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Cornish Coastal Reading Escape Need to take some peaceful time out?

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Want to plan a spring or summer holiday or weekend break?

Your publisher approves of four suggestions to improve books and avoids the pitfalls of being the only man in a reading group (nearly).

Books piling up with no time to read them?

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Mark Franklin’s letter in the Times in late October caught my eye. He was picking up a thread about male readers not willingly reading female authors – not a new debate and not one I’m going to risk pursuing now.

Rather, I was particularly taken by his suggestions for all writers to increase their male readership: “First, avoid prologues; second avoid lengthy descriptions of scenery, weather, clothes and physical appearance; third, do not include dream sequences; fourth when the book is finished, cut it by 20 per cent.”

You may not agree with all four propositions but I’d be amazed if there isn’t one where you’d go, ‘um, well he has a point there’. I can envisage an interesting group discussion about a pecking order that would meet with said group’s approval and plan to try it in two days time with one of the groups to which I belong. If I don’t get drummed out of Winchester then I may even risk it with the other group!

We’ll be discussing The

Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, originally published in 1986. I had planned to keep my counsel until all others had ventured theirs but two of our number who are unable to attend have kindly shared their opinions in advance and they very much chime with mine: how did he get away with it?

Although Songlines is my first book by Chatwin it is very much what I expected.

Privileged young man able to spend his time in foreign parts and cover his costs with the account which he subsequently publishes from his moleskine notebooks. That’s slightly cynical but half way through there are suddenly pages and pages and pages of quotes and thoughts from notebooks of other trips. The implication is that, holed up in the outback with three weeks to fill, he neatly slices and dices his previous work. Has he really taken filled journals on a trip that strongly suggests the need to travel light? And as Jean says, ‘If he had been writing the book now I’m not sure the editors

would have let him do it.’

So, thanks to Jean and Sarah, I have avoided playing the stereotype of ‘the male member’ and the gentle derision that is my – accepted - lot. Except I can’t help wanting to ask another troublesome question.

Chatwin recycles Pascal’s assertion that all man’s miseries stemmed from ‘our inability to remain quietly in a room’. Now, is this is a particularity of the male of the species or does it apply to the female as well?

Should be an interesting meeting.

NUDGE AND NB PUBLISHER

P.S. Dream sequences are my personal bugbear.

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CONTENTS

newbooks FROM US TO YOU 3 GUY PRINGLE

THE VIEW FROM HERE Your publisher on four suggestions to improve books.

Publisher, nudge and newbooks ALASTAIR GILES

Managing Director, AMS Digital Publishing BERT WRIGHT

Nudge List Editor MELANIE MITCHELL

Publisher Relationship Manager DANIELLE BOWERS

Production Manager CATHERINE TURNER

Project Production Manager JADE CRADDOCK

Contributor To find out what the team is currently reading, turn to page 6.

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All raw materials used in the production of this magazine are harvested from sustainable managed forests.

Every effort has been made to trace ownership of copyright material, but in a few cases this has proved impossible.

Should any question arise about the use of any material, do please let us know.

6

WHAT WE'RE READING Catch up with our current faves.

8

IF IN DOUBT MAKE A LIST a selection of Bert Wright’s wisdom to be found in our app.

- Irish Book Awards winners worth adding to your ‘to be read’ list.

- e rise & rise of Jojo Moyes continues - a film of Me Before You and a sequel, Aer You. - Ian Rankin brings back Rebus in Even Dogs in the Wild.

- Does Philip Kerr’s False Nine echo Arsenal’s fortunes?

- Orson Welles volume 3 – Simon Callow has written 1,664 pages so far!

- David Mitchell’s Slade House welcomes ‘guests’.

15 SCRIPT Alastair Giles explores the chequered link between books and film.

32 REVIEW OF THE YEAR A look back at 2015s highs and lows.

35 nb AND NUDGE BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 Introducing your guides...

- BookHugger - Quality literature?

Phil Ramage knows what’s out there.

- BookDiva - Sheila A Grant browses for her next read.

- BookNoir - Mike Stafford says crime fiction has all the answers.

- BookChap – Welcome Reg Seward - who better to do the guided tour?

- BookGeek - Jade Craddock sees beyond geekiness to a cornucopia.

- BookLife - Paul Cheney suggests some prizes worth keeping tabs on.

- nb Reading Group Book of the Year – Read ‘em? Or to be read? th

44 OUR 4 ANNUAL nb READER’S DAY – Didn’t we have a luvverly time . . . st

73 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21 CENTURY Our collection gathers pace with 3 more titles.

77 AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BOOKS From the Baltic to the Caspian we go.

81 DIRECTORY Our reviewers insights on recent publishing including the Costa shortlist.

63-65 GOODIES AND FREE BOOKS – WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE?

Features 23 DEBUTS is year’s crop of ‘bright young things’: - e Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie - e novel as a symphony.

big interviews RECOMMENDED Bill Bryson READS 18

– on our foibles and fascinations

47 THE TROUBLE WITH GOATS AND SHEEP

by Joanna Cannon

- In A Land of Paper Gods by Rebecca Mackenzie - an extract to tempt you.

- e Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt by Tracy Farr - her Editor’s perspective.

51 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SOPHIE STARK

by Anna North

- e Maker of Swans by Paraic O’Donnell – gets W&N’s Deputy Publishing Director’s vote.

- For the Most Beautiful by Emily Hauser - e Iliad – om the women’s point of view.

34 THE BOROUGH PRESS – new kid on the block.

66 BOOKSHOPS WE LIKE – If you’re Travelling rough Waterloo . . .

55 A REUNION OF GHOSTS

by Judith Claire Mitchell 29

Jason Starr

– meets your reviewer Beth Moffat

68 IN CONVERSATION – Claire Fuller and Catriona Ward hit it off at our readers day and carried on ‘talking’.

70 MY FIVE FAVES Priya Parmar looks to some 20th century classics for inspiration.

59 THE QUEEN’S CHOICE

by Anne O’Brien

All free, all we ask is you cover our p&p costs

72 I’M A WRITER...

Get me out of here! Marianne Kavanagh is our first.

CONTENTS

ISSUE 87 WINTER 2015

WHAT WE’RE READING

We are endeavouring to put more – and longer versions – of what we’re reading onto nudge-book.com Just click on the magnifying glass, top right and search with WHAT WE ARE READING and ONE TO WATCH OUT FOR.

WHAT WE’RE READING

in real life as affably as he does in his books and, yet, I was extra careful with my emails whilst reading his acerbic comments on grammar in the book. We’re all oddly obsessed by how foreigners view us. He does so affectionately, but, he certainly skewers our national psyche better than anyone. His writing style is somewhere north of sentimental and, yet, he stays just south of grumpy old man.

I can think of no one I’d rather spend an evening chatting to in a pub and that’s exactly how it feels reading this book.

feel a lot less guilty of prurience because Bate, an astute critic and academic, balances the life and the work here with real delicacy. Hughes was a handful, no question, but then so was Plath and rather than dwell exclusively on the tangled web they wove, Bate brilliantly plots the literary co-ordinates by which they steered their extraordinary lives. Poets like Hughes are an endangered species these days. He saw himself as a quasi-mystical conduit for archetypal patterns and God knows what he would have made of this digital age.

What we are reading ALASTAIR GILES

BERT WRIGHT

The Road to Little Dribbling

by Bill Bryson, Doubleday

Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life by Jonathan Bate, HarperCollins

The Road to little Dribbling marks Bill Bryson’s return to travel writing after 15 years and it’s over 20 since he penned the bestselling prequel to this new work. One chapter in, you can immediately see why he’s such a popular writer. I was corresponding with him as I was reading this and it was hard to sometimes disentangle the two characters. He comes across 6

While many are heartily sick of the soap-operatic aspects of the Ted & Sylvia story, I freely confess to an enduring fascination with the tragic collision of these two literary giants. Pleasingly, Jonathan Bate’s marvellous new biography, Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life, helped me

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Ted Hughes is not a figure to inspire empathy but the power of his poetry and persona is literally awe-inspiring.

MELANIE MITCHELL The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon, The Borough Press

Debut author Joanna Cannon has managed to write one of my favourite books of 2016 with The Trouble with Goats and Sheep and, at the time of writing, it’s still only 2015. It

won’t just be me – this is set to pull on the heartstrings in the way that Harold Fry did but with even more emotional insight, not to mention the irrepressible humour of the two child stars of the story, Grace and Tilly. Set on a housing estate somewhere in Birmingham in the 1970s it’s about prejudice and repercussions, the secrets people hold on to and the lies they tell themselves - and each other. It’s incredibly well written – a subtle beginning gradually builds to an end that packs a serious emotional punch. By the time you’ve finished you’ll have – almost – forgotten about the missing Margaret Creasy that the girls had determined to find. I loved it.

DANIELLE BOWERS The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, Sceptre

This book is mad but lots of fun to read. Separated into six parts, the first and last are narrated by Holly herself – one as a teenage runaway and the last as an elderly lady. The four chapters between are from different characters who all cross paths with Holly at different stages in her life. My favourite was Crispin Hershey a writer whose career is in freefall – he meets Holly at a literary festival.

Crazy things happen in the background throughout the novel but in section five, fantasy comes to the forefront with a battle between two immortal tribes. I have no idea how this book works with realistic narratives and then fantasy sections but it does somehow.

It is energetic, adsorbing, witty and not like anything else I have read.

Helen, a teacher married to Jamie, a person under investigation for reasons unknown. Stephen is falling slowly and inexorably in love with Helen - truly unrequited as she knows nothing of his existence. Matters progress, albeit clandestinely as The Institute extends its 'security' to its staff as well as the many and varied subjects under surveillance. This isn't the GUY career that Stephen expected PRINGLE but the strong impression builds The Long Room that if he opted to leave then he

by Francesca would become a surveillance Kay, Faber target himself.

This may not look like a book This is a new author to me cover that says, 'Pick me up' but although she has been steadily for me it is truly ingenious. It building a reputation since her perfectly reflected the feelings debut - An Equal Stillness the story engendered in me. which won the Orange Award Dark on the edges but with a for New Writers 2009 and was a blurred light being shone where Recommended Read in nb53 it was least comfortable. back in Sept 09 (I was swamped Nothing is clear, are these with other reading at the time!). moths, butterflies, flower The Translation of the Bones petals? This is le Carré's Smiley duly followed in 2012 and was with a dash of Len Deighton. long listed for the Orange Prize That the writing made such an that year. Now, after moving impression on me is obvious from W&N to Faber, The Long and I remain slightly unsettled.

Room looks set to lift her even I'm writing this on the day the higher. government is to vote on It's December 1981 and whether to bomb Syria and can't London is under threat. In the help thinking, if one tenth of Long Room - think GCHQ 34 what is described in The Long years ago - Stephen Donaldson Room is based on fact - and is a 'listener'. Technically a spy - there seems no reason to believe but nowhere near James Bond otherwise - then how much level - his is a lonely life with more are our security services little to look forward to and it 'hearing' now? comes as something of a shock to learn he is only 28. Assigned You will find full reviews of these titles and more that the team have read on to listen to a 'disloyal' member nudge under WHAT WE ARE READING. of staff takes him away from

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THE NUDGE LIST - BOOKHUGGER

If in doubt make a list...

And that’s exactly what nudge List Editor, Bert Wright does each month for your delight and edification.

Since the List is an app for an iPhone or iPad we thought – for those of you who have one - it would be worth bringing to your attention. And for those who don’t . . . we present the very best book information of the last 3 months that you might have missed.

The nudge list app for iPad and iPhone can be downloaded free of charge from the App Store.

Publishing aquires an emerald hue

C

elebrating its tenth anniversary this year, the The Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards [BGEIBA] claim to bring together the entire book community - no idle boast as writers, giddy on the excitement of being nominated, rubbed shoulders with fellow nominees, booksellers, publishers and media celebs.

TV types thrust microphones under the noses of mostly willing victims while snappers snapped, snarling inwardly at the competition mounted by the ubiquitous selfie machine.

Most impressive is the manner in which the awards provide a showcase for Irish books in the critical two month period at the end of each year.

Amusingly, the Newcomer of the Year category which includes some really strong titles - including Sara Baume’s Spill Simmer Falter Wither – has been christened “The Group of Death” so tough is the competition. On the plus side, Irish writers are being signed for major deals by the large UK houses, which is tough on the indie Irish houses which broke these writers in the first place.

Perhaps the most talked-about book of the year in Ireland is Louise O’Neill’s Asking For It, a challenging and deftly-rendered story on the nature of consent, slut-shaming and the role of

social media. Originally billed as a YA title by publishers Quercus and nominated in the YA category, the book is felt by some to be straining the boundaries of the genre but O’Neill is gathering an impressive band of supporters including Jeanette Winterson who commented “O’Neill writes with a scalpel.”

There are so many great books on the shortlist it seems invidious to mention so few but in the Novel of the Year category special mention must go to one of my personal favourites, Nuala O’Connor’s Miss Emily, based on the life of the poet Emily Dickinson and the relationship with her Irish maid. There are many reasons to cheer this book on, not least because of the compelling subject-matter but also for the shimmering frictionless prose.

O’Connor is up against two icons of Irish literature in Edna O’Brien and Anne Enright giving the novel category a seriously competitive edge.

Finally, much has been written lately of a misogynist imbalance in the publishing world with the VIDA count highlighting its worst excesses [VIDA’s mission is to increase critical attention to contemporary women’s writing – see www.vidaweb.org]. VIDA might care to take a look at the BGEIBA shortlists where in

Novel of the Year the balance is two-thirds to one third, women to men. The Newcomer category is 100% women but counterbalancing that the nonfiction category is 100% men.

Overall, the BGEIBA shortlists reinforce a sense of healthy respect for Irish women writers across the genres, better perhaps than in the UK.

Bert Wright, Editor The Nudge List

The 2015 Winners

Novel of the Year The Green Road by Anne Enright Popular Fiction Book of the Year The Way We Were

by Sinéad Moriarty Listener’s Choice Award Irelandopedia by Fatti & John Burke Crime Fiction Book of the Year After The Fire by Jane Casey Newcomer of the Year Spill Simmer Falter Wither

by Sara Baume Best Irish-Published Book of the Year The Long Gaze by Sinéad Gleeson Cookbook of the Year The Virtuous Tart

by Susan Jane White Non-Fiction Book of the Year Children of the Rising by Joe Duffy Sports Book of the Year Until Victory by Jim McGuinness Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year Me and My Mate Jeffrey

by Niall Breslin Short Story of the Year A Slanting of the Sun by Donal Ryan Check out the current Nudge List Download FREE for iPad and iPhone from the App Store.

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THE NUDGE LIST - BOOKDIVA

THE NUDGE LIST - BOOKNOIR

Even Dogs in the Wild

by Ian Rankin

The Rise & Rise of Jojo Moyes

I

n the popular fiction stakes, Jojo Moyes is beginning to pull away. Careers wax and wane but this Jojo need never fear being a loner. Since 2002, when her first novel Sheltering Rain was published, Jojo has written eleven more novels winning her millions of fans. Her best known, Me Before You, has now sold over 5 million copies worldwide, and is currently being adapted for the big screen with a major feature film due for release in 2016. British director Thea Sharrock is attached to the project with an all-star cast featuring The Hunger Games’ Sam Clafin as Will and Game Of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke as Lou. Expectations are understandably high for this sequel. Jojo Moyes said “I hadn’t planned to write a sequel to Me Before You. But working on the movie script, and reading the sheer volume of tweets and 10

emails every day asking what Lou did with her life, meant that the characters never left me. It has been such a pleasure revisiting Lou and her family, and the Traynors, and confronting them with a whole new set of issues. As ever, they have made me laugh, and cry. I hope readers feel the same way at meeting them again.”

Lou is struggling, and she knows something has to change.

When an accident forces her to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started. But slowly she begins to find a new way of living.

After You is quintessential Jojo Moyes, and a return to beloved characters to see what happens next. There are rumours of a possible follow-up to create a trilogy and I for one can’t wait to read What Lou Did Next!

Bert Wright, Editor The Nudge List

More Diva Nudge List titles

The Japanese Lover

by Isabel Allende

The Lake House

by Kate Morton

Fishbowl

by Bradley Somer

Jojo Moyes (c) Stine Heilmann

The sequel addresses the question of how you move on after losing the person you loved. How do you build a life worth living? For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings.

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The Truth According to Us

by Annie Barrows

The Dust That Falls From Dreams

by Louis de Bernieres

Check out the current Nudge List - Download FREE for iPad and iPhone from the App Store.

Man’s Grave and now Even Dogs in the Wild brings back Ian Rankin's greatest characters in a new and gripping novel.

Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke is investigating the death of a senior lawyer during a robbery. But the case becomes more complex when a note is any years ago, in the discovered, indicating that this University of may have been no random Edinburgh English attack, and when local gangster Department library, I Big Ger Cafferty receives an used to occupy a carrel close to identical message, Clarke an intense-looking grad student decides that the recently retired who I later discovered was John Rebus may be able to help. working on his Muriel Spark He's the only man Cafferty will thesis. Soon after graduation I open up to, and together the saw he’d published a novel, not two old adversaries might just terribly successfully. It was then stand a chance of saving that Ian Rankin made the Cafferty's skin. smartest decision of his life by But a notorious family has abandoning literary fiction and arrived in Edinburgh, too, concentrating his considerable tailed by a team of undercover talent on crime fiction. detectives. There's something The first Rebus novel Knots and they want, and they'll stop at Crosses, was published in March nothing to get it. DI Malcolm 1987 and the rest is history.

Fox's job is to provide the The intervening years have seen undercover squad with local a further nineteen Rebus novels expertise, but he's soon drawn which have catapulted their in too deep as the two cases creator into the upper echelons look like colliding. And of international bestsellerdom. meantime, an anonymous killer After retiring him in Exit stalks the night time streets, Music, 2012 saw the return of focussed on revenge. It's a game Rebus in the number one of dog eat dog - in the city as in bestseller Standing in Another the wild.

M

So the guy from the English Library went on to become the UK's number one best-selling crime writer, was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Birthday Honours List in 2002 and was recently made a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Don’t ask what happened to the guy in the neighbouring carrel!

Bert Wright, Editor The Nudge List

Check out the current Nudge List - Download FREE for iPad and iPhone from the App Store.

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THE NUDGE LIST - BOOKCHAP

THE NUDGE LIST - BOOKLIFE

Orson Welles: One-Man Band

by Simon Callow

readers to expect wonderful flowing prose without much punch in the final third but the results are surprisingly good and probably better than Arsenal’s.

By a delicious irony, Hand of God features a London City team getting set to play ports novels do not have a Olympiacos in the Champion's particularly good track League. Greece is rioting and record, if you’ll forgive the manager Scott Manson is pun. From the early 1960s keeping his team on a tight until his death, former National leash. There must be no Hunt champion jockey Dick drinking, no nightlife and no Francis wrote more than forty women. Even with these thrillers based on his first-hand constraints it’s hard to envisage experience of the turf. Another the real Arsenal making it out jockey, Johnny Francome, got in of their qualifying group this on the act some time later. year; unless Arsène Wenger can Leading sports journalist Brian conjure a death on the pitch as Glanville wrote plays, novels Kerr does. and screenplays about football The latest Scott Manson thriller but by and large the UK has not set in the star-studded world of produced sports novels as good international football is False as their American counterparts Nine. Arsenal fans will search in Richard Ford, Frederick Exley vain for a walk-on role for Theo and Chuck Walsh.

Walcott but the novel does In the UK, another literary feature a player who “goes novelist, voted one of Granta’s missing,” perhaps a reference to 20 Best Young British Novelists Per Mertesacker. This time in 1993, has recently taken to around, manager Scott Manson writing soccer novels with feels he has to leave England. clued-in titles like False Nine His career with London City is and Hand Of God. Philip Kerr over, and it cuts deep to watch is, according to his publisher, “a them play on without him. A lifelong Arsenal supporter” new position in Shanghai turns which qualification might lead out to be part of an elaborate

S

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Philip Kerr (c) Joanna Betts

False Nine by Philip Kerr

sting operation. And in Barcelona, he's hired not as a football manager, but as a detective. Barca's star player is missing. Scott has a month to track him down. As he follows the trail from Paris to Antigua, he encounters corrupt men, wicked women, and the rotten core of the beautiful game.

All good rollicking topical stuff and Kerr is clearly a talented writer with his finger on the pulse.

Is he an Arsenal fan of the AKB [Arsène Knows Best] persuasion or in the departure of Scott Manson can we read a subtle hint to Arsène Wenger to get on his vélo? Read this entertaining novel and find out.

Bert Wright, Editor The Nudge List Check out the current Nudge List - Download FREE for iPad and iPhone from the App Store.

H

ow many working actors would be able to find the time to embark upon the writing of a massive 3volume biography of one of their heroes? Not many, but this is precisely what the indefatigable Simon Callow has been doing for the last five years.

One-Man Band is the third volume in his epic survey of Orson Welles’ life and work that began with The Road to Xanadu followed by Hello Americans. Callow again probes in comprehensive and penetrating detail the life of one of the most complex artists of the twentieth century, looking closely at the triumphs and failures of an ambitious oneman assault on one medium after another – theatre, radio, film, television – even, at one point, ballet – in each of which his radical and original approach opened up new

directions and hitherto unglimpsed possibilities.

The book begins with Welles’ self-exile from America, and his realisation that he could only function happily as an independent film-maker, a oneman band; by 1964, he had filmed Othello, which took three years to complete, Mr Arkadin, the biggest conundrum in his output, and

made inroads into the fledgling medium of television and a number of stage plays, including Moby Dick, considered by theatre historians to be one of the seminal productions of the century. His private life was as dramatic as his professional life.

The book shows what it was like to be around Welles, and, with a precision rarely attempted before, what it was like to be him, in which lies the answer to the old riddle: whatever happened to Orson Welles? Few have been able to answer that question as thoroughly as Simon Callow.

As one reviewer remarked, “Callow is not just that rare phenomenon, an actor who can write. He is a superb biographer.” He is too.

Bert Wright, Editor The Nudge List

his masterpiece Chimes at Midnight, as well as Touch of Evil, his sole return to Hollywood, like all too many of his films wrested from his grasp and re-edited. Along the way he

Check out the current Nudge List - Download FREE for iPad and iPhone from the App Store.

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Slade House by David Mitchell

B

orn out of the short story David Mitchell published on Twitter in 2014 and inhabiting the same universe as his latest bestselling novel The Bone Clocks, this is the perfect book to curl up with on a dark and stormy night.

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. A stranger greets you by name and invites you inside. At first, you won't want to leave. Later, you'll find that you can't.

This unnerving, taut and intricately woven tale by one of our most original and bewitching writers begins in 14

David Mitchell (c) Paul Stuart

1979 and reaches its turbulent conclusion around Halloween, 2015. Because every nine years, on the last Saturday of October, a 'guest' is summoned to Slade House. But why has that person been chosen, by whom and for what purpose? The answers lie waiting in the long attic, at the top of the stairs...

Is there anything David Mitchell cannot turn his hand to? This spooky and compelling short novel illustrates Mitchell's consummate mastery of diverse literary forms.

David Mitchell is the author of the novels Ghostwritten, number9dream, Cloud Atlas,

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Black Swan Green, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and The Bone Clocks. He has won the John Llewellyn Rhys, Geoffrey Faber Memorial and South Bank Show Literature Prizes, and been shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize. In 2003, David Mitchell was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.

Bert Wright, Editor The Nudge List Check out the current Nudge List - Download FREE for iPad and iPhone from the App Store.

Which is better – the film or the book?

A round up of recent and forthcoming book to film releases.

S

cript is the first of what we hope will become a regular feature in nb based on the unique relationship between book and film. There seems a constant argument in the media over which form is better and, yet, the fact that film-makers have been ever more regularly plundering novels proves one thing at least; there’s a ready market out there for films based on readers’ favourite books.

I don’t want to completely eschew blockbuster films, but, frankly, they get enough promotion. Our aim is to seek out and analyse the relatively small budget films lovingly adapted from great books which, perhaps, still need help to reach a bigger audience.

In essence every good film starts with a good script and the best scripts started life as a book manuscript. However, some of the very best books have been badly bungled in the adaptation and many have spent years in ‘development hell’.

It’s fascinating to see how the oxygen of publicity attracted by a film adaptation gives a book new life, reaching a new and, often, younger audience. Take Carol, director Todd Haynes riveting slow burn romance between two women in ‘50s New York. Written by Patricia

The film features superb performances from Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara and after attracting rave reviews, has unearthed a wave of new fans for the novel.

Just released as I write is the beautiful - but slow moving film of Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn which is picking up very strong reviews. Irish starlet Saoirse Ronan, who seems to have Cate Blanchett in Carol (c) Studio Canal

Highsmith and originally entitled The Price of Salt she published under the pseudonym Clare Morgan.

Apparently loosely based on a relationship Highsmith had with a Philadelphia socialite it was only published under the author’s real name and new title in 1990.

Saoirse Ronan and Domhnall Gleeson in Brooklyn (c) Twentieth Century Fox Searchlight / Lionsgate UK

Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara and Kyle Chandler in Carol (c) Studio Canal

grown up on screen over the last few years, is astonishing in this lovely tale of an Irish immigrant torn in love between beaus in New York and Ireland in the ‘50s.

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However, American Sniper and Gone Girl were the two big winners in adaptation terms during 2015 with both film tieins in the top 20 bestsellers for the year. The former, to my mind was, an average and morally dubious Clint Eastwood-directed film of the American military marksman, Chris Kyle, and his inability to adapt to civilian life. The book has yet to be published in the UK and yet the import paperback sold over 200,000 copies. The latter thriller from Gillian Flynn had already sold over a million copies in Britain over the last 3 years and yet the competent film from David Fincher still struck a chord with cinema audiences and book buyers.

