The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré

"I don't just want to be having any kind voice . . .
I want a louding voice.

At fourteen, Adunni dreams of getting an education and giving her family a more comfortable home in her small Nigerian village. Instead, Adunni's father sells her off to become the third wife of an old man. When tragedy strikes in her new home, Adunni flees to the wealthy enclaves of Lagos, where she becomes a house-girl to the cruel Big Madam, and prey to Big Madam's husband. But despite her situation continuously going from bad to worse, Adunni refuses to let herself be silenced. And one day, someone hears her."
 

The Girl With The Louding Voice is a coming of age story set in Nigeria; the story of fifteen year old Adunni, told in her own words, moving from the poverty of a rural village to a different sort of poverty among the affluent classes of the city, where workers are treated almost as slaves.

In many ways it's a disturbing tale, spotlighting the treatment of girls and women as commodities to be traded, in a society where men are of primary importance, and which is drastically divided between rich and poor. First Adunni is effectively sold to a much older man, already married with two wives, when her father can't pay his debts, then she goes to work for a woman in the city but all her wages go to the 'agent', the man who placed Adunni in her job, and her employer's husband feels any of the female servants should be amenable to his sexual advances. 

On the other hand, it's a story of hope, and it's hope that stays with the reader as the overall feel of the book. Whatever her situation, Adunni's resilience and determination shine through. She's adamant that somehow she'll find a way to finish her education, and be able to speak out, in her louding voice, on behalf of girls and women trapped as she is.

It's an amazing debut, told in an original, captivating voice, with Adunni finding humour and compassion in life despite her predicaments. I found myself rather regretting that her attempts to improve her English, seen as the key to bettering her prospects, would result in a watering down of Adunni's lively manners of speech.

How Much the Heart Can Hold edited by Emma Herdman

review by Maryom

Last week I was out at a book event the theme of which was the short story, and by pure coincidence my first review this week is of a short story collection.  How Much The Heart Can Hold describes itself as 'seven stories on love', but these aren't romantic tales of falling in love and living happily ever after. Instead they explore the different forms that love can take. The ancient Greeks drew distinctions between seven types of love - for self, for family, charitable love for all mankind, love that borders on obsession, is unrequited, or endures for ever, and, of course, sexual, erotic love - and here they're taken as the starting point for seven very different short stories, each by a different author. The paperback edition which I was given for review contains an extra story - It Was Summer by Phoebe Roy, the winning entry for the SceptreLoves short story prize.
I came to this book just after finishing an epic 900+ page fantasy novel, so at least each tale was short if not necessarily sweet. Faced with a collection from a variety of authors, I'm often tempted to seek out the familiar names and start reading there, but there's a theory that says the editor does more than check for spelling mistakes, also deciding on the order of the pieces and shapes the feel of the whole, and I think that's certainly the case here. Ending, as the original collection did, on Bernadine Evaristo's story of universal love, The Human World, brings a feeling of completeness to the work.
I did, of course, have my favourites, and, yes, they were by those favourite authors, Carys Bray and Donal Ryan. Bray's story, Codas, explores the love and bonds of family from the point of view of a single mother suddenly having to deal with her father's illness after a stroke, balancing his needs against those of her son. Ryan's Magdala, Who Slips Sometimes is a story of obsession, in which a woman clings desperately to the belief that, despite his marriage and children, her teenage sweetheart still loves her above all others.
This isn't to say that the others weren't enjoyable - they all were in their way, though some seemed hard at first to fit to their 'brief'. Of these, I particularly liked Before It Disappears by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, a tale of love that's no longer returned; Nikesh Shukla's White Wine, about learning to love oneself rather than change to fit others' expectations; and Bernadine Evaristo's The Human World, a sad, yet humorous look at what it's like to care for the whole world. Just don't go into this book expecting hearts, flowers and cuddly teddies; love is more complex than the romantic hype of Valentine's Day and this story collection reflects that.

authors; - Carys Bray, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Bernadine Evaristo, Grace McCleen, Donal Ryan, Nikesh Shukla, DW Wilson, and Phoebe Roy.

Maryom's review -  4.5 stars
Publisher -  Sceptre
Genre - short stories, 

Fell by Jenn Ashworth

review by Maryom

Annette Clifford is a bit of a drifter, never holding down a job or staying in the same place for long. Now middle-aged, alone and between jobs, she's returned to her childhood home in the northern seaside town of Grange-over-Sands, inherited by her on the death of her step-mother. It isn't a place she feels much, if any, affection for, and now the large house lies empty and neglected, inhabited only by starlings, and undermined by the roots of the sycamores it was named after; just somewhere Annette would like to spruce up and sell as quickly and profitably as possible. Once, though, the house had been the focus of her parents' hopes and dreams. Having inherited the house while still quite young, Jack and his new wife, Netty, had hoped to meet the running costs of such a huge place by taking in lodgers, and to perhaps one day live out their retirement there in comfort. Life of course rarely goes to plan ...
Now their spirits have been woken by Annette's return, and they watch over her anxiously, realising that over the years their daughter had been neglected - first in favour of the lodgers, then by their total absorption in Netty's illness and their desperate hope for a cure. This time, they're determined to not let her down.


