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July/August 2014 | Issue 82

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Freya North

NoViolet Bulawayo

Stories through orature

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‘Author’s first book is a big seller…’ THE BATH CHRONICLE

Go Swift & Far is a sweeping coming of age saga that exposes the deceit and hypocrisy lurking behind the genteel facades of the famous City of Bath Born in the wartime German raids on Bath in the Spring of 1942, an orphan boy, alone and destitute, is determined to survive. The City is immersed in a cycle of greed, abuse of privilege, corruption and demolition as it struggles out of post-war gloom and austerity. Demolish and rebuild or preserve and protect at all costs? The boy, now a man, is bent on success and wealth, whatever the personal sacrifice and cost to England’s Finest Georgian City.

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July/August 2014 Issue 82 | £3.00

‘I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.’ Groucho Marx

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NoViolet Bulawayo

newbooks Publisher, Guy Pringle, conquers Skype to cross the Atlantic to talk to his current fave author

Barbara Pym

So lovely to read Miss Pym…

NoViolet Bulawayo stories through orature

Libby Tempest of The Barbara Pym Society recalls her ﬁrst introduction to the author

I’m rather sorry you didn’t include a question about what readers of newbooks think of your recommendations. Clearly there are no absolutes here – what appeals to one reader may repel another. For me, though, one of whether I like the books you recommend. I would say that the 80/20 rule applies – but some of the 20 have

futile lives. I, naturally – being one of them myself – take another view.’ Compare this with a conversation that takes place between Mildred and Everard Bone (the rather understated hero of Excellent Women Women) on the subject of marriage and the merits of some of the women of their acquaintance. ‘“You would consider marrying an excellent woman?” I asked in amazement. “But they are not for marrying.” “You’re surely not suggesting that they are for the other things?” he said, smiling… “They are for being unmarried,” I said, “and by that I mean a positive rather than a negative state.”’ It could be argued that putting a woman like Mildred at the centre of a novel is quietly revolutionary in itself: the very act of writing about women whom society considers to be nonentities thus becomes an act of subversion. Pym’s subtle take on serious social issues combined with her wry humour give her a unique voice, reinforced by a strong sense of the ridiculous – here, in an uncharacteristically bold act, Mildred decides to attempt a different image by buying a new lipstick. ‘“It’s called Hawaiian Fire,” I mumbled, feeling rather foolish, for it had not occurred to me that I should have to say it out loud. “Oh, Hawaiian Fire. It’s rather an orange red, dear,” she said doubtfully, scrutinizing my face. “I shouldn’t have thought it was quite your colour”… “Thank you, but I think I will have Hawaiian Fire,” I said obstinately, savouring the full depths of my shame. I hurried away…Hawaiian Fire indeed! Nothing more unsuitable could possibly be imagined. I began to smile….’ As Barbara’s friend and biographer Hazel Holt has written, ‘Our view of life will never be quite the same again.’

been real shockers. My prize for the most repellent book of the decade is The Spinning Heart; utterly repugnant,

the things by which your magazine stands or falls is

o say that an author has changed forever the way you view the world and the way you relate to the world is quite a dramatic statement! The original Barbara Pym novel I read back in the 1980s was Excellent Women and it remains my favourite – when I fi rst read it, as well as laughing all the way through, the thing I remember feeling most was a profound sense of recognition. Excellent Women is narrated by Mildred Lathbury, who lives a modest self-contained life in a quiet London suburb, doing part-time work for the Society for Distressed Gentlewomen but – ‘Let me hasten to add that I am not at all like Jane Eyre, who must have given hope to so many plain women who tell their stories in the fi rst person…’ Into Mildred’s world of church, jumble sales and supper at the vicarage, the glamorous Napiers arrive like a tornado, drinking tea out of mugs and attending exotic anthropological talks at the Learned Society. However, Pym’s novels are not only what David Cecil described as ‘the fi nest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past 75 years’, they also provide rich material for discussion, particularly around issues of gender and ‘the woman question’. There is a fascinating comparison to be drawn between George Gissing’s 1893 novel The Odd Women and Pym’s Excellent Women, published almost 60 years later in 1952. Gissing and Pym both write about societies in which there are many more women than men – in the 1890s, it was estimated that there were more than half a million ‘spare’ women and in the 1950s, there was a similar surplus of women after the Second World War. Gissing’s heroine Rhoda Nunn explains ‘So many odd women – no making a pair with them. The pessimists call them useless, lost,

repetitious and to a large extent incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with colloquial Irish. Never mind, thanks to your recommendations I’ve encountered some really good books, too. Best wishes Chris Sledge

Suffice to say, we have agreed to differ but it was extremely heartening to hear 80 per cent of what we feature gets his thumbs up. High in that percentage has to be We Need New Names by Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo and I wasn’t alone in that because this book made it onto the 2013 Man Booker shortlist, no mean achievement for a debut novel. Furthermore, the extract from it in our last issue prompted an ordering frenzy amongst our readers. Thanks to the technology of Skype, NoViolet and I were able to communicate from early morning her time in the States to late afternoon here in the UK. I started by asking about her distinctive name and whether or not it was a pseudonym. ‘Elizabeth [Elizabeth Zandile Tshele in its entirety] is my given name but it is a name I didn’t use. It is on official documents but I come from a culture that uses random names so I didn’t have an attachment to it in the first place. And when I started writing seriously I 8

just wanted to assume a name that meant something to me. I’m sure my father would be scandalised to hear this.’ This observation was followed by a healthy chuckle and throughout the conversation her tone remained light and full of good humour. ‘Violet was my mother’s name and she died when I was somewhere around 18 months. She wasn’t discussed much when I was growing up which may have contributed to me going into books and reading just as a way of coping with stuff. I was here [in the States] for 13 years before I was able to go back home so [assuming this new name] was my way of dealing with my nostalgia and connecting with my homeland.’ I moved on to ask about the kind of childhood reading NoViolet did, thinking it unlikely that Enid Blyton would be the cultural touchstone that she is for so many young readers here in the UK. ‘I was raised on stories and I think that’s where I caught my storytelling bug but when I started going to school and discovered books and that you could travel without leaving your home I was drawn mostly to what was for the time a common staple for us, but there was Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew.’ And she reeled off several of their books. So Bulawayo was born and raised in Zimbabwe there you have it: the cultural and attended Njube High School and later seepage of Britain and America Mzilikazi High School for her A levels. in Africa. She completed her college education ‘It was only as I grew older in the US, studying at Kalamazoo Valley and went to high school and then to college that my reading Community College, and earning Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English from Texas broadened.’ Juno Diaz, Toni A&M University-Commerce and Southern Morrison, Edwidge Danticat Methodist University respectively. and Jumpha Lahiri are In 2010, she completed a Master of Fine mentioned in quick succession. Arts in Creative Writing at Cornell University, NoViolet elaborated on the where her work was recognised with a kind of childhood she had, Truman Capote Fellowship. ‘It was a very conventional Her debut novel entitled We Need New childhood. In fact, it was a Names was released in 2013, and was beautiful childhood because included in the 2013 Man Booker Prize we were born just after shortlist. This made her the first black independence so we were the African woman and the first Zimbabwean children of promise. Of all my to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. mother’s children I was the It also won the Etisalat Prize for Literature only one that wasn’t born in and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award a colonial time. I relocated [to among other accolades. America] at the age of 18 where

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B O OK B U Z Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 A round-up of book news.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Katie Fforde shares her favourite reading spot. W H AT W E ’ R E R E A DI N G

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

A look at the newbooks staff’s current reading.

QUIRKY Q & A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Danny Wallace’s take on our suggested options. B IG I N T E R V I E W

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

NoViolet Bulawayo – Guy Pringle talks to the Man Booker shortlister.

WHERE I WRITE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Karen Maitland shows us her favourite writing place. B IG I N T E R V I E W

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Freya North – Mel Mitchell chats to the bestselling author.

D O U B L E E X P O SU R E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3 We take a double look at the novels of Freya North.

T H E Y S AY, W E S AY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 The Vanishing Witch by Karen Maitland.

SU B S C R I P T ION S A N D S P E C I A L OF F E R S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 D O U B L E E X P O SU R E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

We look at the last and latest novels by Robert Goddard. T H E DI R E C T OR Y

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Your reviews of the current crop of books. 2

s u m m e r r e a di ng 20 1 4

guisegifts.com | newbooksmag.com

T H E S ON - I N - L AW by Charity Norman

THE TEA CHEST by Josephine Moon

GOSSIP by Beth Gutcheon

Paperback / £7.99 /

Paperback / 3 July /

Paperback / £7.99 /

£7.99 / Allen & Unwin

Atlantic

SHEIL A by Robert Wainright

Kate Fullerton, talented tea designer and now co-owner of The Tea Chest, could never have imagined that she'd be fl ying from Brisbane to London, risking her young family’s future, to save the business she loves from the woman who wants to shut it down. Meanwhile, Leila Morton has just lost her job; and if Elizabeth Clancy had known today was the day she would appear on the nightly news, she might at least have put on some clothes. Both need to move on. When Kate’s, Leila's and Elizabeth’s paths cross, they throw themselves into realising Kate's vision of the newest and most delectable tea shop in London. An enchanting, witty novel about the unexpected situations life throws at us, and how love and friendship help us through. ‘I loved it – a perfect blend of sweet and spice.’ Jenny Colgan

Paperback / 7 August /

T H E G O OD HO U S E by Ann Leary

£9.99 / Allen & Unwin

Paperback / 3 July /

This is a fascinating biography of the life of Sheila Chisholm (1895– 1969) who, although born on an Australian sheep farm, went on to be a shining light among the British upper classes. Vivacious, confi dent and striking, Sheila met her fi rst husband, Lord Loughborough, in Egypt during the First World War. Arriving in London as a young married woman, she quickly conquered English society, and would spend the next 50 years inside the palaces, mansions and clubs of the elite. Her clandestine affair with young Bertie, the future George VI, caused ruptures at Buckingham Palace. She subsequently became one of London's most admired fashion icons and society fundraisers and ended her days as Princess Dimitri of Russia.

The Ruby Slippers by Keir Alexander

‘With my background I can only say that I came into stories through orature and, for me, formally learning craft and technique was very important in my development… otherwise I was neverAllen & Unwin / Atlantic going to do it on my own.’

Summer reading A featured book in nb80, this is an emotional tale about Joseph, who killed his wife, Zoe. Zoe’s parents are bringing up her three children, who witnessed her death, and together they slowly adjust to life without Zoe, until the day Joseph is released from prison… ‘This is a painful, emotionally raw story that examines the deep wounds left behind after the tragic death of a beloved daughter, mother and wife. It was heartbreaking and at times upsetting, and Charity Norman doesn't avoid the sad realities of this diffi cult situation for all concerned, but the story also offers hope and looks at people's ability to forgive and build bridges even when it feels impossible. This author isn't afraid of tackling life-changing themes, and she is a must-read for me now.’ Directory reviewer Lindsay Healy

Regulars WHERE I READ

About the author

Allen & Unwin

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Extracts © Adrian Lourie/Writer Pictures

a n a p p r ec i a t ion

SEE PAGE 35

£7.99 / Corvus

Middle-aged and divorced, Hildy Good is an oddity in her small but privileged town. But Hildy isn't one for self-pity and instead meets the world with a wry smile, a dark wit and a glass or two of Pinot Noir. When her two earnest grownup children stage 'an intervention' and pack Hildy off to an addiction centre, she thinks all this fuss is ridiculous. After all, why shouldn't she enjoy a drink now and then? But we start to see another side to Hildy. Soon, a cluster of secrets become dangerously entwined, with devastating consequences… ‘An interesting read… The author gradually unfolds her story in a delightful way which encourages the reader to be surprised at the events.’ Directory reviewer Marjorie Coles

Loviah French owns a boutique dress shop in Manhattan. She has two best friends: Dinah and Avis, but they have been allergic to one another since an incident decades earlier. When a marriage means that Dinah and Avis must set aside their differences, Loviah has to manage her two friends' secrets as wisely as she can. Which is not wisely enough, as things turn out – a fact that will have a shattering effect on all their lives. ‘Gossip reads like a modern day Edith Wharton and is an insightful exposé of a world that turns on reputation. The dilemmas Loviah fi nds herself in are painfully familiar. This is an easy-to-read but cleverly written character-driven story with a lot of emotional impact.’

