Nick by Michael Farris Smith

 Anyone who's read The Great Gatsby, or even just seen a film adaptation, will be familiar with Nick Carraway - Daisy Buchanan's second cousin who accidentally rents a house across the bay from her, and right next to Gatsby's huge mansion - but beyond his role as narrator he doesn't really exist.

For Fitzgerald, Nick seems little more than a convenient plot device, sitting watching a love triangle tragedy unfold around him, privy to the desires and actions of all sides, fully committed to none.

Now Michael Farris Smith has brought Nick into the limelight. From his Mid-West childhood, where his life stretched planned and orderly in front of him, through the chaos of  World War 1 trenches, and a doomed love affair in Paris, to the violent saloons of New Orleans, Nick makes his winding way to a small house in West Egg on Long Island, and the green light shining across the Bay.

I'm normally a bit wary of 'spin off' books, which give characters lives way beyond the ones dreamed of by the original authors, but I read an online article by Michael Farris Smith about the inspiration behind Nick, and it somehow appealed. 

If you saw The Great Gatsby as a romantic tale of unrequited love, played out against a backdrop of fabulous parties, huge mansions, and flash cars, then this probably isn't for you. It's far grittier and more violent - like Hemingway rather than Fitzgerald - but I very much enjoyed it. It's a story that could well have stood on its own - naive young man traumatized by war, and unable to fit back into the world he left behind - but being the story of Nick Carraway gives it an extra twist. We know where he's going to end up; just not how.  

The Great Gatsby is now out of copyright so there are bound to be an endless number of spin-offs. Get in early and read this one. 

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin

 Lenni is seventeen; Margot is eighty-three. They're an unlikely pair to become friends, but when they meet up at a hospital art class an instant bond forms between the two. 

Lenni knows she doesn't have long to live but with Margot around that doesn't seem to matter. Together they decide to paint a hundred pictures to mark their joint hundred years, to celebrate the lives they've lived rather than mourn the years they'll miss.

I think you'd expect that a story involving a teenager diagnosed with a terminal illness would be full of sadness. But Lenni herself isn't - she's full of life, enthusiasm and humour - and her story reflects that. Margot on the other hand seems to be someone who's always missed out on things in life, but with Lenni's encouragement she determines to make one last grab for happiness.

This is a lovely, life-affirming, heart-warming tale of an unusual friendship in unusual circumstances, and of two women finding out that it isn't the length of life that matters, but of making the most of the time we have.

Superior by Angela Saini

"Where did the idea of race come from, and what does it mean? In an age of identity politics, DNA ancestry testing and the rise of the far-right, a belief in biological differences between populations is experiencing a resurgence. The truth is: race is a social construct. Our problem is we find this hard to believe.

In Superior, award-winning author Angela Saini investigates the concept of race, from its origins to the present day. Engaging with geneticists, anthropologists, historians and social scientists from across the globe, Superior is a rigorous, much needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of the belief that race is real, and that some groups of people are superior to others."

Non-fiction books on politics and social issues don't usually form part of my reading, but I'd been watching David Olusoga on TV where he mentioned race science as part of the justification of slavery, then caught Angela Saini at the online version of  Edinburgh Book Festival talking in greater depth about the subject, and wanted to know more about how pseudo-scientific ideas take root and influence public opinion.  

In a vague way I knew before of the theory that people can be divided into different races, and that some are not as intelligent (or even as 'human') as others. It was used to give 'justification' for the slave trade, for robbing indigenous peoples of land and wealth, and returned in a different form in Nazi Germany. It's a ludicrous idea, and one that I believed was totally discredited today, not one still lurking around. Superior has definitely proved to be an eye-opening read.

Saini takes the reader through the development of race theory, how it affected Europeans interaction with indigenous population of  Africa, Australia and America, and how it continues today in the social and economic effects it has on black people. What surprised me most was its proliferation today. Modern genetic studies have surely proved once and for all that 'race' is a social or cultural concept, but people still want to believe they are in some way 'better' than others - than their neighbours, the folks in the next town, neighbouring country - and unfortunately there'll be someone on the internet or in specialist, right wing journals, ready to support their claims with alleged scientific evidence. 