It's difficult to talk about Fell without making it seem like a ghost story, with friendly spirits intervening to ease Annette's life and push it in a certain direction - but it isn't really. Rather it's a beguiling, atmospheric tale of family, regrets and reconciliation, rooted in reality but laced with something other worldly much like Sarah Winman's A Year of Marvellous Ways  or Lucy Wood's Weathering.

The story moves back and forth in time - between the present day, as Annette struggles to overcome her hostile attitude towards the house, taking out her anger on the enormous sycamores that overwhelm everything, and the summer of 1963 when Netty was ill, beyond hope of conventional medicine, and putting her faith in a young lodger, Timothy Richardson, who appeared to have a magical, miraculous healing touch. The spirits are employed as narrators who can look back to the past, remembering when they were 'young Jack and Netty', filled with such hopes for their home and life together, while also knowing how those hopes foundered when Netty became ill, and being full of regret for how their and Annette's lives turned out - it's a clever, tricky way of telling a tale but Ashworth manages it excellently.

It sounds like it might be a depressing read, but ultimately it feels full of hope.

To my mind, there's a theme throughout of the unpredictability of nature - whether represented in the shifting sands of Morecambe Bay, which once brought the river channel to Grange but have since diverted it to the middle of the bay, the erratic psychic 'gifts' that both Annette and Richardson appear to have or the cancer that spreads slowly, inexorably through Netty - and maybe there's a parallel to be found between the attempts to fell the sycamores and the efforts to combat Netty's illness. In this light, the almost ceremonial downing of the huge sycamores seems to represent a triumph of order over wildness, for a short time if not for ever.


Jenn Ashworth is an author I've been intending to read since I saw her three years ago at Edinburgh Book Festival talking about The Friday Gospels, but somehow, and despite having a copy of Cold Light waiting on a shelf, I've never quite got round to it. (Sorry!) Fortunately there's nothing like a Netgalley review copy for focusing my mind, and, having realised what I'm missing, I now fully intend to get properly acquainted with her writing - I'm glad I have a back catalogue to look forward to!


Maryom's review -  5 stars
Publisher -  Sceptre
Genre - literary adult fiction

Slade House by David Mitchell

review by Maryom

" Turn down Slade Alley - narrow, dank and easy to miss, even when you're looking for it. Find the small black iron door set into the right-hand wall. No handle, no keyhole, but at your touch it swings open. Enter the sunlit garden of an old house that doesn't quite make sense; too grand for the shabby neighbourhood, too large for the space it occupies."

This strange building, Slade House, lies at the heart of David Mitchell's latest novel like an evil witch's hovel in some ghostly horror tale - and every nine years someone is enticed within its walls and never seen again! In 1979, a mother and son are invited to a musical garden party; nine years later, Detective Inspector Edmonds is following up a lead to their disappearance; another nine years, and a group of students investigating paranormal activities find their way to Slade House; in 2006 the journalist sister of one of those students comes seeking further information; and in 2015 a Canadian psychiatrist with an interest in abduction psychoses finds her way into the mysterious garden of Slade House. With each section the tension builds, a little bit more of the House's origins are revealed, and the horror that lies at its heart grows....

 I've been longing to read this book since I heard David Mitchell read the opening section at Hay Festival last May, but as always there seemed to be something else that needed to be read first so it's taken me quite a while to get round to it. That taster definitely set the tone for the book with that 'read if you dare' feel of a good ghost or horror story, which terrifies you but encourages you to carry on reading; you know that no matter how scary, you are NOT going to put this book down till the end!
 I've fairly recently read The Bone Clocks for my book club, and while I enjoyed it, it was a slow drawn-out read; Slade House is the opposite. Possibly because at 230 or so pages it's a lot shorter than other David Mitchell books, possibly because of the way the story falls into five almost self-contained parts, possibly because each section lures the reader towards both its own climax and then the next 'episode', I raced through it.
 With the book splitting into five self-contained sections, you might expect a slight skimping on character development, but no, with the skill of a short-story teller, Mitchell develops each and all of them, relating the stories in first person to make the reader privy to their thoughts and attitudes. We're introduced to an autistic boy struggling to quite 'fit', a world-weary policeman still gullible enough to be seduced by an attractive woman, students with their mix of attitude and cool, a journalist plagued by guilt, - every one a believable 'real' person.
 Slade House inhabits the same 'world' as The Bone Clocks, and makes several passing references to events and characters from it, but stands alone, so there's no real need to have read one to enjoy the other. I actually think if you've heard of David Mitchell, and been intending reading his novels but been put off by the length, Slade House is a brilliant place to start.



