Dance By The Canal by Kerstin Hensel

translated by Jen Calleja


review by Maryom

Gabriela has no place to live, no job, no friends or family who could help her, but for now she's found a snug spot under a bridge by the canal, and a stash of paper on which to write her life story. Born in the East German town of Leibnitz, the daughter of a respected surgeon, Gabriela's early life should have been an easy one of privilege but her parents seem remote and unloving, wanting an ideal child with talents to brag about, and at school she manages to make the 'wrong' sort of friends, irritating her parents even more.
Her father meanwhile is becoming increasingly outspoken about the Communist regime, her mother takes a younger lover, and by the time Gabriela is a teenager their comfortable villa has been exchanged for a tiny flat, and things are definitely on a downward slide ...
Then the Berlin Wall falls, and Gabriela hopes for better things, but has she by then become too much of a misfit to ever fit in?

From the point when Gabriela is homeless, sitting under the canal bridge and beginning to tell of her life, the story moves in two timelines - starting with her childhood one follows her troubles trying to fit in with what first her parents, and then the state, expect of her; the other begins at that moment sitting under the bridge, as she reflects on the past and is 'discovered' by a women's magazine and courted as an 'authentic' voice of the homeless. 
A square peg in a round hole is one way, perhaps slightly lazy way, of describing Gabriela - she never seems to quite understand what people expect of her, therefore can't play by their rules, and make a success of things. She's rootless and homeless long before she's without a roof over her head - her parents are distant and more concerned with their own lives that her well-being - and the only constant in her life is the canal - from childhood when she spent her happiest times playing and dancing there with her 'unsuitable' friend, to the shelter it offers her now.


It's a story which captures the readers attention and imagination. How could someone born into a position of security and respectability end up living homeless? Is it a slip anyone could make, or just Gabriela's fault? But, as I neared the end, I began to have second thoughts about Gabriela in her capacity as narrator. A word here, a sentence there, made me begin to think she wasn't maybe quite as she'd presented herself, but creating a persona to fit the expectations of the magazine editors. I read the relevant passages again, and still wasn't sure if I'd imagined it and was reading in something that wasn't there. It's one occasion when I've wondered if the translation of a Peirene novella didn't quite capture the feeling of the original. I definitely feel I need to re-read this book, but meanwhile if anyone has read Dance by the Canal, what did you think?
Maryom's review - 4 stars 
Publisher - Peirene Press 
Genre - Adult Literary Translated Fiction

Rarity From The Hollow by Robert Eggleton

Review by The Mole

Twelve year old Lacy Dawn lives in the Hollow, a place that the world seems to have forgotten. Her father suffers from PTSD after the Gulf War and family abuse follows as a result. Lacy Dawn's friend's family suffer similarly but her friend was killed through it. But Lacy Dawn has another friend who has his own spaceship - and when Lacy Dawn isn't talking to trees or her dead friend she is taking lessons in the spaceship and falling in love with a robot.

...and Lacy Dawn has to save the universe?

Lacy Dawn is a difficult character to get to grips with as she is intelligent beyond her years yet always the child that she is, as well. Her parents (she is an only child) came across to me as genuine and well written and plausible and her other friends and relatives similarly.

Drugs, used recreationally, feature highly in the books - although not for Lacy Dawn - but they are used to highlight some of the erratic behaviour of characters. Sex also features regularly but behind closed doors only and NOT with Lacy Dawn involved - she is saving herself for when Dotcom marries her. Dotcom is her robot boyfriend from outer space.

Tension and edge of the seat reading did not feature in this book for me but none the less it was a compelling read - one that didn't get me uptight, which was nice for once. It was also laced with humour, not laugh out loud or share with someone in the room humour, but enough to lighten the mood just a little.

It has been described as "an adult literary novel with a social science fiction" but I very much found it science fiction with a little fantasy but very much focussed on social issues - including abuse within the family.

And family abuse (in which the children always suffer in some way shape or form) is something the author has spent his career working against so the author proceeds of the current edition of this book are going to a children's home charity.

A great book that doesn't in any way preach yet brings home 2 things:
(1) important social messages
(2) a truly entertaining story

Genre - Adult Science Fiction
Publisher - Dog Horn Publishing

Yesterday by Felicia Yap

review by Maryom

A body has been found in the river by Grantchester meadows. The coat pockets laden with pebbles point to suicide; the bump on the head says otherwise. So the police begin investigations - but things are tricky in a world where the majority of people can only remember the events of yesterday, and the pressure is on for a speedy resolution.