Also in 2015, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall benefited from a dark and atmospheric makeover on BBC while Sky’s ongoing Game of Thrones franchise continued to bring George RR Martin’s six tomes to a mass new younger audience.

Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall (c) BBC/Company Productions Limited

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject of TV and film adapations: what worked - and what hasn’t. Or even to have your review of one you’ve seen recently.

Bradley Cooper in American Sniper (c) Warner Bros. UK

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In The Heart of the Sea (c) Warner Bros. UK

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On their way shortly In the meantime, here’s an insight into projects currently in production – do let us know what you think of them when they arrive.

After a long delay, Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea was a Boxing Day release.

You never know if that delay (it was originally slated for March 2015) is a good or bad thing, but - experience would suggest more often than not, it’s the latter. Starring Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy and Ben Whishaw, it’s a true tale of an 1820s Nantucket whaling ship’s encounter with an enormous sperm whale. The book was published in 2000 and it’s claimed the story at its heart was the inspiration for Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

Room by Emma Donoghue will be familiar to many of our readers as nb’s Reading Group Book of the Year 2011 (and it was also shortlisted by a certain

Richard & Judy). The very tough subject matter of forced captivity as seen through the eyes of a small boy is set almost entirely in a small room, so it will be fascinating to see how it’s been adapted when the film is released on 15th January.

There are no big name stars involved, but much depends on the acting of young Jacob Tremblay who plays the main protagonist.

Again inspired by true events The Revenant (c) Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation in the 1820s, Revenant tells the story of an explorer left for dead in the American wilderness put a foot wrong, so lots to look Ballard’s black (and once after being attacked by a bear. forward to here. deemed ‘unfilmable’) novel At first glance, Nicholas from 1975. Finally released on Sparks is an American romance 18th March, it stars Tom novelist whose most notable Hiddleston and Jeremy Irons book is The Notebook. However, and revolves around the look more closely: he’s a inhabitants of a tower block Hollywood writing machine slipping into a violent reverse of whose books are adapted primal urges. I did say ‘black’. almost as quickly as they are written. The Choice is his latest and the eleventh to be adapted.

It’s released here on 4th March, starring Tom Welling (Clark Kent from TV’s Smallville a few years back), and is filmed on North Carolina’s beautiful Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay in Room coastline. Having said that, I (c) Studio Canal doubt it will set the world on Released on 15th January, this fire at the box office. Plus it may adaptation from a David be destined to be overshadowed Tom Hiddleston as Dr. Robert Laing in Ebershoff book, not widely by the near simultaneous release High-Rise (c) Stuodio Canal released in the UK, is the latest of the new Batman film. vehicle for Leonardo Di Caprio Instead, it could be Which film added to your enjoyand Englishman, Tom Hardy. worthwhile discovering an art ment of reading the original?

It’s directed by Alejandro house cinema showing HighOr horribly mangled your Gonzalez Inarritu, whose last Rise, the latest film from new literary memories? film Gravity won the best film British director Ben Wheatley.

Send your thoughts to at the Oscars and doesn’t often This is based on the late JG info@newbooksmag.com.

nb magazine & www.nudge-book.com

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THE BIG INTERVIEW

Bill Bryson Bill Bryson was recently awarded the 'International Recognition Award' at the Irish Book Awards and, thanks to them, nudge List Editor, Bert Wright was able to put some searching questions to one of Britain’s favourite American authors.

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Bert Wright: The Road to Little Dribbling is subtitled More Notes from A Small Island so it’s in some sense a sequel or an update on the state of the nation? How has Britain changed in the interim? Are you still in love with the place or perhaps not so much these days?

have infinitely more in the way of personal possessions. So, yes, life for almost everyone is much improved.

Bill Bryson: I wouldn’t still be here if I wasn’t in love with it.

Like any country, Britain has its frustrations, but, as I conclude at the end of my book, it still has a lot of features that make it superior to many other places — a basic decency, excellent sense of humour, good quality of life, a kind of fundamental sanity. (These are, I might note, characteristics it has in common with Ireland.)

By and large, I think life has got vastly better in Britain in the forty years that I have known the place. The food is infinitely better. The National Health Service, which was quite dowdy when I came, is now sparkly and modern almost everywhere. People are better travelled and more worldly and

BB: Well, this returns to my previous answer, but travel and seeing how other people live is a huge change. When I first came to Britain, I met hardly anyone who had ever been to America or even knew much about it. Most people had barely even been to Europe.

My wife, for instance, had only been out of Britain once, on a school trip to Switzerland when she was thirteen or fourteen.

That was not at all unusual.

Now it is rare to meet someone who hasn’t been to America or Australia, or who hasn’t just come back from a trip to Thailand or Vietnam or India. All that travel means that people are much more exposed to other ways of living and are able to see in what ways Britain is

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BW: What particular new developments do you most like and dislike in contemporary Britain? Has Britain made “progress”?

THE BIG INTERVIEW

better or worse than other places. It has given them a perspective that they didn’t have before.

BW: I lived in the US for ten years and there is this reciprocal amusement: Americans think we’re strange but cute and quirky, we think Yanks are pushy, full-on and missing an irony gland. What would be the perfect blend of qualities?

BB: The thing always to remember about America is that it is huge and varied, and so it is dangerous to generalize too freely (though I have to say I am probably more guilty of that than most people). Take the point about Americans not appreciating irony. There’s actually a lot of truth in that — but also a vast amount of exception. If, let’s say, just 25 percent of Americans “get” irony, that’s still more than seventy million people, which means that there are more Americans who get irony than there are Britons and Irish combined.

As for where you find the perfect blend of national characteristics, I would say Australia. Australians have the friendliness and outgoing

THE BIG INTERVIEW

qualities of Americans, but with a culture and sensibilities (and sense of humour) that are clearly built from a British template. For me, as an American who has lived a long time in Britain, Australia has always seemed a very attractive fusion of the two national temperaments.

BW: You said somewhere that “wherever you are in the country, when you turn on the news, we’re all watching Fiona Bruce, or Huw Edwards, or whatever.

Lots of shared experiences. In a country the size of the US or Australia you cannot have that.”

But then you have the move towards independence in Scotland and the North/South divide. Do Brits really share a common set of experiences?

BB: Absolutely, in my view.

The British are masters at focussing on tiny differences between each other — in terms of accent, education, income, geographical affiliations, you name it. I remember when we lived in a place called Malhamdale in the Yorkshire dales being astounded to find that people could tell whether you came

“Black bears rarely attack.

But here's is the absolutely salient point - once would be enough.”

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“ It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect.” from the top of the dale or bottom of the dale — a distance of five miles — just by how you spoke. Being able to detect those tiny distinctions is really important to the British. It means that the British tend to inflate, in their own minds, their social and regional differences. But to someone from another country, like me, those differences are really very slight.

BW: The thing that most endears you to readers, most would say, is your gentle wry tone which makes the telling point without lacerating. Recently you have said “In countless small ways the world around us grows gradually shittier… I don’t like it at all.” Do you see yourself getting grumpier as the years go by?

BB: Of course. It’s inevitable.

You wait till you get old. You’ll bitch a lot, too. The thing I particularly struggle with in contemporary Britain is the

pettiness of the Government’s austerity programmes — the drastic cutting of local library hours, the belief that we can no longer afford to maintain municipal flowerbeds and that sort of thing. As I note in The Road to Little Dribbling, if people in the Middle Ages could find the resources to create magnificent edifices like Durham Cathedral, surely it shouldn’t be beyond us to find the funds for a few flowerbeds or to keep a playground open.

“ Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.”

BW: You have great sport with the madness of the British giving directions on how to get from here to somewhere else.

Here in Ireland we’ve only just introduced postcodes for the first time and the laugh is they are not compulsory! What’s your favourite recent example of weird direction-giving?

BB One of the changes in my lifetime that most fascinates me is that we don’t have to make our brains work very hard because we have electronic devices that will do a great deal of our thinking for us. An example I give in the book was of an

American couple on holiday in a hire car in Britain who wanted to go to a place called Caldey Island, two miles off the Welsh coast near Tenby. They set the sat-nav in their car and it directed them to drive down a boat ramp, proceed across the beach and drive into the sea — and they actually followed those instructions. Fortunately for them, the car got bogged down in sand before it got to the water, but you have to wonder what was going through their heads as this was happening. The answer, I suppose, is: nothing at all.

BW: Little Dribbling is your first travel book in 15 years.

What prompted the decision to turn from travel writing to memoir, popular history and science back then? And what prompted you to return to it now?

BB: I never set out to be a travel writer. I am actually a pretty incompetent traveller and certainly not a very bold one.

My first proper book was The Lost Continent, in which I travelled around my native America having living away from it for several years. I didn’t particularly see it as a travel book, but more as a memoir or sociological investigation, but it was categorized as a travel book and the next thing I knew I was more or less pigeon-holed into travel writing as a way of making my living. So, although I

enjoyed travel writing, I never saw it as the way I wanted to pass my whole professional life.

After a while I began to feel as if I could do with a change and so I started doing other kinds of books — a book on science, a couple of social histories, a biography of William Shakespeare, and so on. I enjoyed all that, but I also missed making jokes, and when my publisher and good friend Larry Finlay pointed out that it was exactly twenty years since I had written Notes from a Small Island, and fifteen since I had written any kind of a travel book, I thought I would give it one more go. The result was The Road to Little Dribbling.

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson is published by Black Swan in pbk and is available now.

Bill Bryson was born in the American Mid-West, and is now living back in the UK. A former Chancellor of Durham University, he was President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England for five years, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society.

In a national poll Notes from a Small Island was voted the book that best represents Britain. He has written more than 20 books and his website is www.billbrysonbooks.com

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THE BIG INTERVIEW

BW: Where are you most at home? Do you see yourself as deracinated in some sense or are you a fully-fledged Englishman after all those years?

Far more bookshops offered readings back then, usually by clearing a space at the back of the shop and putting out a few chairs. At the beginning you would read to an audience of BB: I do have British citizenperhaps three or four people. ship now — I finally took the Then with your next book you test and did all the paperwork a might come back and find that year or so ago — but I will the audience had grown to never really be British except in eight. And then it would grow a technical sense. I am an Amer- again with each subsequent ican at root, and expect always book. Now it is much harder to to be so. But Britain is my build up a following in those home. I have now lived more small increments. If you are not than half my life there, and I able to fill a pretty good sized don’t have any expectation or marquee at a literary festival, desire to leave it. there are far fewer opportunities for you. That’s a great BW: The span of your writing shame for new authors, but also career has seen massive changes a great shame for audiences. I in the publishing industry. The don’t know where the new diswhole digital revolution thing, coveries will come from. the hegemony of Amazon, the To answer the second part of sweeping away of the “Gateyour question, I was given a digkeepers”, self-publishing of ital reader as a gift a couple of e-books and fan-fiction - are years ago, and I do use it more these developments you welthan I expected to. I generally come? Do you use a kindle for prefer a real book, but the digiinstance? tal reader is great when I wake up in the middle of the night BB: Publishing has changed im- and want to read without dismensely. I feel very lucky to turbing my wife or when I am have come along when I did. in a hotel room with paltry bedPublishing when I started was side lighting. expanding at a rapid rate. Book sales were thriving and there BW: To what extent were you were lots of new magazines, so involved in the new film A there was plenty of work for Walk in the Woods? Did you freelance feature writing — a like it? very good way to generate month-to-month income while BB: I had no direct involveI was working on a new book. ment in the making of the It was also much easier to build movie. I simply sold the rights up a following little by little. in it to Robert Redford’s 22

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production company. I assumed that because Robert Redford was the driving creative force behind the project that it would be a good movie — Robert Redford doesn’t make dumb movies, after all — and I am pleased to say I was right. I liked the movie a lot. They took a few small and sometimes curious liberties with my life — they changed my wife’s name from Cynthia to Catherine, for instance; I’ve no idea why — and they had to adjust the ages of the two main characters because Robert Redford and Nick Nolte are both now in their seventies, whereas my hiking companion Stephen Katz and I were in our forties, but overall I thought they were admirably faithful to the spirit of the book. I thought Ken Kwapis, the director, did an especially good job of capturing the beauty of the eastern American woods.

Debuts The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson is published by Black Swan as a £8.99 pbk on 7th April 2016.

The debut novel is a magical time in any writer’s life and here we present some new names to investigate and, hopefully, cherish in years to come.

DEBUTS

DEBUTS

The Portable Veblen

In A Land of Paper Gods

by Elizabeth McKenzie

by Rebecca Mackenzie

The novel as a symphony

We present an extract to tempt you . . .

Silicon Valley, I wanted the world of the novel to be Veblen’s world, filtered by an appreciation for the past and ften, during the years I for plainer, simpler times, when worked on The Portable her namesake Thorstein Veblen Veblen, I felt like a taught at Stanford and lived detective on a case, nearby. This setting made for determined to solve the mystery instant friction, especially since of how a marriage proposal, Veblen’s fiancé Paul has been traumatic brain injury and eagerly waiting to claim his veterans’ issues, medical ethics share of the wealth for his and corporate skullduggery, medical discoveries. mental illness, the economic Throughout the writing, I commentary of Thorstein found it helpful to think of the Veblen and squirrel lore all fit novel in terms of a musical into the same serio-comic score. From the start, various novel. Giving up on it all was characters took on their own out of the question, and besides, tones and themes, much as the I really cared about each thread. bird and the duck and cat have Gradually, the novel began to melody lines played by different take shape, and connections instruments in Prokofiev’s Peter began to reveal themselves, and the Wolf. For instance, until one day, when the book everything to do with was nearly complete, I dared marketing and the military believe there was a surprising industrial complex is satirical inevitability about the story, a and burlesque, best played by certain hoped for wholeness to flatulent tubas and jesting all its disparate parts. trombones, though turning Though set in present day slightly more sinister as the Palo Alto, an affluent corner of story moves on. Paul’s melody

O

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line is prideful, played with the bravado of trumpets—until the wind gets knocked out of him.

Veblen’s theme is cheerful and quixotic in one clef, but always offset by dark counterpoint and undertones in another, representing the difficulties and obstacles she must deal with.

And at last the squirrel… the squirrel is like a trill on a flute flitting through the score in both major and minor key… cajoling, connecting, warning.

I hope I’m not giving away too much by saying that as the “symphony” reaches its climax, discordant notes are flying, kettle drums thundering; that some threads reach a heartening resolution while others simply cannot, owing to the jarring dissonance of our times.

Elizabeth McKenzie

The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie is published by Fourth Estate as a £12.99 hbk on 28th January.

M

y name is Henrietta S. Robertson. That’s my English name.

It is the name on my name tags, my holiday suitcase and on my cabin-trunk. It is the name written by my mother on the first page of my Bible. My Chinese name is Ming-Mei, which means Bright and Beautiful. It isn’t labelled anywhere. It’s just a name I carry in my thoughts, a name that echoes when I try to remember Mother’s voice.

Growing up in China, we missionary children have two names. We are called by our Chinese name every day until we are six, when we’re sent to the mission’s school, high up on a mountain peak. There, answering roll call and following the trail of labels above sinks and hooks and beds, we become our English name. Our Chinese name, like

the sound of our mothers’ voices, fades.

I was born in the winter of 1930 in Shanxi Province, born blonde and pale as can be. The third of my mother’s children, I was the only one to survive.

When I grew sturdy enough, Mother took me on her gospeltelling trips. She’d place me upon Good News, our family mule, while she, dressed in her blue peasant’s tunic, her dark hair coiled in a bun at the nape of her neck, walked along the red dust road, shading us both under a great oiled paper umbrella. Mother’s work was to visit the women of our village and those in the villages nearby, squatting with them by their black-sooted stoves, or sipping tea on a warm brick kang. As she spoke, Mother gripped the back of my tunic with one hand, and in the other she held her gospel. Mother’s gospel wasn’t a Bible or a tract. It was a glove. Each finger was a different colour: black for sin, red for blood, white for

holiness, yellow for heaven, each telling a different part of the story.

‘Women of Pingxia village,’ said Mother, wiggling a finger, ‘do you remember what red is for?’ But the women of Pingxia were more interested in pinching my white skin pink than remembering the blood of Jesus. As I squirmed across the kang, tiger-faced slippers kicking furiously, Mother would say, ‘Please, ladies, listen to this gospel. It’s a matter of eternal life.’ She’d wiggle the yellow finger and add, carelessly, for that’s how best to begin a bargain, ‘Look, Celestial Heaven.’ But the ladies would not look, for tug, tug, tug, they wished to pull my strange white hair. ‘It’s a ghost-girl,’ they said, shuddering, before reaching out their hands to touch me once again.

In A Land of Paper Gods by Rebecca Mackenzie is published by Tinder Press as a £16.99 hbk on 28th January.

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DEBUTS

DEBUTS

The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt

The Maker of Swans

by Tracy Farr

by Paraic O’Donnell

Her Editor’s perspective

W&N’s Deputy Publishing Director suggests you add this book to your ‘to be read’ list

feature in many recent hit books – the 100-year-old man, Harold Fry, Ove – but how many times have you come across an octogenarian narrator ll of us are old at this hour, who also happens to be a junkie on this beach; the heads in and a virtuoso player of that the water are all grey, strangest of electronic including mine. Mostly we instruments, the theremin? move gently, we older, earlyWe meet the intriguing title rising swimmers, the water character of The Life and Loves buoying us in our slow of Lena Gaunt as she prepares choreography. But if we’re all old to perform at a local music and stale, still the water smells festival – her first time on stage fresh – somehow like in 20 years. Having wowed the watermelon, and salt. It’s crowd with the eerily beautiful glorious, the water in the sound of the theremin, she morning, when it’s calm like this, retires to her trailer where, after when you can just bob on the carefully assembling the surface, like a seal, watching. necessary paraphernalia, she How well it makes me feel, how smokes heroin. calm; how light and how heavy Over the course of the book, at the same time: like heroin – a through conversations between little bit like heroin.

Lena and a documentary So begins the extraordinary filmmaker, and the musician’s opening chapter of The Life and recollections about her early life Loves of Lena Gaunt, the first – from growing up in colonial novel of Australian-born, New Malacca to boarding school in Zealand-based writer and Perth, to a glittering career in former research scientist Tracy Jazz-age Sydney and quiet Farr, set largely in the beach domesticity in New Zealand – suburbs of Perth where Tracy we come to learn how Lena has grew up. Mature protagonists become the woman she is: a

A

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woman shaped by the ebb and flow of love and loss, and the constant pull of the sea.

The complexity of the central character and the way in which her story progressively unfolds, as well as the issues and themes raised by the narrative – how the people who enter and leave our lives change us, how our concept of ‘home’ evolves – have put Tracy Farr’s debut in the running for awards including Australia’s top prize, the Miles Franklin, and make the novel ripe for discussion; reading group questions are included at the back of the book.

Emily Boyce, Editor.

[A theremin? No, us neither, so “an electronic musical instrument in which the tone is generated by two high-frequency oscillators and the pitch controlled by the movement of the performer’s hand towards and away from the circuit.” Any wiser?]

The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt by Tracy Farr is published by Aardvark Bureau as a £8.99 pbk and is available now.

The Maker of Swans is set amid the fading grandeur of a long-neglected country estate.

Clara lives in the care of Mr Crowe, a man of many mysterious gifts, and his faithful manservant, Eustace. Free from araic O’Donnell’s debut rules and lessons, Clara inhabits novel, The Maker of a silent world of her own. She Swans, is destined to has her books and her secret become one of the most places, and she wanders the long talked about books of 2016. corridors, watching and If you like your magic dark exploring. and literary then this book is Mr Crowe is much like his for you. If you like dusty estate, unkempt and libraries spilling over with uninspiring. But he was once secrets then you won’t be the toast of the finest salons: a disappointed, and if you enjoy man of learning and means who thoughtful scenes which travelled the world, dazzling all explode with sudden and who met him. Now, he devotes unexpected violence, The himself to earthly pleasures, Maker of Swans belongs on your drinking and proclaiming, reading list. while his great library gathers Helen Macdonald, author of dust.

H is for Hawk, calls the novel But Mr Crowe and his ‘Compulsive reading…rich, extraordinary gifts have not strange, beautiful’. And it is a been entirely forgotten. Giving strange story, but strange in the in to his most base desires, he best sense, full of enchantment makes a fatal error and kills the and other-worldliness like The former lover of his new Night Circus by Erin paramour. The body can be Morgenstern, or Téa Obreht’s tidied away by his faithful The Tiger’s Wife. manservant, Eustace. But Mr

P

Crowe is no ordinary man and he must now answer to a higher power, a power that has the means to destroy them all.

Thus, he attracts the attention of Dr Chastern, the figurehead of a secret society to which Crowe still belongs.

When Chastern comes to call him to account, his sinister attention is soon diverted to Clara. For Clara possesses gifts of her own, gifts whose power she has not yet fully grasped.

She must learn to use them quickly, if she is to save them all.

The Maker of Swans, so delicately wrought exquisitely fulfils our yearning for a truly immersive experience. Magic is all around us and sometimes someone comes along who brings it alive in ways we can only guess at. You will never forget Clara.

Arzu Tahsin, Deputy Publishing Director

The Maker of Swans by Paraic O’Donnell is published by W&N as a £12.99 hbk on 11th February 2016..

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27

AUTHOR MEETS REVIEWER

DEBUTS

For the Most Beautiful

Jason Starr meets Beth Moffat nb reviewer, Beth Moffat loved Jason Starr’s Savage Lane so when we said we could arrange a face-to-face interview, she said yes!

by Emily Hauser The Iliad – from the women’s point of view. brothers went to fight the war against Achilles. I already knew I wanted this to change. These women have powerful voices, when they speak: voices which have always been struck by are capable of commanding the power and eloquence of armies, as Hector admits of the women of Homer’s Iliad. Andromache; of uttering deep Reading their stories was like and powerful laments, as Helen opening up a window onto a does for Hector after he dies different Troy – one which (‘you were my only friend’, she both allows us glimpses of a says). tantalising world at peace, and These were women whose story which shows the devastating deserved to be told. impact of war on the women So when, in my first year of my who stayed at home. As an PhD, I read Margaret Atwood’s undergraduate studying The Penelopiad (a re-writing of Classics, I struggled with their the Odyssey from Penelope’s silence. It seemed to me that the perspective), I suddenly realised Iliad was as much about their the extraordinary capacities of story as the great men and fiction to write back the heroes – Achilles, Hector, women’s stories of the past – as Patroclus – whom we normally well as an opportunity. I knew I associate with the epic of Troy. wanted to rescue the stories of Yet, when we think of the Iliad, two of the most extraordinary – hardly anyone seems to think of and the most overshadowed – Andromache, Hector’s wife; women of the Iliad, whose Briseis, Achilles’ captive slave; stories begin the entire epic and Chryseis, sex slave to king whose fates are deeply Agamemnon; Hecuba, Hector’s intertwined with the fate of mother; all the other women of Troy: Briseis and Chryseis (or Troy whose husbands, sons and Krisayis). By telling their story

I

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– not just the tale of ‘the rage of Achilles’ – I wanted to bring to light a different side of the Trojan War, one which shows the other side of Achilles’ search for glory in the unthinkable costs that had to be paid by women like Briseis and Chryseis. I wanted to rescue and retell their story by giving them a voice – to see what the Trojan War looked like from the perspective of a woman, not a warrior; a slave, not a soldier. Ultimately, when I looked into the text of the Iliad and wove together the threads of these women’s stories, what I uncovered was a harrowing, moving, profound tale of love, loss and betrayal – but even more than that, I found a rich, captivating story that had somehow been forgotten down the centuries: the forgotten story of the women of Troy.

Emily Hauser.

For the Most Beautiful by Emily Hauser is published by Doubleday as a £12.99 hbk on 28th January.

Photo: Giovanni Giovannetti

After thoroughly enjoying Jason Starr's new novel, Savage Lane, the lovely team at nb Magazine arranged for me to have an interview with the man himself. We arranged to meet at The Wallace Restaurant, located within the Wallace Art Gallery in Manchester Square, London where there was a brief opportunity to view the beautiful paintings before I was due to meet Jason. I have to admit to being fairly nervous as other interviews I've conducted in the past have normally been through email but I had no need to worry. Jason, dressed casually in jeans and tshirt immediately put me at my ease and was so warm and welcoming.

After setting my phone up to record our chat (and praying

that the recording would work!) we started chatting. Believe it or not, Jason was just a normal, very funny person who had a lot to say and was clearly passionate about his writing. The whole experience felt very informal and relaxed and I felt that I got a real idea of who Jason was as a person as well as an author. It was nice to also find out more about his life - at the time we met he was in the middle of a European book tour which saw him visiting Austria, Germany, England and Italy and it was interesting to find out that he actually studied in London for a while, so he was fairly familiar with the city, one of his favourite haunts being Camden.

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting and interviewing Jason and now feel much more confident and excited about carrying out further face to face interviews for my blog, bibliobeth.

Beth Moffat: Congratulations on Savage Lane, a fantastic and darkly comic novel that fans of crime fiction/noir will love.

How do you think that love or obsession as a theme is represented in your work?