Maryom's review -  5 stars
Publisher -  Sceptre
Genre - ghost/horror stories,

The Chimes by Anna Smaill

review by Maryom

Following the death of his parents, Simon is leaving his home village in the country and heading to London; he has no clear memory of his past and no directions to follow, just a bag filled with objects that, when handled, help him remember very specific incidents, and a scrap of song that will lead him to a friend of his mother. Simon isn't unusual, for in this strange dystopian world memories are wiped clean at the end of each day by the sound of The Chimes, and lives are governed, directions given, goods advertised for sale, and information passed on by music and song.
In London, Simon by chance meets up with another boy, Lucien, who seems to have more ability to remember than most people, and who seems particularly interested in the small snippets Simon can recall from his past. Gradually Simon begins to remember more, and with growing uneasiness realises he was sent to London with a specific purpose.

A bit like plunging into a cold pool, the reader is dropped straight into Simon's world, standing in the rain at the side of the road, sharing his thoughts and limited memories, without preamble or explanation, and left to work things out for themselves. At first it seems like Simon may be the only one suffering from this weird memory-loss but gradually it becomes apparent that everyone does; unless a memory can be imprinted on an object, once out of sight even things as dear as home and family are soon forgotten - so a story that might be akin to Fifty First Dates or Before I Go To Sleep, quickly changes and becomes something darker. My immediate assumption was that everyone was suffering from some form of Alzheimer's-style epidemic, then when Simon encountered the noise and bustle of London, I wondered if memories were being overwhelmed by all the noise in the way that the constant chatter of social media today dulls us in our interactions with our surroundings, even the people we're actually sitting with. As the story progressed, both of these theories were proved wrong but the Chimes remained as an organised, centrally-controlled form of brain-washing.

The world of the Chimes is a wonderfully strange one, yet believable due to the 'thinking through' of the author. World-building alone, though, isn't enough to make a compelling story, so the author has built in a mystery, part of which the reader is privy to even though Simon has forgotten, and a slightly 'thriller' aspect to the plot.
Being told in first person by someone with no knowledge of what has gone before gives a shifting fluid feel to reality in which everything is observed as if for the first time, and deftly captures how it must feel to be in this predicament.


The main characters are young, teenaged or thereabouts, so I'm not sure whether I'd class it as an adult book perfectly suitable for teens with a desire for something a little unusual, or as YA that adults would want to read.






Longlisted for Booker Prize 2015
Maryom's review -  4 stars
Publisher -  Sceptre
Genre - dystopian,

A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré

review by Maryom

When he turns up in Hamburgh, illegal immigrant Issa Karpov  is ragged, ill and shows signs of recent torture. Finding refuge with a Turkish family, he approaches a human rights lawyer, Annabel Richter, to help him gain access to money deposited by his now-deceased Russian gangster father in a less-than-above-board account with private bank Brue Freres. Not that he actually wants the money for himself - he claims all he wants is to qualify as a doctor and go home to help less fortunate folk back in Chechnya. The current head of the bank, Tommy Brue, is swayed by Annabel, and finds himself drawn in to her schemes, but Issa has come to the attention of the intelligence services who have their own plans for him...

Since the good old Cold War days of Leamas and Smiley I've read some le Carré novels that haven't quite lived up to my expectations  - this time he's back on form inside the double/triple dealing world of espionage. Set against a backdrop of international terrorism and 'extraordinary rendition', A Most Wanted Man captures a shadowy half-world where there may be terrorists at large or the intelligence services may be jumping at shadows and making their own fears real. 

Issa is the fly caught up in a spider's web of intrigue and he's such an enigmatic figure that it's hard to decide which view of him is correct - the dangerous terrorist or innocent caught up in events beyond his control. The same ambiguity applies to many of the other characters too so the reader isn't certain whose opinion to trust and whose to dismiss as biased and paranoid. It's a world where individuals count for very little - are just there to be manipulated as means to an end - and whose muddy waters are too quick to spread - Annabel Richter and Tommy Brue start out as 'normal' fairly ethical, honourable types but even they find themselves corrupted by the forces they come into contact with.

As with the Smiley novels, it's a rather sedentary plot - it moves forward through the close analysis of files, the following of paper trails and the dredging up of half-forgotten memories - a device that works well in book-form but I wonder how well it's transcribed itself to film. From the trailer, I suspect a lot of cloak and dagger action has been added, and maybe a chase scene or two.....  I'm going to need to go to a cinema and check, purely for research.....


Maryom's review -  5 stars
Publisher -  Sceptre
Genre - spy thriller