up with it on a blanket - while my mind was yelling "Don't do that! Think of fleas, ticks, mange!".  I had more sympathy for Mary's neighbours who saw the fox as a threat to their children and cat.


Maryom's review - 3 stars 
Publisher - Hutchinson
Genre - adult fiction,

Carys Bray - Museum of You - blog tour

Today we're delighted to welcome to the blog Carys Bray, author of A Song For Issy Bradley, to talk about her new novel the Museum of You, and one of her favourite museums (you can find more of them by checking out the other stops of the tour).

My Favourite Museums

In my new novel The Museum of You, twelve year old Clover Quinn sorts through her mother’s belongings and curates an exhibition in the second bedroom of the house she shares with her Dad, Darren.
As part of The Museum of You blog tour, I’m writing about some of my favourite museums. In recent months it has been frustrating to read of the museum closures which appear to be disproportionately affecting the north of England. Museums are a great place to learn about our heritage; they’re often a testament to the efforts and dedication of working people, the men and women who built and made many of the things we take for granted today.

The British Lawnmower Museum
This museum is in my hometown of Southport. The museum doesn’t receive any funding so there is a charge for entry: £3 for adults and £1 for children. An audio guide is piped out of speakers that are positioned around the museum so you can listen as you explore. It’s pretty niche – the only lawnmower museum in the world. Instead of carpet there’s artificial turf on the floor and there is something wonderfully eccentric about the whole enterprise.



The staff are friendly and will accompany you and fill you in on some of the stories behind the lawnmowers. For example, the lawnmower in the picture below was used in this advert:

It’s the stories that really make this museum. I learned that James May of Top Gear once reassembled a particular lawnmower without any instructions, another lawnmower was pulled by a horse that wore leather shoes so as not to spoil the lawn, and some people like to participate in lawnmower races (12 hour lawnmower races, in fact).

My favourite machines were the ‘lawnmowers of the rich and famous.’ Below you can see Paul O’Grady’s lawnmower.

And Eric Morecambe’s Dad’s lawnmower, an object which provoked some serious giggling.

My son and I visited this museum wondering why on earth anyone would keep and care for lawnmowers. We left feeling that at the heart of this unique museum lies the determined optimism of people who really love something and want to share it. And even if you’re not a lawnmower aficionado, there’s something contagious about that.





Who would imagine a museum of lawn-mowers to be so fascinating? It sounds well worth a visit though.
Read on now for an excerpt from The Museum of You which Maryom describes as  "tender and compassionate, will make you laugh, maybe bring you to tears, and will have you rooting for Clover and Darren, hoping they can both find happiness and sense of completeness. In short, an absolute joy to read." 

The Museum of You – Excerpt

"When she got home from the museum Dad was kneeling in the hall. He’d unscrewed the radiator and his thumb was pressed over an unfastened pipe as water gushed around it. The books and clothes and newspapers that used to line the hall had been arranged in small piles on the stairs. Beside him, on the damp carpet, was a metal scraper he’d been using to scuff the paper off the wall.

‘Just in time!’ he said. ‘Fetch a bowl. A small one, so it’ll fit.’
She fetched two and spent the next fifteen minutes running back and forth to the kitchen emptying one bowl as the other filled, Dad calling, ‘Faster! Faster! Keep it up, Speedy Gonzalez!’ His trousers were soaked and his knuckles grazed, but he wasn’t bothered. ‘Occupational hazard,’ he said, as if it wasn’t his day off and plumbing and stripping walls was his actual job.

Once the pipe had emptied he stood up and hopped about for a bit while the feeling came back into his feet. ‘I helped Colin out with something this morning,’ he said. ‘The people whose house we were at had this dado rail thing – it sounds posh, but it’s just a bit of wood, really – right about here.’ He brushed his hand against the wall beside his hip. ‘Underneath it they had stripy wallpaper, but above it they had a different, plain kind. It was dead nice and I thought, we could do that.’

Dad found a scraper for her. The paint came off in flakes, followed by tufts of the thick, textured wallpaper. Underneath, was a layer of soft, brown, backing-paper which Dad sprayed with water from a squirty bottle. When the water had soaked in, they made long scrapes down the wall, top to bottom, leaving the backing paper flopped over the skirting boards like ribbons of skin. It felt like they were undressing the house.

The bare walls weren’t smooth. They were gritty, crumbly in places. As they worked, a dusty smell wafted out of them. It took more than an hour to get from the front door to the wall beside the bottom stair. That’s where Dad uncovered the heart. It was about as big as Clover’s hand, etched on the wall in black, permanent marker, in Dad’s handwriting: Darren + Becky 4ever.

‘I’d forgotten,’ he murmured. And then he pulled his everything face. The face he pulls when Uncle Jim is drunk. The face he pulls when they go shopping in March and the person at the till tries to be helpful by reminding them about Mother’s Day. The face which reminds her that a lot of the time his expression is like a plate of leftovers.