Superior is definitely a book that deserves the adjective 'thought provoking'. I understand now where the prejudices of my parents' generation came from, and was left feeling that it's so very easy to feed those prejudices with dodgy scientific 'facts'.

Astral Travel by Elizabeth Baines

 Review by The Mole

 About a charismatic but troubled Irishman and his effect on his family, explores the way that the secrets forged by cultural, religious and sexual prejudice can reverberate down the generations. It’s also about telling stories, and the fact that the tales we tell about ourselves can profoundly affect the lives of others. In a framing narration that exposes the slippery and contingent nature of story, an adult daughter, brought up on romantic lore about her now dead father but having experienced him very differently, tells how she tried to write about him, only to come up against too many mysteries and clashing versions of the family’s past. Yet when a buried truth emerges, the mysteries can be solved, and, via storytelling’s power of empathy, she finally makes sense of it all.

An author decides to write the biography of her father, a man who seemingly never loved her and a man she spent most of her growing up years in conflict with. But to flesh it out she needs to reconnect more closely with her family. It's then that she finds that there was so much that she didn't know.

Be prepared to become involved in the story as it unfolds, piece by piece, in random order, like a jigsaw, only revealing the picture to the reader and narrator at the end of the telling. He is a man that sees the worst when there's nothing to see. He's prone to very violent fits of rage that he turns against his family. But he's a man protecting a secret - one that the writer doesn't know but her sister thought everyone in the family knew.

It's a very tumultuous journey for the reader but a journey worth staying on. 

The more I learned, as a reader, about the man then the less I liked him but I couldn't stop reading. It's very well written and there are pieces along the journey many of us can relate to, but don't expect a happy ever after. I was left sympathising with the narrator and her family but also understanding a little of why she had missed so many signs growing up while her sister hadn't.

I really loved this story, which I received an ARC PDF version of, but it's not for the faint hearted. Highly recommended.

There ought to be a "If you are affected by any of the issues in this book..." to accompany it - but if you are then PLEASE find someone to talk to about it.

Genre: Adult fiction

Publisher: Salt Publishing

The Shape of Darkness by Laura Purcell

Agnes Darken is a silhouette artist, with paper and scissors summoning up a person's likeness. In Bath's heyday it was a profitable occupation but now, like the city itself, it's fallen out of favour, and Agnes struggles to make enough income to support herself, her elderly mother, and orphaned nephew. Then, one of her clients is murdered shortly after posing for a portrait. Then another ... and another ...

Trying to make sense of these events, Agnes decides to contact those who've died through a medium - a young girl, Pearl, who's managed and manipulated by her older half-sister - but instead of clarifying anything, Agnes and Pearl manage to raise troubled spirits out for revenge. 

 Part ghost story, part whodunit, The Shape of Darkness is gripping and enthralling; a book I didn't want to put down.

I loved the depiction of Bath; shabby and down at heel, full of memories of better times when visitors flocked there to 'take the waters', but by the mid-1800s no longer popular with the leisured upper classes. Agnes' fortunes have mirrored those of the city. Her hopes of love and marriage were dashed, and now she's a lonely middle-aged women struggling to get by, and desperately trying to avoid her memories of the past. 

Through Pearl and her sister the reader enters the world of professional mediums and mesmerists. As you might expect, it's a world where things are not quite as they seem. Pearl may have some ability to contact the dead, but her sister knows that isn't enough to bring people back time and again, that a certain level of showmanship is required to make a living out of it. 

There's a dark, brooding atmosphere throughout, as is fitting for a ghostly thriller. It's a book in which nothing is quite what it seems, and in the best tradition, it has a twist (or more) waiting at the end for the reader. 

Maryom's review - 4 stars 
Publisher - Raven (Bloomsbury) 
Genre - Adult  gothic ghosts

The Survivors by Jane Harper

 Kieran Elliott is on a rare visit home to the small Tasmanian coastal town he grew up in, where he's still remembered as the person responsible for the deaths of his older brother and his brother's best mate in a freak storm twelve years previously. On the same night a young teenager went missing, presumed washed out to sea, and the town has struggled to forget the three fatalities. 