Jason Starr: In many of my books there is definitely a theme of obsession but I think of it more in terms of what a character wants i.e. their goal

Beth Moffat

and then trying to dramatise it in a way that is compelling which probably goes back to my background as a playwright. When I'm writing novels, particularly thrillers, I find there are many obsessive characters in my work, particularly in Savage Lane but also in my other novels. For example, in e Follower (which was a book about a stalker) and perhaps in my first novel Cold Caller where many characters want something. In Cold Caller he wanted the perfect job, in The Follower he wanted this ideal relationship and in Savage Lane, every character is obsessive in some way or another! So I think it has definitely become a theme in my books, partly for dramatic reasons because I find it a compelling way to build a thriller but I do think I'm also addressing themes that I think most people can identify with.

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AUTHOR MEETS REVIEWER

Nice place for an interview...

Everyone has been in situations where they feel somewhat obsessive about things and hopefully readers of my novels can identify with a character's behaviour. is doesn't have to be necessarily admiring or feeling like it's something they would aspire to in their own lives but feeling that they get this character and they understand what they want. I think if you really understand what a character wants, the character becomes compelling.

figuring out who they were. en I started consciously thinking about each individual having a different obsession and when everything came together it was clear that everyone was hiding something. Mark's hiding this secret desire for Karen but his wife Debs... well, let's just say they're both hiding things from each other. en the kids, as teenagers oen do, are also hiding things from their parents. All of those dynamics are very relatable for the reader, I hope, as I think they're very real. Granted I take things to the extreme in the book but at the same time I am trying to be as realistic as possible. If it comes off as being too extreme I think it's only because it's very real.

AUTHOR MEETS REVIEWER

believe in the end that they are justified in their behaviour but I think, as the book is a satire, there is an underlying sub-narrative where the reader can hopefully be the judge of their behaviour and decide for themselves whether they approve or not of their actions.

I really wanted to have those two narratives or sub-texts going on where the character feels justified but the reader un derstands this is not necessarily true and that they might be getting it wrong.

BM: You are recognised not only for your novels but for comics such as your Wolverine Max series. What are your views on the different ways your work can be interpreted i.e. pure prose BM: I found your characters to versus a more visual medium? be complex and incredibly fasci- JS: I think when I'm writing comics it's certainly a much nating, especially Mark's wife BM: Many of your characters in Debs. By the end of the novel more visual experience, telling Savage Lane have something to do you think any of the charac- the story with images rather hide. Did you have the full than words, in fact in as few ters have realised the consewords as possible. In the revistory mapped out before writquences of their actions?

JS: I think it was very imporsion process of the comic I will ing it or did you surprise yourtake out as many words as nectant not to censor myself from self at times with an idea?

JS: It's true, every character in essary as I don't want them to being as honest as possible as I interfere with the art which this book does have a secret. I was writing. I wrote closely should really be telling the was really just focusing on the from each character's point of story. In a novel it's all about the situation with Mark and Karen view and I had a real idea of words and you can get deeper and the dynamics of this who Mark was as a character. married guy and this divorced If someone thinks that a charac- into the psychology of the characters and the subtext we were woman in a small community ter like Mark doesn't exist in talking about before, those laytotally misunderstanding and real life that would be false as ers of narrative. It might be posmisinterpreting their relationthey definitely do. I think all sible to achieve this with a ship. en I began to build on the characters are delusional in graphic novel but certainly for a these thoughts into a novel and a way and very disconnected novel the narrative takes on way it was only then that I thought from their own thoughts and more importance. about the other characters and actions so I think a lot of them 30

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BM: If Savage Lane was to be adapted into a film, whom would you like to play the main characters?

JS: I always think about that but always aer I write the book. While I am writing it it's very hard for me to think, for example, what a character looks like. I barely describe them in the book, in fact I keep my descriptions to a minimum for a reason: because I think it's much more important to describe their attitude, getting down the way they talk, then each reader can come up with their own image of what this character looks like. Aerwards when I'm done with the book, like anyone I guess I start fantasising about who would play them in a film. Mark is a character that could be very widely cast but would be a difficult choice. He's not as good-looking as he thinks he is so I'm not sure who would play him, that would be an interesting choice! I guess Diane Lane would be great for Karen and Julianne Moore would be perfect for Debs.

BM: Are you working on anything at the moment and can you tell us a little bit about it?

JS: I usually work on a few things at once. I've been working on a new psychological thriller, in the same genre as Savage Lane but very different characters and situation. I've also been working on a few TV projects and pilots, crime

From Beth’s review which can be found in full on nudge.

and some of the pictures...

dramas which I co-write with another writer and working on a new comics projects with a licensed character which hasn't been announced at the moment. I'm kicking around a few new ideas and I like that, to be honest, as writing a book can be very solitary and I'll keep the whole book in my head until it's done so it's a private process, whereas with other projects that are collaborative or in other mediums it's a good balance to get out amongst the people and not be so introverted.

Many thanks to Beth for taking all this on and do visit her blog which you will find at http://www.bibliobeth.com You can find Beth’s Quick Fire Questions for Jason on nudge.

What makes this story all the more intriguing is that not many of the characters are likeable at all and I did struggle at times to feel any sort of sympathy with them. At first glance, you may think that the story resembles your average psychological thriller and there have been comparisons of this book with Gone Girl and Apple Tree Yard, which are both excellent books in their own right. I’m happy to report however, that Savage Lane stands on its own quite confidently in the genre as it seems to have something a bit different, creepy and wacky at points yes, but certainly a book that cannot be compared. It has all those necessary elements of a great read – an exciting plot with twists I did not anticipate that kept me wanting to turn the pages and interesting (occasionally frightening) characters that show real individuals with flaws, warts and all!

Savage Lane by Jason Starr is published by No Exit Press as a £7.99 pbk and is available now.

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masterpiece ruled the summer, but not quite as royally as Grey by EL James.

This reworking of Fifty Shades of Grey as told by Christian Grey was, far and away, the biggest selling book of the year at over 1 million copies and counting.

Review of 2015 Alastair Giles on last year’s bookish highs and lows.

O

k, here’s the whole of UK publishing 2015 in microcosm; The return of erotica claims all before it, a Gone Girl-alike bestseller, the return of a much loved travel writer, prizes spread around, vapid books from Vloggers and adult colouring books and a very belated return of a 20th century classic author….

In a bit more depth, and avoiding books we’ve already championed in the magazine this year, let’s move through the months picking out the bestselling or prize-winning highlights…

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But the phenomenon of the year began with The Girl on The Train. A female psychological thriller right out of the Gone Girl sausage factory, it shows no sign of slowing down and is already being turned into a blockbuster.

MARCH JANUARY Helen Macdonald’s astonishing part nature book/part memoir, H is for Hawk, deservedly won the overall Costa Prize and becomes one of the most notable books of 2015.

FEBRUARY

Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist wins the Waterstones book of the year and is third bestselling debut of the year. Not everybody’s cup of tea, it is, nevertheless, an extraordinary debut. And the second bestselling?

Emma Healey picked up plaudits and praise for Elizabeth is Missing and the way it tackled the omnipresent subject of dementia.

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Astonishingly, Jamie Oliver has been beaten twice to bestselling cookery book. In 2014 he was eclipsed by Mary Berry on the back of Bake Off and this year he was buried beneath the trend for healthy cooking (quinoa et al) spearheaded by newcomer Ella Woodward.

Deliciously Ella has sold over ¼ million copies. ‘Awesome ingredients, incredible food that you and your body will love’, apparently…

never given an interview could become so feted and celebrated in a single year.

Well, it happened and Elena Ferrante became the literary darling of 2015 when the fourth novel in the series, The Story of the Lost Child, was published to huge acclaim.

MAY

Not limited to this year are a number of ‘books’ from youtube vloggers. The content of all is, perhaps, best described as ‘lite’, but every publisher wanted one so youtube was scoured to find the latest youngster posting videos showing us how to do our hair or some such. Book sales depend upon the number of followers, of course: Zoe Suggs’ signing at Waterstones Piccadilly had a queue snaking along Piccadilly. Police were called to keep order and a fine imposed on Waterstones by the council. Let’s hope it’s a fad and not a trend.

APRIL The only regular ‘brand author’ in the year’s top ten is Lee Child. Personal is the 15th Jack Reacher novel and testament to the continuing success of the crime/thriller genre which accounted for over 30% of the bestseller lists throughout the year.

The most curious trend of the year was billed as the antidote to our hectic, manic lifestyles. Tables of adult colouring books dominated bookshops and bestseller lists throughout the summer.

Closer to the mainstream was the return of David Nicholls. After One Day, Us delivered the wettest male character ever to appear in literature. One of the nicest authors in the business, but not my favourite from him.

first Jamaican winner took the literati by storm, but, I suspect it won’t be one of the better selling ‘Bookers’.

JULY Sales of To Kill a Mockingbird have been constant for the last 60 years and yet the author Harper Lee has never published anything else, so, announcement of a ’prequel’ caused an equilibrium shift in the publishing world. Go Set a Watchman duly set the world on fire and met with mixed reviews. Wow, Scout reviewing all we held dear for so many years. A game changer.

JUNE The Baileys Prize finally anointed the prize bridesmaid of the year, Ali Smith for How to be Both; her complex and dizzying

NOVEMBER

SEPTEMBER With a striking resemblance to Roald Dahl covers - that’s deliberate by the way comedian David Walliams has now carved a very impressive swathe of children’s book sales over the last 5 years. Grandpa’s Great Escape became the biggest children’s book of the year by far…again…

The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction was won by Steve Silberman’s Neurotribes, the first popular science book to win. Let’s hope it adds to the understanding of autism, but a bestseller? That is true of Bill Bryson’s first new travel book for 15 years. The Road to Little Dribbling has, in 4 weeks, already become the bestselling non-fiction hardback of the year, once again tripping round the UK, skewering our foibles and fascinations.

OCTOBER AUGUST How strange that a Neapolitan saga about two female friends through the latter 20th century told in a quartet of novels from an unknown author who has

The Man Booker went to newcomer Marlon James whose A Brief History of Seven Killings really broke the mould of literary sensations. A fictional account of an attempt to take Bob Marley’s life, this

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The Borough Press This new kid on the publishing block is pitching way above its years says Publishing Director, Suzie Dooré, and her team.

2015

T

he Borough Press turns two this January. But instead of celebrating with cake and jelly, a slightly sinister clown and lots of toddler tantrums, we’ve decided to mark the occasion with an incredibly strong line-up of Spring/Summer titles.

Alongside new books from Lionel Shriver, Curtis Sittenfeld, Louisa Young and Tracy Chevalier and the first novel by non-fiction bestseller Natasha Walter, we have some stand-out titles from up-andcoming writers. The Trouble with Goats and Sheep is Joanna Cannon’s debut, but you’d never believe it to read it. Warm, funny and brilliantly readable, it has garnered an astonishing number of advance quotes from luminaries of British fiction, all praising it exuberantly. And Missing, Presumed - Susie Steiner’s second novel after the critically acclaimed Homecoming, but her first literary crime novel - is just extraordinary: gripping, tense and with a hugely relatable protagonist in DS Manon Bradshaw.

Both these writers are set for great things.

Once again –just like the last 13 years – we’re asking you to vote for your Reading Group Book of the Year.

The brilliance of our 2016 list has made us a little dizzy, though it could be a sugar crash. We have eaten a lot of Party Rings…

Suzie, Cassie and Charlotte, The Borough Press @BoroughPress

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However, this year we’re also asking you to vote for the 6 Nudge community Books of the Year introduced by 6 nb reviewers whose names you’ll recognise.

Prize Draw when you vote.

2015

2015

Prize Draw when you vote.

BookHugger

BookDiva

Quality literature is the name of the game for bookhuggers and Phil Ramage knows what’s out there.

Sheila A Grant is definitely not a diva (!) but finds BookDiva ideal to browse for her next read.

The most significant trend for me, this year, has been the quality of writing coming from Ireland.

With three Irish writers in our Top 10 list and a number of others we could have included, the Irish Literary Renaissance that has been simmering for the last few years is reaching full swing. Two previous Man Booker winners, John Banville and Anne Enright have produced books which can only enhance their reputations. The Blue Guitar is written with a joyous feel for language and such warmth throughout that will have you forgiving his selfcentred rogue of a main character. The Green Road is an impressive tale of a family with complex relationships and a mother who proves difficult to escape from.

Sara Baume may have produced the debut novel of the year with her extended love letter from a man to his one-eyed dog.

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It’s highly original, written in language which is powerfully poetic and superbly sums up the need for companionship in our modern existence. If that weren’t enough, snapping at the heels of this list were Irish writers Kevin Barry whose Beatlebone scooped the Goldsmith Prize, Donal Ryan with his short-story collection A Slanting Of The Sun and my personal favourite, Paul Murray, whose The Mark And The Void is an outstanding comic novel.

Anne Tyler enchanted just about everyone with her family saga, the 20th novel in a fiftyplus year writing career which would be a superb reading group choice. From three novels by outstanding prizewinning British authors to the translation of Dutch writer Wieringa’s chilling modern odyssey our Top 10 list shows the wealth of literary fiction from 2015.

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In a year when Harper Lee’s “comeback” made world headlines and a Jamaican author won the Man Booker with a novel peppered with violence and swearing, it’s the thrilling unpredictability of this genre that keeps me bookhugging.

Phil Ramage, Shanklin, Isle of Wight

The shortlist

A God in Ruins

by Kate Atkinson The Blue Guitar

by John Banville Noonday by Pat Barker Spill Simmer Falter Wither

by Sara Baume The Green Road by Anne Enright Purity by Jonathan Franzen Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff The Crossing by Andrew Miller A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler These Are The Names by Tommy Wieringa

To vote go to nudge-book.com, click on the Discover nudge button and place your votes. Closing date is Jan 31st 2016 and the winners will be announced in nb88.

To my mind BookDiva and nb provide the kind of service you want from a good independent bookshop. So relax in your best armchair, coffee or wine to hand, open up the site and sink into a tempting array of pleasurable reading - what’s not to like?

So many goodies ensue that my postman wearily hands over packages with the remark, “More books!”

I find ‘reader rut’ occurs when we stick to the same author or genre: BookDiva will widen your reading horizons, opening doors to the ‘now’ books.

Among the many published books of 2015 reviewed by BookDiva we are championing these ten. Readers and reviewers felt these books had an edge over other recommended and excellent reads.

Previously I was familiar with the work of Kate Morton and Jojo Moyes but what a delight to discover new authors, with Patrick Gale, Lisa Genova and John Ironmonger leaving a

strong impression. If there is a common theme among the ten listed then it is relationships: when an unexpected occurrence changes lives, leaving families and friends under physical and emotional pressure. The intensity of the writing means readers cannot help considering, ‘What if it happened to me?’ And a book that truly ‘involves’ the reader is perfect.

Not on the list but personal favourites are A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, The Drowning Lesson by Jane Shemilt and Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread (see BookHugger).

Which is why my ‘must read list’ gets longer, now including Marilynne Robinson’s Lila, Rosemary Goring’s Flodden and I am always first in the queue for a new Margaret Forster. As a contrast I do enjoy thrillers

by Ian Rankin or Harlan Coben.

I feel privileged to be a reviewer for Nudge and

nb so while I am conscious you may not all agree with my opinions surely the point of readers’ groups is to stimulate discussion?

BookDiva is for readers, so log on, nose around and feel free to take issue, argue or comment on my tastes.

Sheila A. Grant, Kilmarnock, Ayrshire

The shortlist

These Shallow Graves

by Jennifer Donnelly The Versions of Us

by Laura Barnett A Place Called Winter

by Patrick Gale Inside the O’Briens

by Lisa Genova The Girl in the Red Coat

by Kate Hamer Not Forgetting the Whale

by John Ironmonger Summertime by Vanessa Lafaye The Lake House by Kate Morton After You by Jojo Moyes The New Woman by Charity Norman

To vote go to nudge-book.com, click on the Discover nudge button and place your votes. Closing date is Jan 31st 2016 and the winners will be announced in nb88.

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Prize Draw when you vote.

2015

2015

Prize Draw when you vote.

BookNoir

BookChap

Mike Stafford is convinced that crime fiction has all the answers . . . and below he makes a very convincing case!

Reg Seward didn’t know he was a BookChap – but he most certainly is and who better to do the guided tour?

If you can't explore it through crime writing, it's not worth exploring.

Modern crime fiction is one of literature’s most versatile prisms; through it you can view politics, psychology, sociology, geography or history; love, loss, life, comedy or tragedy. There is virtually no field of human activity which crime fiction can't peer interestingly and excitingly into. Sure, there are other charms; it sees order restored from disorder, it sees the forces of justice do battle with the forces of evil, and yes, if you're so inclined you can treat crime novels as puzzles, and lock horns with the author by trying to unmask the killer before they do. For me though, the best crime fiction is that in which the crime itself is secondary to wrestling with other great issues.

In that respect, crime fiction in 2015 remains in rude health.

The onward march of the

BookChap? What the deuce is that? You may well ask. I know I have on numerous occasions.

Somehow, possibly because of my all-abiding love and expanding consumption, our Publisher has coerced me into the dubious task of giving you the impression that I may be able to help you choose books. I have here a shortlist of titles for BookChap Book of the Year 2015. Where this list hails from is anybody’s guess, but some of them actually appeal to my tastes. If they do not fit your needs, then, ‘C’est la vie’.

After The Flood by John Nichol (a former RAF Tornado Navigator and Gulf War veteran) tells of the famous 617 Squadron of WW2 bomber exploits. The bouncing bomb raid on Germany’s Ruhr Dams (filmed as The Dambusters in 1955) was not the only task they undertook, many others followed. Mainly for the older ‘chap’ perhaps, but nonetheless a fascinating story.

The Last Escaper is, again, a WW2 saga, but in Peter Tunstall’s memoir, written many years after the war, the author’s many escape attempts

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suspense novel proves crime readers are - as ever - hungry for tight plotting and authentic character development. Julia Heaberlin’s sublime Black Eyed Susans was an excellent case in point this year, as was Stuart Prebble’s The Insect Farm, which proudly flies the suspense flag among our top ten. Suspense doesn't have the monopoly on masterful penmanship though, and Ryan Gattis’s All Involved, thoroughly deserves its place on the list. Timely, brutal, and brilliantly researched, All Involved is a truly magnificent achievement, studying the LA riots of 1992 with authenticity but compassion. I'd ask for a film but no director could do it justice.

Looking forward into 2016, I’m hoping to see the emergence of some brilliant, upstart new authors, together with the appearance of crime fiction from farther flung places than ever

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before. Kiwi crime, perhaps, or a smattering from Central America?

May our 2016 be a bloody one!

Mike Stafford, Worcester

The shortlist

She Who Was No More

by Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac Wolf Winter

by Cecilia Ekbäck Career of Evil

by Robert Galbraith All Involved

by Ryan Gattis A Game for All the Family

by Sophie Hannah The Girl in the Spider’s Web

by David Lagercrantz The Insect Farm by Stuart Prebble Even Dogs in the Wild

by Ian Rankin Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins by James Runcie Savage Lane by Jason Starr

To vote go to nudge-book.com, click on the Discover nudge button and place your votes. Closing date is Jan 31st 2016 and the winners will be announced in nb88.

are here all documented. I have read many escape books and they all relate tales of ‘derring do’.

Or what about TV and radio presenter Melvyn Bragg and his Now Is The Time? This is a fictional account of the Peasant Revolt led by Watt Tyler back in the 1380s. Stir the blood with Bragg’s account of the first ‘Poll Tax’ protests. I know he is a good author, but I do not really enjoy stories much, so even if it is based on a truth, perhaps it isn’t for me.

More my kind of thing, the late, great filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock is once again examined, this time by Peter Ackroyd. There are many books purporting to be the ultimate treatise on the man, but having read a few, he struck me as a lonely man, overweight, burdened with his visage and his predilection for blonde leading ladies. A good filmmaker though, Psycho is still a top film.

Some of these books should appeal to the chap who cares about his reading content, hence the sobriquet. In this day and age the reader is confronted with a vast array of

choices, therefore, a helping and guiding hand can be useful.

Try it on nudge where you can obtain a preamble of many and varied book choices. And I hope this particular BookChap can be of some help to you, maybe you could drop me a line and let me know.

Reg Seward, Leiston, Suffolk

The shortlist

Alfred Hitchcock

by Peter Ackroyd Now is the Time

by Melvyn Bragg Trigger Mortis

by Anthony Horowitz The Secret War

by Max Hastings Flood of Fire

by Amitav Ghosh The Last Days of the Condor

by James Grady It’s One For The Money

by Clinton Heylin False Nine by Phillip Kerr After the Flood by John Nichol The Last Escaper by Peter Tunstall

To vote go to nudge-book.com, click on the Discover nudge button and place your votes. Closing date is Jan 31st 2016 and the winners will be announced in nb88.

nb magazine & www.nudge-book.com

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Prize Draw when you vote.

2015

2015

Prize Draw when you vote.

BookGeek

BookLife

Jade Craddock sees beyond geekiness to a cornucopia with something for everybody.

Paul Cheney suggests some prizes worth keeping tabs on for BookLifers.

Ask most people and one of the pleasures that derives most often from reading is that ability for a book to take the reader outside of their own world and transport them somewhere else entirely. And that is none more so true than in the realm of speculative fiction – fantasy, sci-fi, horror so it is unsurprising that the genre seems to be going from strength to strength, with many publishers having dedicated imprints especially for this pursuit.

The nomination of Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island in this year’s Man Booker shortlist is perhaps one of the genre’s successes of 2015 for a novel that has been described as ‘Kafka for the google age’.

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Whilst Patrick Ness’s YA offering The Rest of Us Just Live Here has recently been longlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal showing the continuing strength of speculative fiction in YA. James Rice’s compelling debut Alice and the Fly was another highlight this year, merging the teen voice of its protagonist with a darkly twisting plot that has spurred comparisons with Mark Haddon’s genre-defining work The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Finally, another debut, Catriona Ward’s Rawblood, a haunting tale of a family curse, reinvigorated the classic gothic novel, with echoes of du Maurier and Poe. It would seem then that speculative fiction is very much alive and well and some of the breakthrough novels are beginning to get more mass market recognition, although sci-fi and some of

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the more traditionalist work still tend to occupy the margins. But with big name authors like David Mitchell on board,and the raft of new writers the likes of James Rice and Catriona Ward, the future looks bright. And on that note, Paraic O’Donnell’s The Maker of Swans is definitely one to watch in 2016.

Jade Craddock, Redditch, Worcs.

The shortlist

Tracer by Rob Boffard The House on Cold Hill

by Peter James Plesantville by Attica Locke Satin Island by Tom McCarthy The Raven’s Head

by Karen Maitland The Loney

by Andrew Michael Hurley The Rest of Us Just Live Here

by Patrick Ness SNUFF by Victor Pelevin Alice and the Fly by James Rice Rawblood by Catriona Ward

To vote go to nudge-book.com, click on the Discover nudge button and place your votes. Closing date is Jan 31st 2016 and the winners will be announced in nb88.

Whilst I like fiction, my real passion for reading lies with those books that sport the Dewey numbers on their spines in libraries. I enjoy most subjects too: history, technology, the sciences, a variety of sports and biographies, but my absolute favourites are travel and natural history.

This year has seen a number of excellent books released. Any new book by Nigel Slater is a treat, and I have already picked up a copy of A Year of Good Eating. Not only is he a dab hand with the wooden spoon, he is pretty accomplished with the pen too, making this a beautiful book to hold and read. Just as notable was Meadowland by John LewisStempel. Beautifully written, it brings alive all the drama for wildlife as they play out their lives in a field on his land; good enough to collect the 2015 Wainwright Prize.

Better known for his poetry, Simon Armitage’s first travel

book, Walking Home, recounted walking the Pennine Way and collecting money at public readings to pay his way.

Walking Away, follows a similar pattern, but is set in the south west. Another of my favourites this year has been Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks.

Prompted by the latest children’s dictionary dropping several well-known nature words, we journey through his favourite authors with a substantial reference list of local words for natural phenomena.

Whilst the literary set has their headlining Man Booker prize, BookLifers look out for the Samuel Johnson Prize, recently won by Steve Silberman with his book Neurotribes. For those interested in sciences, then the Royal Society Winton Prize is a good place to start, whereas those that want to reach the world from the comfort of their own armchair need only consult the Stanford Dolman shortlists.

Meanwhile, those with a finger on the financial pulse have plenty of competition in the FT Business book awards. And then there’s my particular favourite, the Wainwright Prize, celebrating the best of nature and travel writing in the UK.

Paul Cheney, Wimborne, Dorset.

The shortlist

Clothes, Music, Boys

by Viv Albertine Walking Away by Simon Armitage Do It Like A Woman

by Caroline Criado-Perez The Story of Alice

by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst Reasons to Stay Alive

by Matt Haig Meadowland

by John Lewis-Stempel The Mistresses of Cliveden

by Natalie Livingstone We British by Andrew Marr Spectacles by Sue Perkins A Year of Good Eating

by Nigel Slater

To vote go to nudge-book.com, click on the Discover nudge button and place your votes. Closing date is Jan 31st 2016 and the winners will be announced in nb88.

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£100 of National Book Tokens to be won when you vote. *T&C’s apply.

Sponsored by

Reading Group Book of the Year

Your publisher realizes he’s yet another year older as he embarks on the latest search for our Reading Group Book of the Year.

Y

ou know how, as you get older, the days, weeks, months seem to fly by?

Imagine how it feels when it’s time to announce the latest contenders for our Reading Group Book of the Year, yet again. For someone who can’t remember the last five books he read, it’s always a salutary experience to look again at the books that have won in previous years. They may not all still be troubling the bestseller lists but I’d like to think that for each one you have read, there is a slight tingle as you peruse this list.

Yes, books can be transitory things but the good ones stay in the memory and I would personally stand by all our previous winners as still being worth seeking out.