She didn’t say anything, and although she wanted to, she didn’t trace the heart with her fingertips. Instead, she went up to the bathroom and sat on the boxed, pre-lit Christmas tree dad bought in the January sales. When you grow up in the saddest chapter of someone else’s story you’re forever skating on the thin ice of their memories. That’s not to say it’s always sad – there are happy things, too. When she was a baby Dad had a tattoo of her name drawn on his arm in curly, blue writing, and underneath he had a green, four-leaf clover. She has such a brilliant name, chosen by her mother because it has the word LOVE in the middle. That’s not the sort of thing you go around telling people, but it is something you can remember if you need a little boost; an instant access, happiness top-up card – it even works when Luke Barton calls her Margey-rine. Clover thought of her name and counted to 300.

When she went downstairs Dad had recovered his empty face and she couldn’t help asking a question, just a small one.

‘Is there any more writing under the paper?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘She didn’t do a heart as well?’
‘Help me with this, will you?’

They pulled the soggy ribbons of paper away from the skirting and put them in a bin bag. The house smelled different afterwards. As if some old sadness had leaked out of the walls. "

Thank you Carys for dropping by and I hope that's tempted people to read the novel!

Check out our full review here  and the rest of the blog tour 

The Museum of You by Carys Bray

review by Maryom

Twelve year old Clover Quinn is looking for answers.

Her mother, Becky, died shortly after Clover was born, and there is so much about her that Clover doesn't know.  Although he's done his best to be both father and mother to Clover, her dad, Darren, has always been reluctant to talk about Becky. Encouraged by his friends, he's tried to move on with life, but the spare room is still full of things he intends to clear out - and in there Clover believes are clues to her mother's life, to who she really was. So this summer, the first she's been allowed to spend time at home alone, Clover intends to sort through the boxes and rubbish bags, organise the things she feels are worth keeping, and create a museum of her mother.
Darren meanwhile is fully immersed in his role of father. He tries to pre-empt all Clover's needs, from pencil cases for school, to treats to cheer her on sad days, to venturing into a bookshop to buy a book on being a woman. He's kind, caring and takes his responsibility as parent far more seriously than many do.

In this her second novel, Carys Bray again explores the relationships within a family coping with loss. Told from the alternating perspectives of Clover and Darren,The Museum of You builds a picture of a close loving father/daughter relationship which sadly still has a hole at its heart - the void left by Becky's death. Again, the family unit plays an important part in the story - but this isn't a standard 'Mum, Dad, two kids' family, but instead a looser structure with Darren and Clover at its centre and an extended family surrounding them - Darren's own rather withdrawn father, his best friend Colin, Becky's brother Jim, elderly neighbour, grandmother-substitute Mrs Mackerel, and potential girlfriend Kelly and her two boisterous boys.
In the re-tellings of her family history, Clover's birth has always been described as a surprise - and surprises come in two kinds - the good and the bad. Darren's life seems to have been filled with the latter - disrupting first the ambitious plans he had as a teenager, then the future he imagined with Becky - but even so he's kept a certain level of cheerfulness about him, whereas another man might have turned bitter and resentful. His kindness shines through in so many ways but especially in his thoughtfulness in looking after Clover and the way he's taken on the extra responsibility of caring for Becky's troubled brother Jim. At times I found myself smiling at Darren's over-eagerness to be the perfect dad, but it was always fondly and with an admiration for his efforts.
Clover herself is an independent twelve year old, seeming at times wiser than her years but still quaintly child-like in the way she goes about setting up her 'museum' and her misinterpretation of the things she chooses as exhibits.
Both were characters I grew to sympathise with and care for. The author captures the tiny details of their days - the tending of the allotment, the route Darren drives on his bus, their joint ritual of finding three happy things in each day - and brings them to life, almost ready to walk off the page.

A Song for Issy Bradley was one of my picks of the year when it came out, and I'd wondered how anyone would follow such a wonderful book, but Carys Bray has! The Museum of You is tender and compassionate, will make you laugh, maybe bring you to tears, and will have you rooting for Clover and Darren, hoping they can both find happiness and sense of completeness. In short, an absolute joy to read.



Maryom's review - 5 stars 
Publisher - Hutchinson
Genre - adult fiction, bereavement

Exposure by Helen Dunmore

review by Maryom


Simon Callington is an minor bureaucrat at the Admiralty, working with sensitive 'official secrets' documents though not at the 'top secret' level. He plods along as anyone might at any old office job, but then an old friend is hospitalised and calls on Simon to do him a favour....  which will land him in far more trouble than he can imagine. For, unknown to Simon, that old friend Giles has been passing secrets to the Russians, and the favour involves returning a 'top secret' file that should never have left the Admiralty offices. Before long Simone finds himself arrested on a charge of spying, and his wife Lily is left with three children to look after, the press hounding them and in fear of what may happen next.

