Held by Anne Michaels

The book (I'm not sure whether to refer to it as story) begins on the battlefields of WW1 where a soldier, John, lies injured, with his thoughts drifting back to childhood, to his first meeting with his lover, to times since then spent with her. Three years later, he's home, reunited with Helena, trying to pick up the life that was interrupted by war, but still carrying the physical and mental scars of battle, and still searching for that place and time when he felt 'held' and surrounded by love.

At this point it feels like the story might follow their life - but it doesn't. There's no linear plot, not even an overall story arc or a darting backwards and forwards to reveal something buried in the past. Instead the book is comprised of vignettes capturing a moment in time, highlighting important moments in the lives of John's family over four generations,with a linking theme of their search for that feeling of love and safety.

Overall I found this an odd book, maybe because I was expecting something more straightforward. The writing is beautiful and poetic, but the flitting from one generation to the next is confusing at first, and takes some getting used to. Having finished the book and being able to see it as a whole, I feel I can appreciate it more, and would like to reread it.

This Plague of Souls by Mike McCormack

A man, Nealon, returns home to find his house empty; not just empty but seemingly abandoned. No heating. No lights. No inhabitants. The only welcome (as such) is from an unknown man on the telephone. A man who seems to know all about Nealon, and certainly more than the reader does.. 

As days pass more of Nealon's life is revealed - his childhood in rural Ireland, his career as an artist, his relationship with his wife and son, and, crucially, where he's been for the past few months - but he himself remains an enigma. He may, or may not, have been behind an enormous insurance fraud. He may be the person behind an ongoing security alert ... but, then again, he may not

This is definitely a difficult book to describe, but for its length (under 200 pages) it gives the reader a lot to think about. It's a strange book, weird but absorbing, enigmatic like its protagonist, which raises more questions about characters and events than get answered. (I once read that a lack of resolution was the mark of a literary novel - in which case this must be the most literary of them all). For me, it's a book that I'd go back to and mull over; I feel like there are hints and details along the way that didn't register with me on a first read-through but which would help clarify the ending. 

I haven't read anything previously by Mike McCormack but knew he'd been long-listed for the Booker, so was intrigued when I saw this come up on Netgalley. I'm not certain if this is typical of McCormack's style but to me it seemed reminiscent of Samuel Beckett's work, with that feeling of a character creating the world around him as he names things and people.

 

The Earthspinner by Anuradha Roy

Studying English Literature at a British university, Sara feels adrift - cut off from her family back in India, disoriented by the familiar, yet unfamiliar, language around her, even the strangeness of English seasons. She finds comfort and familiarity in the students' pottery studio, exploring an art she first encountered many year before as a child.

Elango the local potter is a man straggling two worlds - the huge terracotta pots he makes have drawn interest from art galleries and buyers beyond his small town, but he prefers to remain in his backwater and create practical, 'everyday' pots of use to everyone. One day he finds (or is found by) a lost dog, which, opening his heart to companionship and affection, seems to lead on to other developments. After long being in love with a local Muslim girl, he begins to think that she reciprocates his feelings, despite the impossibility of their relationship. And at the same time another passion takes hold. Sparked by a dream in which he sees a horse breathing fire under the sea, he begins to create a huge terracotta statue - what will happen to it when finished he doesn't know, but something is driving him on, and he cannot rest before it's completed. Daring to dream of something different isn't easy though, and there are always people waiting to destroy those dreams.

This is a beautifully written and crafted novel about the burning desire to create beauty from a very basic substance - mud - and the perils of daring to love or live in a different manner to those around you.

The story moves from England to India, back and forward between Sara's teenage years and her 'present day' almost ten years later, always showing how difficult it is for an outsider who doesn't wish to conform. It's threaded through with themes about the unpredictability of love, of coming of age and self-discovery, and the demands that art puts upon its creators, and I think everyone will have their own 'focus' to the story. For me though the emphasis lies on the 'daring to be different', to brave society's or parental expectations and follow one's heart - whether this is shown through Elango and Zohra's forbidden love, or Sara's fellow student following a career that wasn't planned out for her..

The Earth Spinner is the first fiction title from new imprint Mountain Leopard Press, which specialises in literary fiction and nonfiction from around the world. Anuradha Roy's previous novels have been listed for prestigious literary prizes and translated into over fifteen laguages.