Which brings us to this year’s shortlist: 10 fabulous books Previous Winners 2014 The Humans by Matt Haig 2013 Flight Behaviour

by Barbara Kingsolver 2012 The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

which have won widespread approval from our readers – whether they have been Recommended Reads, Prize Award contenders or ‘rank outsiders’ when they started this year. I know I’m causing you angst in asking you to choose from a list which I suspect you’ve already sampled.

And as for those you haven’t then I strongly suggest you add them to your ‘to be read’ list.

However, the moment has now arrived and, while you’d never mistake me for Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs, I’m going to ask you to choose just one of these books when you go to nudge-book.com, click on the Discover nudge button and nominate your choice. There is one consolation – when you’re there do vote for the nudge community books of your choice.

2011 Room by Emma Donoghue 2010 The Help by Kathryn Stockett 2009 The Return by Victoria Hislop 2008 A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini 2007 Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky

Prize Draw: £100 of National Book Tokens to be won when you vote.

The 2015 Shortlist A Song For Issy Bradley

by Carys Bray All the Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doerr A Place Called Winter

by Patrick Gale Elizabeth is Missing

by Emma Healey The Children Act by Ian McEwan The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes

by Anna McPartlin The Bees by Laline Paull How to be Both by Ali Smith A Spool of Blue Thread

by Anne Tyler The Paying Guests

by Sarah Waters

2006 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 2005 My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult 2004 The Sixth Lamentation

by William Brodrick 2003 Altered Land by Jules Hardy 2002 The Seige by Helen Dunmore

*T&C’s apply.

To vote go to nudge-book.com, click on the Discover nudge button and place your votes.

Closing date is Jan 31st 2016 and the winners will be announced in nb88.

nb magazine & www.nudge-book.com - the book gift cards accepted in bookshops everywhere.

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READERS DAY 2015

READERS DAY 2015

Our 4th annual nb Readers' Day Didn’t we have a luvverly time, the day we went to Winchester . . .

OK, the original was Bangor and the above doesn’t quite scan but we certainly did have a great time. Who says? You do!

My second readers' day and even better than the first. You had a really interesting range of authors, both in terms of genre and their own personalities, all of whom I am now very keen to read.

OK, so I am the only person in Britain who hasn't read any Sophie Hannah, but acquiring a new fan made her appearance worthwhile! Your handling of each author was superb.

You were well prepared and knowledgeable, but you have a lightness of touch - you keep them focused while letting them speak and allowing the conversation to develop.

Plus an excellent venue, easy to reach and wonderful catering. What's not to like?

Ann Smout

I [thought] I would enjoy hearing from two of the authors - the jury was out on the other two. O ye of little faith! I should have had more trust in you and your ability to arrange for us to hear from four authors who were extremely interesting The multi-coloured book swap table. and all different from one another.

Claire Fuller was thoughtful David Keay and articulate, Stuart Prebble was fascinating what an amazing life history, I had no idea, and I . . . amazingly I had just enough money in my wallet loved his dry humour. to pay for all the titles I Sophie Hannah, well, a few suddenly absolutely had words from you, Guy, and to have! Such she was off and running, foresight....sincere thanks what a great speaker, as to all for another always. She was a hard act wonderful readers' to follow, but Catriona convention.

Sue Hannigan Ward was so bubbly and enthusiastic it was a delight to listen to her. I heard nothing but praise all around me for the speakers, The authors were fascinating, the food delicious and the the venue and, of course, atmosphere uplifting. Great the catering. I thought last to be in the company of so year's event was great, but many like-minded book this was even better. lovers!

Daphne Poupart Lydia Revett

They look well-behaved here but . . .

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And how it looked from the stage . . .

Mel was an early champion of Our Endless Numbered And your MC today is Days and since Claire Fuller is a Winchester resident, I’d had the chance to meet her in advance.

Instantly, she struck me as someone you’d love to have in your reading group. Quite a surprise then to read her book and be engrossed by the darkness of her imagination.

And of course on the day she was just as grounded but as she talked the audience started to see what an interesting person she was and how she’d built her story to a completely gripping climax.

I knew of Stuart Prebble as a former BBC reporter in the 70s but, in a calm and measured way, with no hint of selfelevation, he walked us through his career – producer for World in Action, CEO of ITV, independent producer of Grumpy Old Men, Three Men in a Boat and Sky’s Book Programme until, as if that wasn’t enough, he wrote The Insect Farm. I’ve read it and reviewed it on nudge, it’s

brilliant and you should read it.

I even put two of my fellow group members in the audience on the spot by saying I thought we should read it in our group!

The audience marvelled at a life they just weren’t aware of and the sheer presence of the man.

A life lived without hubris remains my impression.

Fortunately, Sophie Hannah is expert at solving mysteries – since I’d told her we were at St Paul’s when I’d meant to write St Peter’s. When she arrived she didn’t even mention this, it was Mel who alerted me so I could go and apologise profusely!

I’ve done events with Sophie before so I knew what was coming – personable, witty, self-deprecating, charming . . . and a damn good storyteller.

She took our audience into the palm of her hand and gently seduced them. Sat along side her I watched a Mexican wave of emotions slip across the audience’s faces – sad, happy, taken by surprise, admiring.

My only worry, as

with Ben Aaronovitch a couple of years back, was . . . how would our final speaker cope after such a tour de force?

I needn’t have worried, Catriona Ward bubbled and bounced with enthusiasm. Her life seems to have been a series of exotic adventures and we were gripped as it unfolded, including this awfully dark summer holiday home in Dartmoor that became the inspiration for Rawblood. We realized that she is no slouch in the brain department and it was totally apparent that here was another author set to make her mark on our reading experience.

Many thanks to Roger Goult for his photographs.

Rawblood by Catriona Ward.

A Game for All the Family

by Sophie Hannah.

Our Endless Numbered Days

by Claire Fuller.

The Insect Farm

by Stuart Prebble.

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omm c e r ded en Settling down with a good read is one of life’s outstanding pleasures. We present four cracking reads for your delectation – and you can have them all, FREE. All we ask is you cover our p&p costs.

The Avenue has a reason for not fitting in, but in the thick, hot summer of 1976, hiding these differences becomes more and more difficult. When one of the neighbours mysteriously disappears, we find out that not everyone on the street is as respectable as they might have you believe, and through the eyes of Grace – our ten year-old narrator – we soon discover that if you scratch the surface of a sheep, you may very well find yourself with a goat. And the biggest problem of all, is working out the difference.

Being a full-time doctor and

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s a doctor working in psychiatry, I spend my days talking to people who ‘unbelong’. People who are pushed by society to the very edge of the dancefloor, for being a little bit different, for being not quite like us. These are the goats.

The people who try to copy what everyone else is doing, but never quite get it ‘right’.

It’s not just on mental health wards. There are goats everywhere. They are stitched into the landscape of everyone’s day, a herd of unbelongers, whose stories are never told and whose lives are never noticed.

help us to be a little kinder to those who stand at the edge of the dancefloor, and if we look through Grace’s eyes for a little while, it might also help us to realise that unbelonging is actually a belonging all of its own.

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep Are you a goat or a sheep? Joanna Cannon confronts a modern dilemma.

It’s only when something goes wrong, when people need someone to blame, that the sheep turn to the goats and say we knew it was them all along and of course they must be guilty, because they just look the type, don’t they? It’s not easy being a goat in a world full of sheep.

I wrote The Trouble With Goats and Sheep, because I believe there is a little unbelonging in all of us – it’s just that some people hide it better than others. In the story, everyone on

writing a novel was always a battle between hours and words.

Goats and Sheep was created at four o’clock in the morning, before I went to the wards. It was plotted out in a wide variety of NHS carparks in my lunch hour, and thought about on night shifts, on the very (very) rare occasion when all my patients were asleep at the same time. But it was so important for me to tell the story. I hope it will make us all think a little more deeply about what it means to fit in, I hope it will

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

by Joanna Cannon is published by The Borough Press as a £12.99 hbk on 28th January 2016.

Free copies will be sent out on receipt of stock from the publisher.

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The Trouble with Goats and Sheep - Joanna Cannon

Number Four, The Avenue

‘Sometimes people need their own space,’ my mother spoke to the stove, ‘they get confused.’

‘Margaret Creasy was confused all right.’ My father turned to the sports section and snapped at the pages until they were straight. ‘She asked far too many questions. You couldn’t get away for her rabbiting on.’

‘She was just interested in people, Derek. You can feel lonely, even if you’re married. And they had no children.’

My mother looked over at me as though she were considering whether the last bit made any difference at all, and then she spooned porridge into a large bowl that had purple hearts all around the rim.

‘Why are you talking about Mrs Creasy in the past tense?’

I said. ‘Is she dead?’

‘No, of course not.’ My mother put the bowl on the floor. ‘Remington,’ she shouted, ‘Mummy’s made your breakfast.’

Remington padded into the kitchen. He used to be a Labrador, but he’d become so fat, it was difficult to tell.

‘She’ll turn up,’ said my father.

He’d said the same thing about next door’s cat. It disappeared years ago, and no one has seen it since.

21 June 1976 Mrs Creasy disappeared on a Monday.

I know it was a Monday, because it was the day the dustbin men came, and the avenue was filled with a smell of scraped plates.

‘What’s he up to?’ My father nodded at the lace in the kitchen window.

Mr Creasy was wandering the pavement in his shirtsleeves. Every few minutes, he stopped wandering and stood quite still, peering around his Hillman Hunter and leaning into the air as though he were listening.

‘He’s lost his wife.’ I took another slice of toast, because everyone was distracted. ‘Although she’s probably just finally buggered off.’

‘Grace Elizabeth!’ My mother turned from the stove so quickly, flecks of porridge turned with her and escaped on to the floor.

‘I’m only quoting Mr Forbes,’ I said, ‘Margaret Creasy never came home last night. Perhaps she’s finally buggered off.’

We all watched Mr Creasy. He stared into people’s gardens, as though Mrs Creasy might be camping out in someone else’s herbaceous border.

My father lost interest and spoke into his newspaper. ‘Do you listen in on all our neighbours?’ he said.

‘Mr Forbes was in his garden, talking to his wife. My window was open. It was accidental listening, which is allowed.’ I spoke to my father, but addressed Harold Wilson and his pipe, who stared back at me from the front page.

‘He won’t find a woman wandering up and down the avenue,’ my father said, ‘although he might have more luck if he tried at number twelve.’

I watched my mother’s face argue with a smile. They assumed I didn’t understand the conversation, and it was much easier to let them think it. My mother said I was at an awkward age. I didn’t feel especially awkward, so I presumed she meant that it was awkward for them.

‘Perhaps she’s been abducted,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it’s not safe for me to go to school today.’

‘It’s perfectly safe,’ my mother said, ‘nothing will happen to you. I won’t allow it.’

‘How can someone just disappear?’ I watched Mr Creasy, who was marching up and down the pavement. He had heavy shoulders and stared at his shoes as he walked.

*

Tilly was waiting by the front gate, in a jumper which had been hand-washed and stretched to her knees. She’d taken the bobbles out of her hair, but it stayed in exactly the same position as if they were still there.

‘The lady from number eight has been murdered,’ I said.

We walked in silence down the avenue, until we reached the main road. We were side by side, although Tilly had to take more steps to keep up.

‘Who lives at number eight?’ she said, as we waited for the traffic.

‘Mrs Creasy.’

I whispered, in case Mr Creasy had extended his search.

‘I liked Mrs Creasy. She was teaching me to knit. We did like her, Grace, didn’t we?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘very much.’

We crossed the road opposite the alley next to Woolworth’s. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock, but the pavements were dusty hot, and I could feel material stick to the bones in my back. People drove their cars with the windows down, and fragments of music littered the street. When Tilly stopped to change her school bag to the other shoulder, I stared into the shop window. It was filled with stainless steel pans.

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* We have copies to give away FREE. See page 65 to claim yours.

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‘Who murdered her?’ A hundred Tillys spoke to me from the display.

‘No one knows.’

‘Where were the police?’

I watched Tilly speak through the saucepans. ‘I expect they’ll be along later,’ I said, ‘they’re probably very busy.’

We climbed the cobbles in sandals which flapped on the stones and made us sound like an army of feet. In winter ice, we clung to the rail and to each other, but now the alley stretched before us, a riverbed of crisp packets and thirsty weeds, and floury soil which dirtied our toes.

‘Why are you wearing a jumper?’ I said.

Tilly always wore a jumper. Even in scorched heat, she would pull it over her fists and make gloves from the sleeves. Her face was magnolia, like the walls in our living room, and sweat had pulled slippery, brown curls on to her forehead.

‘My mother says I can’t afford to catch anything.’

‘When is she going to stop worrying?’ It made me angry, and I didn’t know why, which made me even angrier, and my sandals became very loud.

‘I doubt she ever will,’ said Tilly, ‘I think it’s because there’s only one of her. She has to do twice the worrying, to keep up with everyone else.’

‘It’s not going to happen again.’ I stopped and lifted the bag from her shoulder. ‘You can take your jumper off. It’s safe now.’

She stared at me. It was difficult to see Tilly’s thoughts. Her eyes hid behind thick, dark-rimmed glasses and the rest of her gave very little away.

‘Okay,’ she said, and took off her glasses. She pulled the jumper over her head, and when she appeared on the other side of the wool, her face was red and blotchy. She handed me the jumper, and I turned it the right way, like my mother did, and folded it over my arm.

‘See,’ I said, ‘it’s perfectly safe. Nothing will happen to you. I won’t allow it.’

The jumper smelt of linctus and unfamiliar soap. I carried it all the way to school, where we dissolved into a spill of other children.

om rec m events and settings in the book from a different angle than I, as a writer, ordinarily would.

What inspired The Life and Death of Sophie Stark? Why did filmmaking capture your imagination?

I had wanted to write about a female filmmaker for a long time; I actually started a project about a director named Sophie Stark years ago, and then put it on hold when I wrote America Pacifica. I don’t know if I was fascinated specifically with

What was the most challenging aspect of the writing process for you? How did it differ from writing your previous novel?

Probably the hardest thing was getting the points of view right.

At the beginning I thought the book would have just one point of view, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out which one it would be. But no matter how many I tried out — Robbie, Allison, a film-student character who ended up having some things in common with the critic Ben Martin — none of them felt like they could tell the

when Robbie is powerless to help her. I had very different attitudes toward the characters when I was writing them through hard times, also. I felt really sorry for Robbie — he loves his sister so much, and even though she loves him too, she doesn’t always treat him very well. Robbie’s sort of figured his life out by the end of the book, but I also think of him as a little bit fragile — his sense of self, outside of Sophie, isn’t that strong. So I felt especially sad

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark Author Anna North on how Sophie came together filmmaking as much as with this particular character, who is a filmmaker — she seemed to come into my head almost fully formed. For her, I think filmmaking is appealing because it allows her to approach life at a remove; she can tell the stories of people close to her without being part of them, exactly. It’s also a visual medium, and she thinks much more visually than verbally — she’s interested in qualities of light and space, and not especially good at expressing herself in words. I enjoyed the challenge of thinking about things the way Sophie would; it forced me to approach the

whole story. When I realized I could include them all, things got easier. But still, some of the voices came to me more easily than others, and I had to spend a lot of time thinking about each person and how she or he would talk and see the world.

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark features some admittedly dark and tragic scenes. Was it difficult to immerse yourself in the characters’ interior lives during the writing process?

At times it was. It was especially hard to write about Allison’s assault by Bean, Jacob’s mother’s illness, and Sophie’s last days,

for him when he lost her.

Allison is stronger; everything that happens between her and Sophie hurts her, but it won’t break her. I like thinking about her going on after the book is over, raising her child and living her life. Even though she’s done some cruel things herself, I find myself feeling proud of her.

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North is published by W&N as a £8.99 pbk on 11th February 2016.

Free copies will be sent out on receipt of stock from the publisher.

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The Life and Death of Sophie Stark - Anna North

Robbie SOPHIE RAISED ME, KIND OF. WE RAISED EACH OTHER. OUR DAD was dead, and our mom was just young and sad and indecisive, and one day she was into Amway and the next day she was into Jesus, and she was never that into us. Sophie taught me how to read and how to draw and how to crouch quietly in the grass behind the drugstore and spy on people, like teenagers making out and our third-grade teacher crying and once our mom looking at photos of a man we didn’t know with an expression we’d never seen before. I taught her how to boil a hot dog and clean a cut and talk to grown-ups to get out of being in trouble—she never got good at the last one, so a lot of times I had to do it for her.

That makes it sound like we were best friends, and we were, but also she did all kinds of things I didn’t understand. She was terrible at school—she didn’t care about pleasing the teachers, and she didn’t care about fitting in, and when she was in eighth grade, she started wearing the same men’s black button-down shirt as a dress every single day, with a leather belt around the middle and boxer shorts underneath. The other kids called her “Crazy Emily”—she was still plain old Emily Buckley then, after our grandma—but she didn’t seem to care. I was in sixth grade then, and I’m embarrassed to admit I tried to pretend I didn’t know her; I even made fun of her when my friends did, though not as harshly and not when she was around to hear. It didn’t work—the school was small, and everybody already knew we were brother and sister. Even if they hadn’t, it was obvious: She and I had the same black hair and sharp faces, the same everything, except her eyes were even bigger than mine. So I tried to convince her to act more like a normal kid. It didn’t work, until the eighth grade when boys started throwing chocolate milk and mushy strawberries at her, and even then her only concession was buying some girls’ jeans.

In high school she started trying a lot of different things—one

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week she went running every morning wearing her crappy black sneakers and twisted her ankle so hard she limped for a month. After that she started smoking weed—I’d find her in her room red-eyed, petting the wall. Then she tried other drugs, ones I didn’t know. She started coming home covered in sweat, her pupils pinpricked, and once she drew tiny figures all over her bedspread in permanent ink, men and women with their faces all turned up like they were staring at the sun. She still didn’t have any friends at school, but there were rumors about her—about girls, about boys, about older men I was sure she’d never have anything to do with, as much as I could ever be sure about her. Twice she stayed out all night and wouldn’t tell me where she’d been. Once I caught her outside the drugstore begging for spare change.

When she was seventeen, she said she wasn’t going to college. She said she was going to move to Chicago and draw portraits of people on the street for money. Maybe I should’ve let her do it. I don’t know if she was happy then, but she had this kind of drive in her, and maybe if I’d just let her go, it would’ve pushed her in the right direction. But a family has to have one practical person, and I wanted my sister to have a nice life. Also, even though she still embarrassed me at school, part of me was proud of her. I thought she was a genius, and I thought no one had seen it yet, and I wanted them to see.

So I convinced her to take the SAT, and then I found some colleges that didn’t seem to care that much how you scored on it. I filled out the application for her. I said I (Emily) was an avid artist and also president of the French club (which we didn’t have) and a volunteer at the senior center (it was true that she’d been a big hit on our high school’s trip there, because she’d been willing to sit silently and listen to the old people for hours). I said my goal in life was to help people through art. My sister’s only contribution was in the “nicknames” field, where she wrote “Sophie Stark.”

“I’m changing my name,” she said.

I asked her why.

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Reunion of Ghosts tells the intertwined stories of Lady, Vee, and Delph Alter, three devoted if beleaguered sisters who share a New York City apartment, an irrepressible sense of humor, and the intention to die by their own hands on the last day of the twentieth century. This predilection for suicide is not unusual in the Alter family: all the members of the past three generations of Alters have taken their own lives. Why? The answer may be found in the words tattooed on Delph’s calf: the sins of the father are visited to the 3rd & 4th generations.

write “the world’s longest suicide note” to explain not only their motivations, but also the role Lenz and other family members played in shaping their perceptions of the world and of themselves. A Reunion of Ghosts is that note.

A Reunion of Ghosts is partly a historical novel—while the sisters are pure inventions, Lenz is based on the chemist Fritz Haber. It’s been called a biography of the twentieth century with its endless wars and struggles for individual rights. It’s a dark comedy—the Alter sisters have never met a

A Reunion of Ghosts tackles a multitude of serious issues and decidedly dark topics. But because it’s narrated by three women with wicked senses of humor and fierce sisterly love, the darkness is always tempered with light and laughter...just like life itself.

Judith Claire Mitchell introduces

A Reunion of Ghosts The father in question is the sisters’ great grandfather Lenz Alter, a German-Jewish chemist who saved the world from famine via the first manmade fertilizers, but then introduced the world to the horror of the first poison gases used in warfare. Like those who came before them, from Lenz’s wife to his son to his granddaughters, the sisters view their Nobel Prize-winning ancestor with a discomfiting combination of pride and debilitating shame.

As the sisters prepare to end it all, they agree they must first

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She shrugged. “Do I look like an Emily to you?”

I had to admit that she didn’t. I sent her applications off, and in the spring she got into Drucker, a liberal-arts college in eastern Iowa, about a hundred miles from our town. Mom had a party with scented candles and hard cookies shaped like fish, and it was just the three of us plus a lady from her church, and then one day late in August my sister was gone, and there we were in the house by ourselves.

I still had two years of high school to get through. I tried on some different things, too: I started listening to a lot of punk music and wearing band T-shirts, and then I tried out for and managed to get on the baseball team. Both of these worked out sort of okay—no one thought I was a loser, and I made a couple of new friends. But I didn’t get a girlfriend or become extremely cool, and I felt kind of cut loose, like as soon as I left school in the afternoon, I didn’t know what to do or how to be. I missed my sister. I kept starting a sentence in our silent house and realizing she wasn’t there to hear.

When I got into Drucker, it was obvious I’d go. I’d gotten into a couple of other schools, and I made a show on the phone with my sister of weighing my options, but all she said was, “You should probably come here,” so I did. I remembered how she’d been in high school, but I’d heard that college was supposed to change people— my friend Tyler’s brother had come back a Jehovah’s Witness—and I thought there was a chance Sophie had become cool. When I sent in my acceptance letter, I imagined her talking about me to a bunch of girls in black clothes, who played it cool because they were artists but who were all secretly excited to meet me.

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pun they didn’t like and can’t resist cracking wise no matter the situation—but also a meditation on fate and happenstance, on the conundrum of time and the grace of God, on the nature of our moral obligations to one another and to our selves.

And when an intruder appears inside the sisters’ apartment one stormy night, ultimately causing one of the sisters to see her life—and her impending death—anew, the novel is an examination of the joys and dilemmas that come with family.

A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire Mitchell is published by Fourth Estate as a £8.99 pbk on 31st December.

Free copies will be sent out on receipt of stock from the publisher.

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A Reunion of Ghosts - Judith Claire Mitchell

F

rom a distance the tattoo wrapped around Delph’s calf looks like a serpentine chain, but stand closer and it’s actually sixty-seven tiny letters and symbols that form a sentence—a curse: the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the 3rd & 4th generations

We are that fourth generation: Lady, Vee, and Delph Alter, three sisters who share the same Riverside Drive apartment in which they were raised; three women of a certain age, those ages being, on this first day of summer 1999, forty-nine, forty-six, and forty-two. We’re also seven fewer Jews than a minyan make, a trio of fierce believers in all sorts of mysterious forces that we don’t understand, and a triumvirate of feminists who nevertheless describe ourselves in relation to relationships: we’re a partnerless, childless, even petless sorority consisting of one divorcee (Lady), one perpetually grieving widow (Vee), and one spinster—that would be Delph.

When we were young women, with our big bosoms and butts, our blackrimmed glasses low on the bridges of our broad beaky noses, our dark hair corkscrew curly, we resembled a small flock of intellectual geese in fright wigs, and people struggled to tell us apart. These days it’s less difficult.

Lady is the oldest, and now that she’s one year shy of fifty, she’s begun to look it, soft at the jaw, bruised and creped beneath her eyes. She’s the one who wears nothing but black, not in a chic New York way, but in the way of someone who finds making an effort exhausting. Every day: sweatshirt, jeans, sneakers, all black. “I work in a bookstore,” she says, “and then I come home and stay home. Who do I have to dress up for?” She wears no bra, hasn’t since the 1960s, and these days her breasts sag to her belly, making her seem even rounder than she is. “Who cares?” she says. “It’s not like I’m trying to meet someone.” Her hair, which she wears in a long queue held with a leather and stick barrette, is freighted with gray.

Vee is the tallest (though we are all short), and the thinnest (though none of us is thin). Her face is unlined as if she’s never had any cares, which (she says with good reason) is a laugh. She doesn’t like black, prefers cobalts and purples and emeralds, royal colors that make her look alive even as she’s dying. “Isn’t that what fashion is?” she says. “A nonverbal means of lying about the sad, naked truth?” She wears no bra either, but in her case it’s because she has no breasts. She has no hair either. Chemo-induced alopecia, they call it. No hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes. Her underarms, her legs—

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they’re little-girl smooth. As is the rest of her. Little-girl smooth.

Delph is still the baby. Even now, two years into her forties, she looks much younger than the other two. She’s the smallest, barely five foot one, and the chubbiest, and she still wears girlish clothes: white peasant blouses with embroidery and drawstrings; long floral skirts that sometimes skim the ground, the hems frayed from sidewalks. As for her hair, it’s always been the longest, the wildest, the curliest, those curls bouffanting into the air, rippling down her back, tendriling around her big hoop earrings, falling into her mouth, spiraling down into her eyes. She says there’s nothing to be done about it; it’s just the way her hair wants to be. “There’s plenty to be done about it,” Vee has said more than once. “Just get me a pair of hedge clippers, and I’ll show you.”

So: black-clad, gray-haired, saggy, baggy Lady. Pale-skinned, bald-headed, flat-chested Vee. And little Delph. Three easily distinguishable women. And yet people still mix us up. The aged super who has known us since we were children. Our neighbors, old and new. We don’t resent it. Even our mother used to get jumbled up and call us by the wrong names. Sometimes we do it ourselves.