The Railwayman’s Wife by Ashley Hay

Directory reviewer Melanie Mitchell

T ORC H by Cheryl Strayed Paperback / 7 August / £8.99 / Atlantic

A searing and luminous novel of a family's grief after unexpected loss, from the author of the huge bestseller Wild. ‘Work hard. Do good. Be incredible’ is the advice Teresa Rae Wood shares with the listeners of her local radio show, and the advice she strives to live by every day. She has fl ed a bad marriage and rebuilt a life with her two children and their caring stepfather, Bruce. Their love for each other binds them as a family through the daily struggles of making ends meet. But when they receive unexpected news that Teresa, only 38, is dying of cancer, their lives begin to unravel. Strayed's intimate portraits of these fully human characters in a time of crisis show the varying truths of grief, forgiveness, and the beautiful terrors of learning how to keep living.

guisegifts.com | newbooksmag.com

The Way Back Home by Freya North

Features

Rumours by Freya North

U N C ON S C IO U S S T OR I E S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1

Featured author Keir Alexander follows up on a mysterious message. IG N I T ION S PA R K S

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Featured author Ashley Hay on writing about her grandparents. S O U N D T R AC K T O A N OV E L

. . . . . . . . . . .25

Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford

W H E N T H E WOR L D C H A N G E D . . . . . . . 3 0

The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

S U M M E R R E A DI N G

Featured author Jamie Ford lists the songs that inspired his latest book.

Featured author Jacqueline Winspear shares the background to her new novel.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Fifteen pages showing the pick of this year’s summer sizzlers.

S O L OV E LY T O R E A D M I S S P Y M . . . . . . . 5 5 A celebration of noted author Barbara Pym.

The Corners of the Globe by Robert Goddard

E N T H U S I A S M , PA S S ION A N D S H E E R DR I V E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

The Ways of the World by Robert Goddard

P OE T R Y RO U N D - U P . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 0

Alastair Giles extols the dynamism of featured author Douglas Westcott.

Jade Craddock takes a look at some current anthologies.

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Go Swift and Far by Douglas Westcott

OVER 40 EVERY ISSUE NEW BOOKS KATIE FFORDE AND READING GROUPS FREE BOOKS SEE PAGE 35

KAREN MAITLAND THE MAGAZINE FOR READERS

REVIEWED INSIDE DANNY WALLACE

NEWBOOKSMAG.COM

July/August 2014 | Issue 82

big i n t erv i e w

NoViolet Bulawayo

Stories through orature

OUR FEATURED BOOKS FREE TO YOU THIS ISSUE

Cover photo NoViolet Bulawayo

PLUS Go Swift and Far PB AW 2_Layout 1 04/03/2014 11:04 Page 1

SPINE 30.6mm

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‘Author’s first book is a big seller…’ THE BATH CHRONICLE

www.douglaswestcott.com

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PRESS

July/August 2014 Issue 82 | £3.00

‘I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.’ Groucho Marx

SUPPLEMENT

Freya North

©Adrian Lourie/ Writer Pictures

Publisher Guy Pringle Managing Editor Sheila Ferguson Design Park Corner Design Ltd Sales & Publisher Liaison Mel Mitchell Marketing Madelaine Smith Reviews & subscriptions Guy Pringle & Mel Mitchell mel.mitchell@newbooksmag.com To ﬁnd out what the team is currently reading, turn to page 6. newbooks 1 Vicarage Lane Stubbington, Hampshire PO14 2JU Telephone 01329 311419 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.

e recently sent out two surveys, as we’ve tried to do annually for the last few years: one to our reviewers and one to a selection of our general readers. Apologies if any of you had questionnaire-fatigue and weren’t happy to fi nd one of these in your inbox. However, asking your readers what they think has to be a sensible thing to do every so often – in case one loses the plot. In my time in publishing I have had occasion to assiduously measure response rates to justify some of the projects in which I’ve been involved. When I was Marketing Director of Collins Educational division, achieving between 2 and 5 per cent was considered exceptional, the norm being between 1 and 2 per cent. Back then – before recycling – that was an awful lot of paper to have mailed to schools simply to be binned. My point being? Well on both of this year’s surveys we topped a 40 per cent response rate. Four zero. Unheard of, but absolutely true. Before we even looked at what you wanted to tell us it was immensely heartening to feel we must be producing something with which you wanted to engage. Yes, there were some gripes (though I’m not going to tell you what they were – we’ll just quietly take a view and do something about them). What surprised me is the breadth of your reading. From our Book of the Year voting it has always been apparent that you have no fear of the outer reaches of fiction. We always end up with a healthy top ten that, we think, accurately reflects what reading

groups across the land are tackling. But the long trail of books that garner three, two or just a lonely single vote stretches off to the end of the spreadsheet. Stereoptypically, women read fiction and men read non-fiction (if they read at all). In recent years we’ve worked hard to increase our appeal to male readers – with a male publisher (putatively) in charge you might expect a healthy selection of manly books but perhaps I’m just too in touch with my feminine side? (It’s true I do own a quantity of pink shirts.) What surprised me are the stats for the various genres we listed for you to choose. We asked you to tick as many as applied but from 453 responses the spread is gratifyingly wide – you are the saviours of the publishing industry! Commercial ﬁction

52.1%

236

Literary ﬁction

91.8%

416

Crime/thriller

78.6%

356

Romance

20.8%

Historical ﬁction

73.5%

333

Fantasy

19.6%

Science ﬁction

15.2%

Horror

7.9%

Young adult

28.7%

130

Childrens’

13.2%

Non-ﬁction – biography/memoir

61.1%

277

Non-ﬁction – general

47.0%

213

Graphic novels

4.6%

When the future of reading is regularly debated in the broadsheets and the media generally, it is massively encouraging to realise the breadth and commitment you have to this ‘dying’ art.

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

BREAKING NEWS…

… we’ve just conﬁrmed the last two authors for our readers’ day. Jake Wallis Simons and Sara Sheridan complete our line-up for what promises to be an outstanding day if last year was anything to go by. The only regret I had about last year was that the sun didn’t shine much at lunchtime for those who wanted to venture out into the grounds – and if that’s the worst I can think of then I think it can be deemed a success! Fingers crossed for 28 June this year. guisegifts.com | newbooksmag.com

Joanne Harris © Geraint Lewi

b o ok bu z z

Our regular column of news snippets and insights into the world of books

The Government has united the literary community in

s/Writer Pictures

BOOK BUZZ opposition to a policy of banning book parcels for prisoners. Among the

Survey after survey, and the bestseller lists, demonstrate that women buy and writers who have protested are Mark Haddon, read more fiction than do men. The latest fi ndings come from a poll released in Philip Pullman, Joanne Harris, Julian Barnes, advance of this year’s World Book Night. Nearly a third of the men surveyed said that Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duﬀ y, and Jeﬀrey they had not picked up a book with intent since school. As a smaller number – a fi fth – Archer – a former inmate himself. But, at confessed that they found reading ‘difficult or unenjoyable’, there must be about 10 per the time of writing, the Ministry of Justice cent of men who do not mind reading but simply cannot be bothered to do it. So give the is unmoved, arguing that the ban is man/men in your life a book! You’ll fi nd plenty of recommendations in newbooks. necessary in order to prevent the

for short ﬁction at the moment. Last year, Lydia Davis – some of whose stories are no longer than single sentences – won the Man Booker International Prize, and short stories, won the Nobel. Now the ﬁrst Folio Prize (£40,000), run from the UK but given for an English-language work from anywhere, has gone to George Saunders for his ‘artful and

As aspiring authors toil in obscurity, the following is the kind of experience they dream of emulating. Jax Miller finished her first novel, Freedom’s Child, on a Tuesday, signed with a leading literary agent by Wednesday, and by the following Tuesday had a six-figure advance with HarperCollins. Freedom’s Child is a psychological thriller – a highly fashionable genre at the moment – about a woman in the Witness Protection scheme who risks her safety to hunt for her missing child. Jax Miller is a pseudonym for Áine Ó Domhnaill, who under her real name has been shortlisted for a Crime Writers’ Association award.

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res

The Sunday Times’ top ﬁve bestsellers since the paper ﬁrst published a bestseller list 40 years ago have been A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, Wild Swans by Jung Chang, The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden, and Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. These are the titles with the most appearances in the list, not the ones with the highest sales – in case you were wondering about the absence of Dan Brown and EL James.

e/ Writer Pictur es

Kazuo ishiguro res © Geraint Lewis/Writer Pictu

There will be new books this autumn from a number of literary big hitters, among them Kazuo Ishiguro (it is nine years since his last, Never Let Me Go), Ian McEwan, Peter Carey, and Hilary Mantel. But Mantel’s book will be a collection of short stories, bearing the provocative title The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher Thatcher, and not the conclusion of the Wolf Hall trilogy. ‘I have to ask my readers to be patient because the third book is highly complex,’ she has said.

Pictures

profound’ collection Tenth of December.

You do not often learn the privately expressed views of members of the Royal Family. But Martin Amis has divulged that Prince Charles, at a ‘small dinner party’, once expressed a lack of sympathy for Salman Rushdie over the Satanic Verses aﬀair, when Rushdie was threatened with assassination for supposedly insulting Islam. ‘A novel does not set out to insult anyone,’ Amis informed the Prince, who ‘took it on board’. But, Amis added, in an interview with Vanity Fair, ‘I’d suppose the next night at a diﬀerent party he would have said the same thing.’

Alice Munro, best known for her

George Saunders Pictures © Steve Bisgrove/Writer

Prize juries seem to have a taste

smuggling of dangerous materials.

w here i rea d

Katie Fforde

Where I read Bestselling author Katie Fforde reveals there’s a race to the prime spot

read any and everywhere. My husband is the same. There isn’t a room in this house, including the bathroom, without either a bookcase or a pile of appropriate reading. People do say, ‘have you read all those books?’, and thankfully, we haven’t. The thought of having nothing to read induces deep panic. But because of our joint book habit there is always something waiting to be snatched up and carried to a conducive spot. But there is a problem. While we both can and do read anywhere there is a favourite spot and rather like dogs chasing to get nearest the Rayburn, we head for the conservatory to get there. Our house is built on the side of a hill and so from some angles (ie the road) our conservatory appears to be on the fi rst storey. This elevation, caused by the falling away of the land beneath, makes it extra light. It has a solid roof and there are blinds so it doesn’t get too hot or too bright but when there are no leaves on the trees and the world is generally fairly gloomy, there you feel surrounded by air. And you can see for miles – right across the vale to where the River Severn glints in the distance and behind it, the Welsh Hills. But when spring comes, it is like being in the trees and at the right time of year a pale pink rose (Paul’s Himalayan Musk if you’re interested) climbs like the

rose in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ in among the branches so you’re in a rose bower. But unlike rose bowers in real life, you are comfortable. There is a lovely sofa and if suitably propped and if you direct your gaze forward you can see the view and even if completely supine you are aware of the light and leaves. There is no better place when accompanied by a large book and a large glass of wine. And of course the dogs will always join you. I find them useful for resting my arms and sometimes forget they are animals and adjust them, like cushions. They’re very good natured about this and don’t seem to mind. The only downside is there is only one of this most blissful reading spot and my husband tends to get there fi rst. This is because I do feel obliged to clear the table after lunch or put a couple of things in the dishwasher before going for that blissful slump, the permitted time to read during the day. (I do read during the day at anytime but that always feels a bit illicit.) However, he is not always allowed to be there alone. I can make myself fairly comfy if I sit in the The Perfect Match by chair and put my feet on the end of the sofa. Then there are two of us, reading companionably together. Katie Fforde is published in hardback by Century, But should he foolishly get up for any reason, I’m price £16.99. there, in the prime spot. And I won’t be moved.