Summerwater by Sarah Moss

At the end of a long single track road sits a holiday park, a small group of wooden chalets. With a lochside location surrounded by mountains it sounds like the perfect place to rest and relax, to get back in touch with nature and the simpler things in life, far away from normal everyday life. But the Scottish weather is proving a disappointment. The rain is constant. Getting out and about seems unappealing. There's little for the families on holiday at the park to do but stay indoors, and maybe watch the other holidaymakers. 
A wife tries to outrun her problems, children are forced outside to play by the water, teenagers would rather be anywhere else. A young couple think of what their future holds: an older one reminisce about the past. One family, though, is marked out as 'different'. They play music and party late at night. They don't have the proper 'serious' clothing and footwear. Maybe you aren't allowed to have fun while the rain continues to pour and ruin everyone else's holiday?

Over the course of a day, tempers start to unravel, tension rises, and, whether it's from children spotting another child who's easy to bully, or from the solitary guy camping nearby, there's a feeling of trouble brewing.

Sarah Moss has perfectly captured that claustrophobic mood of sitting hunkered inside out of the rain, day after day, in an area where all the attractions - walking, swimming, cycling - are outdoors, of longing to go out but being soaked after a few minutes, while inside wet clothes steam but never dry out, and the windows fog up from condensation. 
Following first one person, then another, we see the day unfold from different perspectives, and with each of them that uneasy tension builds. By close observation and dipping into their thoughts, at the end of the day/novel, these feel like people you know intimately, possibly better then their close families do. There's a certain similarity to Jon McGregor's If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, with the emphasis being on people going about a fairly ordinary day, doing little of importance, while unknown to them tragedy is about to strike. 
And the ending ... well, that's one that will resonate for quite a while. DO NOT be tempted to skip ahead and see what happens. On a second or third reading you'll know how things work out; just once let the full shock hit you.


Maryom's review - 5 stars

Publisher - Picador

Genre - adult, literary, 

Flotsam by Meike Ziervogel

Anna and her daughter Trine live on the German coast, by mudflats that are covered twice a day, and whose form shifts with the tides. Their life is lonely, haunted by the ghosts of war. Anna is emotionally and artistically paralyzed by grief. She spends her days collecting debris washed up by the tides, with which she intends to create something - but can't find the spark within herself to start. Trine, forced into more social contact through school, is more resilient, finds it possible to put the past behind her and move on.

Set in 1950s Germany, Meike Ziervogel's latest book tells the story of a mother and daughter trying to come to terms with grief and the past. Anne and Trine live, damaged and adrift, like emotional flotsam on the blurred edge between land and sea. The mudflats, shifting and changing form with each tide, echo the women's thoughts and memories - there's only one safe way through, otherwise you'll sink and be caught by the tide. 

Ziervogel's writing is, as always, concise and sparse; her characters troubled and arresting. It's a story which sticks in the mind, with a lot of impact for such a slim volume.


This isn't by any stretch of the imagination a 'traditional' post-apocalypse story, but mulling over what exactly I'd say in this review, perhaps due to how my thoughts are running at the moment, it struck me that there were similarities. Isolated, bleak, drab, their location seems spot on for post-apocalyptic fiction. And then, imagine the mindset of the German people in the immediate post-war years. No matter whether or not they supported the Nazi regime, believed its propaganda or thought it was all lies, the end of the war marks the end of an era; everything that shaped their lives has been swept away, leaving huge uncertainty in its wake. For them, this is post-apocalyptic life.


Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Salt Publishing
Genre - adult literary fiction, coming of age, 

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

Flesh of the Peach by Helen McClory

review by Maryom

Twenty-seven year old Sarah Browne is struggling to make her way as an artist in New York when she's hit by two major emotional blows - the married woman she's been having an affair with decides to return to her husband, and news arrives that her estranged mother has died, leaving Sarah a large inheritance including a cabin in New Mexico. Doubly cast adrift, Sarah decides she'll not return home to England for her mother's funeral but head off to New Mexico - to start again, maybe to find some connection to her mother that was lacking in life, or maybe just to hide the way an injured animal will. The cabin is remote and isolated; the only neighbours, Theo and his middle-aged mother, living on the opposite side of the valley. Sarah soon embarks on a relationship with Theo, earning his mother's disapproval, but it's an uneven, unstable relationship bound to end, possibly in violence.