“I’m Delph,” Delph will say to Lady, who has just called her Vee for the third time in an evening. Most of the time, though, we let it go.

And sometimes one of us, sleepy or tipsy, catches a glimpse of herself in a mirror, and for a moment even she mistakes herself for one of the others.

Also, sometimes we confuse things by wearing each other’s clothes.

Like many of the Alter women in the generations before ours, we were named for flowers—but Lady is how Lily pronounced her name as a toddler, and it stuck; Vee is as much of Veronica as anyone has ever bothered to utter; and Delph is short for Delphine, which our mother thought was the name of the vivid blue perennial, but actually means “like a dolphin.” We don’t mind the nicknames. You might even say we’ve cultivated them. The flower names our mother picked never thrilled us. The funereal lily. The purple veronica, known for its ability to withstand neglect. Delph’s name that isn’t quite what it was supposed to be. “Neither the gods of flora nor the gods of fauna knew who had jurisdiction over me,” Delph likes to declaim. “No wonder I fell through the cracks.”

The truth is, we all fell through the cracks, and that’s where we’ve stayed.

Our father left when Lady was seven, Vee four, Delph swaddled. Our mother . . . well, that’s another sad story. But life between the cracks isn’t so bad when you’ve got sisters. It can be cozy and warm, when that’s what you want.

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A Reunion of Ghosts - Judith Claire Mitchell

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oanna of Navarre, second wife of King Henry IV, crowned Queen in Westminster Abbey with all the royal regalia in February 1403, is one of England's queens to remain almost invisible.

So why would I choose to write about her, apart from having a very personal delight in discovering a medieval woman who might just have something to say to us today. Because to marry Henry, Joanna was forced into some major decisionmaking, not all destined to bring her happiness.

It was to be no easy marriage for Henry and Joanna, with England torn apart in an ongoing civil war instigated by the powerful Percy family and the Welsh Owain Glyn Dwr. Would Henry and Joanna weather the storms of political upheaval and open rebellion?

Many were willing to claim that Richard II was still alive, waiting to lead an overthrow of the Lancaster monarchy. Many were willing to join such a rebellion.

Even worse for the new Queen, as a Breton by association, Joanna could be seen as the enemy in their midst.

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It can be filled with in-jokes and conversational shorthand and foolishness, if that’s what’s needed. Or it can be silent and still, which we tend to appreciate these days, given that, in addition to everything else, we’ve grown ever more introverted, even a touch agoraphobic.

All of which makes us well suited to the project we embark upon tonight, namely writing this whatever-it-is— this memoir, this family history, this quasi-confessional.

Our subject is the last four generations of Alters, up through and including our own. We plan to record all the sorrows and stumbles as well as all the accomplishments and contributions. We’re sorry to say there’ve been many of the former, far fewer of the latter. This is especially true when it comes to our own generation. We’re the entirety of the fourth generation; we’re the last of the Alter line; we’re “that’s all there is, there ain’t no more”; and we’ve brought the family name no glory.

On the other hand, we’ve brought it no shame either, which is more than certain preceding generations can say. That first generation, for instance, which starred our infamous great-grandfather, Lorenz Otto Alter, World War I hero, World War I criminal. Genius and monster. He was the sinner who doomed us all.

Still, he accomplished things. Good things, bad things, Nobel Prize– winning things. Not so the three of us. We’ve accomplished nothing, contributed even less, and we fear for the poor sap who’ll someday be saddled with our eulogies. What will this hapless orator say? Delph Alter, the youngest sister, never left a filing cabinet less organized than she found it.

Vee Alter, the benighted monkey in the middle, spent her entire adult life as a paralegal at a law firm where she drafted wills and settled estates—a deadly occupation. Lady Alter, the eldest, stood behind a cash register, ringing up purchases of paperbacks and magazines, saying little all day besides thank you and do you need a bag for that and romance is the third aisle on your left.

Clearly all three died of excruciating boredom.

Yit’kadal v’yit’kadash. Requiescat in pace. Th-th-that’s all, folks.

We’ve been thinking about our eulogies lately because this is not only our memoir, it’s also our suicide note. It’s true: we’ve set the date at last.

Midnight, December 31, 1999. New Year’s Eve. We’ve always known we’d die by our own hands sooner or later. Sooner has now come a-knocking.

“Six months to a year.” That’s what Vee’s doctor said.

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step-son and the hero of Agincourt.

The consequences for Joanna of the choices she made in her life were far reaching. They brought her status and much happiness but also condemned her to a life of great uncertainty.

The Queen's Choice, I decided, was a story worth writing.

The Queen’s C hoice Who was Joanna of Navarre?

What was it that made Joanna, a renowned and highly capable ruler of thirty years of age, with a healthy family of seven children and an enviable reputation, give up everything power, children, family approval - to travel to England to wed the usurper Henry Bolingbroke who had stolen the Crown of England from his cousin Richard II? Was not Joanna past the age of frivolous emotion? Her duty surely lay with Brittany and the young Duke, her son, for whom she was Regent.

With Joanna in England, Brittany under the guiding hand of the Duke of Burgundy was perfectly prepared to throw its weight behind England's enemies. Even without the wars, Bretons were detested for their piracy and trade aggression at England's expense. Joanna would not be the most popular of queens.

And then there was the terrifying accusation of necromancy against her, that by using witchcraft and necromancy Joanna had plotted the death of King Henry V, her

The Queen’s Choice by Anne O’Brien is published by Mira Books as a £12.99 hbk on 14th January 2016.

Free copies will be sent out on receipt of stock from the publisher.

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The Queen’s Choice - Anne O’Brien

October 1396: the town of Ardres, near Calais It was to be the day, although I did not know it when my women confined my hair to a jewelled caul and coronet, my feet to gilded-toed shoes, and all in between to layers of fine linen, silk damask and fur.

It was to be the day that my life tilted on its even keel; the day that my ordered existence warped, as a tapestry, ill-formed in the hands of a careless Arras weaver, would stretch immoderately in the damp of winter. I had one such in my audience chamber at the Château of Vannes, until I dispatched it, ruined, to some distant storeroom. On this day it was as if some power had disturbed an exact balance that throughout my life had been secure and unquestioned.

It was the day that I met Henry, Earl of Derby.

Not that I had any presentiment of such meddling in what fate, my father and my husband had decreed for me. Nor did I look for such turbulence in my life, for I lived in placid luxury, always predictable, sometimes dull, but never less than harmonious. My life demanded no emotional response from me, rather a practical acceptance of my role as wife, mother, ducal consort. Indeed my whole life had been one of acceptance. I was particularly good at it. I was nobly born, twenty-eight years old, and had been Duchess of Brittany for ten of them. But on that bright morning, my thoughts occupied far from any intrusive dabbling, all was overset.

‘What do you think?’

A soft voice in my ear managed to pierce the snap and flap of canvas of the dozens of pavilions, a huge encampment constructed for the occasion.

The voice of John de Montfort, my husband, the fifth Duke of Brittany.

‘Poor mite. It’s no age to be wed,’ I whispered back. I would not wish for one of my daughters to be wed at so tender an age, but dynastic marriages demanded sacrifice. My mother, undoubtedly a sacrifice in her union with my father, had been wed at eight years.

‘He’ll only get her allegiance.’ John frowned at the charming scene where the bridegroom kissed the cheek of his child-bride. ‘Not her body.’

‘So I should hope.’

I smiled.

I liked weddings. Such an opportunity to reunite with family and friends, and erstwhile enemies too, without the prospect of drawn swords or blows traded in the aftermath of too many toasts to the happy couple.

Although, I considered as the two puissant kings, one of England, the other

The Queen’s Choice - Anne O’Brien

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of France, drew close to exchange the desired kiss of peace, that could not always be guaranteed. I remembered occasions when good manners had drowned in a pot of ale almost before the marriage vows had been taken.

But not today. Today, we had been assured, would be a day of good omen.

We all knelt in a gleaming shiver of silk and satin as Richard of England and Charles of France clasped hands and beamed their goodwill.

I particularly like French weddings, with the wealth of aunts and uncles and a fistful of cousins here for me to enjoy, for through my mother’s blood I was a Valois princess. And now that the greatest blot on the political landscape, my father, no longer defiled this earth with his presence, there was no need for me to hold my breath as I had as a young girl. My father was dead, and had been for almost ten years. He and his vile temper and even viler habits would not be missed.

My father, of atrocious repute, had been King of Navarre, that prestigious little kingdom which bordered with France and English possessions to the south, and so was much desired in alliance. But it was my mother, daughter of the Valois King John the Good, who gave me my true rank. King Charles the Sixth of France was my first cousin, the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy my uncles. I could claim cousinship with every man or woman at the Valois Court of France. Every man or woman who mattered in the politics of Europe. I had been raised to know my worth.

‘I see that Charles is in his right mind,’ I observed, my eyes lowered in deepest respect for this royal cousin who was acknowledged as mad and could become violent in the blink of an eye. ‘I expect the whole Court has been offering up novenas to St Jude.’

‘Ha! It would take more than a petition to lost causes. I wager it would take a full Requiem Mass to guarantee Charles’s sanity for more than a day at a time,’ my husband replied.

We were here for a momentous alliance that might bring some vestige of peace to our troubled lands. And there he was, the bridegroom, tall and resplendent in red, smiling and gracious, luminous with satisfaction. We had heard that it was not altogether a popular move across the sea, a French woman to be crowned Queen of England, but the English King would have his way. King Richard the Second, a widower, was in need of a wife and an heir. A country was precarious without heirs, and here I could admit to my own smugness. I came from fertile stock, with six stalwart children of my own, four of them sons to safeguard the inheritance of Brittany. I had every reason to enjoy my own achievements. Was family not everything?

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The Queen’s Choice - Anne O’Brien

We rose to our feet, my husband’s hand beneath my arm, allowing me the time to cast an eye over the bride, this child Isabelle who was still four weeks from her seventh birthday. I did not fear for her. She would be given all the time she needed to grow up before she must become a wife.

‘He will care for her.’

I turned to the owner of the voice who had echoed my thoughts, John, solid in dark velvet, as handily at ease in silk and fur and jewelled rings as he was in armour. My lord was given to opulence when the occasion demanded it.

‘He looks at her as if she were a present wrapped in gold,’ I said. The bride giggled as Richard bent again to kiss her cheek. ‘Do you think it will bring an end to the conflict?’

‘King Richard does not have a name for warfare,’ John said, and in truth the rancorous relations between England and France had settled a little since Richard had taken the throne. ‘He’s not of a mind to pursue English claims in France, lost by Edward, the old King.’

And there the discussion of rights and wrongs, of who should wear the Crown of France ended, as the royal families moved towards the dais. The crowds milled. The musicians and minstrels puffed and blew with enthusiastic disharmony. Platters of food and vessels of wine were produced. I sighed a little.

‘Do you wish to go? I can arrange for you to retire.’

John’s hand was again solicitously on my arm, for I was carrying another child. No one would notice—there was no need yet for my sempstresses to loosen the stitching of my bodice—but John had a protective care for me and I covered his hand with mine.

‘Certainly not.’

John, wisely, did not waste his breath in argument. ‘Then if you are feeling robust, my love, come and meet a family for whom I have the greatest affection.’

John set about forcing a path, the bejewelled crowd parting before his impressive figure like the Red Sea before Moses. We were heading, I realised, towards the English contingent that had accompanied their King, now standing in an elegant little group to one side of the dais. Superbly dressed, superbly self-aware as they viewed the proceedings, they were here to honour the event and be gracious. I did not know them.

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BOOKSHOPS WE LIKE

BOOKSHOPS WE LIKE

t r av el l in g If you w er e t o o p en a bo o ks ho p w i th a n ame l ik e that, where would you site it in the UK? Just behind the bu sies t r a ilway s tat ion in L ond on ? C or r ec t !

As well as travel literature and guides, we do have a unique selection of world poetry representing poets from London, Ethiopia, Canada, Somalia, and Central America.

Our ranges of fiction and nonfiction representing Asia and Southeast Europe are also particularly diverse.

W

e opened Travelling Through... in October 2014, and we’re all about books which tell you about culture, community and place. Whether it is fiction, non-fiction, travel writing, memoir or biography, we categorise our recommendations by continent, country and location therein rather than by genre. In this way, we hope to inspire cultural discovery across the world and across London,

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We are also keen to work with local authors, hold regular events and readings, etc. and have partnered with both poetry press, Hercules Editions and poetry publication, and provide an outlet for Butcher's Dog just around the visitors to discover new and corner, to hold poetry readings classic works from across the and launches. Authors Julian globe.

Sayarer, Elizabeth Gowing, Emma is our captain of the Stephen Marriott, Mary J Travelling Through ship, Howell and Jennifer Wallace erstwhile world traveller, and have held book readings or avid armchair traveller, as the launches with us. Most recently selection of the shop will attest.

Simon Frank and Margit Ian and Abigail are our Mulder launched their second assistant booksellers, baristas, Squarehead children's book and resident experts on here Hairy Scary's Bad Day contemporary photography delighting children and and Victorian novels children-at-heart alike. respectively.

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through... our promotions are linked to our cafe; for instance discounted or complimentary cafe fare with the purchase of a book or entrance ticket to an author reading. We also participate in Books Are My Bag events, offering a BAMB bag with every £10 purchase (while stocks last!). Our café downstairs with walled patio garden is a secret hideaway where we serve artisan teas, coffee and hot chocolate as well as a selection of delicious cakes and savoury strudels. We are licensed to sell wine and beer on weekday evenings and Saturday lunchtime. And if you are looking for a cosy space for a private party or book launch the bookshop space and café are available for hire.

Though our doors have only been open a year, we hope to continue to engage with local authors, as well as those whose books provide a unique perspective on culture and community. And then there’s the monthly book club we host, But overall, you should stop by so for the moment we are all reading Emma Larkin's Finding because our selection is George Orwell in Burma. But over the past few months, our book club has read Antarctic page-turner Everland, Mexican travel memoir A Visit to Don Otavio, and Swedish island idyll, The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. Something from every corner of the world...

Do you need any more reasons to visit us? Well, quite a few of

thoughtfully curated, each book either having been read by one of our staff, or recommended by friends, family, or customers. As our books are arranged by continent rather than genre, customers are certain to discover something interesting.

And both our new and secondhand selection is always changing, so you're guaranteed to find new books each visit.

You will find Travelling Through . . at 131 Lower Marsh, London SE1 7AE and more information at www.travellingthrough.co.uk Twitter: @Trvllng_Thrgh Part of the Love Your Indie scheme loveyourindie.co.uk

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IN CONVERSATION

In conversation...

Claire Fuller

Claire Fuller and Catriona Ward hit it off at our readers day (see p45) so we asked them if they’d continue their conversation.

Claire: Hello Catriona.

What did you think having your first book published would be like, and what was different?

Catriona: Hello, Claire. Good question. Difficult question!

Rawblood has only been published for two weeks – so I have limited experience. So far it has been largely as I had hoped, which is wonderful. I will say that before being published I hadn’t fully understood the challenges debut novelists face in today’s extremely competitive market. You focus so much on getting published that it can feel like the end of the road when you get there. Whereas actually it brings a whole new set of challenges with it - and it’s just the beginning.

We hope.

What I really looked forward to and what I have in fact most enjoyed

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over the last few months is bookshop talks, literary festivals, author evenings. Talking to readers and writers, not just about my book but books in general. Writing is an isolated profession, and that contact with like-minded book people has been both a pleasure and an education.

What did it mean to you, and how did it feel for your debut, Our Endless Numbered Days to (completely deservedly, I think!) win such a major prize as the Desmond Elliott? [is is for the best debut novel in 2015.]

Claire: It was absolutely amazing! Firstly, it was up against some wonderful books including e Miniaturist and Elizabeth is Missing. And secondly there were three highly respected judges, so it was a huge compliment for them to select my novel. I really didn't believe it when chair of the judges, Louise Doughty, read out my name at the award ceremony in London. Quite wonderful. Rawblood is a wonderfully haunting and atmospheric novel. Did you always want to write in the gothic style? Is it a genre you grew up reading?

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Catriona: I’ve always loved gothic literature. It’s fall-onyour-sword stuff, such a rich emotional and symbolic landscape – but it only works when paired with scepticism. You need the rational narrator to fully frame the horror. Jonathan Harker, in Dracula, Lockwood in Wuthering Heights... I devoured those books when I was young - as well as more recent authors, like Kelly Link, Susan Hill, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King. e conventions were embedded in me. When I started writing, it all flowed very naturally into the style and structure. Having lived in the gothic for five or so years now, I’m ready for new pastures. I think the next one will be a bit different.

Your second novel, Swimming Lessons will also be published

by Fig Tree. Was that a different experience?

Claire: It was different. At first I couldn't help but be aware that there is now a potential audience who might be interested in what I wrote next and that was slightly inhibiting.

But also I didn't have a strong idea of what the novel would be about, as I did with Our Endless Numbered Days.

Swimming Lessons came from a couple of things: firstly, a piece of flash fiction I wrote about a man on a beach, so I had a character and a location, but no idea what was interesting about him.

And also a project my husband and I did before we were married. We wrote notes to each other and hid them in each other’s houses. He's found all the ones I wrote, but several years later I'm still looking for some of his. But these were vague ideas and so, unlike my first book, my second was full of dead-ends and I had to find my way past them to get to the story.

What's your writing process?

Are you a planner? When do you write, and where?

Catriona: I’m a planner but a vague one. I almost always know the end point of a scene, but not how to get there. at’s the exciting part. When characters start surprising you, when the fictional world feels complete, like something you’ve wandered into rather than something you’ve created.

I wrote a lot of Rawblood at night, at rather unsociable hours. My habits are more diurnal now. I like writing in the morning and early aernoon, preferably in someone else’s house. My parents’ house in Devon is a favourite. I talk to myself a lot while I’m writing, so it has to be quite a secluded corner.

Do any particular writers influence you, and how?

Claire: Oh, so many writers and books. I was interested to see you mention Shirley Jackson. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is possibly my favourite book ever - beautifully written, but also something slightly sinister throughout it. I also really like fiction with lots of nature writing. David Vann's novels, for example, especially Legend of a Suicide was a big influence on Our Endless Numbered Days, as was Wallace Stegner, and his novel Angle of Repose. ey both have a very strong narrative and interesting characters (although Legend of a Suicide is really a collection of stories), interwoven with descriptions of landscape that is very vivid. Perhaps what links all three books I've mentioned is they are all quite dark.

I love that you talk to yourself when writing. Do you have any other quirky author habits?

Catriona: I love writing outdoors. It can be difficult, as I use a laptop. I was in France this summer past, and I dragged an enormous old table out of the house, down the hill into an old olive grove, and wrote there. It was lovely. At the end of my stay I couldn’t get it back up the hill into the house. Luckily it turned out to be an old, unwanted table so I didn’t feel too bad. I hope it will still be there next year waiting for me.

As you say your influences are quite dark. Our Endless Numbered Days and your forthcoming novel are both mysteries and

also quite dark (I’m guessing, with Swimming Lessons!)

Claire: Yes, both are mysteries and dark, although Swimming Lessons perhaps less so. I think what draws me to writing like that is it is what I first remember reading and enjoying as a young teenager. My Dad had a non-fiction book called Phenonema: A Book of Wonder which was about things like spontaneous human combustion, raining fish and fairy rings, which I was absolutely fascinated by. I also loved to be scared and read a lot of horror and ghost stories from an early age, and watched Tales of the Unexpected and the Hammer House of Horror series. All these spooky and dark influences must have seeped in, not surprisingly.

You can find the full conversation on nudge.

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Catriona Ward

IN CONVERSATION

Photo: Gary Doak

MY FIVE FAVES

Priya Parmar looks to some 20th century classics for inspiration.

Vanessa and her Sister

by Priya Parmar is published

by Bloomsbury as a £7.99 PB on 14th January 2016..

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MY FIVE FAVES

HOWARDS END

BY E.M. FORSTER Subtle, lyric, and rich with a melancholy that does not step fully forward until the final third of the novel, this is a story I come back to again and again.

The independent, artistic Shlegels and the convention bound Wilcoxes weave in and out of each other’s lives to devastating effect. Women anchor the novel. There are the Shlegel sisters: Margaret, cultured, free thinking but grounded in the traditions of her time, and Helen, who is wild, absolute in her idealism, and wholly uncompromising. And then, there is Ruth Wilcox. Ruth is a character who haunts me. She is a bit out of focus and difficult to know but so compelling. The house, Howards End, is Ruth’s childhood home and I love the way that she loves it. Through a series of tightly plotted moments, Howards End falls to Margaret, whom we quickly see is the natural, rightful heir. It gripping and inevitable and it is beautifully done. I think I reread Howards End at least six times while I was writing Vanessa and Her Sister. Returning to Forster’s understated rhythms and his echoes of the subversive, bohemian Bloomsbury Group solved something in my own writing.

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MRS DALLOWAY

BY VIRGINIA WOOLF I know it is so often quoted but I do love the first line. I love the cadence, the information, the flowers, and the pure belllike tone. And then comes the rest of the novel, and it is marvellous. The structure is bold and seamless. The plot slips forward and back in time from the early 1920’s to a perfect prewar day in June to the shelling of World War I, and the weight of the interior narration is passed from person to person like a hat. It is a fearless structure and it pulls together the disparate characters as they brush past one another in their small but fiercely dramatic London lives over the course of a single day. Clarissa Dalloway is the engine of the story and she is planning a party. Woolf had originally planned to kill Clarissa at the end and I am so happy she changed her mind.

The novel needs Clarissa to live.

I opened Vanessa and Her Sister with a party in honour of Mrs Dalloway, my favourite of Woolf ’s novels.

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED

BY EVELYN WAUGH There are books that you read at the right place at the right time and when you pick them up later, the visceral memory of that time comes thudding back. It was my third year of university, I was studying at Oxford and I read Brideshead Revisited in the green gold afternoons of June.

The early sections of the book take place in Oxford. Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte fall in love in the honeyed summer term. Things go horribly wrong and heartbreak eventually crashes their youthful idyll but that golden light is built of sturdy stuff and after the devastation of the final pages, it is the clear memory of that light that is left.

‘Priya Parmar is a powerful new voice in historical fiction … and provides a new view of the artistic, sensual Bloomsbury world, placing Vanessa Bell at the heart of the story’ Philippa Gregory

AN EQUAL MUSIC

BY VIKRAM SETH I called my mother three times a day as I was reading this glorious novel. It is an unabashedly musical novel, diving and swooping in the language of chamber music. I am not musical. (After five years of piano, my piano teacher invited me to stop taking lessons.) But, my mother is a wonderful pianist and was happy to field my many questions as I read. By the third day, (and after playing Schubert’s Trout Quintet several times for me down the phone,) she went out and bought the novel and we read it in tandem. It was one of those vividly happy experiences that sticks to the bones of memory.

I was in London, she was in Washington DC and it made me miss her less.

This is a spectacular, pull-nopunches sort of book. Michael, the violinist, loves Julia, the pianist. He loved her before and lost her and has been unable to find her until he sees her on a London bus. Julia is now happily married but falls again for Michael. But, the love triangle is not the heartbeat of the story.

Music drives this novel—music and the unbearable understanding that Julia is going deaf.

POSSESSION

BY AS BYATT This is a thunderclap of a novel. The enormous scope is hung on a gorgeous frame.

The echoing, twinned narratives of this novel become an auxiliary engine, ramping up the already galloping pace. The illicit love affair between fictional Victorian poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel Lamotte, forms the historical thread and the academic treasure hunt story of scholars Roland Michell and Dr Maud Bailey forms the present day narrative. The stories diverge and dovetail and the payoff is huge. Exquisitely detailed and resolutely pitched high, this is a novel the reader must work for—and that is something I absolutely love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Priya Parmar is a former dramaturg [a professional position within a theatre or opera company that deals mainly with research and development of plays or operas] and freelance editor, educated at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, the University of Oxford and Edinburgh University. Author of one previous novel, Exit the Actress, she and her husband divide their time between Hawaii and London together with their French bulldog, Herbert.

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I’M A WRITER... Get me out of here!

Marianne Kavanagh is our first I’M A WRITER . . . and she’s grabbed the best tagline but what’s bugging her?

Dickens didn’t bother with Facebook. Daphne du Maurier never sent a single tweet. No one expected George Eliot to be active on Instagram and James Joyce didn’t even have a website. But these days writers have to be good at social media. It’s not enough to write a book, or even to get it published. You have to get noticed. You have to be good at publicity.

Unless, of course, you’re already a celebrity. This autumn sees the publication of a number of novels and children’s books written by British stars. They include Terry Wogan’s collection of short stories Those Were the Days, David Walliams’ children’s book Grandpa’s Great Escape, and Dawn French’s third novel According to Yes. Publishers love big names. You can see why. Big names attract publicity. If Madonna, Geri 72

Halliwell or Julianne Moore bring out a children’s book, journalists can’t write copy fast enough. But publishers also know that talented comedians, actors and presenters are good with words. They delight audiences, so they’ll entertain readers. Dawn French’s first novel A Tiny Bit Marvellous was hugely popular. David Walliams, who regularly tops the bestseller charts, is said to be the new Roald Dahl.

All of which leaves us noncelebrities feeling incredibly gloomy. Our lives to date have been rubbish. We didn’t have the talent to think up Little Britain. We haven’t got a BAFTA for being the vicar of Dibley, and it’s way too late to switch career and become a world-famous rock star. All we have is our writing.