Set in London in 1960, Exposure is an unusual spy-thriller - almost, I'd say, one for readers who don't normally like the genre. It's not about cloak and dagger secrecy, dead-letter boxes and coded messages but the human cost particularly to people who innocently get caught up in events. Giles' unfortunate accident behaves like a pebble thrown into a pond, though not only sending ripples out across it but raking up all the mud from the bottom too. For all three have secrets they've kept well-hidden; obviously Giles' espionage activities, but also Simon's relationship with him, dating back to university days, which if exposed could cause at least as much trouble for both of them; and for Lily, it's her secret struggle as a Jewish refugee from Germany, trying to fit in and become as English as possible but still holding a fear of authority and a gut feeling that the only person you can rely on to protect you, is yourself. Of the three, Lily turns out to be the strong one.
Giles is essentially a risk-taker and gambler, both professionally and personally, maybe even thriving on danger - but he's become sloppy over time and his past is about to catch up with him.
Simon is the sort of man who drifts through life and has things happen TO him, rather than make them happen. He drifts into an illicit love affair with Giles, drifts again into marriage and fatherhood, and now he's drifted unthinkingly into the middle of a spying scandal.
Lily though, following her mother's example, believes in taking things into her own hands. She isn't prepared to just rely on Simon's upper-class family to come to her aid but puts measures in place herself - and (without spoiling the ending I hope), it's fair to say that it's Lily's actions which save her, Simon and their family.

As an unusual twist on a familiar scenario, I really enjoyed this, and would definitely recommend to readers who normally shun the 'spy' genre.





 Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Hutchinson
Genre - adult, spy thriller, psychological thriller,

A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray

 review by Maryom

 A Song for Issy Bradley is the story of a Mormon family trying to come to terms with grief following the sudden death of their 4 year old daughter -
 - Dad, Ian, a bishop in the Mormon church finds consolation and strength through his faith. He firmly believes that he will meet Issy again in Heaven and all he must do is continue in his faith
 - Mum, Claire, who converted in order to marry him, cannot cope at all; she finds Mormon values too cold to help her. Swallowed by her overwhelming grief, she takes refuge on Issy's bunk bed and refuses to get up again.
 - Their teenage children, daughter Zippy (Zipporah) and son Alma are already struggling with their faith. They miss Issy desperately but both want to be 'normal', to be allowed to behave as their friends do. Zippy despite being a firm believer in Mormon values wants to wear fashionable clothes, go to parties and be allowed to date boys. Alma just wants to play football.
 - Only 7 year old Jacob can see a way to make everything right again - a miracle is needed to bring Issy back and he thinks he knows how to work one.

A Song for Issy Bradley is a stunning novel of death and life, faith and family, grief and hope. Knowing this was a book dealing with a child's death and the emotional impact on the family, I was half-expecting something totally depressing. It wasn't going to be like a murder-mystery where everyone achieves closure by the catching of the villain, and then gets back to their lives. This was going to be about 'real' people facing up to probably the most devastating thing that could happen to them. But as I read, I realised it wasn't going to be as devastatingly sad as I'd feared; though there are dreadfully dark moments, they're balanced with light and humour and, above all, love.

Throughout there's an amazing attention to the little things that make up life. It starts with the lead-up to Issy's death, capturing the awful ease with which a serious illness can be ignored until it's too late. The hustle and bustle of a normal day compounded by a houseful of extra children at a birthday party and Ian rushing off to help a dying church member. I found myself willing Claire to notice while there was still time to act even though I knew it was pointless.
Ian frustrated me throughout - he's always rushing around and putting others' needs before his own family's and so secure in his own faith but can't see that this isn't enough for Claire.
Teenagers always bear the brunt of any perceived 'weirdness' in their parents - and Zippy and Alma have more than an average share. Saddled with odd names, bound by the restrictions of Mormon behaviour, fitting in with their peers at school was never going to be that easy, and it isn't even possibly to argue with parents who cliam the support of God.
Jacob's faith in his miracle-working is as heart-breaking as Issy's death. He is SO confident that he can do it - with that seriousness that young children have in their approach to things - but we know it's not going to work and he's going to be devastated all over again.

 Although she's written many short stories, including a prize-winning collection, this is Carys Bray's first full length novel - and it was hard at times to believe it was a debut. Ultimately hopeful and life-affirming, this is a 'must-read' that's straight onto my Picks of the Year list.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Hutchinson
Genre - adult, literary fiction, bereavement

Winner of the Authors' Club First Novel Award
Shortlisted for Costa First Novel Award
Longlisted for Desmond Elliott Prize 2015 
Richard and Judy Summer2015 Book Club