I had slightly mixed feelings about this book from its synopsis. I hope the author will forgive me for suggesting it sounded like the story of a pampered woman, running out on her responsibilities, to 'get in touch with herself' in the wilderness, and then presumably going to find true love; a light, almost romcom scenario. It's not at all like that. It's a much darker read, exploring the way grief, particularly unacknowledged grief, can work on people turning them to anger and violence. 

Sarah is a complex character, shaped by the unresolved issues stemming from her childhood - a odd upbringing in a house of women; her mother and aunt (both alcoholics if Sarah's point of view is to be believed) and surprisingly level headed, well-adjusted cousin. Always feeling neglected by her mother, she alternately loved and hated her in return, eventually running away from home at 17. With her mother's death the outside chance of a reconciliation is gone, but also so is the focus of Sarah's anger. She won't acknowledge any love for her mother, or grief at her death, yet it's easy to see that both are buried somewhere deep inside her. 


This is a book which I found growing on me as I read - initially because I realised it wasn't going to be that light fluffy read I'd dreaded, but then as I became immersed in Sarah's troubles and dreading how she might act. She's somewhat like a pressure cooker, waiting to burst, or even the extinct volcano that formed the valley her mother's cabin sits in; anger simmers just below the surface, and it's obvious that sometime or other Sarah will 'explode'.

Maryom's review - 4 stars

Publisher - Freight Books

Genre -  Adult literary

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor

review by Maryom


Rebecca Shaw, on a New Year holiday with her parents, goes out walking on the moors one day, and disappears. The locals gather to help the police search the area, and at first the talk is of a twisted ankle, or the girl deliberately staying out, trying to frighten her parents, and expectations are high that she'll soon be found. But there are so many things that could have happened - she could have fallen into a quarry, be trapped down an abandoned mine, sucked into one of the bogs on the moor, or even hitched a lift to the nearest city, - and as the days, weeks, months pass, finding her seems unlikely. Despite their initial shock and concern, the villagers soon find that life continues, at first slowly but speeding up with the passing of the years - Spring comes with lambs and fox cubs, wild flowers blossom in the hedgerows, vegetables sprout up at the allotments; babies are born, children grow, relationships develop or falter, the elderly die, newcomers arrive, and ultimately people begin to forget about a missing girl.

I usually try to avoid spoilers when  writing reviews but I don't think that's possible here because a lot of my thoughts revolve around what the book IS, and what it ISN'T.

Although the book opens with Rebecca's disappearance, it ISN'T a crime thriller, with clues to unearth, false leads to pursue, but ultimately leading to a resolution. Over the years, various times of Rebecca's clothing are found but no real evidence of what happened or clue to her whereabouts discovered. Instead the focus is on the impact to the people living in this quiet out-of-the-way village - something devastating has happened on their doorstep, but to an outsider that most of them had never met. Naturally they're shocked, but for how long can they be expected to grieve and put their lives on hold?

Personally I found a lot of similarities with McGregor's first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. In much the same way, it encourages the reader to see and remark upon the small happenings that occur from day to day around us but which are so often missed in the rush of life; to stop for a while and watch a butterfly, listen to birdsong, or notice our children growing from infants to teenagers. It's a mesmerising, beautifully written book charting the emotional and physical changes within a small tightly-knit community over thirteen years, but this time I was left wanting something more. As the years pass, snippets of information come to light about Rebecca's disappearance, various items of her clothing are found on the moors, but no explanation of her disappearance is forthcoming. This may, in all honesty, be truer to life than a crime novel which neatly closes all leads off by the final page, and reaches some nature of resolution, even if not a happy one, but, even so, I was left unsatisfied. Somewhere I read that the mark of a literary novel is that it ends without resolution - this is certainly literary, not crime, fiction.