And because we much prefer hiding indoors to making any kind of public appearance, the tiniest lifeline of publicity is a huge ordeal. Even a ten-minute phone interview for the local paper is terrifying. That’s why, in all photographs, we have frozen rictus grins like Donkey in Shrek.

For all I know, celebrities feel the same. They make it look so straightforward, as they chat away on This Morning or The

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Graham Norton Show. I never hear the slightest quiver in the voice of a celebrity being interviewed on Woman’s Hour. But what do I know? Maybe underneath it all they’re terrified, hearts pounding, adrenalin racing. Maybe it’s never easy to publicise your own writing, however famous you are.

‘You’ve got to get a thicker skin,’ said my husband this morning, as I started worrying about doing a reading next week in my lovely local bookshop.

He’s right. But right at this moment that seems as likely as winning a part in a Hollywood megabuster.

Marianne Kavanagh’s second novel Don’t Get Me Wrong is published by Text.

You’ll find more I’m a Writer pieces on nudge. . . . And I love social media by Emily Benet . . . And I’m sick of happy endings by Radhika Sanghani and several other authors.

Although we are only sixteen years into the new century we thought it was a good time to take stock.

You will find full reviews of previous nominations (above) on nudge. Use BB21C to find them all.

Published by Doubleday Ireland 2013

We make no apologies for our first ‘returning’ author whose The Thing About December was one of our BB21C titles in nb86 – our readers feel proprietorially towards Donal Ryan.

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The Spinning Heart

Purple Hibiscus

Donal Ryan

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Back in January 2013, I was sent a copy of this book. It was not a book I would have chosen to read myself, a contemporary Irish novel from a debut author.

Within a few pages I was hooked. I was blown away. I felt that everyone should know about this book. I posted my five star review and hoped others would discover it. And they did. Within a short time a book chain had picked it out as a book to watch and Guy Pringle began to champion it in newbooks. The magazine had an interview with the incredibly talented author and my review appeared alongside. By the middle of the year the Man Booker longlist arrived with Ryan’s name upon it. I don’t think I’ve actually read that many Booker longlisters before they have been announced. It felt like I was in at something big right from the beginning. It didn’t make the shortlist but did end up in the coveted “newbooks Top 10 Books of the Year” and was certainly my favourite read.

It is set in small-town recessionhit Ireland where everyone

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knows everyone's business and the departure of a bankrupt builder leaves a great hole in the community. Ex-foreman, Bobby, the central character, is given first shot as narrator and then the tale is told by twenty other narrators, each developing the plot. No one is given a second bite at the cherry. This unusual device works so well, that within a few pages Ryan superbly creates each character through their narration.

It is a book of voices, every one clear and vibrant. Each section could be read separately as a high quality short story but when read as a whole it becomes a compelling first-rate novel of contemporary Ireland.

It is a slim book and deceptively simple. Reading groups would love that a little analysis shows what a complex piece of work this is and marvel at how a whole community could be created in so few words: wonderful economic writing.

The Spinning Heart is a superb achievement by Donal Ryan.

Phil Ramage

Published by Fourth Estate. 2005 A recommended read in nb25

Half of a Yellow Sun won the 2007 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and has recently been awarded the “Bailey’s Best of the Best” from the winning novels of the past ten years. However, Linda Hepworth thinks Adichie’s first novel was equally remarkable and has the potential to become a classic.

Kambili, a stuttering, repressed 15 year old Nigerian girl , along with her brother and mother, is physically and emotionally abused by her bullying, violent and fanatically religious father.

Eventually, when she and her brother begin to spend time with their aunt and cousins, they are exposed to a different, more joyful and spontaneous way of living. Although at first fearful of this unaccustomed freedom, Kambili begins to find a strong voice and to experience how it feels to be loved unconditionally.

Woven into the story are all the conflicts within the family: violence and appeasement; love and forgiveness; Christianity and the struggle for independence. These issues are dealt with not only on a personal level, but are also reflected in the descriptions of a country in which tyranny and fear dominate people’s lives.

The author evokes a vivid picture of the struggles in modern day Nigeria: the disgrace of so much poverty and deprivation in the midst of so much wealth, and the

tragedy of the exodus of so many talented people fleeing a repressive regime.

This is a compelling and powerful story which is written in a deceptively simple, calm and rather understated way. It does offer glimmers of hope, although this is somewhat tempered by an awareness that a legacy of scars will remain.

On re-reading it I realise why this story has remained vivid for me since I first read it ten years ago, and why I think it deserves a place as one of the best books of the 21st century: though set in Nigeria, its themes are universal, and resonate as strongly now as they did when it was written.

Linda Hepworth

Published by Fourth Estate. 2014

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Altered Land Jules Hardy

Published by Pocketbooks. 2002

Another ‘discovery’ that newbooks would claim to have brought to the much wider attention of readers who have loved it as much as your publisher.

Where are you now, Jules Hardy? We would love to hear you have another book on the way.

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If you are looking for a tense exciting story this is not for you. But if you enjoy curling up with a superb tale, peopled by fascinating characters, read this absorbing book. It is a ‘feel good’ book.

A love story in every sense focussing on the close relationship between Joan and her son, John. Joan’s strikingly beautiful appearance attracts the opposite sex and she is a loving single parent. The author portrays magnificently the fun enjoyed when mother and son are together. A tragic accident on a treat to London for John’s 13th birthday throws that in jeopardy. Never have I read a better illustration of how a brief moment has the potential to change lives through no fault of the participants.

After long recuperation in hospital Joan and John return home scarred and impaired physically and psychologically.

Their attempt to rebuild their lives is told with sensitivity and skill when a life plan can no longer be pursued. The writer changes the viewpoint and the time zone in alternating

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chapters and the reader has the fairly unique experience of seeing both points of view and added to the reader’s emotional involvement. The language has a poetic flow to it as befits such a slow meditative book. A book to get lost in.

There are no ‘baddies’ in this story, rather there are people with regrets and ‘if only’ feelings. I empathised with Joan and John willing everything to come right for them. An extremely moving story that lingers in the mind long after the last page has been read. A book written from the heart to such an extent I wonder if it was based on truth.

Sheila A. Grant, Ayrshire

Personal read.................. ★★★★★ Group read....................... ★★★★★

I remember vividly getting to the 'tragic accident'.

It felt like the air had been instantly withdrawn from my lungs. Nor was I able to breathe in. I wasn't dead but neither was I alive for what seemed like a very long time.

Guy Pringle

Around the World in 80 Books Jade Craddock continues her literary journey beginning on the Baltic in Latvia, then crossing Russia to end in Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea. You can find her reviews of books from previous countries she has "visited" by searching nudge with ATW80.

Around The World In 80 Books

Most of us have a 'Russian phase' in our reading lives – but more recently?

And your knowledge of Latvian and Azerbaijani literature? We thought not, so fortunately here comes Jade Craddock to expand your horizons.

LATVIA

I

must admit from the very premise of this book – a woman’s life told largely in reverse chronological order – I had high hopes, but as any veteran reader will know, books quite often don’t live up to the blurb. The first chapter however was hugely promising and set up the intriguing concept. After that the next few chapters were quite difficult to get into, introspective and enigmatic as they are, and I began to worry that this was going to be one of those books that promised so much but fell short.

However, it really is a case of the more you read, the more the pieces fit together and the story emerges. The idea of a reverse chronology is absolutely fascinating but at the same time inevitably risky. However, Ābele structures the novel in very clear sections and it is surprisingly easy to follow once you get into it and I really enjoyed this alternative approach.

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The story centres on the protagonist Ieva, whose life we follow from death to birth, but from the start we see how her story is caught up with the imprisonment of her husband, Andrejs, linked to the shooting of her boyfriend, Aksels. But with the reverse chronology it’s an interesting journey to get to the truth of this mystery and when we do, Ābele provides a worthy twist. By the end of the novel most things have been cleared up and there’s a very definite sense of Ieva’s life, although some questions still remain and I think this lends itself to reading groups and discussion. Indeed, as well as being a great personal read, this is definitely one to share and examine with other readers.

It’s a book of the sort of high literary value that you’d expect from a prize-winning novel and in some ways reminded me of Ali Smith’s How to be Both in its ability to fuse experimentalism with

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substance, although I’d argue that Ābele’s book has a stronger plot and story element to it.

Overall her book is one that requires attention and effort in the early stages but which I feel is fully rewarded by the end. It is the sort of book I was hoping to find on this journey and it’s great that it’s come from a nation I know so little about and whose literature I wouldn’t have otherwise come across.

Personal read ............★★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★

High Tide by Inga Ābele.

Published by Open Letter

RUSSIA

A

mongst the big names in contemporary Russian literature is author Ludmila Ulitskaya who has received the most nominations for the Russian Booker Prize. The Funeral Party was rereleased in August and was her first full-length novel to be published in English, originally in 2001.

What drew me to the book was the title and the book’s premise: the idea of different characters coming and going and gathering at the bedside of a dying artist. However, it wasn’t quite what I expected.

Although the party element of the title hints at this being far from a mournful, funereal novel, it largely avoids being oppressive or grim at all, oftentimes witty, satirical and wry. Nor is death the mainstay of the novel, in fact although Alik, the ailing character whose bedside at which the others congregate, is obviously unwell, he seems very much the life and soul of the gathering. His illness is acknowledged but hardly defines him. And surprisingly whilst he’s physically and emotionally at the centre of the novel, narratively he’s just one voice amongst many. Alik may be the glue that binds them all together but the novel is about the varied experiences of these characters – all Russian émigrés in America – how they came to

to be there, how they’ve acclimatised and what Russia and America mean to them.

So whilst there is a funeral and a quasi-party in this novel, it’s not really a novel about either of those things or even death, it’s more about the characters, their relationships, interactions and experiences. The novel runs to less than 200 pages and although Ulitskaya squeezes a lot in, I was left feeling as if I’d only scratched the surface and had to say goodbye prematurely. I would have preferred the novel to have more of a narrative rather than these character-driven snippets but it was a different and unusual experience. The novel is very much about the narrative mode and stylistic choice and reader response will depend on what you make of this.

Personal read ....................★★★ Group read .....................★★★★

The Funeral Party by Ludmila Ulitskaya. Published by W&N

FURTHER READING

Space limits what we can include here but we commend to you Jade’s much fuller and highly informative views on the publishing of the countries she’s ‘visiting’ that can be found on nudge – simply search with ATW80 on nudge-book.com and you will see just how comprehensive and erudite her accounts are.

“I can count off the things I know about Iceland on one hand, in fact I already have, and the things I know about Icelandic literature don’t even stretch that far, so it's a great place to start this voyage of discovery.”

“Although Swedish literature dates back to the Vikings, yes they had time to pen a saga or two in between taking to the high seas, it began to really flourish in the twentieth century.”

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AZERBAIJAN

A

li and Nino is somewhat of a departure from the other books I’ve reviewed so far in that it was originally published in 1937.

However, there’s not much translated Azerbaijani literature and anyway, this book is often considered as their national book, in the way of Madame Bovary, Don Quixote and Huckleberry Finn. It is easy to see in Ali and Nino’s starcrossed love affair echoes of Romeo and Juliet – there are two antithetical families, the Muslim Azerbaijani Shirvanshirs and the Christian Georgian Kipianias; a stabbed third party and a banishment, even a quasi balcony scene – well, Ali stood outside Nino’s school feeding her answers, but in that seemingly trite analogy lies the problem for me with this novel, it simply lacks the emotional integrity and intense passion of its Shakespearean forebear.

Indeed, Ali and Nino isn’t meant to be Romeo and Juliet and the love story is as much – indeed more so – the love story for one’s culture, one’s tradition and one’s home than that between two people. However, even so, it lacks the drama and tension of a truly great novel.

Indeed, every time an obstacle is introduced with which to test the characters, the situation is overcome fairly smoothly.

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There’s no real dramatic crux on which the whole novel hinges until perhaps the very end, but within the pages themselves whilst there’s a hint of flux and tension in the atmosphere, the narrative is largely unaffected. There’s also an emotional distance from the characters, most notably Nino who we only see through Ali’s eyes, and again this compromises the success of the novel. In terms of a sense of place, identity and nationhood, Ali and Nino is indeed up there with the likes of Don Quixote and Ulysses and is the sort of book that belongs to and defines its culture so effectively, but it falls down for me in drama and plot and just lacks that roundedness needed to make it a truly great book.

Personal read ....................★★★ Group read.........................★★★

WHERE NEXT JADE?

Uzbekistan: The Railway

by Hamid Ismailov.

Published by Harvill Secker.

Moldova: The Good Life Elsewhere

by Vladimir Lorchenkov Published by New Vessel Press

directory Ukraine: Suite Française

by Irène Némirovsky Published by Vintage Books

Ali and Nino by Kurban Said.

Published by Vintage

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The reviewers have their say

For reasons of space some reviews have been edited but you will find them in full on nudge.

Tip: simply use dir87 as your search.

reviews

Thanks to a very quick turnaround by your fantastic reviewers we present their thoughts on most of the novels in this year’s Costa Book Awards shortlist. Below are all of the titles on this year’s list.

reviews

The category winners are announced on Monday 4th January 2016 and the Costa Book of the Year is announced on Tuesday 26th Jan. Poetry lovers, you will find all four titles reviewed on nudge by Rebecca Foster and Jade Craddock.

2015 Costa Novel A God in Ruins

by Kate Atkinson The Green Road

by Anne Enright A Place Called Winter

by Patrick Gale At Hawthorn Time

by Melissa Harrison 2015 Costa First Novel Spill Simmer Falter Wither

by Sara Baume The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer The Loney

by Andrew Michael Hurley Things We Have in Common

by Tasha Kavanagh 2015 Costa Biography The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland

by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst The House by the Lake

by Thomas Harding John Aubrey: My Own Life

by Ruth Scurr The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science

by Andrea Wulf 2015 Costa Poetry Physical

by Andrew McMillan The Observances

by Kate Miller 40 Sonnets

by Don Paterson Talking Dead

by Neil Rollinson The Loney

by Andrew Michael Hurley 2015 Costa Children’s Book The Lie Tree

by Frances Hardinge Sophie Someone

by Hayley Long An Island of Our Own

by Sally Nicholls Jessica’s Ghost

by Andrew Norriss Full reviews of those published here can be found on nudge plus a couple we just didn’t have space for – use costa15 as your search to bring them all together.

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A GOD IN RUINS Kate Atkinson

THE GREEN ROAD Anne Enright

Doubleday

Jonathan Cape

Whereas Life after Life followed Ursula Todd as she was condemned to live her life over and over, A God in Ruins centres on her younger brother Teddy and his experiences as an RAF pilot during the war.

Although this is seemingly a much more straightforward book, it still succeeds in juxtaposing scenes from different periods in time.

The author has cleverly used this to create the mystery at the centre of the book, thus making the final revelation all the more surprising.

Of course, Teddy's time in the RAF is the central theme, and this together with his struggle to adapt to civilian life, will ensure that it appeals to a wide audience.

On this, Atkinson's research has been extensive, although this has not been at the expense of dramatic storytelling. Interestingly, the Special Operations Executive also gets a brief mention.

However, this is much more than the story of how one RAF pilot beat the odds.

Ultimately it is a thoroughly thought provoking book which explores the shadow which the war still casts.

It is 1980 in County Clare and Rosaleen Madigan takes to her bed after her son Dan tells her he is going to become a priest. Eldest daughter Constance waits for a mammogram test, son Emmet saves lives in Africa but is thwarted by a relationship and a dog and actress daughter Hannah struggles to cope with motherhood and alcohol.

The most vibrant of these is Dan, whose route to the Priesthood is diverted by trips to Fire Island, grappling with his sexuality at a time when men are falling rapidly to AIDS. Although the family go their separate ways there’s no real escape from the complex relationships they each have with their mother whose presence lurks in the background.

It is full of “moments” this novel – vignettes of excellent writing on coping with the complexities and tensions of life. The bringing together of the family for the final section works beautifully, returning home is so often poignant in fiction and this is no exception.

Nicholas Cutler Personal read ................★★★★ Group read .....................★★★★ Also reviewed on nudge by Susannah Perkins 4/3

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Phil Ramage Personal read ................★★★★ Group read .....................★★★★ See also Mandy Jenkinson’s review in nb86 and on nudge

A PLACE CALLED WINTER Patrick Gale

THE LONEY Andrew Michael Hurley

SPILL SIMMER FALTER WITHER Sara Baume

THE GIRL IN THE RED COAT Kate Hamer

THINGS WE HAVE IN COMMON Tasha Kavanagh

Tinder Press

John Murray

Windmill Books

Faber & Faber

Canongate

Harry Cane is vulnerable and confused and after a scandal hits the family, he finds himself exiled to Canada, penniless and forced to use his hands to work for the first time in his life. The opening pages of the novel find him as a patient in a psychiatric hospital before being transferred to an experimental community where he becomes a subject of a forward-thinking doctor. When Harry undergoes hypnotic therapy, the reader travels with him and the reasons for his incarceration are revealed.

A Placed Called Winter is emotive and beautiful, Patrick Gale is a genius story teller and he has created one of the most stunning and moving novels that I have read in many many years.

His sense of timing, his ability to create a setting that engulfs the reader is a triumph. The story deals with serious issues, with social injustices, with hardship and also with triumph. But this novel is not all hearts and flowers by any means.

The Loney is an odd, dreary sort of horror story - the tale of two boys, our nameless narrator and his mute brother, Andrew, known as Hanny, [the setting] a desolate stretch of northern coast, and one of a number of deliberately evocative place names in this story.

The boys travel to the Loney as part of a sort of pilgrimage . . . led by a newly arrived priest, Father Bernard, [with] the boys' parents, Father Wilfred's brother and his wife; and the church housekeeper and her fiancé. The religious aspect of the group's gathering is more than mere exposition: [his mother] believes it is here that Hanny will be 'cured' of his mutism and learning difficulties, and it's the perceived power of faith and ritual - ultimately, the insufficiency of faith - that informs the plot's development and the real horror at the Loney's heart . . . a seriously impressive first novel, and so successful at creating a setting that it's sure to linger in the memory.

This is an extended love letter from a man to his dog.

Ray’s life is a lonely one, his sole parent has died, leaving him in an empty house until he sees an advert for a rescue dog in a shop window. We know from the minute he catches his reflection looking at the photo that the relationship between these two will be significant. The one-eyed dog, the result of an unfortunate encounter with a badger, has a volatile temperament and becomes fiercely protective as the relationship between these two outsiders is forged. This may be her debut but I am sure Baume has a background in writing poetry, if she hasn’t then everything is there to suggest that this is a skill in which she would excel. . . . The sense of loneliness and the unfolding of secrets is beautifully handled. It’s knowingly quirky in the way [of ] Curious Incident and 100 Year Old Man and so might not be everyone’s cup of tea (bowl of kibble) but for the literary dog-lover it’s a must and I will be fascinated to see what Baume comes up with next.

From the tale of Red Riding Hood onwards, the wearing of red has foretold disaster and in Kate Hamer’s début, things are no different. Beth is the frayed and harried single mother, Carmel is her eccentric and day-dreaming eight year-old daughter. The two of them are slowly building up a new routine after the departure of Carmel’s father and one day Beth takes Carmel to a children’s festival. Just like that, Carmel is gone. Despite being marketed as a thriller, The Girl in the Red Coat does not strictly play by the rules of the genre. Rather than being concerned with the details of the crime itself, Hamer concentrates on its reverberations for Carmel and Beth as each of them attempt to carry on, separated from each other.

Like Room or Forgetting Zoe, this was a novel to be galloped through in chunks, I completed it with a feeling of relief at coming up for air.

The Girl in the Red Coat reveals Kate Hamer as an extraordinary new talent – yet somehow I could not warm to this book.

Phil Ramage

Personal read ....................★★★ Group read .....................★★★★ Also reviewed on nudge by Anne Cater 4/4

Yasmin is fifteen years old and unhappy. She's friendless and the victim of school bullies; she's overweight, and endures visits to a patronising dietician whose advice she ignores anyway.

The shining light in her life is her obsession with a radiant classmate, Alice Taylor. We meet Yasmin when she is staring at Alice but also watching someone else do the same. This is the first 'thing she has in common' with her coobserver, a stranger with whom she immediately feels a bond. But this person is no fellow pupil: he is a middleaged man . . . a chameleon-like character who moves from sinister to thoroughly innocuous so it's (no doubt intentionally) impossible to get an angle on who he is.

This is a really strong debut novel, a subtle masterclass in character-building with a teenage voice so genuine that Yasmin really comes alive. It's rare for me to read a book quickly and yet find its characters and other details only become more solid in my head as time passes, but that's exactly what has happened.

Anne Cater Personal read ............★★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★ See also multiple reviews on nudge, search with The verdict is in

Blair Rose Personal read ................★★★★ Group read .....................★★★★

Personal read ................★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★

Susannah Perkins

Blair Rose Personal read ................★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★

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reviews

LOVE AND FREINDSHIP AND OTHER YOUTHFUL WRITINGS Jane Austen Penguin Classics Sept 2014 hbk

Love and Freindship and Other Youthful Writings (sic) is a new paperback release from Penguin, offering an anthology collection of Jane Austen’s juvenilia, including snippets dating back to when the author was just eleven years old. The book offers fascinating and at times tantalising glimpses of the author in training, a young girl writing purely for her own amusement and that of her family, but then every so often she turns a particular phrase which betrays her as the woman who would go on to write some of the finest novels in the English language. Love and Freindship is at times a dense and disorientating read, but for the true Austen fan there is much to be enjoyed.

The reader is able to observe Austen’s early experiments, as she mimics Henry Fielding’s hyperbolic style, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary novel but then there are those moments of Austen elegance which signpost her own genius in embryo. More so even than with her later novels, one feels as though we are able to hear Jane’s own voice, with many pieces being written

84

reviews for public performance.

Many of her stories feature dispassionate descriptions of disastrous events – not unlike Voltaire’s Candide – and I could imagine her reading them aloud in a deadpan tone to family applause.

Down the centuries, Jane Austen has been repeatedly misconstrued as a romantic novelist, but here it is underlined that she was always a satirist before anything else. In works such as The Beautiful Cassandra, she describes how her heroine (named for her own sister Cassandra) fell violently in love with a bonnet, using the same expressions of affection more usually reserved for a lover. In some ways, Love and Freindship seems more like a collection of miniature high-spirited farces – but yet there is much pleasure watching Austen work with such enthusiasm. While nobody can doubt the beauty of her later works such as Persuasion, there is a sadness to some of its tone which is entirely absent here.

In style, many of the works are indeed reminiscent of some of the Brönte juvenilia, with the same unfinished style but yet there is a greater confidence about how she deploys the one-liner. Were she alive today, I could imagine Austen as a consummate stand-up comedian. In the titular story, we stand on the sidelines and snigger as two young women wreak havoc in the lives of all they come across – cheerfully explaining to the daughter of their benefactor that she cannot love the man her father wishes her to marry since he is only her father’s choice and anyway, the man’s

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hair ‘is not auburn’. They then point her in the direction of a fortune-hunter and wave her off to Gretna Green. The women of Austen’s juvenilia take turns fainting and go to Machiavellian lengths to get their own way about marriage, yet the naughtiness always remains within the realms of a parson’s daughter’s innocent imagination.

Susannah Perkins Personal read ................★★★★ Group read.............................★★

A RECENT NB RECOMMENDED READ

This book is a brilliant find, it wasn't quite what I expected, it was much better written and more subtle. I felt at the end of the book that I knew Ove and I'm sure I've met many people like him who aren't quite what they seem. It's hard to write a review without giving too much away as each event gives you a bit more insight to the character and that has to unfold as you read. What I can say is that Ove is a brilliantly drawn character and that everything in the book is used well to explain a bit more about him, nothing is wasted.

I loved this book, I love any book that makes me laugh or cry, but this one made me feel as though I'd met a real person and I really wasn't expecting to fall in love with Ove. Nicky Hallam Personal read ............★★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★

AYR WRITERS CLUB A MAN CALLED OVE Fredrik Backman

We are delighted to publish the winning review from AWC’s annual competition:

Sceptre May 2015 pbk

The story is about Ove, a very particular man and his attempts to keep order in his life and neighbourhood. I'm always wary if a book has quotes on the cover telling me how funny it is, I think these people must 'laugh out loud' at the slightest thing.

However, this book did make me laugh (and cry) out loud. Ove has to be the grumpiest character I've come across in a long time but the author does a great job of making him likeable as well. Throughout the book you learn more and more about his life and personality.

POEMS Iain Banks and Ken MacLeod Little, Brown Feb 2015 hbk

Before his death in 2013, Iain Banks had long planned to publish his own poems alongside those of his friend and fellow SF writer, Ken

MacLeod. Fifty of his poems written between 1973 and 1981 with forty by McLeod, arranged chronologically, make up this volume. Their poetry shares an SF view of Mankind and the World that can be tangential and distanced but is unaffected

by Raine’s Martianism.

Banks’s free form poems are instantly likeable and accessible. The earlier work, from his undergraduate days reading English at Stirling, explores a range of styles suffused by the classics, Shakespeare, Donne, Shelley, Yeats and Eliot, with wordplay as rich as those of McGough or Joyce: Andante!

Andante!

It’s just an alighieri! may be a pun too far but, once thought of, who could resist? Less sparky and more thought-provoking are: of consumerism – ‘diabetical materialism’; and the Mediterranean cerulean waves that ‘Lap us lazily’.

Assonance, paradox and irony abound: Xerxes exerted, beat and did not beat The straights.

The elephant in the room tramples the blind men And resumes its work Composing a treatise on reality.

Love too is a theme of many of these early poems. In ‘041’, the Glasgow STD code, he hears My lady’s voice on the phone Like an electric thread of silk …

To a stormy city A handful-hundred miles away.