Now tragedy is ready to strike again. Another body is found on the beach, this time a student working on the island for the summer. There seems at first to be nothing to link this death with previous events, but the past has a way of returning to haunt the community.

Part whodunit, part a study in long-term grief, The Survivors looks at the impact on a small close-knit community of a night which robbed them of three young people. For the close families the loss will never go away, but in a hurry to smooth things over it seems the police may not have investigated quite as strenuously as they might.

Although I've rather 'gone off' crime recently, a Jane Harper novel is always something to look forward to. To me, there's always quite a feel of a Miss Marple mystery about them; the tight communities where everyone knows everything about their neighbour (or thinks they do), the buried secrets that nevertheless manage to persist, the limited number of suspects, the red herrings that confuse detection. There are no psychopaths or serial killers, just 'normal' people driven to murder for very human reasons - of love, anger, or fear. 

There's just no replacement for Jane Marple as each story takes the reader to a different part of Australia. and this time the backdrop feels almost familiar - an out-of-season coastal town, dependent on tourists for livelihood, but with a beautiful setting of beaches, dramatic cliffs, and dangerous caves.

Sugar and Snails - giveaway

 Next month (February 2021) is LGBT history month, and throughout that time author Anne Goodwin is making her first novel Sugar and Snails available free for subscribers to her website. The story is of a woman who has kept her past secret for thirty years following a momentous event which changed the course of her life, and in 2016 the book was short-listed for the Polari First Book prize. 

Click here to subscribe

Below is Maryom's review of Sugar and Snails from 2015

Diana is a forty-something, set-in-her-ways university lecturer; an intensely private person, she lives alone with only a cat for company, and even her closest friend who has known her since their university days isn't aware of the secrets hidden in Diana's past. For thirty years she hasn't told anyone about the momentous event which altered the course of her life completely but now, entering into a new relationship which offers the hope of lasting happiness, that past seems back to haunt her.

Sugar and Snails is a portrait of a woman in crisis; at first Diana's actions seem extreme but as I got to know her, and her back-story, I came to understand her reaction. There's a feeling throughout that Diana is as uncomfortable with who she is now in the present day as she was as a child. Her work as an academic psychologist leads her to suspect the decision she made as a teenager was wrong, to think that maybe, at fifteen, she was too impulsive and ill-informed, and that her actions haven't really led to a happier life. Now Diana has a chance of happiness, but to grab it she needs to step out of her comfort zone and face down her fears. Advised as a teenager to forget about the past, and 'put it behind her', that was exactly what she did but, never truly happy and always frightened that someone would find out, she's put much of her life on hold for 30 years; relationships, as such, have failed and, rather than risk change and scrutiny, she's stayed in one job settling for the familiar but unchallenging and dull.
So, what was the traumatic event 30 years ago? It's kept a secret for much of the book but I'd spotted an accidental reveal in the publishers media-pack. Now this isn't the ideal way to approach a story - it's always nice to have the big reveal sprung upon you the first time through, whether it's the plot twist in Bruce Willis' film The Sixth Sense or not knowing whether Elizabeth and Darcy will get together in the end. Knowing before hand loses some of the tension and build up, but both books and films have to stand up to a second read/viewing and I find myself in the curious place of having read Sugar and Snails once but being able to say that it's a re-readable story; that it doesn't just rely on that one surprise element. Through the flashbacks to Diana's increasingly troubled childhood and adolescence, I could stand back a little and appreciate how the author had cleverly built up hints at what is to come without actually giving anything away, while still being immersed in the unfolding of Diana's life.

This is the story of one specific person and her problem, but it raises a lot of wider issues from gender identity and stereotyping, and the way society forces us to conform, to how impetuous decisions made when young can affect our whole lives. Although she's written many short stories, this is Anne Goodwin's debut novel - I hope to read many more by her.