Maryom's review - 4 stars 
Publisher - Fourth Estate
Genre - adult literary fiction, 

Cove by Cynan Jones

review by Maryom

A man is paddling far out at sea when a sudden electrical storm bursts around him, lightning running down to the water - and attracted to him and his kayak. When he regains consciousness, he's out of sight of land, injured, dazed, no idea of how much time has passed, of who is is, why he's there, his paddles are lost, his sense of direction gone... Instinct alone forces him to attempt the seemingly impossible journey to land.
"a man locked in an uneven struggle with the forces of nature" is how the blurb describes Cove. Well, to me, that sounds too much like some hunky hero in an all action-packed drama facing huge mountainous waves, and fighting off killer jellyfish or attacking sharks. Rest assured - this book isn't like that at all!
It's a quiet, undramatic tale, which is surprising considering its subject. It's short at under a hundred pages. Tightly written with not a surplus word left, but it still captures the helplessness of being adrift at sea, and the man's confusion of not knowing who he is, where he belongs, and his fear at the physical enormity of the waters surrounding him - the depth below, the expanse on all sides with no sight of land.

Jones proves once again that a book doesn't need to have a massive word count to make an impact. he gives the reader enough to set their imagination to work - to feel the pain, the fear, the physical and emotional numbness, the tightly bottled-down panic, and the buried animal instinct which strives for survival without, or may even despite, man's rational thought processes.
It's a book to devour whole in one sitting, and then turn over and examine in your mind, to see various aspects and themes appear.

Although Cove is very much about one man, in one very specific situation, it also feels like a story with wider application relating to anyone drifting, astray in life, trying to find their way back to something indefinable but lost. I couldn't help but be reminded of Stevie Smith's "I was much too far out all my life/And not waving but drowning", particularly when the kayaker spots a beach in the distance, with families paddling, but he still drifts helplessly past carried by currents beyond his control.

I suspect the ending may divide readers but I see it as a hopeful one, like rushing headlong to a re-birth. Maybe I just like to be an optimist.




Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Granta Books
Genre - Adult literary fiction 

Other reviews; Tim Hannigan

The Empress and the Cake by Linda Stift

translated by Jamie Bulloch

review by Maryom

Passing by a Viennese cake shop a young woman is enticed into sharing a Gugelhupf cake with an elderly lady dressed in a strange antiquated style, from head to toe in black. Normally this young woman is very conscious of what she eats, its calories and sugar levels, but somehow her usual objections fade when faced with the formidable Frau Hohenembs. The two new acquaintances head back to Frau Hohenembs' apartment, a space filled with strange curios and shared by parrots, an Irish wolfhound and a plump, equally black-clad, housekeeper, Ida.
There they share Frau Hohenembs' half of the cake, and the narrator finds herself being pulled into the life of this very strange and manipulative woman. They go for walks with the dog or visit museums - all very normal on the surface, but Frau Hohenembs is following a bizarre agenda, attacking and stealing items associated with the Empress Elisabeth, and the narrator feels compelled to go along with her plans.
Interleaved with this ongoing narrative, are reminiscences about the Empress Elisabeth by one of her loyal servants; a relationship which bears striking resemblances to that between Frau Hohenembs and Ida.

How would I describe The Empress and the Cake? Well, it's part subtle, tense psychological thriller but also an examination of addiction and loss of control. The Narrator (she's never named) has a history of eating disorders, of binge-eating and purging, which has been in abeyance for fifteen years, but which returns immediately after her first meeting with Frau Hohenembs. Throughout, she claims to be in charge of herself and the situation, believing she could walk away any time she chooses, but the reader can see that this is far from true; some part of her has come to rely on Frau Hohenembs, to need her dictating what to do and when.

The Empress and The Cake is part of Peirene's fairy tale series and Frau Hohenembs has at least a hint of the old crone, or even wicked witch, of folk tales about her; luring the innocent in with tempting food only to enslave them, or, as in the case of Hansel and Gretel, eat them!