But so is superficiality: You’re only deep on the surface Inside you’re shallow to the core.

After Banks turned exclusively to prose,

MacLeod included rhyme and formal structures in some of his work while maintaining his own love of wordplay – ‘the irony curtain’; ‘Nuclear waste fades your genes’. In his world the subconscious is a kid that hacks the access codes for all the files and uses them to play, sex fantasies, . . . and a moment of love, when your toes tickled behind my knees which now go loose as you grin at the sun. is set in the landscape that tells of the present, the past and the future (‘Succession’).

The matching concerns and exuberant joy in language confirm Banks’s decision to put his dying energies into publishing these poems together. They are genuinely exciting and yield their zest immediately, yet ample, deeper meaning is forthcoming to the close reader.

James Rose, Ayr Personal read ............★★★★★

.

LITTLE BLACK LIES Sharon Bolton Corgi Nov 2015 pbk

On the Falkland Islands Catrin and Rachel had been best friends since childhood, but their friendship ended when Catrin’s two young sons were killed in an accident whilst in Rachel’s

care. Three years later Catrin is still grieving and also feels full of murderous rage towards her former friend.

Over the years since the accident three young boys have gone missing. However, the close-knit island community is reluctant to contemplate the idea that there may be a serial killer in their midst. People want to believe that perhaps all of the children were involved in unexplained accidents: the alternative is to acknowledge that they have failed in their collective responsibility to look after the children of the community.

The first-person narrative of this powerful psychological thriller, set twelve years after the Falklands War, is divided into thirds and is told from the perspectives of the three main characters: firstly from Catrin’s, then Callum’s, her ex-lover, who fought in the conflict, has now returned to the island to live and who suffers PTSD flashbacks and blackouts, and finally from Rachel’s. The switches between the voices are made quite abruptly but, whilst initially rather disturbing, make sense as the story progresses and contribute to a heightened sense of tension for the reader. The fact that the narrative is in the present tense, and that the story develops over a period of six days, increases this sense of tension, a tension which is maintained until the final sentence.

The psychological portrayal of each of the main characters was disturbingly credible and I was very impressed by the way in which the author gave each character such a distinctive voice, thus confronting the reader with their different

perspectives and dilemmas.

Each of the characters is psychologically damaged and their actions are not always commendable, but the quality of the writing elicits sympathy and understanding. The events of the war, and its ongoing aftermath, are central to the development of the story and to an understanding about how the individuals and the community react to the dilemmas faced. I found the exploration of the nature of friendship, of loss, grief and revenge, as well as the pressures of parenthood and the isolation and insularity of a remote island community to be very impressive. The Falklands scenery and wildlife was brought vividly to life and added real depth to the story.

In general I was impressed by the convincing development of the plot, and I thought that the ending was masterful. There were some aspects of the plotting, particularly in the final third, which stretched my credulity too far – but the character development was so good that any feeling of irritation didn’t last!

However, it did cause me to award it four rather than five stars as a personal read.

Linda Hepworth Personal read ................★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★

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101 Detectives Ivan Vladislavic And Other Stories Hilary Ward 4★

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reviews A MALE VIEW OF A FEMALE CLASSIC

JANE EYRE Charlotte Brönte Vintage Classics Nov 15 pbk

A second edition copy gleaned from a local auction prompted me to begin reading one rainy afternoon.

The book itself was published in October 1847, a second edition later that year. Originally published in instalments, later copies came as a complete book.

Although my copy was in fairly decent condition for its age, one had to handle it with care. So for once I sat as they did in those days: a fireside chair, a footstool, light from the window behind me and made time to read in peace.

Charlotte Brontë wrote this book in an age of class division that would be totally misplaced today: as the story unfolds, we read about certain levels of status, various characters appear, either a little higher class, or indeed, a bit lower. We also gather that religion and propriety was much more 'in vogue' than today, dare I say?

So, here we have a book contemporary with the mid 1800s where romantic notions by the authoress play mightily with the written word. By today's standards, some would regard this story

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reviews as fanciful and twee, the Barbara Cartland of the day, however do not let this put you off. Maybe it could be deemed a 'ladies' book, but as a roughty toughty chap, I still found it a delight to read.

The written word from those far off days is a pleasure to absorb, yes, one has to think a bit to fully grasp the intent, but once the bit is between the teeth, then another world, sadly long gone now, is revealed to the reader. The number of filmic versions of this book testify to the greatness of the story and wonderfully, I had not seen any of these adaptations, so this was truly a new reading experience for me.

A short quote from the book to emphasis my take on the text: "I was an outcast, a beggar, a vagrant; now I have acquaintance, a home, a business. I wonder at the goodness of God, the generosity of my friends, the bounty of my lot. I do not repine."

Taken in context this little extract means a great deal; it uses the English language superbly, including the minor role played by religion, although it is there throughout the book in its guises.

So . . . a social history lesson, a romantic love story and, simply, a historical document of how we lived back then.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone with a smidgen of decent moral value; take yourself back to a life when existence and survival was all a person had to hopefully get by. No welfare state back then, life was excruciatingly hard unless you were fortunate, or just plain lucky.

Reg Seward

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will end but for me it just didn't quite hit the spot. I think this is just because the book wasn't what I was expecting rather than a poor novel.

Fiona Atley Personal read ....................★★★ Group read.........................★★★

BLACK MOON Kenneth Calhoun Vintage Oct 2015 pbk

This is a story about what happens when the vast majority of the population find themselves unable to sleep. Those that can are hated and attacked by the insomniacs.

I was looking forward to reading this book but must admit to being a bit disappointed. I was expecting an 'end of the world' type story, which although it is, it went off on too many tangents for me. I think it would be classed as science fiction rather than disaster survival. Several different characters, all sleepers are travelling alone trying to either find relatives or just escape the hordes of insomniacs.

Each chapter is told by a different character and some come together at the end.

Biggs is desperately searching for his wife, Lila is sent away by her parents who have started to hurt her, and Chase and Jordan have stolen sleeping pills and other drugs that they hope to cash in on.

The insomniacs become totally deranged after several days and then weeks without sleep, society breaks down completely. It was certainly thought provoking and challenges the conventional theories of how the world

DEAD WATER Ann Cleeves Pan Sept 2015 pbk

This is the fifth in Ann Cleeves' series of crime novels set in Shetland. The wild, bleak, dramatic landscape plays a huge part in the story, with the past still present in fishing, knitting and customs and the reality of gas, oil and wind and wave power signposting the future.

The people of Shetland welcome new industry and actively seek new projects to guarantee jobs but newcomers tend not to want anything happening to spoil the peace and the views.

Jimmy Perez, the hero of the series, is on sick leave after the death of his fiancée so when a body is found Willow Reeves is sent from Inverness to oversee the case.

The victim, Jerry Markham, is an investigative reporter from London, but originally from Shetland where his parents run a hotel. Soon Jimmy begins to take an interest and returns to work and with the help of Sandy,

his faithful sidekick he helps to work out what happened.

Many in the vicinity have secrets that are slowly uncovered and then a second victim is found. John Henderson was about to be married to Evie Watts who had had a long ago relationship with Jerry Markham and thus connections are made by the police team. Rhona Laing, the Procurator Fiscal , has something to hide too, to say nothing of Evie's father and the Markhams. There is unrest among the workers on the rigs as the locals struggle to make a living and the 'green' community try to minimise the effect of industry. In a small community, everyone knows everyone else's business . . . or do they?

It is difficult to review a crime novel without giving away too much of the plot but the mystery is solved in a satisfying and believable way.

I really enjoyed the interaction of the characters, the dialogue and the setting.

Jimmy Perez' recovery looks good and I am sure we will read more about his relationship with Willow.

Dorothy Anderson Personal read ............★★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★

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The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry Gabrielle Zevin Abacus Dorothy Flaxman 3★

seasons, all of which go to make up the cycle of life and death.

It is written with sparklingly tight prose too, making this a delight to read.

Paul Cheney Personal read ................★★★★ Also reviewed by Rebecca Foster on nudge.

CLAXTON: FIELD NOTES FROM A SMALL PLANET Mark Cocker Vintage Oct 2015 pbk

This is a collection of previously written articles that have been compiled into a book. Cocker has made it read like a diary with events and observations set over one year, though they are from a number of different years, and he has also taken the liberty of polishing up some of the original text to help with the time and context. Most of the pieces are set local to him, hence the title of the book, and others from further afield, including Greece.

In the same principle of the finest nature writing that we have, Cocker has immersed himself in his local environment and his frequent haunts and walks to see what is around on that day. His sharp eyes observe the mundane survival of the local wildlife and he writes with a passion about the dramatic events of life and death that he sees.

Normally a bird writer, his book Crow Country is fantastic, in this he sees all manner of other creatures, including mammals birds and insects, especially moths, coupled with his acute observations of the subtle changes and the inexorable turn of the

FIRST ONE MISSING Tammy Cohen Black Swan Oct 2015 pbk

Little girls are going missing and turning up dead on Hampstead Heath and the police are desperate to find a serial killer before another little girl is murdered. The press has dubbed the murderer The Kenwood Killer and this killer has taken four little girls from their families over the course of four years. The families of the murdered girls have formed a support group called 'Megan's Angels' after the first victim and they meet up regularly to try to give each other support and comfort. As the net begins to close in on a suspect the group begins to fall apart under the stress, and marriages and relationships are stretched to breaking point.

I enjoyed this book despite its dark subject matter, and I do love my psychological thrillers, but it didn't really take off for me until the final few chapters. Unfortunately,

I found it hard to connect with most of the characters, many of whom were particularly unpleasant. Each time I put down the book then picked it up again I found I was confused as to who was who. I did, however, love Leanne, the police Family Liaison Officer for one of the families. She was a likeable if flawed character and I would love to see her featuring in her own series.

This book was full of twists, turns and red herrings. I would love to say I was surprised to learn the identity of the killer, but I had guessed correctly early on. However, this did not detract from my enjoyment of the book, as I was soon swept along with the story.

First One Missing has been compared to The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins, and I certainly have enjoyed reading both books.

This psychological thriller is my first Tammy Cohen but I intend to read her previous two psychological thrillers, The Broken and Dying For Christmas. She has previously written books on family breakup under the name Tamar Cohen and these have also received much worthy praise. So if you like your thrillers, particularly the psychological ones, I'm sure you will enjoy this book - I know I did.

Teresa O'Halloran Personal read ................★★★★ Group read.........................★★★

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reviews BORING COVER, INTERESTING BOOK

NOTES ON SUICIDE Simon Critchley Fitzcarraldo Editions Sept 2015 pbk

This concise philosophical essay illuminates the arguments surrounding suicide. Simon Critchley is a philosophy professor at New York’s New School for Social Research. However, he wrote this short essay from a beach hotel in East Anglia.

Although he reassures readers with his first line that “This book is not a suicide note,” he also hints that its writing was inspired by personal trouble: “my life has dissolved over the past year or so, like sugar in hot tea.” Not suicidal himself, then, but certainly sympathetic to those who are driven to self-murder. He is justified in opening with a caveat; after all, two authors (Austrian essayist Jean Améry and French novelist Edouard Levé) killed themselves after publishing books about suicide.

“Suicide … finds us both strangely reticent and unusually loquacious: lost for words and full of them,” Critchley observes.

Philosophy, theology and the law have a lot to say on the subject, but in everyday life we do not have the kind of cultural discourse that

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reviews would keep suicidal feelings from being taboo. This short book is an attempt at fostering that discussion.

In the most interesting section of the book, Critchley considers the suicide note, discussing a “School of Death” art installation and creative writing workshop he ran in New York City – in puckish defiance of Alain de Botton’s London-based School of Life. It might be macabre, but it is intriguing to read the last words of Kurt Cobain, George Eastman and Hunter S. Thompson et al recorded here. Critchley notes that “suicide produces a peculiar inversion of biography, where all of one’s acts are read backwards through the lens of one’s last moment.”

Understandable causes of suicide include unemployment, chronic pain or a terminal diagnosis.

More troubling, Critchley acknowledges, are those instances where there seems to be no obvious reason, as in the rise of school shootings ending in the killer’s suicide – most often fuelled by narcissism.

Although I found this essay noteworthy, I thought it overall felt cursory and inconclusive. Still, I appreciated the author’s final advice to readers: find the small pinpricks of meaning in everyday life, Virginia Woolf ’s “moments of vision” (indeed, he quotes To the Lighthouse at length). For Critchley, these are reason enough to keep going.

Rebecca Foster Personal read ....................★★★ Group read .....................★★★★ A fuller review is on nudge.

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A KILLING MOON Steven Dunne Headline Aug 2015 pbk

I don't know how I have missed reading any novels by this author. What I do know is that I am going to read all four previous books.

The plot centres around missing girls and the detectives involved are characters written about in previous novels - just one of the reasons I want to read them. For me, they ceased to be characters in a book very early on in the story and I found myself thinking of them as real people whom I wanted to know better. Only by reading the previous novels can I achieve this.

Brook and Noble are truly well-created and fleshed out.

Brook has "flaws": he has suffered a breakdown in the past; he faces criticism, even dislike, from some colleagues, yet he rises above all these. He can be acerbic when confronting fools, or smart Alecs, but he can also be loyal and tolerant.

Noble is no Lewis kowtowing to Morse; in fact, I thought Brook had more Rebus-like qualities but the duo jell and are able to work, and progress in their investigations, the latter involving the disappearance of girls in Derby, turning up evidence of something very dark and evil.

The plot twists and turns but the reader can follow the

clues and compete in the investigation. Steven Dunne writes well, though I found some of his graphic descriptions harrowing. He does not mince words. His villains, though they would resent that title, are truly appalling people; the subject-matter frighteningly different.

Verdict? Full marks.

Mary Anderson Personal read ............★★★★★ Group read.........................★★★

CHASING LOST TIME Jean Findlay Vintage Aug 2015 pbk

This is a biography of CK Scott Moncrieff by a great, great niece using (largely) surviving family papers and letters. But family written does not mean that it lacks objectivity. This dense biography is stuffed with information about this extraordinary man ranging from simple day to day activities to involvement in literature as well as international politics. His days and actions are placed gently, but surely, within their wider context.

I am not an historian, neither have I studied the period covered – CKSM lived from 1890-1930 - or its literature but I found this biography fascinating due to the multiple threads of his life, albeit his fame lay in his translation of Proust’s novels.

He was born into the exgentry, business class of Scotland thus knowing influential people. His mother was a prolific writer and passed a love of literature to him. He became a serious letter writer – his correspondents ranging widely across family, literature and the arts, a veritable who’s who. He was, too, an active homosexual – still a criminal offence at the time and not mentioned except in inner circles.

A Winchester scholar, he was publishing poetry from his teens. His poetry is covered (some might say in too much detail) in this volume. War intervened; he lost close friends and was seriously injured allowing transfer to the War Office and intelligence work. After the war his literary work masked his intelligence activities. But his literature was more important to him both translation (Proust, Pirandello, Abelard, Stendhal) and criticism. As Proust’s first English translator, a massive task, he created work said to be better than the original.

So many strands of his life are covered – the war, illness (trench fever) and injury; intelligence work – in Italy in the twenties as fascism is established; translation and creative writing – and his links to the London literary establishment of the twenties. Throughout run his compromises – hiding his homosexuality from most; work – choosing topics that paid rather than his preferences; home – dictated by his intelligence work; family – having to provide financial support for his brothers’ children. But in spite of all these things, and illness that would kill him

early, this was a man who worked prodigiously hard and achieved so much.

Specialists might cavil at some of the historical interpretations; but for me this book was an eye opener, providing background to so much else I have randomly read elsewhere and pointing to other writers, his friends and contemporaries that need to be explored.

Hilary White Personal read ............★★★★★ Group read .....................★★★★

SARAH CANARY Karen Joy Fowler Orion Sept 2012 pbk

This is the English publication of Fowler’s first 1991 novel – now re-issued following her Booker shortlisted We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

When I spotted another book by this author I snapped it up and was not disappointed. A rich and very strange tale.

In short, it is 1873 and in West Coast America a woman – Sarah Canary – falls into a Chinese railway camp. Chin is ordered by his uncle to return her to the asylum in Steilacoom. Once she is there he feels obliged to help her; she escapes with BJ too - and the journey starts.

As they travel – and it is never clear where they are going, or why - others attach

themselves to their group either momentarily or for longer. Each will have a back story as an explanation of why they are in the place they have crossed with Sarah or Chin. We see the complexities of life in an unsettled, but diverse, early America. Chin views everything through his Chinese perspective – in a racist and dangerous America; BJ sees things through his mental fragility and Sarah Canary says nothing. Who is Sarah Canary? And how do these others see her?

This deceptively complex novel is about relationships, communities and coping – but attachment and detachment too. At a deeper level it is about what people have in common [and] their differences; and the price one pays for both living and involving oneself in a wider community. This is a novel that needs to be read slowly, savoured and mulled over, but well worth the read.

Hilary White Personal read ............★★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★

WEST Julia Franck Vintage Oct 2015 pbk

Set in the late 1970s, we follow young mother Nelly Senff as she finally manages to get permission to leave

East Germany to start a new life in West Berlin with her two young children. During the Cold War refugees from the GDR were often held in the Marienfelde transit camp, where they received food and housing while being subjected to interviews from the intelligence services. So once through the East German exit formalities, Nelly has to face the West German entry formalities and she soon discovers that leaving one life for another is not always that simple.

Nelly’s story is interwoven with the stories of others in the camp, including that of her CIA interrogator. It’s a powerful and often moving novel, bleak and atmospheric. A sense of menace pervades the whole book, with a particularly excruciating scene near the beginning when the children are taken away for questioning.

The conditions Nelly faces in the transit camp are as bleak and dehumanising as those she has left behind in the East, giving an added layer of nuance to the story.

So a worthy and enlightening read, certainly, but not always an enjoyable one. Julia Franck’s style is flat and distancing, somewhat monotonous in delivery and Nelly herself seems quite passive and distant, so that it is quite difficult to really relate to her. However, for its historical context and for its relevance to how we treat refugees today, it’s definitely a book I can recommend, and it would be of particular interest to book groups.

There’s a lot to think about here.

Mandy Jenkinson Personal read ....................★★★ Group read .....................★★★★

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reviews

THE LOOKINGGLASS SISTERS Gøhril Gabrielsen Peirene Press Sept 2015 pbk

The Looking-Glass Sisters by Gøhril Gabrielsen (with a wonderful translation by John Irons) is the final book in Peirene’s Chance Encounter series. A tale of two sisters who cannot live either with or without each other, it is a tumultuous read, full of emotion and bitterness.

Ragna and her younger sister - the unnamed narrator have lived together in their cabin in the depths of Norway since their parents died. Due to serious illness, the narrator has been unable to walk since she was young, leaving Ragna to care for her and manage the house on her own. Theirs is a relationship on a knife-edge, often filled with raging arguments and malicious tricks intended to hurt the other. Yet there are also moments of affection where their love shows through, and they have managed to make ends meet through the years. This all changes one day when a strange man moves into the neighbouring cabin and Ragna begins a relationship with him, causing an ever widening rift between the two sisters as the narrator vies for attention with Ragna’s newfound love.

The novel is an intriguing

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reviews look at the extremes of sibling rivalry, of the power of loneliness and jealousy to fuel bitterness. At times it is difficult to read, full of vicious accusations and spite.

Yet there are moments of beauty too, of introspection as the narrator recounts her younger years and speaks of her loneliness, both emotional and geographical.

Humour often shines through in these memories, counterbalancing the depths of emotion that the narrator falls to in the full fury of conflict.

It is a short read, but wonderfully written, straddling a fine line between pathos and revulsion. At times the sparse landscape and evocations of loneliness reminded me of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, yet there is a darkness here that feels unique. The novel blurs the line between truth and fantasy, and concludes with uncertainty, with the reader not sure of the circumstances in which the narrator lies at the end of the novel.

The Looking-Glass Sisters was not the novel I expected in reading the blurb, it is something darker and more powerful. It is a draining and intense experience, but I couldn’t put the book down and finished it in a day.

Brendan White Personal read ................★★★★ Group read .....................★★★★

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Lock In John Scalzi Gollancz Ian Simpson 4★

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THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE Neil Gaiman Headline Nov 2015 pbk

There are books that fit into many categories, and The Ocean At The End Of The Lane is one of them. It is an adult book, with many of the attributes of a children’s book. It is magic realism, but is based in real life. There is escapism, good and evil, families of all types, allusions to worlds and science and knowledge outside of our own.

It concerns a loner, going home after forty years for his father’s funeral, and it is here that he remembers the events that happened when he was seven. Starting with a birthday party which no-one goes to, it soon gets worse. A lodger commits suicide in his father’s car, and from this event, monsters are invited into his life, taking on the forms of a new, alluring housekeeper, who seduces his father, and changes his father’s behaviour towards his children, and sets in motion a series of events that would destroy him, if it wasn’t for the women at Hemstock Farm.

Lettie is 11 when she helps the boy, taking him along to find monsters, but when he accidentally lets go of her hand, a monster is allowed to escape through him, taking up a place in his

heart, a heart which will remain altered for years.

Lettie, her Mother and her Grandmother remember the earth before the moon, and have dominion in this world, and many others, power and control over time, but there are monsters that even their powers cannot stop.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is at once both elegiac for times during the 1970s of the boy’s childhood, and the effect that it has on his life as an adult. The Hemstocks may have power over time, and can change and alter it at will, but the results are inevitably the same, and there will always be a monster in the heart. In this case, it is real, but it is also metaphorical for all of us, for the world and our childhoods always shape us into the adults we become.

Neil Gaiman’s writing ratchets up the tension, using narrative structure and characterisation to cast a spell, and keep the reader hooked. If you are unfamiliar with his writing, this book is as good as any to make a start.

Dorothy Flaxman Personal read ............★★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★

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Secret Shelter Rob Gittins Y Lolfa Cyf Sarah Garland 4★

hometown. The story flips back and forth between her adult life and her teenage recollections and ends with a poignant twist.

The novel might work as a discussion point for reading groups as it could act as a springboard for recollections of teenage years and growing up.

THE BOOK OF MEMORY Petina Gappah

WHEN WE WERE ANIMALS Joshua Gaylord

Faber & Faber Sept 2015 pbk

Del Rey Sept 2015 hbk

Memory, the narrator, is in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Zimbabwe, having been found guilty of murder. She is writing down her life story as part of her appeal against her death sentence. The reader is told at the start that she did not murder Lloyd Hendricks, her adopted father.

This is not an easy book to read and, as it twists and turns as the truth is revealed, it is a very sad tale but, after saying that, there is also a lot of humour.

The book is vivid in its descriptions and the author manages to retain the tension inherent in this volatile country.

The book is basically about love in its different forms and how it makes unthinkable actions appear acceptable. For example, why was Memory sold as a nine year old to a stranger?

Was it a financial transaction or was there more to it?

I struggled with the book initially as it took a while to get to the crux of the story so am pleased I didn't give up as it proved to be a book I would recommend as both a book group and personal read.

This is a coming-of-age novel with a difference. The story centres around Lumen, a young girl living in a small town with a big secret.

In this community when teenagers reach a certain time in their lives they ‘breach’ and become adults.

This ‘breaching’ involves a return to a ‘feral’ state where the youths roam around in packs, reveling in violence, nakedness and lust.

Lumen lives with her father; her mother having died many years before. As a child she had always been led to believe that she was different because apparently her mother never ‘breached.’ As a late starter, Lumen is already relegated to the peripheries of teenage society and she struggles to come to terms with herself and her life as all her friends and schoolmates ‘breach’ around her.

This is an interesting story, well written with some charming prose. As there are a multitude of ‘coming of age’ novels in circulation - it is refreshing to know that there are still some new ways in which such stories can be told. You feel for Lumen as she struggles with the normal teenage problems, compounded by the unique circumstances of her

Dorothy Flaxman Personal read ............★★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★

Sue Hardiman Personal read ....................★★★ Group read.........................★★★

GORSKY Vesna Goldsworthy Vintage Sept 2015 pbk

I was very much looking forward to reading this homage to The Great Gatsby, set in the world of London based Russian oligarchs and I wasn’t disappointed. The writing is stylish and intelligent, although I was interested to see that the Belgrade born author is writing in her third language. The Gorsky/Gatsby figure is sufficiently enigmatic and Nicolas/Nick is at once naïve and world weary.

There are some beautiful descriptions of the pleasures of life among the über-rich – party guests falling into baths of caviar and Greek islands where every wish is anticipated – but also the terrible emptiness which opens up when everything which can be bought has been bought and yet real

happiness remains out of reach.

I admit I spent a lot of my time spotting the differences and similarities with the original Gatsby and in some ways I wish I could have read this as a stand-alone novel, without the baggage of the original classic. The author is clearly steeped in the Russian classics and I finished reading with a long reading list to improve my own – scanty - knowledge. I was fascinated, too, by the portrayal of a London populated almost entirely by émigrés, at both ends of the social scale, and which appeared both familiar and strangely exotic.

I enjoyed the whole book but the plot did sometimes feel a little superficial and the ending a little rushed.

Perhaps a second reading would reveal greater depth, without Fitzgerald’s shadow falling across it. This book would be great for reading groups – especially if they read The Great Gatsby alongside.

Rebecca Kershaw Personal read ................★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★ Also reviewed by Rebecca Foster on nudge.

on nudge

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins Irvine Welsh Vintage Eleanor King 3★

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THE FORGETTING TIME Sharon Guskin Mantle Feb 2016 hbk

This is an impressive debut novel by Sharon Guskin.