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WHAT WE’RE READING GUY PRINGLE Publisher

I’m keen to alert you to The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain – a collection of Ian Jack’s journalism from The Guardian, and other sources, over a couple of decades or more. It is all fantastic stuff but let me focus on one short piece, ‘Revolution on a Plate’, where he briefly elaborates on a series of culinary fi rsts: First tin of baked beans that also contained sausages, First tinned spaghetti, First olive oil in my mother’s kitchen (as opposed to bathroom) cupboard, First garlic in same place, First untinned salmon – all significant staging posts in the development of his palate. And as for themes, engineering – of railways and yachts – regularly appears plus the Indian sub-continent; then there are things we no longer have, but never approached with a mawkish or sentimental mien. As someone who has to write pieces like this knowing I’m not a

writer, I marvel at how he takes a topic of little apparent interest and turns it into an enchantment or makes me laugh out loud with self-recognition. As another reviewer has written, ‘almost all of these wonderful pieces were commissioned by newspapers and magazines. They would never have worked, and would not now work, on the internet, which is so very interested in speed and sensation and so resolutely uninterested in well-researched thoughtfulness’. Take a break from your fiction and give The Country Formerly Known a try, I implore you. You can thank me later. S H E I L A F E RG U S ON Managing Editor

I’m not usually a reader of non-fiction however my horror at the current spate of killings of raptors in the Scottish Highlands prompted me to read Wildlife Crime by Dave Dick, the former Senior Scottish Investigative Officer of the RSPB. This fascinating book gives a revealing insight into the callous and appalling offences committed against nature, as well as highlighting the deficiencies within the system which is meant to offer protection. However the book is not all grimness, the author also describes the wonders of the many birds

he’s been privileged to survey in their natural habitats and his personality and humour shine through to make this an enjoyable and engrossing read. MEL MITCHELL Sales and Publisher Liaison

I’m almost sorry I’ve already read The Lemon Grove by Helen Walsh because it is pretty much the perfect beach read. Jenn and Greg are on their annual holiday in Mallorca, along with Greg’s daughter Emma and her new boyfriend. It is a place the family knows well but this year something has changed. Jenn finds herself questioning the nature of her relationships with the other three and crossing boundaries with potentially devastating consequences. Walsh deftly weaves themes related to love, desire and lost youth into a fairly straightforward plot, elevating the story into a thought-provoking exploration of a family on the verge of crisis. It had great pace and the setting was evoked in authentic, sultry detail. I was less keen on the two younger characters and I wondered whether it was quite a fair representation of the concerns of ‘women of a certain age’ but you’ll probably need extra ice in your cocktail if you take The Lemon Grove away with you this summer…

newbooks Readers’ Day 2014 Come and join us at this year’s event which promises to be even more successful than our enthusiastically received 2013 venture. We are delighted to conﬁrm our guest authors are Katie Fforde, Sara Sheridan and Jake Wallis Simons Winchester St Peters on Saturday 28 June To book your place see page 35, go to newbooksmag.com or ring 01329 311419 Lunch is included in the price.

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qu i r k y q & a

Danny Wallace

QUIRKY

Who is Tom Ditto? by Danny Wallace is

Writer and presenter Danny Wallace makes his choices

published in hardback by Ebury Press, price £12.99. You can sample this title on page 45.

Cats or dogs? Depends what the side dish is. Tea or coffee? Tea tea tea tea tea tea tea tea tea and sometimes coffee. But mainly tea. I’ve never had a bad cup. Nor have I ever turned one down. I mean that genuinely. I don’t think I’ve ever turned one down. I would remember. Tea is the greatest drink on earth. Bridges or tunnels? I’m not sure what kind of nutter would choose a tunnel over a bridge. Why would they do that? ‘Oh great – a tunnel! My view will remain entirely consistent for the duration of my time here’. Bridges, on the other hand, can take your breath away with their magnificence, their views, and with the sense of respectful wonder you have for the people who built them. Any idiot can dig a bloody tunnel. Porsche or BMW? Porsches are flashy. They’re cool, but the guy inside probably has his trousers up too high. BMWs exude confidence. Granted, the guy inside probably has his trousers up too high, but at least no one would guess.

Paper clips or staples? Well, it’s the classic debate, and I’m pleased at least one publication has fi nally had the balls to address it head-on. Staples will always have their haters, but the propaper clip lobby is in danger of gaining too much power in this country. Surely there’s a way to appreciate both paper clips and staples for what they are. Why must we always argue? America or Australia? I actually have my own Australian at home, but both countries are places I’ve had fantastic adventures. Driving down the east coast of Australia with my wife, stopping at the Big Prawn by the side of the road, or the Big Banana further down, will always be a treasured memory, and one tainted only by the fact that it involved a big plaster prawn and a giant concrete banana. TV or radio? I’m a radio nut. I love TV, but I adore radio. I listen to a lot of speech radio, on one of the seven or eight digital radios in the house, but I also listen at night to weird American right-wing talk shows or placid Australian phone-ins on my iPad… nothing will send you to sleep faster than someone calling a

phone-in to get advice on whether or not they can sue their neighbour for growing their hydrangeas too high. Radio 4, 3, 2, or 1? Radio 4. This is a books magazine – is anyone going to choose Radio 1? But Radio 4 for its unwavering Britishness and its willingness to devote airtime to documenting things you think must be boring but end up fascinating. Malaysian legal reform and its effects on local jammakers, or whatever. Denim or linen? Can you imagine a bunch of cowboys wearing linen? Perhaps riding side saddle then stopping off at the saloon for a cup of Earl Grey and some pilates? Can you imagine Mick Jagger strutting round the stage, stamping his feet, the silhouette of his little legs visible through his gently billowing linen slacks? I think you have your answer, madam. Starter or dessert? Depends if it’s cat or dog for the main.

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t h e big i n t e r v i e w

NoViolet Bulawayo

newbooks Publisher, Guy Pringle, conquers Skype to cross the Atlantic to talk to his current fave author

NoViolet Bulawayo stories through orature

egular readers of this magazine will know I am subject to bouts of enthusiasm. Indeed, spare a thought for my colleagues who help me publish each issue as they have to fend off many more ‘great ideas’ that fortunately never see the light of day. However, I bow to no woman or man in my willingness to spread the word about books I have really, really enjoyed. In fact, only this morning Chris Sledge and I have engaged in a minor spat about The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan. Chris was responding to a questionnaire I’d sent out enquiring what we need to do to further improve what we do. I’m rather sorry you didn’t include a question about what readers of newbooks think of your recommendations. Clearly there are no absolutes here – what appeals to one reader may repel another. For me, though, one of the things by which your magazine stands or falls is whether I like the books you recommend. I would say that the 80/20 rule applies – but some of the 20 have been real shockers. My prize for the most repellent book of the decade is The Spinning Heart; utterly repugnant, repetitious and to a large extent incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with colloquial Irish. Never mind, thanks to your recommendations I’ve encountered some really good books, too. Best wishes Chris Sledge

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About the author

t h e big i n t e r v i e w

NoViolet Bulawayo

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NoViolet Bulawayo

competitions elsewhere around the world). There’s another outburst of laughter: ‘I was just telling a friend that I was home this summer and my sisters and I were just talking. “You think we care that you wrote a book; we don’t care”.’ She giggles infectiously. ‘I don’t come from a family of readers. I never knew what it was like for an older sibling to give me a book and say “Read this, you’ll enjoy it”. It’s been interesting because they have had to gauge the worth of what I do by the interest of the media. So it wasn’t until they started reading about me in the newspapers that they began saying “Oh wow”.’ Behind all this, her light-hearted tone clearly shows she really has no highfalutin opinion of herself, all very refreshing. And when I try to give her at least one compliment about the quality of her writing she very modestly ducks and says it was a result of innate ability rather than particular craft. ‘Perhaps it was from years of reading and getting a sense of how a book is put together.’ If you have read the book and enjoyed it as much as I did, you will probably agree just how cleverly it is constructed. ‘I wasn’t thinking of adult readers. When I’m writing from a child’s voice I’m in a space… I’m in a world of children and I imagine children reading what I’m writing.’ She describes the process of turning an idea into a fi nished story and the time she gives it to take shape within her own mind before committing to the written version. ‘I wrote We Need New Names in Ithaca in upstate New York where it was very cold,’ – heavy emphasis on the word ‘very’ – ‘I was mostly confi ned to my bedroom so I just wrote from my bed.’ We digress into the importance of notebooks to a writer and how when Bruce Springsteen was asked about what he would save from a burning building it was his notebooks that came to mind fi rst of all – not his wife or children. NoViolet’s laugh tinkles in the background before she says her friends would be what she would save rather than her notebooks, even though they are obviously important to her. And communicating with the outside world? I mention the absence of information on her own website. ‘I’m not a social media person, I used to be on Facebook but I took that down when the book came out. Writing is a solitary business and I am at my best when I am disconnected.’ We then compare notes about the relative merits of technology, me the grumpy old man and she the young woman who can see it in perspective as a matter of time-management. Our conversation draws to a close and, after my attempt to secure her for an event when she visits the UK (possibly 2016?), we say our thank yous and goodbyes. Having just got back from a literary prize award in Boston, she’s ﬂying out to Los Angeles later that day for a similar event. I doubt we will ever meet but this young lady is going a long way and I, personally, look forward to reading her next book as soon as it is available.

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I was going to study law but I took a creative writing class and decided that that was what I was meant to do.’ As Bulawayo now teaches a course in creative writing, I told her about the recent coverage in the UK media of playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker and novelist, Hanif Kureishi. At the Bath Literature festival in late February, he told the audience, ‘it’s probably 99.9 per cent [of his students] who are not talented and the little bit that is left is talent… [telling a story] is a difficult thing to do and it’s a great skill to have. Can you teach that? I don’t think you can.’ Unsurprisingly the media jumped on this, not least because Kureishi is a professor in the creative writing department at Kingston University. Having listened attentively to my description of Mr Kureishi’s predicament, NoViolet laughed refreshingly at the irony but went on to outline her experience and perspective. ‘With my background I can only say that I came into stories through orature and, for me, formally learning craft and technique was very important in my development… otherwise I was never going to do it on my own. Some writers have done it and have done it well but with my preparation I absolutely needed that help, there was no way I was going to do it on my own. I continue to teach creative writing today and I can see the value of it in my students. Talent itself is not enough and in my students I can see… we have kids who are talented and have stories to tell but they don’t always know how to end their stories. I don’t think there’s any harm in walking them… teaching them literally about reading. ‘As somebody who spent four lovely inspiring years going through [this process] I just don’t buy it myself.’ We move on to the title of her novel – did it spring out fully formed or did it develop during the gestation of the book? ‘I waited for it and when it didn’t come I started searching [the novel] for clues.’ I mention that the reference to the title appears very early in the book (which, of course, she already knows). Graciously she agrees, ’Absolutely, but it became one of those accidental titles that worked.’ She described how that time of writing was reﬂected by changes in her home country and her personal feeling that the way life was lived there needed new thought and new ways of living. Much as many of us might hanker after a life in an exotic location abroad, making it happen is something very few of us actually do. I was suddenly struck by the thought: here is a young woman who left everything in order to pursue a career. I asked whether her family were all still back in her home country. It turns out that a brother, sister and cousin have also relocated to the States which makes life for NoViolet much more equable although she lives by herself. Perhaps I was somewhat discounting the prestige her novel has achieved when I asked what her family made of its success. After all, any debut novelist would be delighted to make a longlist and then the shortlist of the most prestigious prize in the UK (a feat it has similarly achieved in literary prize

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo is published in paperback by Vintage, price £8.99. It is also available in e-book.