Additional thoughts - when I read this I knew I was reminded of something else, a recent novel dealing with manipulation of one woman by another, but couldn't pinpoint it at the time. It's Alison Moore's Death and the Seaside which has threads of the power of naming, and suggestibility, rather than addiction but the two are interesting to read together




Maryom's review - 5 stars 
Publisher - Peirene Press 
Genre - Adult Literary Translated Fiction

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

All We Shall Know by Donal Ryan

review by Maryom

Melody Shee's life is a mess; she's thirty three, pregnant, alone, frightened, angry, and riddled with guilt. 
The baby's father is Martin Toppy, a Traveller boy, barely more than half Melody's age. Her husband, Pat, has left in disgust and anger, knowing there's no way the child is his. And, at the back of Melody's mind, always haunting her, is the memory of the dreadful things she did to her best friend, Breedie, back in school. She's so desperate that taking her own life is beginning to seem a welcoming option.
Fortunately, a whim takes Melody to the Travellers' halting site, looking for Martin Toppy. He and his family have moved on but she makes an unlikely acquaintance, Mary Crothery, a nineteen year old Traveller woman with her own problems.
As her pregnancy advances week by week, Melody spills out her thoughts and regrets to her computer, and gradually comes to accept that maybe, after all, the birth of this child is a good thing, and that through it she can begin to forgive herself.

All We Shall Know is another absolutely stunning novel from Donal Ryan, but there's often a difficulty, in that when you've found an author whose work you love, it can be hard for them to surprise and amaze you. I was left, though, feeling equally moved by the story and amazed at Ryan's ability to tell it. Part of the magic of Ryan's story-telling, for me, is that he doesn't seem so much to 'create' characters as to give voice to ones who already exist fully-formed elsewhere, and what impressed me this time was his way of getting not only inside a woman's thoughts, but her physical feelings too - as if he'd experienced the draining emptiness of morning sickness, or a baby kicking and turning, for himself. I've read other novels written by a male author but told in the first person from a woman's point of view, and I've felt unconvinced by the masquerade; this time, I was utterly convinced - so much so that at times during my reading I was surprised to remember this story is written by a man! 

Melody herself isn't a person to quickly take to - she's as outspoken, argumentative and downright stroppy as a teenager! - but as her story unfolded, I came to see her as a person damaged by her past misdeeds, and masking her vulnerability with anger, while caring deeply about her father and husband. The unravelling of Melody's story revolves around several threads - the difficulties that can at times surround something we take for granted; the birth of a child; the gradual wearing away of a loving marriage into a constant battle of recrimination; the way a community makes its own unwritten rules and how quick it is to judge anyone who doesn't conform; and how inflicting pain and suffering on others can bounce back on the giver. 

In many ways, as in The Truth About December, this is a story about people living on the edges of society, shunned by family, friends or community for not behaving as expected; Melody is shunned by her neighbours for being pregnant; Mary by her own mother (!) for her inability to conceive, and then shaming her family by leaving her husband; the Travellers' community as a whole is looked on with suspicion and hatred just for being 'different'.  

For anyone familiar with Ryan's work, there are places where his other stories seep through - a 'courting' couple in a car park at a beauty spot, or a policeman the reader's encountered before - which gives a feel of a whole world continuing its life in the background, just waiting for its story to be told.

Maryom's review - 5 stars

Publisher - Doubleday

Genre - adult contemporary fiction

Five Rivers Met On A Wooded Plain by Barney Norris

review by Maryom

In the south of England, in the vicinity of Salisbury, five rivers meet and flow together to the sea.
In the similar way, the lives of five people living in and around the city run into each other briefly but then part and continue separately - Rita, a market stall holder who feels that after a life filled with mistakes, this time she's really ruined her life; Sam, a teenager torn between first love and first devastating grief, George an elderly man whose wife has just died, Alison, a middle-aged army wife struggling to fill her lonely days, cut off from her husband posted abroad and unable to communicate with her teenage son, and Liam, a security guard who's abandoned his flash London job in search of something that he can't really name. Their paths have crossed before without them realising but a car crash brings all five together - some directly involved, others as shocked by-standers.


The novel is told through five separate stories, each of which is devoted to one of the five characters and narrated in their own words. Norris definitely has a knack for capturing the essentials of a character, and convincingly bringing them alive through their own 'voice'. There's a downside to this though, in that while I felt sympathy for some of the characters, I found others self-obsessed and tending towards boring because of it (perhaps that's just part of the author's skill though).
Each of them is facing a personal crisis, and, of course, they tackle it in different ways. As they reflect on their lives, the reader becomes privy to their loves and losses, the huge mistakes, the occasional lucky break, and realises, often before the characters themselves, that these five lives have been circling round and touching each other frequently over the years.
Despite the very obvious 'literary' structure, this is still a very readable book, with characters who are easily related to. Certainly an author I'll be watching out for.