Very assured and a real page turner. I read it in two days could have been one day but by midnight tiredness forced me to put it down. The main idea of the novel is unusual and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it but it did make me think.

Noah is a four year old boy living in New York with his mother Janie. A charming precocious boy who keeps waking up screaming for his Mama and saying he wants to go home (but he is at home). He also seems to know a lot of things that noone has told him and that a four year old shouldn't know. Reluctantly Janie is forced to accept that he may be remembering a previous life.

Jerome Anderson is a psychiatrist who specialises in this field. Unfortunately he's just been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia.

He's about to publish a book that he hopes will validate his years of research and silence the sceptics. Most of his research subjects are from Asia. An American case could really help the book sales. Can he help Janie and Noah and they in turn help him?

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reviews These three main characters are well rounded and believable. Noah is a delight and Janie's worries and problems as a single parent ring true. Her desperate need to find out what is wrong with Noah forces her to go along with Dr Anderson's ideas despite understandable reservations.

The story is told in alternate chapters from Janie and Anderson's point of view, interspersed with real case studies from work by Dr Jim Tucker and Dr Ian Stevenson. Sharon Guskin worked quite closely with Dr Tucker while writing this book and has since appeared on a lecture tour with him.

I liked the the way the book was written in a matter of fact way despite the rather sensationalist topic. It reminded me very much of Jodi Picoult's early novels, particularly My Sister's Keeper. I can imagine book groups having quite heated discussions about the main idea of the novel, but also perhaps about being a parent and wanting to do the best for your child even when it's difficult.

Maddy Broome Personal read ................★★★★ Group read .....................★★★★

CITY ON FIRE Garth Risk Hallberg Jonathan Cape Oct 2015 hbk

The first thing I need to tell

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you about this book is that it’s long – 944 pages. That’s not such a bad thing, with winter approaching, hunkering down and losing yourself in a long book is to be recommended. That is – if the time invested in reading so many pages is rewarded and with this much anticipated novel I’m not absolutely convinced it is.

I was drawn to this book by its setting - New York, spanning primarily from the end of 1976 and working towards a big set piece for the city, the night the lights went out – July 13-14th 1977 when a localised total blackout led to looting, arson and panic in the streets.

This, however, is no “disaster” novel. It is very much character led and at the centre is William Hamilton-Sweeney, troubled son of a millionaire businessman, who disappears from family life on the eve of his father’s remarriage and reinvents himself as an artist and as Billy Three Sticks, a musician in underground punk band Ex Post Facto.

At the start of the novel William is in a relationship with Mercer, an AfricanAmerican not long up from Georgia who is working in a girl’s private school. This mismatched gay couple are strongly characterised. In fact, for me the most successful aspect of this novel is its characterisation.

For a work with an epic sweep and ambitious scope the cast of characters is smaller than you would imagine and I know that I have spent a lot of time recently in their company but I do feel they will linger with me when I move on to

other (shorter) books.

I wanted this book to be an unqualified success but it isn’t. It has the tendency to suck the reader in and then spit back out. There’s some really engaging writing and a real zest for language. I lost count of the number of new words I had to look up, but there’s also great chunks of frustrating uneventfulness which might suggest overall that the author was not quite ready to guide us through a book of so many words. I did feel that, at times, there’s a great shorter novel waiting to explode from this mammoth one, but thinking about it once completed I am not sure what I would cut. There are occasional interludes away from the plot, including journalistic pieces and fanzines, but these often contain some very good writing and do have a bearing on outcomes.

Phil Ramage, Isle of Wight Personal read ................★★★★ Group read.........................★★★ Published in full on nudge and www.reviewsrevues.com

THE WINDS 12 QUARTERS AND THE COMPASS ROSE Ursula K. le Guin Gollancz Aug 2015 pbk

I nearly wrote this review without reading the book. It would have been very short.

'Ursula K le Guin is brilliant.

Read the book'. Having now read it, I might change it to 'absolutely brilliant'. As you may gather I'm a big fan of her work.

This book is two collections of her earlier short stories. I first got into SF through short stories and in many ways I still think they are the best format for this genre.

However I'll make an exception for le Guin as I love her novels too.

The first collection (originally published in 1975) is more or less chronological and shows the progression of the author's thoughts and style from her second published story 'April in Paris', which is delightful and not what you would necessarily think of as SF. In fact a lot of her stories are like that and we should perhaps think of her as an excellent short story writer who sets some of her stories in a different time and place.

She is exploring ideas and different world views; looking at other ways of communicating and understanding. 'The Author of the Acacia Seeds' in the second volume of stories is a good example of this.

This first volume also contains a story that has haunted me since I first read it over 30 years ago. 'The ones who walk away from Omelas' is very powerful and deceptively simple. It is (unfortunately) as relevant now as it was when she first wrote it.

The second volume was originally published in 1982 and shows a definite change of register. Fewer of the stories are connected to the 'other worlds' she created for her novels. Some of them seem to have no SF element at all. The compass rose of the collection's title refers

partly to a compass of 4 dimensions: spatial, temporal, material and spiritual. Bear this in mind when reading the stories.

One of my favourites in this collection is 'The Diary of the Rose' which explores the idea of orthodoxy of thought in an apparent benevolent state. It would be more comfortable to think of it as pure SF, but we only have to look at our own world - past and present- to realise this isn't necessarily so.

I hope I've convinced some of you to try her writing if you haven't already done so.

Although short stories (particularly when there are so many) can be difficult to discuss in a book group, I think some of these could lead to some very lively discussions.

Maddy Broome Personal read ............★★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★

Leith writes really well about food - a pig killing on the farm and how all parts are used, the difficulties of rationing, the struggle to produce good meals.

As the story moves on to the late 1940s and Laura runs away to London with a young Italian ex-prisoner of war, we get the excitement and novelty of exotic Italian food in the days when olive oil was only used medicinally.

The book is not just about food though. It is a really good family saga with a cast of interesting, well-drawn characters and with all the drama of births, deaths and family quarrels. This story only takes us to the mid 1950s but it is the first of a trilogy. I'm really looking forward to reading more about these characters and about food in the 50s and 60s.

Berwyn Peet Personal read ................★★★★ Group read.........................★★★

THE FOOD OF LOVE: BOOK 1 LAURA'S STORY Prue Leith

CRACKED Barbra Leslie

Quercus Sept 2015 hbk

Titan Books Nov 2015 pbk

Love and food are the main ingredients of this enjoyable story. Laura is thirteen in 1940, living on a farm with her family and there are evocative descriptions of farming and country life during wartime.

As you would expect, Prue

With her new book, Cracked, the first in a planned series featuring asskicking heroine Danny Cleary, Barbra Leslie has made a bold move. In a genre where it's the protagonist's quirks that distinguish them, Danny is a committed

crackhead. Sure, she kicks the proverbial asses and takes the proverbial names, but the Buffy-esque heroics aren't the stand-out feature of Danny's character, it's the drugs - the book is called Cracked, after all.

Therein lies a potential problem - junkies aren't easy to sympathise with. Other than Sherlock Holmes, and Renton in the cinema adaptation of Trainspotting, there aren't many hard drug users who win hearts and minds. It's Puritanism and hypocrisy on the part of society perhaps (if alcoholics met the same treatment then detective fiction would look wildly different), but they've got a point. When we meet Danny, she's gamely and knowingly flushing her life down the toilet in pursuit of the white rock. When she gets news of her twin sister's death, she sets off on the bloody and smart-mouthed quest for revenge that drives the book forward, but her crack addiction infects every page. Moreover, there's something unsympathetic about Danny's love for crack; for Holmes, opium was the vice of a genius; Renton chose heroin because choosing life was vacuous; for Danny, crack is almost a gap year, a diversion for a woman smart enough to know better and strong enough to kick it if she actually wanted. In short, she's that junkie tabloid readers love to hate - the one from California to Toronto and Maine, and from opulent mansions to crack houses at breakneck speed.

There are twists, turns, sex and violence - plenty of violence. The plotting is assured and, crack aside, Danny has enough about her to hang a book around, with

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reviews enough mouth and courage to get her into trouble and enough fight to get her out again. Overall, a competent thriller that could be the foundation stone for an engaging series, if Danny drags herself to rehab.

Mike Stafford

WHY WE DO THE THINGS WE DO – PSYCHOLOGY IN A NUTSHELL Joel Levy MOM Books Oct 2015 pbk

In Why We Do The Things We Do, Joel Levy has packed a lot of information, about most subjects in everyday life. He uses simple language and ideas to put across more complicated ideas.

Using the most up-to-date [thinking], along with older, established practices Levy takes both the expert and the psychology novice through ideas, ranging from hypnosis, free will, smoking, happiness, the use of sleep, dreams and how we relate to other people, [plus] any prejudices that we may have.

The book starts with historical perspectives, from folk psychology, how it relates to the brain and the body, science, the ancient Greeks, and how psychology has replaced religious beliefs to explain how the world works. In less than two hundred pages, a lot of ground is covered, from the

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reviews main names in psychology, to how we can relate their ideas, and discoveries to modern life, and relationships. He also looks at various historical movements, from Nazism to Philip’s Zimbardo’s prison experiments, and how certain situations bring out the worst in us as individuals, and as a society.

He also looks at how we vote, how bald men never become presidents, or attain high office in politics, what we look out for in potential sexual partners, and how relationships work, both chemically, and romantically.

Other topics discuss why we can never remember much before we were two years old, how we unconsciously copy other people when growing and developing, or when we learn that we are not at the centre of the universe.

Although certain topics could have been covered in more depth, there is a wealth of this information on the internet, and in other books, so for a quick overview of the more basic psychological tenets, this could be the book for you.

Ben Macnair Personal read ................★★★★ Group read.........................★★★

I have slightly mixed feelings about this book. I really enjoyed reading it; it drew me in right from the start and I loved the chapters where Jane Austen is writing Sense and Sensibility and then working on Pride and Prejudice. Alternating with these chapters is the present day story of Sophie, mourning the loss of her bibliophile uncle and his library and becoming involved in the hunt for a rare book. The author's love of old books and Jane Austen shines through and I think he captures the period very well. And then the idea that there might have been an early draft of Pride and Prejudice - well, what more could any JA fan want?

So why mixed feelings?

Once I had stopped being completely immersed in it, there were a few niggles - the plot feels a bit contrived to fit the dual time scheme, the ending is rather melodramatic and Sophie's actions don't always tie in with what you expect from her character. However, these fade into insignificance compared to the pleasure I had reading about old books, early printing, a mystery about the authorship of Pride and Prejudice and Jane Austen's life.

It would be an excellent choice for groups as there are many topics for discussion and I think there would be some differing views.

Berwyn Peet Personal read ................★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★

FIRST IMPRESSIONS Charlie Lovett Alma Books Sept 2015 pbk

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WHAT MILO SAW Virginia Macgregor Sphere Aug 2015 pbk

THE DROWNING GROUND James Marrison Michael Joseph Aug 2015 hbk

Milo Moon is 9 years old and has a condition which means he sees everything through a pinhole. This means he tends to notice a lot more than other people.

His mum and dad have split up and his dad now lives with The Tart and his greatgran has to go into a nursing home, upsetting the balance of his life. But he soon realises that things at the Forget Me Not home are not what they seem and he decides to expose it and Nurse Thornhill who runs it.

This book has a feel of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It's about a child but it's not a children's book at all. It tells the story from the points of view of Milo, his mum, Sandy, Tripi, who works as the cook at the home and Lou, Milo's great-gran. I really liked this way of telling the story which meant it wasn't all from the viewpoint of a child and we could see all sides of the story.

It's a lovely book, full of innocence in a way but with a serious storyline. I liked the characters and how it all came together.

Nicola Smith Personal read ................★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★

This book falls into the genre of Rankin - Rebus; Cleeves - Vera and, dare I say it, good old Morse. I would say though that the writing does fall short of those three.

The story is set in the Cotswolds in winter and I failed to get a feeling of place and weather despite constant references to snow.

There was also a lack of cohesion about the isolated communities involved although the descriptions of the manor house are good and do convey its gothic feel.

The novel starts with current murders, moves back to past crimes and even past accidents before reaching its conclusion.

The characters were well drawn, especially Downes and his colleague Graves.

Both men have an interesting back story that emerges as the book unfolds.

Downes' Argentinian background is different and interesting. The crimes are believable and different and I didn't get close to guessing the outcome until the truth slowly dawns on the detectives and clues are exposed.

This is an easy read and I liked both the chapter structure and the way the writing jumps from first person for Downes to third

person for Graves. I was hooked by the story and wanted to get back to the book to read more. I will certainly look out for future novels by this author and I think there is the potential for these books to do well.

As a personal read I thoroughly enjoyed it but as a book group read I don't think so. There is a little psychological involvement that could be discussed but apart from that it is very much a 'whodunnit' which often does not produce a lot of discussion.

Jo Dobson Personal read ................★★★★ Group read.............................★★

don't see them as individual characters. (Try a Hairy McClary book - just the right number of dogs.)

The human characters have ridiculous names that might raise a wry smile in adults but I doubt it would appeal to children, eg Mrs GustavoWentworth Worthington Donquist Torresdale Blindon PerstancionWithers.

There isn't an age range given but I think it's probably 8-10 year old girls (sorry, but I can't see a boy enjoying this). I have 5 and 10 year old grandsons so perhaps I'm not appreciating it from that point of view. To finish on a positive note, I did like the way she introduced new vocabulary and writing conventions.

Maddy Broome Personal read............................★ Group read ................................★

The book revisits characters and is so funny in places.

The story has moved on and the ending, in my opinion, gives scope for a third book.

Me Before You is a hard act to follow. It stayed with me long after I finished reading it and reduced me to tears.

Please do not attempt to read After You without reading the first book. Some books are stand-alone but this one definitely isn't.

I rarely re-read books but did so with Me Before You as I wanted to refresh my memory. It succeeded in making me cry again but at least I was ready to read the next book. It's hard to separate the two books when doing a review so would say, I loved both of them and devoured them in a couple of days. I would like to see Louise happy and settled but hope the author doesn't make us wait so long should she decide another book is appropriate.

Dorothy Flaxman Personal read ............★★★★★ Group read .....................★★★★

THE ADVENTURES OF MISS PETITFOUR Anne Michaels Bloomsbury Nov 2015 hbk

Oh dear. Why do so many good authors of adult fiction think they can write for children? Anne Michaels has written two excellent books - Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault. The former is one of my all time favourites (do read it if you haven't already done so). Please Ms Michaels write another book for adults and leave children's fiction to others.

The Adventures of Miss Petitfour is too whimsical and sweet. It isn't very funny and it isn't very adventurous (despite the title). There are too many cats - 16 - so you

AFTER YOU Jojo Moyes Michael Joseph Sept 2015 hbk

As someone who loved Me Before You, I was nervous about a sequel. Would it spoil the original? Would the author be able to pick up the threads of the story?

It is now 2 years since Will's assisted suicide and Louise Clark, his carer, is still grieving. She has been unable to move on with her life, is working in a dead-end job and living in an empty flat.

THE FIRES OF AUTUMN Irène Némirovsky Vintage Aug 2015 pbk

This book, first published posthumously in 1957, was written at the same time as the celebrated Suite Française. But it's a very different book - a short

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reviews novel which covers the lives of three Parisian families from 1912 to 1942. A large number of characters are introduced in a short time which makes the beginning of the book rather confusing but it soon becomes clear who the main characters are, and their lives in this pivotal epoch of French history become fascinating.

The book's main theme is the pernicious effect the First World War had on the French people and particularly on those who fought in it and returned home to find a society which had no idea about their suffering on the battlefields.

Moreover, the upheaval of the war resulted in society in general becoming more hedonistic and immoral, this leading in the author's view to France's defeat in 1940.

This message is repeated too often and at times rather seems to diminish the story of the individuals involved.

Nevertheless, it's a beautifully written book and it's hard not to be moved by the fate of the main characters Thérèse and Bernard at the end of the book, particularly as we're aware of how it ended for the author with her death in Auschwitz. I recommend this book but with a few reservations about its structure. This is probably inevitable as this edition was compiled from two typescripts and so is not the author's definitive version.

For this reason, I prefer some of Némirovsky's earlier work, such as Fire in the Blood and David Golder where she had time to revise and publish her own version.

Sue Glynn Personal read ................★★★★ Group read.........................★★★

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reviews

THE DROWNING LESSON Jane Shemilt

DOWN AND OUT TODAY Matthew Small

Penguin Sept 2015 pbk

PaperbackBooks Oct 2015 pbk

Hospital consultants, Emma and Adam Goodhew, have two daughters aged 10 and 5. Adam is offered a year in Botswana to do some research and his family go with him, including their newborn son, Sam. But Sam is abducted from his cot, amid fears of witch doctors, and the family's lives fall apart.

The book starts with Sam going missing and then goes back to tell of the family's life in London. Throughout, Emma narrates which works well, particularly in Botswana and during the search for Sam. I did struggle with the early parts of the book, finding myself having to go back and read bits again, as though I wasn't completely taking it in. But then it got into its stride and I got right into the story. I read the last third in one go and was racing through it to find out what happened at the end.

I enjoyed Daughter by the same author [nb83 RR] and, although it didn't bother me, a lot of people were not keen on the ending. This book is much more conclusive and I really enjoyed it. I do like Jane Shemilt's writing style and look forward to book 3.

Every generation or so there seems to be [an updated response to] George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. This particular version is based around Bath, in the UK and India where the author stops at Ananadwan and volunteers at a leprosy community, then Kolkata where he spends a day with the Sisters of Mercy and visits a shanty town. And finally he visits Nepal where he stops at Sauraha (to break his journey to Kathmandu).

There he visits an orphanage and a national reserve. He then returns to Bath where he catches up with Dean who he mentions in the first part and then briefly on to Paris.

While in Bath the emphasis is very much on the poverty of those on the streets seen and unseen in even our most beautiful and most historic towns and cities. After his day with the Sisters of Mercy it all takes on a touristy feel, although he still has an eye out for the poorer elements of the society he is visiting.

All this with a distinct eye for the litter which he sees everywhere and wonders whether it is neglect from the people or the state and the effect this will have on the future. This is depicted

Nicola Smith Personal read ................★★★★ Group read .................★★★★★

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beautifully by the image he sees on a poster of a bird whose insides looked as though they had been made up of litter.

This is a good read-alone book and also a worthwhile read for book groups. I imagine the topics would be less on poverty and more about travel and holidays abroad.

Deborah Mika Personal read ....................★★★ Group read .....................★★★★

PUBLIC LIBRARY AND OTHER STORIES Ali Smith Hamish Hamilton Nov 2015 hbk

Ali Smith's fabulous new collection of short stories revolves around the theme of books, and why they 'mean the world to us'. The power of stories, then, is what Smith focuses upon here; or, at a more basic level, the power of the written word itself. The twelve tales have been bookended with twelve insightful pieces of commentary, the majority of which muse upon the importance of the library.

Segments range from thoughts about a 'Library' in Covent Garden, which resembles a 'fancy shop' and turns out to be a private members' club, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer's use of a library card as a weapon.

Smith has also borrowed the

stories of friends regarding their stance on the public library. The figures whom we encounter are both imagined and real, and sometimes a clever blend of the two, from poet Olive Fraser, to the ashes of controversial author D.H. Lawrence. There are stories in the collection about linguistics, about companionship, and [even] about bookish criminality.

As I invariably find with Smith's work, beautiful and profound phrases are woven throughout, and often have the power to make the reader stop and think. The central theme has allowed Smith a lot of creativity, whilst still allowing her to produce a thematic and connected collection. Her commentary strengthens the whole, and ties it together in a thoughtful and measured manner. To borrow a phrase of Smith's own making, Public Library and Other Stories is made up of 'endless stories, all crossing across each other'.

Ali Smith very deservingly and finally! - won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction earlier this year with her stunningly creative novel How to be Both. There is a reason as to why Smith is at the very top of her profession; she is a wonderfully gifted and distinctive writer, who surprises at turns, and who understands, more than anyone, the importance of the book. Each tale in her newest collection is constructed entirely of strengths. Public Library and Other Stories is just as profound as the aforementioned, and is guaranteed to leave established fans of her work content, as well as bringing

new readers to the fore.

Kirsty Hewitt Personal read ................★★★★

THE AMERICAN LOVER Rose Tremain Vintage Oct 2015 pbk

This book's cover, with its stylised Mad Men-esque couple against a distant Eiffel Tower backdrop, caught my eye immediately.

It isn't until the title page that it states 'The American Lover and Other Stories' not a novel but a collection of short stories. Seemingly like the majority of British readers I eschew this format of literature and I confess I struggle with it (I always feel like I have missed the bigger picture). I read these stories in the published sequence as if they were chapters in a novel. I don't know whether that helps or hinders my understanding.

What I really love about Tremain's general authorship is her range of backgrounds, times and settings shown in her novels, apart from Merivel nothing is a copy of an earlier one. The reader never knows what to expect.

This is also true of these different stories although there feels to me as if there is a unifying theme, too.

Essentially the prevailing sense is that of melancholia and hopelessness. The few flashes of humour only serve

to emphasize this condition in my eyes.

Tremain's use of language, here as always, is a delight.

Short phrases pack a powerful punch. The closing lines of the last story in the book are: "I'm far too thin for my dress. When I get into it, it just hangs on me like a shroud." Those words stayed with me a long time.

They serve to give you a sense of both the elegance and despondency contained within.

The range of the stories, as mentioned earlier, is immense - I particularly enjoyed 'The Housekeeper', the imagined back-story of du Maurier's Mrs Danvers, so imaginative yet believable weaving potential fact and fiction effortlessly. The story 'Captive' was almost too harrowing for me to read. I understand why Neil Mukherjee thought 'each story a perfectly cut jewel'.

There is a sense of precision and clarity within each.

However, I think I would have enjoyed or rather, benefitted from, more, had I read this book with a book group so that more varied perspectives would have drawn out all those nuances I misread or ignored.

It is a collection to be savoured, read and mulled over, not raced through. I will reread some of them.

Cath Sell Personal read ................★★★★

on nudge

THE ICE TWINS SK Tremayne Harper Sept 2015 pbk

This is a sad story of a family torn apart by tragedy. Angus and Sarah Moorcroft are mourning the death of their daughter Lydia, one of a pair of identical twins. To try and recover they take their remaining daughter Kirstie to live on a remote Scottish Island to rebuild their lives.

Did they get it terribly wrong? Was it really Kirstie who died?

This is an intense psychological thriller. The reader is pulled one way and then the other until all is revealed at the end. There are many twists and turns which keep you hooked in a dark and slightly creepy story. The setting on the Isle of Skye is vivid and very atmospheric.

I thought the author SK Tremayne was a woman when in reality the author is Tom Knox, who usually writes archaeological and religious thrillers. A good read and would make a good film.

Dorothy Flaxman Personal read ............★★★★★ Group read .....................★★★★

Girl Runner Carrie Snyder Two Roads Nicholas Cutler 3★

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In nb88 – due out early April 2016 –

WHAT WE ARE THINKING

Is this language really necessary?

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unnecessary for any writer, especially one setting out on a writing career, to resort to this continual barrage. Skilful use of vocabulary should be sufficient to convey protagonists to the reader. The fact that this new author had to apologise to his mother tells its own story.

I am no prude - it is the frequency and extreme overuse of the bad language that annoys me. No one objects to the odd ‘bad word’ but it becomes wearing and an insult to our excellent language (and hints at a lack of vocabulary).

How would these authors so prolific in the use of swearing feel about their children speaking like the people in their books? The worst culprits tend to be male thriller authors.

Little beats sitting down with a gripping thriller. But please writers - remember some of your readers find your over-use of oaths a total turn off.

Writers are warned against too much repetition. Is foul language on every page excluded from that advice?

Is it a macho thing? Does it sell books?

the nb Reading Group Book of the Year 2015

2015 The nudge Books of the Year 2015

Stand back, please, madam – it’s our annual CRIME investigation!

Sheila A Grant, Kilmarnock

Want to get something off your chest? You can rant all you want for our What We Are Thinking – we’ll print what we can but the whole piece will go on nudge.

Email: info@newbooksmag.com

Festival season is coming – which ones to go to?

Photo: Finn Beales

Y

ou cannot walk down the street without overhearing offensive language now. Words that add nothing to the context but do reflect badly on the speaker are in common use.

I grew up oblivious to such language even in the countless books I read and I was an avid reader of Ian Fleming, Dennis Wheatley, JD Salinger, John Steinbeck and others.

Recently I attended a reading where a young man spoke about his first novel. It depicted life for teenagers in the 70s and 80s in a Scottish town. Before reading from the book he apologised for his language to his mother who was in the audience.

Sheila A Grant takes The dialogue is crammed with up the cudgels - in a the worst kind of expletives to non-violent way you such an extent that no character in the book speaks without understand. (No swearing. I remember well the swear words were used in the writing of social deprivation that existed in that period and yes there was this piece!) an increase in foul language but not to the extent portrayed in Other WHAT WE ARE THINKING’s his otherwise excellent novel. you will find on nudge: However, in my opinion, the Which is best, a book or a pleasure of reading is spoiled by garden? Guy Pringle every page peppered with such words. Popular writers of today Richmal Crompton - Not Just William by Berwyn Peet - Ian Rankin, Denise Mina, Funding, not volunteers, required Alex Gray, Linda la Plante, Ruth Rendell et al have no need

by Clare Donaldson to resort to such depths to make YA, to read or not to read? That is their characters crystal clear. the question. Jade Craddock Are their characters less well Bert Wright on Amazonia defined because they do not resort to this language? I do not Sustainability in literature by believe so. It is totally Roseann Campbell