This book starts with an interesting premise - that most adults only retain memories of the previous day, the lucky few remember two days - then throws in a murder mystery, but it soon lost its hold on me as it turned into a fairly predictable domestic noir.
 Although the book isn't promoted as such, I'd expected a more 'sci-fi' take to the story. After all, a whole population coping with memory problems like that would surely be really weird. How did it develop in the first place? How do people cope from day to day? Would staying awake for long periods (perhaps with the help of drugs) keep someone's memory intact or is time the factor that governs this strange condition? And how can you hope to solve a murder when the facts will start to slip away from witnesses' minds at the end of the day? The aspects which intrigued me most weren't addressed as the book is much more murder mystery than speculative fiction, and as for coping day to day, well that's solved by the use of diaries - filled in every night to make sure important events and feelings are remembered, and read every morning to convert 'memories' into 'facts' which are never forgotten. To be honest, I felt these characters probably had a better grasp of what happened last week, by referring to their diaries, than I have with only a memory to count on!
I also found it a bit bizarre that events took place in what feels like a familiar setting, Granchester Meadows - I half expected Sidney Chambers and his entourage to show up and help solve the mystery!
If you're reading this as another domestic noir, you'll probably like it well enough, but I'm not particularly fond of the genre, and, comparing it to other fiction involving memory loss, Yesterday didn't have the tension of SJ Watson's Before I Go to Sleep, total world immersion of Emily Barr's The One Memory of Flora Banks or the grittiness of the Christopher Nolan film Momento.




Maryom's review - 3 stars
Publisher - Wildfire 
Genre - domestic noir, adult fiction

The Court of Broken Knives by Anna Smith Spark

review by Maryom

The city of Sorlost stands at the heart of an empire that was once the richest the world had ever known. But its glory days are past. While titled families still play court to a puppet Emperor, and spend wildly and extravagantly on their own pleasures, the streets are filled with the desperate and homeless. Orhan Emmereth has decided it's time things were changed, and a band of mercenaries are heading across the desert to put his plans into action. They're a hotchpotch band of experienced fighters and raw recruits, but the strangest among their number is the youngster Marith, running away from something ( a common enough scenario for mercenaries) yet filled at times with a berserker killing rage beyond anything his comrades have seen, and somehow carrying a feel of impending doom or glorious destiny about him.
Meanwhile, in the temple in Sorlost, the High Priestess Thalia continues her routine of prayers and sacrifices, never wondering what lies beyond the enclosing walls ...

To be honest, I found it a little difficult to get started with this story - it has that problem frequently found in fantasy books (or even hulking great classics like Middlemarch or War and Peace) of such a huge cast of characters to be introduced within the first few chapters, that it can be hard to start to piece together the overall plot-line; I just got to grips with one group of characters and the story jumped elsewhere and to different players. If you find this, bear with it. Get past those first few chapters, and the book will grow on you - well, it did on me! Gradually, the scenario emerges - a decaying empire, someone eager to gain control of it, mercenaries with their own aims which may not run in the same course as their employer's, a young man hiding secrets in his past and a probably unfortunate destiny in his the future, and a beautiful woman dedicated since childhood as a priestess.
It has all the things I love in fantasy novels. The world-building is excellent, the writing rich and varied, and the characters behave as real people with human foibles, failings, and strengths. Yes, there are mages ready to whip up pyrotechnic displays, beautiful selkie women from the sea, even a dragon or two, but the story is powered by qualities we can recognise - ambition, fear, or desire - not the wave of a magician's wand.
If you love a tale in which alliances are made and broken, god and armies are ready to battle till no one's left standing, and trustworthy friends are as eager to betray you as your enemy is, then this is for you. Be warned though, the story is dark, violent, there's plenty of blood and gore, and the description of Marith's beserker rampages deeply unsettling. It's maybe odd then that the images and scenes which stood out most for me were of quieter moments -  the descriptions of the once glorious but now down at heel city of Sorlost, the desolate emptiness of the desert or its brief flowering after rain, Marith's delight in the seaside haunts of his childhood, and two lovers stealing a day away from treachery and death. Maybe it's something to do with the balance between the two aspects of the story but as the first book in a series it's grabbed me in a way that off hand I can only think of Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice having done before. I just hope there isn't too long to wait for Book 2.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Harper Collins (Harper Voyager)
Genre - Adult fantasy

The Floating Theatre by Martha Conway

Review by The Mole

When the steamship that May Bedloe is on explodes she finds herself on the banks of the Ohio with only the clothes she is wearing. Separated from Comfort, her cousin she was travelling with, she looks for some way to carry on. She joins the Floating Theatre as a seamstress, front of house, pianist, stage manager, show promotions, ticket maker and seller, in fact anything that is not actually on stage.

Then enter Mrs Howard, to who she owes money, to blackmail her into helping in the underground railroad.

When I saw this book I was very curious... I reviewed "O Freedom" a while ago, which is a book for younger readers, that follows a family along the underground railroad. Then "The Underground Railroad" by Colson Whitehead won the Pulitzer Prize For Fiction (a book I haven't read) so another book touching on the same topic intrigued me.

The plot follows the theatre, which drifts down the river that marks the border between north and south, and is towed back up the river at end of season. We are introduced to theatre life in this cramped environment as well as a little of lives along the river and the coming of coal mining to the area - the fuel of the steamships.