Maryom's review - 4 stars

Publisher - Doubleday

Genre - adult literary fiction

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

A Country Road, A Tree by Jo Baker

review by Maryom

In September 1939, Samuel Beckett is an unknown writer, visiting his mother in Dublin and faced with a choice - to return to Paris and his partner Suzanne, or sit the coming war out in safety at home in Ireland. The atmosphere at home is too stifling and restrictive, and staying there feels too much like taking the coward's way out, so he heads back to France. Here, too, there are choices to be made. As the citizen of a neutral country, Beckett could theoretically keep himself to himself, not make a fuss, and wait for the war to be over, but his moral and political leanings won't allow him to sit idly by...

One thing to get straight right from the start is that this isn't an all-action story of daring deeds and shoot-outs between the Resistance and occupying German forces. It's more a story of choices - to keep quiet but safe, or follow one's conscience, probably into danger - and of the day-to-day terror that almost anyone in occupied France must have lived with, especially Resistance members and sympathisers - the knock on the door in the middle of the night, the telegram which says a friend has been arrested, the warning to flee. At the same time, Beckett is growing as a writer, moving out from the shadow of his mentor, James Joyce, so, although the characters are adults, in some ways it can almost be seen as a coming-of-age novel.

As with Jo Baker's Longbourn, there's a feeling that the story is of people standing on the side-lines; in Longbourn's case, she told the story of the servants of Austen's Pride and Prejudice households; this time it's of private individuals, involved against their will in a war, and not even part of the massive armies sweeping across Europe, Africa and Asia at the time; others may be caught up in that whirlwind, the ones we're concerned with are on the periphery.

I love Baker's writing style, even though I find it difficult to describe. She takes small, intimate moments, creates a mood in which the reader can almost experience the same sights, smells, and emotions as the characters, then links these moments to advance the story. From a boy hiding in a tree to evade his mother, to a train packed beyond 'full' with people fleeing Paris, to trying to hide a case of explosives under a display of geraniums, the reader is there in the moment.


The publisher's blurb merely talks of 'a young writer', and it was only a couple of chapters in, with mention of translating 'Murphy', that I realised this writer was Samuel Beckett; someone I have mixed feelings about. I was introduced to his writing at A level via Malone Dies - and I'm not sure it was something I was ready for; it seemed dull, rambling, disjointed, and not at all what I expected from a novel. I always had him rather marked down as an odd, dull guy, obsessed with finding the exact word to express his meaning, dwelling on thoughts and ideas rather than the sweeping plot-driven work of Hardy or Lawrence (also on the A level syllabus). So, to be honest, I'm surprised to find him such an interesting guy after all. I loved Longbourn, and I loved this. Now I wonder if I re-read Samuel Beckett would I love his work too? It's certainly made me reassess my thoughts about him as a man if not a writer.

Maryom's review - 5 stars

Publisher - Doubleday

Genre - adult fiction, literary fiction, fictionalised biography, WW2

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi

review by Maryom

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is a collection of stories revolving around love and libraries, gardens and diaries, and the keys that can unlock their secrets. The stories are loosely linked, with main characters from one popping up in a minor 'walk-on' role in another, and with the imagery shared by many of them, of hidden secrets and lost treasures.

Throughout there's a blurring of the boundary between real and unreal - some of the stories are very firmly set in the real world, others have a folk tale feel to them, or take flight into a world where puppets are as sentient as you and I. There's a city surrounded by marshlands filled with drowned bodies, one where the clocks have stopped and fixing them is considered an offence; a house where the doors won't stay closed unless locked by key, a twist on the story of Red Riding Hood.

Reading these stories is a bit like dipping in to a collection of fairy tales for adults - the first one even starts 'once upon a time' - and, as in fairy tales and fables, I felt that hidden beneath the story was a moral, but one I couldn't always find. The stories are definitely beautifully written but so much so that I found myself at times carried away by the words, and not grasping the meaning; I was half mesmerised, half perplexed. The collection has, though, whetted my appetite; I hadn't previously read anything by the author, but now I shall check out her previous work.