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The Ruby Slippers by Keir Alexander

Featured author Keir Alexander ﬁnally follows up on his mysterious message

ince the publication of The Ruby Slippers, I’ve had to try and explain the inexplicable many times over. People keep asking where the idea came from, and the characters. In both cases the honest answer has been, ‘I don’t know’. It all began with a dream I had in 1988; I was at the point of dropping off one night when I heard a man’s voice say ‘Do the red shoes’. It was just as if someone was in the room, and I later found out that it’s called a hypnagogic hallucination. The message though was a mystery. I had no connection with red shoes in any way, so, over the years I simply kept an eye out for anything remotely connected. I checked out Hans Christian Andersen’s story fi rst, but it had a hideous moral, so that was that. The 1947 fi lm of the same name, again did nothing for me, and Kate Bush’s 1992 ‘Red Shoes’ album didn’t move me either, although I’m a diehard fan. It wasn’t until twelve years later that anything came to light. My daughter was visiting Cardiff, where I lived and was wearing a badge with a picture of the ruby slippers from the fi lm, and I just said out loud ‘That’s it!’, having no idea why. The Wizard of Oz certainly held no special meaning for me; my mum took me to see it when I was five and at the fi rst sight of a wicked witch, I got up out of my seat and ran out into the street, never to return! Notwithstanding early trauma, I decided to check out the ruby slippers on the web and discovered some intriguing facts. Particularly noteworthy was the gay interest and of course the Judy Garland element. Afterwards, I sat down and wrote a synopsis for a fi lm, as simple as that. It kind-of wrote itself in a day and the characters just ‘volunteered’ themselves. It wasn’t until five years later that I dusted the

treatment off again, and, realising I wouldn’t stand any chance of getting the fi lm done, decided to write the novel – another simple decision but at the end of such an extraordinarily long process that had little to do with conscious thought. Hypnagogic illusions are apparently quite common and there are several recorded instances of writers and musicians claiming dreams as their inspiration. I’d love to hear from any readers who have had similar experiences. As for the characters, although I didn’t consciously plan it, there are characters in it who resemble people I know. Alas, I’ve had to be circumspect about these. All I can say is that the deepest secret in the story is one that was confided to me; the most troubled soul is someone very close; Old Rosa’s condition is not unknown to me as I once did my bit to clear out the place of a sufferer. I’m in there too in several characters, I’ve concluded. As a case in point, I worked as a sixteen-year-old after school in a grocer’s. I vividly remember the sepulchral atmosphere of the cellar, and the sour-sweet smell of the cold room. Interestingly, I also remember an old couple in particular, who used to come into the shop. They both stank ‘to high heaven’ and you knew they were coming long before they arrived. I privately christened them ‘the pair of nickers’ because I used to watch them surreptitiously secreting cans of cat-food about their persons. Out of sympathy, I never grassed on them, though the manager would have been livid. He was a funny old stick – Mr Barrett who ran the Liptons that used to be on Brixton Hill. Perhaps some readers will remember him? I was then that shop-boy up to a point, but I’m also James, Michael and Malachi in one way or another. If they ever make a film, I’ll put myself up to play the auctioneer.

The Ruby Slippers by Keir Alexander is one of this issue’s featured books and you can sample it over the page.

We have copies to give away FREE – see page 35.

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The Ruby Slippers by Keir Alexander

A N E X T R AC T F R O M

mme

The Ruby Slippers

ded

reco

Keir Alexander Publication date 21 August Directory reviewer Linda Hepworth gave this stunning debut a ﬁve-star review… ‘How does smelly, chaotic Rosa, the old, Latvian bag-lady, come to own a valuable pair of ruby slippers? With a cast of diverse, vibrant, credible and unforgettable characters, this story explores the decades old mystery which will eventually bring change to all of them. The lives of the various characters gradually intersect as each one searches for meaning and value in life… The story drew me in from the opening sentence and held me entranced throughout. It is full of rich, colourful language and some wonderfully comic moments. What an amazing, utterly satisfying and believable modern fairy tale, and what a wonderful debut novel, just the sort of book to curl up with, and lose oneself in.’

he stinks. It has to be said. Stinks to high heaven. No, worse, stinks like death. This is not just a smell, an unpleasant odour to be carried away on the next breeze, it’s a stench, a pestilence that violates the space she enters and damns the air where she has been. The rest of her spells death, too: the funeral-dark clothes, head to foot, and the dry knot of hair which has surely been borrowed from a corpse, not to mention the skinny marbled wrists sticking out of her black shell, making her look like some great wounded bug dragging itself away somewhere to die. She has the dog for company, of course. His name is Barrell – another great black thing, padding ahead of her. If you see him coming along the street, get away and downwind pronto before Old Rosa arrives. Why he puts up with her is a real mystery. She has never petted him, or made him stand on his hind legs for treats, or tickled his tummy. He has never known the restraint of a leash, so how come he never ran barking for the hills? Maybe he likes the smell and wears it with pride, like 12

a doggy badge. All the same, you don’t see too many other mutts running up to sniff his old balls. Even animals seem to give Old Rosa a wide berth. Why the authorities have not taken it upon themselves to do something about the woman is another mystery. They could surely take her in, scrub her down, and dress her up and perch her on a floral chair in some nice old folks’ home. But they don’t. Maybe the neighbourhood possesses an unconscious collective wisdom and somehow they need Old Rosa to walk among them. This creeping intimation of mortality, accompanied by the dog and the once-tartan shopping cart, with its squeaking wheel so simply and eloquently mocking all the vanities that flesh is heir to. Memento mori. So she is free to roam. Here she is coming along 98th towards Fifth. The dog is there at the kerb, mooning for the grass in the Park, slavishly looking back over his shoulder for the next intervention. With barely a nod, Rosa sends him on and steps straight off after him, looking neither right nor left. She’s canny

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The Ruby Slippers by Keir Alexander

enough to know the police have already blocked off the traffic from the Avenue. People are out already – happy families and a few early-worm Paddies-for-alloccasions, huddling, flapping and stamping against the cold before the sun gets up. As Rosa hauls the cart up the far kerb, a little girl holding a green flag leans over to pat the dog. Rosa walks on, wilfully oblivious. She does not see when the child doubles over, retching, and she escapes the dagger of a look that the mother hurls at her back. Rosa has conditioned herself never to look back or to take account of the reactions of others. She just walks on, never turning to confront the chaos churning in her wake. But all of these awful things about Rosa are far from the whole story. For within the cavern of her spirit, Old Rosa, the bag lady, carries a thing of infi nite beauty. A secret, shining treasure. Michael Marcinkus shuffles out of the shop door, carrying a long pole with a brass hook, which he uses to draw down the tired striped awning from its recess. Rain or shine he does this; the weather is not the point. What matters is that these things are done and that they are seen to be done. It’s the same with the striped canvas apron that he wears round his tubby waist. It’s the same with the lettering, which makes a tarnished dawn across the window: Sunrise Deli and Grocery Store. It’s the same with the open/closed sign that must at all times give the correct message. And it’s the same with the polishing and priming of the ‘ridiculous’ old weighing machine that, as his wife Grace has complained every day for the last forty years, takes up so much space in the doorway. A small man shouldering big burdens, Michael straightens the chairs at the outside table, squints up at the cold slice of sun peeping out from behind the block and throws a glance in the direction of Fifth. Trade will be brisk today. In days gone by, the thought would have made him happy, but now that he is older and tireder it means the day will drag all the more. He fl ips the sign to open, wipes his feet, goes back inside to see that all is as it should be in a deli store preserved exactly as it was in the Twenties. Faded marble counters, big swishing slicers, grinders and ranks of knives. The stock itself – myriad meats, cheeses and fruits – all laid out on trays, set out on stands, hanging on hooks. Then there are the invisible but equally important things that give the promise of things: the cool, sad aromas of olives, garlic and anchovies; the warm, seductive invitation of coffee, oranges and spices. And all these items to be in their places at their appointed hours. Bread, bagels and bakery goods – in and arranged in their cases by five thirty. Ham, poultry, sides of beef – up from the cold room by six; pared, sliced and under the glass by seven. Cans, bottles and cartons – up from the cellar, tagged and onto the shelves by seven thirty. All of these separate things are part of the whole, and the whole must be preserved each day in the same way, because that’s how it has been and how it shall continue to be. Articles of faith.

Then there are the invisible but equally important things that give the promise of things: the cool, sad aromas of olives, garlic and anchovies; the warm, seductive invitation of coﬀee, oranges and spices. And all these items to be in their places at their appointed hours. A blemished piece of fruit leers at him from an otherwise spotless battalion of apples on a stand. Michael stoops and studies it from all angles, his head twitching like a canary contemplating a seed. He tuts: the boy should have spotted that. He walks back into the store, ruefully holding out the apple for Grace to see as she mops the floor. Imperiously, he calls out, ‘Benjy!’ and looks towards the cellar door, where he knows he will emerge. Grace squeezes out the mop and sighs. She is less religious about these things. She’s tired, too; she’s been doing this for a lifetime now, and all she would like to do is lie on a beach in Hawaii for a month and watch her toenails grow. Fat chance. She watches blearily as Benjy clunks up the stairs and inches through the door, juggling a box of Wesseltoft’s Luxury Cat Litter. Michael holds out the apple like it’s Exhibit A. ‘Would you care to explain?’ Benjy looks at the inadequate apple, shocked, as if it’s a dead rat, then sticks out his bottom lip as if he’s going to cry, which is the signal for soft-hearted Michael to back-pedal. Grace knows that once Michael is off his back, Benjy will go round behind the racks and laugh himself silly, and she doesn’t blame him for this; he’s a nice boy. She herself so often feels the same way about her husband. Why must he persist in being such a funny little man? Michael continues, half-hearted now, to berate the boy. ‘You have to be on the lookout for these things, young man. The devil is in the detail.’ Grace rolls her eyes. My God, so now we have St Michael the Evangelist! Why does he have to be so damn right and proper all the time? All these rules and regs on top of the crippling day. What do they gain by it? It’s an issue, a real issue. Grace shakes herself out of her daydream monologue but already he has marched off to find the next abomination – some item wrongly shelved, or particle of dust gathering where particles of dust are forbidden to gather. A brown-haired, dapper-looking man of forty or so walks in the door and waits meekly at the counter. With the turned-up collar and his mackintosh belt tied just so, he looks stylish, jaunty even. But look close enough and you’d see that his keen blue eyes are drawn tight and shuttered against the day. Grace, who has gone back to mopping the floor, looks up and calls out, ‘A moment, please.’ And then she yells for her old man to get up front. For the past five years and just about every day, this same nice polite man has been coming to the deli to have a coffee or buy some choice thing to eat. He has become a friendly

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The Ruby Slippers by Keir Alexander

regular, but still Grace does not address him by his name, which is James, and still James does not have many words for her, either, though each of them has nothing but kind thoughts for the other. Instead, he smiles and stands there until Mr Marcinkus comes shuffl ing up, wiping his hands on his apron. ‘James, James, how are you? Macchiato, yes?’ James sits down at one of three stools just inside the door, while Michael busies himself at the espresso machine, a magician conjuring aromatic delights in a swirl of steam. He was in here only yesterday, and shadows have gathered inside James even since then, but the Sunrise always gives him such pleasure. Delis like this are rare now, so many of the smaller places having been gutted and ruined in the eighties and nineties, and the big downtown ones made over all fake and flashy. He takes it all in: the old-fashioned letters across the window, so beautifully crafted, and the mouldings, tired now and in need of TLC but retaining their Twenties charm. He adores the old weighing machine in the doorway, and above all he loves the whole mysterious interior – light in creamy marble counters; dark in mahogany, with curved glass cases held in flowing chromium and the vast array of products so abundant with their shapes, colours and aromas. More than once, it has occurred to him that the shelves here mirror in a more sensual way the shelves in his own workplace, the New York Public Library, both endeavouring to connect people with offerings from other places, to bring them closer to a bygone age. Yes, here time can pass, here he can be something more like himself. As if to underline the fact, Michael strikes up, friendly and comforting, ‘So, James, up and about early. Out to see the Parade?’ ‘I was on my way to the hospital.’ ‘Ah, yes, of course…’ Michael can see by the new lines on James’s honest face that it’s a subject best steered away from. He brings over a steaming cup and sets it down, saying, ‘I’m sorry, I should have realized.’ ‘It’s OK,’ is as much as James can say. How could he explain to this kindly old man that at this very moment all of his thoughts are calcified around one simple, horrible proposition? That as soon as he has fi nished his coffee he will turn out of this place along East 99th. Turn left across from the Park and walk two blocks along to Fifth and 97th. That he will then crane his neck to look up at the dark tower of the hospital, will take an elevator to the fourteenth floor and there enter an unnervingly pleasant room. And lying in this room he will fi nd the beloved person who, as is the way of things, is likely this very day to die. This unspeakable knowledge slides round his guts like a blade. Death will soon come roaring for Paolo, his partner, and inside James burns to scream out at the wickedness of it. It would be so glorious to take hold of his dying lover, rip him from the web of tubes that have softened him for the end and crash with him through the glass into the blazing corona of the sun. 14

But these are not the kind of things you say over coffee. James looks up and sees Michael gazing at him, all downcast. He takes a last sip, neatly replaces the cup on its saucer, lines up spoon and cup and stands down from the stool. ‘Please give Paolo my best wishes,’ Michael ventures, pointlessly, because James has already moved off through the door and back into a closed world of his own making. Michael sighs, slides away the cup and saucer and gives the spotless table a precautionary wipe-down.