May is a character that cannot lie - she corrects the smallest of errors in speech - so the theatre is an odd place to find her - stories and plays are "lies" after all. I found her a fascinating character to follow and how she coped with the pressures of blackmail that forced her to more than lie, but to break the law.

The story also covered an aspect of the railroad that I didn't know existed.

All in all an intriguing story told very well that left me with an idea what life on the Ohio at that time may have been like.

Genre - Adult historical fiction
Publisher - Zaffre Publishing

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

review by Maryom

"For sisters Liz and Jane, coming home to suburban Cincinnati means being paraded at the Lucas family’s BBQ, where burgers are served alongside the eligible men. But it’s difficult to focus on re-booting their love lives when the family’s mock-Tudor house starts to crumble around them. Yet as their mother reminds them, it’s not every day you meet a pair of handsome single doctors . . ."



Mr and Mrs Bennet of Cincinnati have been blessed with five daughters. Now ranging in ages from mid-twenties to late thirties Mrs Bennet feels it's time they settled down and got married, preferably to someone wealthy. The two eldest, Jane and Liz, have returned home temporarily due to their father's ill-health, and Mrs Bennet sees this as an ideal time to pursue her plans, especially when they're introduced to two doctors newly-arrived in town, and by all criteria eminently eligible.
In some on line listings, this book is sub-titled A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice, so if you hadn't guessed already, you know now where this story is taking us - into familiar territory with Jane and Liz Bennet, Chip Bingley and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Obviously the Bennet sister's lives are different in the 21st century, (though the younger three are still trying their best to live off Mom and Dad, rather than strike out on their own as independent women) but some things don't change so, although a rich husband is no longer a necessity, everyone is looking for a lasting, loving relationship.

I'm not a purist so I've no problem with re-workings of Austen's work, from books such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to films like Bride and Prejudice or Clueless, and really rather liked Eligible. transporting the Bennet sisters to present day America worked better than I thought it would, and although there's less of Austen's cutting satire, I felt overall the book really captured her style.


I'm not sure though that I'd say it's what Austen would write if she were around today. In her time she was innovative, exploring what could be achieved in a relatively new art form, so today I'd don't think she'd be in the 'romantic fiction' section of the book shop. Instead I imagine her writing graphic novels, feminist stand-up comedy, or The Thick of It style political satire - and if the Bennet sisters have a place there, it's a very different one.

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Harper Collins (The Borough Press)
Genre - Adult fiction

The Woman in the Shadows by Carol McGrath

review by Maryom


Elizabeth Williams is newly widowed, after a love-less marriage arranged by her father. She's still young, has a head for trade and figures, and is determined to keep her independence by taking over her husband's cloth business. It's not an unknown course of action for a widow, but Elizabeth has opponents among London's cloth merchants and, closer to home, in her father who thinks she should do no such thing, but either let him merge the business with his, or marry again. An arson attack on her premises leaves her shaken but still firm in her intentions, though concerned that someone may have uncovered her late husband's secrets ...
Meanwhile, she finds herself attracted to Thomas Cromwell, cloth merchant turned lawyer, who represents a chance for both love and security.


I think anyone with an interest in historical fiction will be aware of the huge number of books out there set in the Tudor period, but most focus on Henry VIII's court, and, of course, his multitude of wives. In The Woman in the Shadows, Carol McGrath approaches the matter from a different angle - that of a woman from the merchant class, involved in trade both at home and abroad, seeing the noblemen and women of the court as potential customers for her finer stock but little concerned with their lives. Once she marries Thomas Cromwell her life begins to change - for Thomas is intent on furthering his career, and in Tudor times that means becoming involved with the court and its politics. If you've read, or watched the TV version of, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, you'll know what happens to him later in life, but here we're concerned with him BEFORE he became a major player on the Tudor political scene. Seen through Elizabeth's eyes, he's ambitious, a little too secretive, and definitely too radical in his views! Elizabeth is portrayed as a modest, religious woman, not wholly comfortable with some of her husband's ideas or his growing involvement with the movers and shakers of Henry's court. In one respect I wasn't comfortable with her outlook - along with no doubt many others at the time, she sees homosexuality as a sin, condemned by the church, and punished after death, but it's important to bear in mind that she's a Tudor woman with the attitudes and opinions of her time, and influenced heavily by the Church's stance.
The insight into everyday Tudor life is fascinating. From the details of Elizabeth's clothes, cleaning and decorating a house, to dressing up and celebrating feast days almost every aspect is covered as Elizabeth and Thomas go about their daily lives. It's also interesting to see that long before celebrity magazines the public were eager for news of the famous folk of the day - Henry's longing for a son, and his extra-marital affairs are pretty much public knowledge, and discussed eagerly among the cloth merchants' wives (and I suspect by their husbands too). All these details help bring the period to life, a living backdrop to Elizabeth's personal story.

You can also read a guest post from Carol McGrath talking about Elizabeth Cromwell and Women in Tudor Times here


Maryom's review - 4 stars 
Publisher - Accent Press
 Genre - adult historical fiction