Maryom's review - 4 stars

Publisher - Picador

Genre -adult, short stories

Star Shot by Mary-Ann Constantine

Illustrated by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

review by Maryom

Something strange is happening in the centre of Cardiff - as people move around the city, particularly close to the Museum, they are encountering silent spaces where all noise is suddenly cut off. A handful of people seem more aware of the phenomenon than others - Myra, who feels some strange, almost physical, attraction to the museum; Theo, an expert on ponds and the life found in them, who carries out 'guerilla-gardening' style pond installations; single-parent Dan struggling with the loneliness of bringing up his son; Luke carrying out a study into the use of public benches across the city, and his supervising professor - the first to spot the extant of these silent patches and their alarming growth. As the paths and lives of these five cross and connect, the puzzle of the silence grows, and initiatives are put it place to fight it but nothing seems to stop its spread.

  
Set in a off-skew Cardiff, Star Shot is a fable-like novel that speaks, to me at least, of the dangers of wiping out nature through the spread of concrete urban centres, and of the isolation of individuals in our high pressure, work-obsessed modern society. These ideas are explored, not through highly-moralistic rhetoric, but through the lives of a small group of characters, most of them rootless in the city, cut-off in some way from family and friends, struggling to form new relationships. As the story evolves, we learn more about their backgrounds, how in various ways they are damaged or weighed down by their past. The exception is Theo, the only one who lives outside the city, who you might even say 'lives and breathes' nature. Everything in his life revolves around ponds; employed during the day by corporations and councils to install them as one of their 'green' credentials, and sneaking out at night making wildlife havens on waste ground, with ponds and plants. It seems like he is the one who holds the key - not only to halting the spread of 'silence' but to bringing the others together.

After a short initial confusion, as the characters were introduced in quick succession, I found the story taking off and holding me. It's not your average 'airport' or 'beach' read but an interesting, thought-provoking comment on modern life, which, although I enjoyed it this time, I'd like to re-read in the not too distant future, knowing how the complexities of the plot work round each other.

Seren have previously published a collection of the author's short stories, All The Souls, but this is Mary-Ann Constantine's first full-length novel.

Maryom's review - 4 stars 
Publisher - Seren Books
Genre - adult literary fiction, modern fable

Melissa by Jonathan Taylor

review by Maryom

When seven year old Melissa Comb dies in her home in Stoke on Trent, her neighbours all experience the same hallucination - at first a shrieking, headache-inducing noise, which makes them go into the street, followed by uplifting "old-fashioned" music, which spreads a mood of happiness and pride among them. For a short while, the inhabitants of the street come together, putting aside their differences and behaving as old friends. But soon the media move in, followed by scientists trying to pin down the cause of the phenomenon, then religious groups/new age believers set up a camp in the street, and this small part of Stoke becomes a destination for spiritual holiday tours. While all this is unfolding, the only family who DIDN'T hear anything, Melissa's own, are having to come to terms with their loss. Hiding behind their drawn curtains, the Comb family is slowly falling apart...

Melissa avoids the sensational, sentimental, and over-emotional traps and offers an unblinkered view  of a family trying to make sense of tragedy. So far, it's rather like Carys Bray's A Song For Issy Bradley , but whereas the Bradleys for all their differing opinions behave as a family, the Combs lack that cohesion and act as individuals, each filled with frustration, anger and grief. Melissa is definitely a darker yet quirkier read.
Having been the one most closely involved with Melissa's illness, her mother Lizzie is the one most prepared to pick life up, and start again, but another blow that comes through the media's interference almost floors her. Teenaged half-sister Serena doesn't know how to grieve; her mother is abroad, contributing only financially to Serena's life, and father Harry is lost in his own world since Melissa's death. Although they try their best, her friends just don't know how they can help her, and Serena is left to work things out alone. Harry, though, is the one who really can't cope. He just can't see how carrying on is possible but wishes that, like a piece of music, life would end; gradually he retreats into himself - from work, from communication with his family, from the world.

Melissa is a curious read -  it's told in a variety of styles (with snippets from newspapers and scientific journals), it's not as straightforward as you may like (starting with the musical phenomenon then moving back to Melissa's illness), and it only gradually seems to focus in on the real heart of the story - but its quirkiness appealed to me. Of course it's bleak - after all it's dealing with the death of a much-loved child, and the family's disintegration afterwards, but it's told with a sense of wry humour (particularly as regards the habits and 'goings-on' of the neighbours), and the 'coda' at the end leaves the reader feeling that, no matter what, life does carry on. 