We present… a second opinion This book was very interesting. It is set around an old-fashioned grocer’s store and involves a dazzling cast of characters all of which you come to know very well. The characters are in three distinct families: the grocer, his wife and grown children; a bitter old millionaire, his carer, his gay son and his grand-daughter; and the grocer’s ex-assistant, his friends and his aunt; and an individual stinky old bag lady. When the bag lady is taken into hospital in a coma it is up to the grocer, her nephew, to sort out her ﬂat, where the ruby slippers are discovered and removed. This is seen by the ex-assistant who is hiding in her wardrobe, which leads to one of the most exciting parts of the book.

I thought the book was very well written, In a city built so high into the especially as it is a debut. There are plenty of sky, people don’t allow their vision to stray much above eye twists and turns throughout and the ending is very surprising. As a book-group read there is level. Only fools, romantics plenty to discuss and I found myself actually and children walk around wishing there was someone for me to discuss it with faces raised. For the rest with as there is so much in the book. of us, compelled by the daily Debbie Mika grind, the must-gets and the Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ must-dos, the sidewalk is the Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ place to stare. But, if we were to lift up our eyes… On a balcony, high up in one of those tombstone buildings for the rich on Fifth, sits a man in a wheelchair, the two fused into one, statue and plinth – the appearance so weighty you fear for the balcony’s safety. Malachi McBride sits and glowers down upon the Parade as if it passes at his command, as if he could turn down his thumb and bring the whole teetering juggernaut to a halt. The beginning of a smile creeps like a seismic crack from the fault line of his jaw. But before it can take hold and climb to the upper reaches, he quickly bulldozes it flat, burying it in the jowly foothills. He wheels the chair round and heads back into the lounge; time for fun and games. A woman, an agency nurse, stands in the cold room watching the Parade too, on the TV. Inez is her name. Next to McBride, in her corn-blue frock, she looks like a tiny Madonna, stolen from a wayside shrine. But McBride shows no respect for her frail saintliness. With a hawkish jerk of the head, he makes his intentions clear. ‘Well, don’t it just make you swell up with pride.’ His words come out like bile, and Inez knows that darker, more poisonous stuff will follow. She turns away with a sad little dip – the eye contact thing – and struggles to keep the mask blank. ‘We’re all fucking Irish today,’ he continues. The Ruby Slippers She closes her eyes and breathes deep. Of course, by Keir Alexander is she knows why he is like this. He is sick; he knows published 21 August in he is going to die sooner rather than later (God paperback by Corsair, willing and heaven forgive her!); and he is angry price £7.99. with his Maker.

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Karen Maitland

Where I write Medieval-thriller author Karen Maitland shares her favourite writing place

live in the past – not my own past, at least I don’t think so, unless I’ve been reincarnated. I live in the medieval world of my characters, and the sounds of the modern world drive me insane. Some authors can block out the noise of a Hoover, TV or phone. But I can’t. So recently I moved to a cottage in Devon simply because there was a derelict blacksmith’s workshop in the tiny garden which I could repair to use as my writing retreat. Blacksmiths were pivotal figures in medieval life. Every craftsman depended on the tools the blacksmith made. But smiths were also feared, for any man who could master the alchemy of iron, fi re and water, could work magic too. My blacksmith must have believed in magic, for I found a model pixie in the workshop, no bigger than a thumbnail, hidden high on one of the beams. The repairs to my workshop are complete. The holes, once stuffed with rags and birds’ nests, are now fi lled. The blackened walls have been painted white and I’ve hung an ancient witch-ball from the beams. I’ve surrounded myself with replica medieval objects – a Saxon drill carved from a polished oak burr, a lucet made of deer horn and fragments of pots. Then of course there are the bookcases stretching from floor to ceiling, groaning under the weight of books on everything from the history of false teeth

to poisons, medieval cookery to folklore. I have to be surrounded by books. Even as a small child I couldn’t sleep unless all my books were piled on the bed with me. The glass in the window is opaque so I can’t be distracted by the outside world, but I can see wonderful patterns of light and shadow as the tree branches stir. My tiny desk faces a bare white wall. ‘Don’t you want to have something to look at as you write?’ people ask. ‘But I am looking at something,’ I explain. I can see whole scenes playing out on that wall as if I’m watching through a window – mist swirling over the marshes; a medieval family huddled round a fire; murdered corpses lying in the streets of London; a terrified priest running through a darkened forest. I can hear them all too – monks chanting; a howling wolf; waves crashing over a sailing ship. My writing retreat wouldn’t suit everyone. The only way of getting an internet signal is to sit with the door open, which is freezing on a winter’s day, but The Vanishing Witch by Karen Maitland is at least it ensures I only log on when I absolutely have to and stops me watching videos of surfing ferrets. But published 14 August in paperback by Headline at night, when I leave the medieval world and cross Review, price £12.99. back to modern life in the cottage, I listen to the owls calling from the trees and realise that in my workshop You can read our I have found the enchanted gateway, the secret portal reviewers’ verdict which can take me back in time – maybe a spark of on page 29. blacksmith’s magic still lingers in that place.

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The Railwayman’s Wife by Ashley Hay

Featured author Ashley Hay on writing about her grandparents

I The Railwayman’s Wife by Ashley Hay is one of this issue’s featured books and you can sample it on the facing page.

We have copies to give away FREE – see page 35. 16

f there’s something I emphasise when I talk about The Railwayman’s Wife, it’s that it’s an imagined thing, made-up, invented, a fiction. Yet my grandmother, Nathalia Hay, was a railwayman’s wife whose husband was killed on the railways one bleak and wet night on the coast south of Sydney in the early 1950s. Four months later, Nattie began working at the Railway Institute Library in Thirroul, the seaside village where she lived. Short, stocky and with strong, white hair by the time I met her, Nattie was the mother of one living son, my father. She was not Anikka Lachlan, my railway librarian: Anikka is tall, blonde, and the mother of one ten-yearold daughter when her husband is killed on a clear, bright, spring afternoon. The physical fiction of Anikka was one of the clearest ways I underlined for myself that she was made up. But when I run through the aspects of my grandmother’s life that I did appropriate for Ani, I realise that much of Ani’s believability as a character comes from having given her aspects of Nattie. I gave her my grandmother’s Scandinavian heritage. I gave her her childhood on the Hay Plains, in far western New South Wales. I even gave her an emigrant suitor who’d followed a correlation between his own name and a place in this new, antipodean country to find himself in her part of the world. Mackenzie Lachlan hunts the Lachlan River just as I

always believed my grandfather, Jock Hay, had followed his own name out there to the town of Hay. When you’re working at a novel, it’s hard sometimes to believe that you’ll fi nd its end – let alone a publisher, some readers, an audience. And of course, setting the book in a real and identifiable place – Thirroul; literarily famous for the fact that DH Lawrence wrote Kangaroo there in 1922 – meant that some of its putative readers might read it with their own very real memories of that place in 1948, and of my grandmother amongst those. No one asked me if it was her; no one assumed it was. But they read the novel through the prism of their own memories of times, landscapes and people, and they believe in it. Although as my father said, it’s quite surreal to read a story where you’re mostly conscious of the people who aren’t in it. More than a year after completing the book, I read it differently too. I see more clearly what I’ve borrowed and what I’ve made up. I see more honestly how much of the real world snuck in to the thing I was imagining. In deciding so consciously not to write about Nattie and Jock and some historically accurate Thirroul, I kept those three realities sharp at the front of my mind, like the negative space at the centre of a complex painting. And whatever they’d make of what I made, I couldn’t have done it without the sparks that came only from them in the fi rst place.

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The Railwayman’s Wife by Ashley Hay

A N E X T R AC T F R O M

The Railwayman’s Wife

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Ashley Hay Publication date 7 August

In a small town on the land’s edge, in the strange space at a war’s end, a widow, a poet and a doctor each try to ﬁnd their own peace, and their own new story. On the south coast of New South Wales, in 1948, people chase their dreams through the books in the railway’s library. Anikka Lachlan searches for solace after her life is destroyed by a single random act. Roy McKinnon, who found poetry in the mess of war, has lost his words and his hope. Frank Draper is trapped by the guilt of those his treatment and care failed on their ﬁrst day of freedom. All three struggle with the same question: how now to be alive. This is a story of life, loss and what comes after; of connection and separation, longing and acceptance. Most of all, it celebrates love in all its forms, and the beauty of discovering that loving someone can be as extraordinary as being loved yourself.

he sits, her legs folded beneath her. The fi ngers of one hand trace the upholstery’s pattern while the other hand holds the pages of the book. It could be any day, any year: call it 1935, 1938, 1945, or somewhere decades away in her future. Perhaps it’s the day after her wedding, the day after her daughter’s birth, the last day of the war, the last day of her life. Whenever it is, Anikka Lachlan is reading, swallowed by the shapes and spaces made by rows of dark letters on pale paper. She wets one finger, not slowly, but absently, and moves it to turn the next page. From outside, across the roofs of this small town, comes a sharp line of noise—a train’s brakes and the squeal of wheel on rail, metal on metal. Ani looks up from the page but at nothing, and at nowhere, as if the room she’s sitting in and the rest of this whole cacophonous world do not, at this moment, quite exist. The sound fades. The silence holds. She looks down, and fi nds the next word.

These are the sort of people they are, Ani Lachlan and her husband Mac. They are people who make a fuss of birthdays, people for whom no effort is too great in search of the perfect present, the perfect tribute, the perfect experience. Even during the war, when their daughter Isabel had asked—impossibly—for a bicycle, Mac found the bits and pieces to craft a tiny ornamental one, to see her through until a proper one could be sourced, and saved for, and procured. And so in late 1948, on the weekend before Isabel’s tenth birthday, Ani and Mac take the train up the coast to Sydney to fi nd her next birthday present— she’s asked for something magical. All morning they rummage in dusty shops near Central, until they fi nd—in the last quarter-hour before their train—a dull cylinder with an eyehole at one end and a round dome of glass at the other. Mac holds it up to one eye, the other eye closed, and the kaleidoscope transforms the overfull shop into a series of mosaics. Now it’s a stained-glass window;

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r ec om m e n de d

The Railwayman’s Wife by Ashley Hay

now a fan of Arabic tiles. Now it flares into brightness as he angles the tube towards the shop’s open door. He hands it to his wife, smiling. ‘You’ll love it,’ he says, watching her turn the tube, watching her transform the busy mess of the shop. Its drab brass looks heavy against the glow of her skin. ‘Yes,’ she says, turning the tube to make another image. ‘Yes, she’ll want this. She can make everything she looks at into something beautiful with this.’ No better present for their Bella: Mac pushes the coins across the counter to the old lady who stands there, wrapping the gift in a thick sheet of paper, the colour of a pale yellow dawn. ‘For a present?’ the shopkeeper asks, tucking the parcel’s ends neatly into themselves. ‘For our daughter,’ says Mac. ‘Turning ten,’ says Ani. The old lady smiles. ‘So many ways of seeing things,’ she says, patting the paper. ‘I hope they are all beautiful, the things your little girl sees.’ And she wraps the tube again in heavy brown paper, tying its ends with string, like a bonbon. Ani smiles in return. ‘You should see where we live,’ she says, touching Mac’s arm while he packs the parcel into his bag. ‘Most beautiful place in the world.’ Mac blushes, partly at the extremity of his wife’s words, and partly because he loves it when she says this. Because he was the person who took her there, the person responsible for delivering her to this beauty. In a scratched and spotted mirror behind the counter, he sees them standing together, Ani a little taller, and fine, like the saplings that grow down by the beach. The paleness of her hair is so uniform that she looks as if she’s been lit from above. And there he is, Mackenzie Lachlan, solid next to her, his head thick with hair that looks blond next to any but hers. Her reflection smiles, and he turns to catch the end of the real thing. That’s what illuminates him, that right there. In the shop’s darkness, a clock chimes, and he grabs her hand again. ‘Train, love.’ The shopkeeper comes around the counter, bows her head with her hands pressed together like a prayer. ‘Then a safe journey back to your home and your little girl,’ she says, standing by the door. They fly out to the street, past shopfronts, across roads, around corners, up stairs, and onto their platform. As they swing into an empty compartment, the engine gathers steam and lets out one perfect cloud of white, one perfect trumpet of sound, and begins to move off. ‘We’ve got a good loco in front of us,’ says Mac, leaning over to watch the big green engine take a curve. ‘Home in no time—it’s a 36; nice run down the line.’ Most beautiful place in the world. He feels Ani tuck herself between his body and the angular edge of the train’s wooden window frame. The warmth of her arm brushes his own as he turns the pages of his newspaper and mutters the names of the countries in the news—Burma, Ceylon, Israel, South Africa, two new Germanys. By the end of the second page, he feels her heavy against him and knows she’s going to sleep through this patchwork of suburban 18

