Dominicana by Angie Cruz

Review by The Mole

A young girl has a husband chosen for her by her mother who sees the marriage as a way for the family to enter the USA. This is how Ana finds herself 'married' to a man twice her age and living in New York at the age of 15. Ana has undergone a huge cultural shock and does not believe she can love her 'husband', who she finds herself afraid of.

I had a PDF version of this book which I read on my phone but... despite the formatting issues that this creates I found it extremely engaging and surprising.

The author interviewed generations of Dominicans and compiled this novel (for that's what this is) from bits and pieces of accounts that she picked up from family and friends of the family - so it is not entirely fiction.

The sacrifices that Ana makes to her family came as a shock to me - one that became more concerning when reading the final author's notes to explain the book.

I didn't love this book - because that feels like condoning the behaviour of everyone involved. I did find it fascinating and extremely disturbing. Well worth a read by anyone.

This has now been long listed for THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020 and it's a book well worthy of going further.

It's not a huge tome so won't take forever to read but it's well written and powerful.

Publisher: John Murray
Genre: Adult fiction

Elmet by Fiona Mozley

review by Maryom

Daniel is on the road, following the railway tracks north, looking for his sister. For a while they lived an idyllic sort of life - him, Daddy, and older sister Cathy - in a house Daddy built himself in a small patch of unwanted isolated woodland. They lived almost completely 'off grid', hunting and foraging for food, having little to do with folk in the nearby village. At home their life was one of peace and simplicity but away from it, Daddy's life was one of violence, clandestine prize-fights and acting as a 'fixer' when debts weren't paid. When these two worlds collide, someone's bound to get hurt ...

Daddy's 'occupation' allows him to live on the fringe of society, but the 'real' world can't be ignored forever, and the woodland idyll is threatened by folk who care about law, property ownership, and their rights. Piece by piece, Mozley raises the tension, building a great sense of brooding violence in which you feel almost anything could happen, and Daddy is backed into a corner with only one way to respond.

It's a story rather reminiscent of a Martin McDonagh script - folk going about their day to day lives getting caught up in violence outside their control - or one in which a retired hitman is called on to do one last job, with devastating consequences to his family, mashed up with a Robin Hood style tale of the 'little man' trying to overcome those with land and the backing of law.

The peaceful existence in the wood jars harshly with the outside world, and Mozley seems equally at home bringing both to life on the page - a delight when the reader's experiencing the woodland through Daniel's eyes, a horror when violence erupts.

Things start a bit slowly, with lots of back story and I wondered where the plot was going, and how long it might take. To be honest, there were times when I nearly gave up ... but then the beautifully descriptive writing caught me, and the sharks started to circle Daniel's little bit of heaven, waiting for the first opportunity to oust his family, and I found it a book I couldn't put down.

Maryom's review - 4.5 stars

Publisher - John Murray (Publishers)

Genre - Adult Fiction,

The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

review by Maryom

In the north-west of England lies an empty, flat stretch of coastline known as the Loney; a place where few people live, sand shifts with the tides sweeping across the bay, and the unwary are caught out by rapidly rising water. When storms cause a landslide on the tidal island of Coldbarrow, and the body of a baby is discovered, the narrator is drawn back into events which unfolded thirty years ago. He and his family were part of a church group visiting a shrine in this remote area, in the hope that his brother, Hanny, born with speech and learning difficulties, would be miraculously cured, but boys left to find their own amusement tend to gravitate towards trouble, and things didn't go quite according to plan ...

The Loney was one of the options offered as a read for my book club, and, having heard so much praise for it, I was eager to read it.

Hurley creates the setting brilliantly - the desolate coast, mud flats quickly covered by incoming tides, inhospitable locals, strange objects and hidden rooms found in the holiday house. It all adds up to a tense, eerie atmosphere. I could feel the wind whipping in from the sea, the sands shifting beneath my feet, and imagine the causeway leading out across the flat expanse of mud, but as the story progressed I felt the creation of atmosphere wasn't enough.
It's clear that events are moving towards a big reveal, but somehow it didn't deliver for me,and this is what . A lot of the set up - people revisiting a place after several years absence, strange behaviour of the locals who appear to be part of a pagan cult, remote setting -  all these things feel familiar even if only from films such as The Wicker Man or Hot Fuzz, so there's ample warning of what might happen as events unfold. Even when the crucial event, on which the whole plot revolves, is revealed, I thought, yep, seen that on Babylon 5 (though it's a fairly common sci-fi/fantasy trope which you might have encountered somewhere else).
Although I felt the ending just a little too predictable, the writing makes this book worth a read, and I actually wonder if my rating of it might improve another time - after all, for the second, third, subsequent readings I would know how events unfold, and not be expecting a big surprise.

Maryom's review - 3.5 stars

Publisher - John Murray (Publishers)

Genre - Adult Fiction, horror

Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones

Handed Down Tale
review by Maryom


An African hotel supervisor has an affair and a child with a foreign tourist. He doesn't intend to abandon her though, but take the child back to his home in Berlin to be brought up by him and his wife. She determines to follow him at all costs and see her son again. The story follows her trek across Europe, exploited, helped or hindered by strangers.
I received this book as part of a promotion in which 100 copies were sent out to be read and reviewed and then handed on to new readers. These books are numbered so hopefully I should be able to track where this copy goes to and what future readers have to say about it.
Sad to say I was a little disappointed with Hand Me Down World. It started fine. I loved the way the story was told, passed on to the next person in the chain who picked it up and carried on - but when the goal of Berlin is reached the plot stalled and, although it picked up again later, I didn't feel it reached the momentum of the early chapters. This woman's story ought to have been heart-breaking BUT somehow it wasn't for me.

Publisher - John Murray (Publishers)

Genre - Adult Fiction

Buy Hand Me Down World from Amazon