Is it a book I'd say I loved? Well, it's too dark for that, but it's a quiet, slowly revealing story one I could read again and again.

Jonathan Taylor's earlier novel Entertaining Strangers didn't quite grab me when I first read it - too many ants among other things! - but I always felt it was a book worth re-reading. Having been so impressed with Melissa, it's time I did just that!

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

At Hawthorn Time by Melissa Harrison

Here's where it all ends: a long, straight road between fields. Four-thirty on a May morning: the black fading to blue, dawn gathering somewhere below the treeline in the east. 

This is how Melissa Harrison's Costa Shortlisted novel At Hawthorn Time opens; from there the story moves back to the month before, as Spring comes to the countryside around the village of Lodeshill, and four people set out on courses which lead to this moment early one May morning.

I loved At Hawthorn Time when I first read it last year, and revisiting it before paperback publication I felt just the same.


Here's the full review - At Hawthorn Time -  and my summing up from it
 "At Hawthorn Time is a lovely, compelling read. While it doesn't share the brutality of Cynan Jones' The Dig, it has the same quality of depicting rural life intimately and seeing it clearly, without blinkers; of showing that it's not glossy and chocolate box pretty but a place of dirt, and that without it being a place of work it will become empty and sterile. 
There's also a little touch of the thriller about it. As the story brings us closer to discovering who was involved in the accident and why, it will have you turning the pages faster or wanting to sneakily check the ending - I'm not sure I'd advise it as, like the motorist whizzing along a country lane, you'll miss so much in the details."

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

Look At Me by Sarah Duguid

review by Maryom


Searching her father's desk for a telephone number, Lizzy stumbles across a letter; with its pink envelope and hint of scent, it immediately attracts her attention. Inside is something waiting to overturn Lizzy's comfortable world - the news that she has a younger half-sister, Eunice. Her father Julian thinks the matter should be dropped; his wife Margaret (who died two years ago) was fully aware of his other daughter, and 'cool' about the situation. Her brother, Ig, agrees; nothing can be gained by further contact. But Lizzy feels something more is needed, and gets in touch with Eunice. At first they meet for lunch but gradually Eunice works her way into their lives .... and then how do they get rid of her?

For Lizzy and Ig life so far has been pleasant and sheltered; living in studio-flats built in the garden, and sharing their parents' arty, hippy life-style, they seem to float through life unconcerned with practicalities, and despite being in their late twenties feel no need to grow up and move on. The death of their mother has added another barrier between them and the real world with their house becoming almost a shrine to their mother's memory - a place where time has stopped and everything is preserved as it was before Margaret died; all her clothes are kept, her jewellery and ornaments are just as she left them, nothing must be moved.
Into this atmosphere Eunice brings the  'everyday' world of dead end jobs and mortgages, and a huge dose of practicality. Cuckoo-like, she reorganizes, orders and moves things around to make space for herself, unwittingly trampling over memories and emotions as she does.

I really loved this debut novel; so much that it's hard to enumerate everything that delighted me. Certainly I loved the over-all feel of the laid-back bohemian lifestyle of Lizzy and family - where money seems to present no hindrance to following one's artistic life; wouldn't we all like to live like that? Then there's Lizzy's impulsive good nature which rapidly changes as she realises the trouble she's let into their lives. Or the way the author lets us in on the intimate details that make up a family, the way their lives slot together, and the way the dynamic changes with Eunice there, forcing her way in, altering things to suit her, while everyone seems paralysed to stop her.

To say 'psychological drama' too easily infers a thriller with death and destruction by the end, but this isn't that nature of drama. Instead it's a look at the under-currents of family life, the history and secrets they share, and the disruption one outsider can cause to a stable family group - with its light touch and occasional comic moments, particularly in regard to Lizzy's relationship with her director/lover, it reminded me of an Ayckbourn drama.
It's a wonderful first novel from Sarah Duguid and I hope there'll be many more.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher -  Tinder Press
Genre - Adult fiction, literary, family drama