It’s a still and sunny day, the water ﬂat and inky, the escarpment coloured golden and orange, pink and brown. As the train takes the curves and bends of its line, the mountain’s rock faces become great stone monoliths that might have come from Easter Island, and then the geometric edges of some desert temple. backyards, their clotheslines, their veggie patches, their haemorrhaging sheds. She’ll sleep through to the slice of the journey she loves best, when the train surges through one long black tunnel and delivers her onto the coast, the northern tip of Ani Lachlan’s most beautiful place in the world. ‘I’ll wake you up when we get there,’ says Mac. And she nods, squeezing his hand. She sleeps quickly, deeply, on trains, as if their rhythms and noise were a lullaby. He watches her breathing, feels the air from her mouth on his shoulder. They cross the Cooks River, then the Georges, pushing south. Through the window now, thick bush rushes by, transformed into fragments and segments of trees, palms, grasses, birds and sky as if they’d been poured through the kaleidoscope too. His eyes fl icker and dart, trying to isolate a single eucalypt, the fan of a palm, and then they close. His newspaper drops to the floor as the landscape changes from eucalypt forest to something more like a meadow—almost at Otford; almost at the head of the tunnel—and her fi ngers, light, begin to pat his arm. ‘Not often I get to wake you.’ She smiles. ‘Almost there,’ he says. The engine is puffi ng and blowing, pulling hard, and the train presses on towards the archway that’s been carved to open up the mountain. ‘Now,’ says Mac, taking his wife’s hand. ‘Now,’ his mouth so close to her ear. They’re in darkness, the sound monumental, the speed somehow faster when there’s only blackness beyond the windows. And then they’re out, in the light, in the space, in the relative quiet. And there’s the ocean, the sand, the beginnings of this tiny plain that has insinuated itself, tenuous, between the wet and the dry. It’s a still and sunny day, the water flat and inky, the escarpment coloured golden and orange, pink and brown. As the train takes the curves and bends of its line, the mountain’s rock faces become great stone monoliths that might have come from Easter Island, and then the geometric edges of some desert temple. Here are the hellish-red gashes of coke ovens; here is the thin space where there’s only room, it seems, for a narrow road, a narrow track, between the demands of sea and stone. And here is the disparate medley of place names—simple description, fancy foreign, and older, more original words; Coalcliff, Scarborough, Wombarra, Austinmer. And then, Thirroul.

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The Railwayman’s Wife by Ashley Hay

They pass the big glass and wooden roundhouse in Thirroul’s railway yards—Ani’s favourite building is how he thinks of it, although it’s where his every working day begins. As the train slows, they’re almost home. The engine lets out a long whistle and pulls into Thirroul’s station, its low waiting rooms set back from the platform’s edge and the Railway Institute and its library on the opposite side of the tracks. Ani reaches for Mac’s hand, and steps out of the carriage. The air is thick with salt and ozone from the unseen ocean nearby. Arranging their bags, they begin their slow walk home, east towards the water, south up the hill, east towards the water again, and halfway along Surfers Parade. From the top step of the house’s approach, the view is all mountain and water, while behind its back fence, and maybe a mile further south, a headland rules off the space she’s told him she regards as the edge of their world. ‘A mile south of that pine tree, sitting in our yard like a pin in a map for X marks the spot.’ ‘Then I leave the world on any train run to Wollongong,’ he protested once. ‘I go out of your world in the course of every day.’ ‘Out of our world, yes, but you’re very good about coming home.’ When they fi rst came, newly married and more than twelve years ago now, they’d climbed the mountain too, straight up the cliff face to the summit of the scarp where they turned and stood, gazing east over the limitless blue. ‘Nothing there,’ said Mac quietly, ‘nothing at all— until you hit Chile.’ The tops of the trees below looked like crazy paving, and among the grey-green of the gums were the odd cabbage-tree palm, the odd cedar, the odd tree fern an almost luminous green among the eucalypts, the turpentines. In late spring came extra punctuation—the fiery scarlet of the native flame tree; the incandescent purple of the exotic jacaranda. They’d watched a storm come up the coast that day, clambering down the track in its noisy wetness, and arriving wild and muddy at the bottom. ‘I’ve got you,’ Mac had laughed, wrapping his wet arms around her. Then closer, quieter—‘I’ve got you now’—and he held her fast with a kiss. She’d squirmed then, anxious at the embrace in the open air, and he’d laughed at her for it, hanging on. Hanging on. Now, as Ani makes a pot of tea and hides the precious present, Mac watches the sun set, remembering that kiss, that discomfort, and the messy embraces that came next. The shapes of the shadows, the colours of the world begin to shift and change towards nightfall and he longs for the gloaming, for one more walk in the wide dusk of a Scottish summer and an unexpected kiss in the braw open air. But it’s too far away, the other side of the world, and too many years since he left. Kisses now tend towards the perfunctory, the habitual, with the occasional moment of surprise, spontaneous or remembered. It’s just life, he knows, rather than

anything particular or sinister. Still, he’s glad for recollections, and the privacy of imagination. From the corner of his eye, he sees a flash of colour against the growing dark, and it’s Isabel coming home from a friend’s house by the shore. He whistles three times, twice low and once high and long, so that the sound slides back to the pitch of the fi rst two notes. Even through the gloom, he sees her stop and steady herself before she whistles in reply. It’s power, to whistle your girl home, he thinks, opening the gate and feeling her hug hard against his body.

We present… what you think Written in skilful ﬂowing poetic prose that leaves vivid images in the mind of the reader this is a gentle meditative novel. A love story set in a remote part of Australia where three years after the end of World War Two people still remember and mourn their loss. Ani and Mac with their little girl are a happy loving family, content with life. They enjoy the tranquillity where the sound of the surf is broken intermittently by the chugging of the steam trains. There is an overwhelming sense of peace in this book. Nothing happens quickly and the characters are quiet people apparently leading untroubled lives. The language is perfect conveying the slow pace of life but it is such a lovely read I was bereft when it ended due in part to the poignant ﬁnale. This is a book that will linger with me and I will certainly seek out

more from this gifted writer. The next weekend, on Isabel’s Sheila A Grant birthday, after breakfast and Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ the present, Ani slides the Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★ birthday cake into the oven and the family walks to the beach with the kaleidoscope. It’s a clear morning, the sky very high and light, with a band of clouds, thin and white, tucked in beyond the ridge of the mountain. Isabel stands with the brass tube of her gift, changing the world with the smallest movement of her hand. ‘Like magic,’ she says, and Ani and Mac smile. She loves birthdays; the present, the cake, and always an excursion—a milkshake in Wollongong, she wants, and they’ve promised to take her after school, one day in the coming week. ‘Maybe chocolate,’ she calls now, ‘or maybe chocolate malted. Or would it be more grown-up, now I’m ten, after all, to have caramel?’ She dances circles in the sand around her parents, looking at this, at that, with her precious new spyglass while they head towards the silvery smooth pylons, the fractured segments of joists, that are all that remain of the old jetty, pushing inland above the line of the low tide and out to sea the other way. ‘We should’ve given you a telescope, love,’ Mac calls to his daughter. Then: ‘Looks like there’s someone sitting up there on one of the poles.’ And the three of them pause, peering ahead, the sun warm on their backs as they separate the shape of a man from the shape of the weathered wood. ‘You know, I reckon that’s Iris McKinnon’s brother,’ says Mac at last. ‘One of the drivers said he was home. You remember, love—he’s the one The Railwayman’s published the poem during the war. We took it round Wife by Ashley Hay is for Iris, do you remember?’ He shades his eyes, more a published 7 August in salute than anything to do with glare. ‘Wonder what he’ll do now he’s back here? Not much call for a poet in paperback by Allen & Unwin, price £7.99. the pits or on the trains.’

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Freya North

Mel Mitchell talks to the prolific bestselling author

freya north a sense of place

t would probably be fair to say that Freya North has become something of a doyenne of contemporary women’s fiction. She started with Sally, published in November 1996, which was inspired by a compulsion to write the kind of book and language she wanted to read herself and culminated in a bidding war. The Way Back Home is likely to be the thirteenth in a long line of bestselling titles and brings with it a very subtle change of style. For those who are already fans of North’s work it will represent a somewhat bittersweet return to Derbyshire, with guest appearances by Cat and the ever-popular Django McCabe. It is a story of reflection and redemption – a tender tale that seems to have come from the very heart of this author, who is perhaps better known for her sassy characters and their saucy exploits. ‘I wrote it in such a fug,’ she explains. ‘When I was reading back through it and editing it myself there were vast tracts of the book that I had no recollection writing. For the first time in my career I had chronic writer’s block – it made me ill –and I really didn’t have a handle on how it was progressing. It was the first of my books that I’ve been able to read back and enjoy, because I felt so removed from it.’ I imagined that for a consistent and disciplined writer like North, writer’s block must have come as a shock. ‘Absolutely,’ she agrees. ‘I hold my hands up and admit that I’ve never given it much credit. I was almost cocky – I thought it was a lame excuse by lazy authors who wanted to go shopping. I’ve always found such solace in writing, even though some of my first twelve novels coincided with very hard times in my life personally. Then I spent six months feeling physically sick – the book in my head wouldn’t come out. The feeling was akin to feeling chronically constipated. I had this massive thing to get out and I couldn’t.’ Unsurprisingly, the experience knocked her confidence. ‘I felt humiliated and ashamed. I couldn’t tell anyone, not even my publishers. In the end I had to frogmarch myself to the library every day and I sat there and hauled it out, word after word after word.’ She pauses. ‘I poured everything into it. Usually when I finish a novel I feel deflated but with this one my fingers were flying over the keys and as I got to the end I let out an involuntary squeal of delight. I really pushed myself. I faced some demons. I made it happen.’ A novel to feel particularly proud of, then? ‘It was an achievement,’ she confirms, clearly relieved to have made it to the other side.

The novel is also a testament to the research North has become accustomed to undertaking. Hero of The Way Back Home, Malachy Bedwell, is blind in one eye. ‘I consider myself a bit of an expert on ocular medicine now, ‘ she laughs. ‘I love the research. I had lots of in-depth conversations with eminent eye surgeons, I looked at gory photos, I read medical text books, I visited online forums.’ And all this for just a few paragraphs where Malachy’s disability is explicitly referred to. ‘I needed to know what he would know, in order to write from his perspective. You must never stint on these searches, I always impart this advice to people. It always shows if you do.’ Her attention to this kind of detail is impressive and hasn’t gone unnoticed by local government. ‘What I don’t know now about cantilevers and torsions and trusses is not worth knowing,’ she says, laughing, referring to the bridge-building research she undertook for Secrets, which featured the Middlesborough Transporter Bridge. It helped lead to an appointment as ambassador for the North East – a career highlight, she insists later, clearly delighted. I ask her if she ever thought she’d get to a thirteenth novel. ‘In the early days I’d look at the page at the front of my books saying ‘Also by the same author’ and I would see two books, then three...and by six books it was looking like a pretty healthy list. But I don’t think how did I get here or have I got a fourteenth book in me. It’s much more what am I writing about next, who am I writing about next.’ Her list is certainly evidence of her work ethic – almost a book a year since Sally, with only slightly longer breaks to allow for the birth of her two children. She credits her publishing team with helping to support this longevity. ‘I’m very privileged to have worked with the same agent and the same editor throughout my career,’ she says. ‘It’s not essential but it makes it a less isolated and a less lonely journey, knowing I have people there for me who completely get the way that I write.

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t h e big i n t e r v i e w

Freya North

‘It’s one of the most flattering things that people have said to me, how much they’ve liked my male characters. They’re really not the wooden, or token, hero in the background, with everything revolving around a more self-indulgent female lead.’ I find it quite difficult to talk about the book that I’m working on but they understand the shorthand that I use. They trust me and they let me get on with it, which is really great.’ Is anyone allowed to scrutinise the work in progress? ‘No – never, never, never. I have a friend I go dog-walking with and I might give her glimpses into random scenes but no more than that. I’m so completely bound up with the characters and with what’s going on. I don’t ever plan a book. I let it unfold very organically so it would be difficult to say it’s about this, or about that.’ So what gives her the impetus to start? For The Way Back Home, she says, it was Windward – a sort of high-end commune for well-known artists, and the childhood home of Oriana and the Bedwell brothers. It was loosely based on Marden Hill House in Hertfordshire, she reveals, which in the sixties was rented by a group of artists who lived communally, and then bought it and divided it between themselves. Rod Stewart even wrote ‘Maggie May’ there – she just knew she had to write about a house like that. It also gave her a reason, by dint of relocating the house to Derbyshire, to bring back Django McCabe, the most loved of her male characters by far. In fact, she seems to pay particular attention to her male characters. I asked her if this was deliberate. ‘My male characters are absolutely as important to me as my female characters,’ she asserts. ‘It’s one of the

most flattering things that people have said to me, how much they’ve liked my male characters. They’re really not the wooden, or token, hero in the background, with everything revolving around a more self-indulgent female lead. They have equal pegging. The Way Back Home is as much Malachy’s story as it is Oriana’s. Chances is as much Oliver’s story as it is Vita’s.’ And might Windward inspire a future novel set in the past? ‘I don’t think so,’ she muses. ‘I’m very happy writing contemporary novels. Quite frequently what I will do is have a historical figure who, in a non-whimsical way, enables the character and the plot of a contemporary novel. In Chloe, for example, she’s obsessed with a Gainsborough painting which I happen to know a lot about, having studied art history before I became a novelist. This gave me a way of bringing a period of Gainsborough history and painting into the present. Similarly, in Rumours, the first owner of Longbridge, Lord Fortescue, is just a statue in the grounds but it allowed me to weave the past into the present.’ North considers setting to be just as important as character. ‘Whether it’s a bridge, or a building, or a landscape...in my mind, they are a fundamental part of the story. They are not a backdrop. Windward is a character. The bridges featured in Secrets are characters, even the trees in Chances. That’s hugely important to me.’ And does she feel the need to have experienced

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t h e big i n t e r v i e w

Freya North

What would I do if I couldn’t write? What job would I do? I feel very lucky – I think I’ve got another couple of books in me yet.’ Something her fans will no doubt be relieved to hear and she is as loyal to them as they are to her. ‘I make a lot of effort,’ she says, regarding her social media efforts. ‘I think it’s terrible when a Facebook or Twitter account is obviously not managed by the author. What a con. I’ve always believed that if people are making the effort to contact me, by whatever means, I will make the effort to respond. These are the people that have put me in the charts, book after book. These are the people, in these straitened times, who are going to go out and spend their money on my book. They deserve as much recognition from me as I am flattered that they’ve made the effort to contact me. I like to involve them. A lot of them have had babies, a lot of them have grown up with my books and that’s really touching. You have to remember as well that I spend most of my life with people who don’t exist so it’s quite nice to have some interaction. ‘ But perhaps there are limits. Does she allow her novels to be influenced by what the fans would like? ‘Never. Never, I’m afraid. Finding stories is like catching invisible butterflies. I don’t take a blind bit of notice of requests. I don’t have much input myself, in a way.’ And what does she do when she’s not writing or interacting with her fans? Oh, nothing much really – just helps to organise the Hertford Children’s Book Festival, which she founded in 2012. ‘It’s growing, it’s fantastic. We’ve got funding and this October we’re going to be bigger and better than ever. Encouraging literacy and imagination is so key to me as a parent. I still read aloud to my children and they are voracious readers. It’s going to be a lot of fun and it’s very exciting but it’s a lot of hard work.’ Sounds like Freya North needs a holiday. Having stalked her on Facebook in the run up to this interview I know she’s planning a jaunt to sunny California with her children the day after we speak. What books is she planning to take with her? ‘Nathan Filer’s book [Shock of the Fall] is coming with me, I’m really looking forward to that. Then there’s a book that I’ve been meaning to read for ages called Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell, that’s coming with me. Another one is Maggie O’Farrell’s Instructions for a Heatwave because I haven’t read that yet either and am quite cross with myself. Also The Yellow House by Martin Gayford, again which I’m really looking forward to.’ Real books or an e-reader, I venture cautiously. ‘I don’t have a Kindle and I don’t want one,’ she says firmly, championing the pleasures of print, in book form at least. Like Freya on Facebook here www.facebook.com/freya.north And the Hertford Children’s Book Festival 2014 here www.facebook.com/hertfordchildrensbookfestival Follow Freya on Twitter here www.twitter.com/freya_north

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these settings herself, in order to bring them to life? ‘Oh, yes. I could never...there was an award-winning book a few years ago that was set in Canada [The Tenderness of Wolves, which won Costa Book of the Year and was researched entirely at the British Library by the agoraphobic author Stef Penney] and the author had never been there. I was horrified and awestruck in equal measure. For me, it’s usually places that I already know. Even before Sally was published, I was backpacking around the States and ended up in Vermont. I immediately thought – I have to set a book here. It’s that way round for me. Locations inspire me to write.’ This profound commitment to a sense of place is central to the aforementioned ambassadorial role, which followed a surge of tourist interest in the North East by people who had read and loved Secrets and Pillow Talk. ‘I’ve loved doing it and I’m committed to promoting the area,’ she says. ‘The readers even do little tours there, visiting the places featured in the books. It’s a place dear to my heart and I’m happy to share it.’ There is a family connection to Middlesborough but home is now rural Hertfordshire for London born and bred North. ‘I’m very proud of where I now live. I’m very active in the rural community, I’ve embraced it. The move came about after a climactic period of my life. My mother got very ill with cancer and I split up with my partner. I felt I needed to put down roots and have a fresh start. It had been a childhood dream to live in the countryside but I think it’s only in extremis that you find the courage to do the things you never dared do before.’ The change in location inspired her writing – Chances and Rumours are both based in Hertfordshire – and led to her discovery of Marden Hill House, confirming her love for her new home. ‘I think my writing has become much more lucid, and more spare, which is a good thing,’ she says, considering the impact of change and experience in general. ‘Things that have crept into the books reflect that I’m now in my mid-forties and I started writing in my mid-twenties. I hope I write with more compassion. I don’t think the books are quite as larky as they were but then life in your mid-forties isn’t as larky. Hopefully they continue to be enjoyable, commercial novels but I am proud of the sensitivity and the insights that I feel I can now offer.’ Her experience and self-awareness appears to have enhanced her writing prowess without formal training but what does she think of those tempted by the many courses in creative writing now on offer? ‘I worry about people’s expectations,’ she says. ‘They’re not a fast-track to publication. It’s harder than ever before to find an audience, a market. I don’t take anything for granted. I feel enormously lucky to have such a solid fan-base, who have really supported me over the years. It’s really moving to meet the people who used to write to me in the beginning by snail mail, then it was email and now we tweet each other – it’s lovely.’ Her recent struggle with The Way Back Home made her realise how important writing is to her. ‘I was absolutely terrified. I realised how much it defines me.

The Way Back Home by Freya North is part of this issue’s Double Exposure feature and you can sample it on the facing page.

d ou bl e e x p o s u r e

Freya North

A N E X T R AC T FR O M

The Way Back Home FR E YA N O R T H

W H E N I WA S . . . hen I was born there were already other children at Windward. None was beyond toddling age and, as such, we were grouped together pretty much like the clumps of perennials in the garden, or the globs of paint on a palette in one of the studios, or the music which drifted from the top rooms – discordant notes that, as a whole, wove together into a quirky harmony of sorts. We were who we were, the children of Windward – a little ragtaggle tribe further defining the ethos and eccentricity of the place. I wasn’t born in a hospital. I was born at Windward but I wasn’t born in my home. I was born in Lilac and George’s apartment with Jette assisting my mother, ably helped by all the other females there at the time, whether permanent or itinerant, mothers or girls, lesbians, lapsed nuns and even an aged virgin. I know all about a woman called Damisi who was visiting at the time though, it seems, no one really knew where her connection lay. She was a doula, apparently, and I know the story off by heart – how she had all the women breathing and bellowing to support and inspire my mother to relax. It worked – I know I was as easy a birth as it’s possible to have, slipping out into the Windward world to a backing track that was practically a bovine opera. Some of the other children heard – how could they not – and often, they mooed at me. I didn’t mind – it seemed my own special herald. However, when I fi rst heard a similar sound emitted by a cow it scared me senseless. When I was five, Louis, who was always very old but never seemed to age, hosted my birthday party in his apartment. We didn’t know he knew magic. He took pennies from behind all our ears – it was probably the fi rst time any of us had coins of our own. He gave me a piggy bank to keep mine in – to start

saving the pennies, he explained. I thought I had to save the coins from some fate that would otherwise befall them. When I was ten, my birthday party was a disaster. I’d been at the local school for three years, been to the parties of my classmates – pink and proper, simultaneously joyous and lively and yet fastidiously organized. That’s all I wanted – a party like that. A neat cake with the right number of candles. My parents got it wrong. There were only nine candles. Someone – probably my mother – had put a tenth one in, but had decided that it was incorrect. Ten? That’s wrong. That small dent in the beige icing of my lopsided, inedible cake was to me a sinkhole of indifference. It struck me then that perhaps not everyone loved everyone. When I was fi fteen – When I was fi fteen something terrible happened.

The Way Back Home by Freya North is published 19 June in hardback by HarperCollins, price £12.99.

We have copies of The Way Back Home to give away FREE. See page 35.

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d ou bl e e x p o s u r e

Freya North

A N E X T R AC T FR O M

Rumours FR E YA N O R T H

ea with Lady Lydia was always the same: sandwiches of fish paste or butter and cucumber slices, and a plate of cakes. Today it struck Xander how the food seemed to personify the irascible dowager and her cantankerous housekeeper – the cucumber sandwiches delicate and refi ned like the former, the fish paste slightly common yet comforting like the latter. Similarly, the pastries so elegantly put together with the fancy toppings, just as appealing as the plain but reassuringly dough Chelsea buns. Lydia poured the tea, the same tea cosy warming the pot that Xander remembered his mother knitting when he was still a boy. There was so much about Longbridge that stayed the same. There were the sounds – the clocks, different in each room, the water in the crunking old pipes complaining its way around the house, the whistle of the kettle on the Aga as dramatic as an air-raid warning. And the smells – Assam tea, ancient tobacco, a faint mustiness from old soft furnishings, a subtle drift of floral arrangements that needed changing, of vegetables cooking in the kitchen, or lavender secreted in little muslin pouches in between cushion and cover. And there was the setup of each room – the photograph frames and various porcelain ornaments just so, the furniture whose configuration never changed, the heavy folds of the enormous curtains as vertical and precise as the fluting on Greek columns. And the portraits of the ancestors, positioned around the house like sentries, some gazing benignly, some fixing sternly, all staring directly. ‘Little changes, Xander.’ ‘I’m pleased.’ ‘You still look from portrait to portrait, as if answering questions asked of you in a particular order.’ ‘I know.’ ‘You’re wearing a tie.’ ‘I could have worn a jacket.’ ‘Mostly, these days, I see you scampering around in all that ghastly sportswear.’ ‘I’m training – I have a half-marathon next week.’ ‘Does that mean you’ll be begging me for sponsorship?’ ‘Most defi nitely.’ ‘African babies again?’ ‘Cancer, this time.’ ‘Jolly good. Pastry?’ 24

Rumours by Freya North is published in

Xander fi nished a jam tart and waited for Lydia to raise her eyebrows at the platter for him to help himself to another. ‘Longbridge plums,’ he said, ‘incomparable.’ ‘Jars and jars of the bastard stuff in the pantry – help yourself when you go,’ Lydia said. ‘Surplus from the summer fete – the fi rst time we’ve come back with unsold produce. Ever.’ ‘Don’t take it personally,’ Xander said. ‘People are holding on to their pennies. Anyway, I heard it was more to do with politics within the committee.’ ‘That wretched bouncing castle monstrosity?’ Xander laughed. ‘And the rest.’ ‘Personally,’ said Lydia, ‘ I blame all that shopping people do nowadays on those computers. It’s an obsession and, if you ask me, absolutely unnecessary! All those supermarket vans double parking along the high street and all those delivery companies doing the postman out of a job. More tea?’ ‘Please.’ He offered his cup because Lydia liked to pour and she wouldn’t tolerate people stretching. ‘How are things here?’ He looked around – it looked the same, but Longbridge was so much more than the house itself. ‘I hear Mr Tringle made a good recovery – pneumonia is no laughing matter, especially not at his age.’ ‘I’ve always thought, if they dropped one of those nuclear bombs, he’d be the one creaking his way out of the debris. Extraordinary chap, really.’ ‘How about the barns?’ asked Xander. ‘Did you get anywhere with the planners?’ Lydia looked a little uncomfortable. ‘I’m just going to have to let them crumble – it’s too much work and too much money. And Xander, how are you? Are you any closer to marrying?’ Xander stirred his tea thoughtfully, despite not taking sugar. ‘No.’ ‘Are you one of the gays?’ ‘No, Lydia. I’m not.’ She raised her eyebrow, archly. ‘I’ve heard people talking.’ ‘Talking?’ ‘Village tittle-tattle.’ ‘And you listen to it?’ ‘Sometimes I like to remember dear Alice Roosevelt who used to say, if you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.’

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paperback by Harper, price £7.99.

We have copies of Rumours to give away FREE. See page 35.

r ec om m e n de d

Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford

SOUNDTRACK to a NOVEL Featured author Jamie Ford details the songs that inspired him I try to write for all five senses so music is an important part of storytelling, perhaps as important as description, and metaphor. With that in mind, here’s the music from Songs of Willow Frost: When I Lost You – Henry Burr Blue Skies – Josephine Baker Cheek to Cheek – Ella Fitzgerald Dream a Little Dream – Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody – Al Jolson A Good Man is Hard to Find – Bessie Smith Till We Meet Again – Henry Burr

Oh, the joys of second novels. After three years of fielding emails from readers that often said, ‘When’s your second book coming out? I’m 83 and won’t be around forever, you know.’ I fi nally have a new story, new characters, and new heartache to share. Songs of Willow Frost isn’t a sequel to my breakaway fi rst novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (I could only screw it up at this point), but it is another historical, multicultural, Seattle tale, and if readers and book clubs enjoyed Hotel, I’m certain they’ll enjoy this new offering. But… enough about me, let’s talk music. Songs of Willow Frost is set amid a musical landscape that’s going from riches to ruin. But as often is the case, emotional turmoil can produce some amazing tunes. Take Irving Berlin for instance. He’d written hundreds of songs but it wasn’t until he penned When I Lost You – a song dedicated to the loss of his young bride – that he found commercial success. So it’s no surprise that Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Victoria Spivey all had some of their greatest hits during the Great Depression, when an embattled populace more than embraced their music – these songs were needed, they mirrored the cultural consciousness. Music was sustenance. The blues, jazz, swing, and Tin Pan Alley that had begun in speakeasies, and Chinatowns, and juke joints – music of the down and out, the marginalised, the minority, became the voice of the majority, as everyone felt the same economic pains, experienced the same fears, and clung to the same hopes. And it’s through music that a girl of tragic circumstance, Liu Song Eng, a girl without a voice in society becomes Willow Frost. As a performer she fi nds success, she fi nds acceptance. But along the way she loses her only son, who is searching…

And more music that served as inspiration: All of Me – Louis Armstrong It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing) – Duke Ellington Detroit Moan – Victoria Spivey Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground) – Blind Willie Johnson Mean Low Blues – Blues Birdhead There’s a New Day Coming – Ted Lewis I Surrender, Dear – Red Norvo & His Orchestra Gloomy Sunday – Billie Holiday NRA Blues – Bill Cox He’s in the Ring (Doing the Same Old Thing) – Memphis Minnie With Plenty of Money and You (Oh! Baby What I Couldn’t Do) – Hal Kemp Dawn of a New Day – Horace Heidt & His Orchestra

Enjoy the book. Enjoy the music. And if I happen to break your heart along the way, I promise that I will put the pieces back together again, hopefully in better working condition. It’s the least I could do.

Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford is one of this issue’s featured books and you can sample it over the page.

We have copies to give away FREE – see page 35.

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r ec om m e n de d

Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford

A N E X T R AC T F R O M

reco

Songs of Willow Frost

ded

mme

Jamie Ford

Directory reviewer Carolyn Fraser thinks this would make an excellent reading-group choice… ‘This is the poignant tale of William, a Chinese-American boy. Stuck in the Sacred Heart Orphanage in Seattle, William, like the other orphans longs for the day a parent comes to reclaim them. On an annual trip to a movie theatre, William glances at a woman on screen that he is convinced is his mother… but you have to read this book to ﬁnd out what happens. I feel the themes of this novel would provide plenty for book groups to discuss: the Great Depression in America, children being put into orphanages, and the dichotomy of traditional versus modern life for Chinese-American women.’

illiam Eng woke to the sound of a snapping leather belt and the shrieking of rusty springs that supported the threadbare mattress of his army surplus bed. He kept his eyes closed as he listened to the bare feet of children, shuffl ing nervously on the cold wooden floor. He heard the popping and billowing of sheets being pulled back, like trade winds fi lling a canvas sail. And so he drifted, on the favoring currents of his imagination, as he always did, to someplace else – anywhere but the Sacred Heart Orphanage, where the sisters inspected the linens every morning and began whipping the bed-wetters. He would have sat up if he could, stood at attention at the foot of his bunk, like the others, but his hands were tied – literally – to the bed frame. ‘I told you it would work,’ Sister Briganti said to a pair of orderlies whose dark skin looked even darker against their starched white uniforms. Sister Briganti’s theory was that bed-wetting was

caused by boys illicitly touching themselves. So at bedtime she began tying the boys’ shoes to their wrists. When that failed, she tied their wrists to their beds. ‘It’s a miracle,’ she said as she poked and prodded the dry sheets between William’s legs. He watched as she crossed herself, then paused, sniffi ng her fi ngers, as though seeking evidence her eyes and hands might not reveal. Amen, William thought when he realized his bedding was dry. He knew that, like an orphaned child, Sister Briganti had learned to expect the worst. And she was rarely, if ever, disappointed. After the boys were untied, the last offending child punished, and the crying abated, William was fi nally allowed to wash before breakfast. He stared at the long row of identical toothbrushes and washcloths that hung from matching hooks. Last night there had been forty, but now one set was missing and rumors immediately spread among the boys as to who the runaway might be. Tommy Yuen. William knew the answer as he scanned the washroom and didn’t see another

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r ec om m e n de d

Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford

matching face. Tommy must have fled in the night. That makes me the only Chinese boy left at Sacred Heart. The sadness and isolation he might have felt was muted by a morning free from the belt, replaced by the hopeful smiles the other boys made as they washed their faces. ‘Happy birthday, Willie,’ a freckle-faced boy said as he passed by. Others sang or whistled the birthday song. It was September 28, 1934, William’s twelfth birthday – everyone’s birthday, in fact – apparently it was much easier to keep track of this way. Armistice Day might be more fitting, William thought. Since some of the older kids at Sacred Heart had lost their fathers in the Great War, or October 29 – Black Tuesday, when the entire country had fallen on hard times. Since the Crash, the number of orphans had tripled. But Sister Briganti had chosen the coronation of Venerable Pope Leo XII as everyone’s new day of celebration – a collective birthday, which meant a trolley ride from Laurelhurst to downtown, where the boys would be given buffalo nickels to spend at the candy butcher before being treated to a talking picture at the Moore Theatre. But best of all, William thought, on our birthdays, and only on our birthdays, we are allowed to ask about our mothers. Birthday mass was always the longest of the year, even longer than the Christmas Vigil – for the boys anyway. William sat trying not to fidget, listening to Father Bartholomew go on and on and on and on and on about the Blessed Virgin, as if she could distract the boys from their big day. The girls sat on their side of the church, either oblivious to the boys’ one day out each year or achingly jealous. But either way, talks about the Holy Mother only confused the younger, newer residents, most of whom weren’t real orphans – at least not in the way Little Orphan Annie was depicted on the radio or in the Sunday funnies. Unlike the little mop-haired girl who gleefully squealed ‘Gee whiskers!’ at any calamity, most of the boys and girls at Sacred Heart still had parents out there – somewhere – but wherever they were, they’d been unable to put food in their children’s mouths or shoes on their feet. That’s how Dante Grimaldi came to us, William reflected as he looked around the chapel. After Dante’s father was killed in a logging accident, his mother had let him play in the toy department of the Wonder Store – the big Woolworths on Third Avenue – and she never came back. Sunny Sixkiller last saw his ma in the children’s section of the new Carnegie Library in Snohomish, while Charlotte Rigg was found sitting in the rain on the marble steps of St James Cathedral. Rumor was that her grandmother had lit a candle for her and even went to confession before slipping out a side door. Then there were others – the fortunate ones. Their mothers came and signed manifolds of carbon paper, entrusting their children to the sisters of Sacred Heart, or St Paul Infants’ Home next door. There were always promises to come back in a week for a visit, and sometimes

That’s how Dante Grimaldi came to us, William reﬂected as he looked around the chapel. After Dante’s father was killed in a logging accident, his mother had let him play in the toy department of the Wonder Store – the big Woolworths on Third Avenue – and she never came back. they did, but more often than not, that week stretched into a month, sometimes a year, sometimes forever. And yet, all of their moms had pledged (in front of Sister Briganti and God) to return one day. After communion William stood with a tasteless wafer still stuck to the roof of his mouth, waiting in line with the other boys outside the school office. Each year, Mother Angelini, the prioress of Sacred Heart, would assess the boys physically and spiritually. If they passed muster, they’d be allowed out in public. William tried not to twitch or act too anxious. He attempted to look happy and presentable, mimicking the hopeful, joyful smiles of the others. But then he remembered the last time he saw his mother. She was in the bathtub of their apartment in the old Bush Hotel. William had woken up, wandered down the hall for a glass of water, and realized that she’d been in there for hours. He waited a few minutes more, but then at 12:01 a.m. he fi nally peeked through the rusty keyhole. It looked as though she were sleeping in the claw-foot tub, her face tilted toward the door; a strand of wet black hair clung to her pale cheek, the curl of a question mark. One arm lazily dangled over the edge, water slowly dripping from her fi ngertip. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling, fl ickering on and off as the wind blew. After shouting and pounding on the door to no avail, William ran across the street to Dr Luke, who lived above his office. The doctor jimmied the lock and wrapped towels around William’s mother, carrying her down two fl ights of stairs and into a waiting taxi, bound for Providence Hospital. He left me alone, William thought, remembering the pinkish bathwater that gurgled and swirled down the drain. On the bottom of the tub he’d found a bar of Ivory soap and a single lacquered chopstick. The wide end had been inlaid with shimmering layers of abalone. But the pointed end looked sharp, and he wondered what it was doing there. ‘You can go in now, Willie,’ Sister Briganti said, snapping her fi ngers. William held the door as Sunny walked out; his cheeks were cherry red and his sleeves were wet and shiny from wiping his nose. ‘Your turn, Will,’ he halfsniffled, halfgrumbled. He gripped a letter in his hand, then crumpled the envelope as if to throw it away, then paused, stuffing the letter in his back pocket. ‘What’d it say?’ another boy asked, but Sunny shook his head and walked down the hallway, staring at the floor. Letters from parents were rare, not because they didn’t come – they did – but because

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r ec om m e n de d

Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford

the sisters didn’t let the boys have them. They were saved and doled out as rewards for good behavior or as precious gifts on birthdays and religious holidays, though some gifts were better than others. Some were hopeful reminders of a family that still wanted them. Others were written confi rmations of another lonely year. Mother Angelini was all smiles as William walked in and sat down, but the stained-glass window behind her oaken desk was open and the room felt cold and drafty. The only warmth that William felt came from the seat of the padded leather chair that had moments before been occupied, weighed down by the expectations of another boy. ‘Happy birthday,’ she said as her spidery, wrinkled fi ngers paged through a thick ledger as though searching for his name. ‘How are you today… William?’ She looked up, over her dusty spectacles. ‘This is your fi fth birthday with us, isn’t it? Which makes you how old in the canon?’ Mother Angelini always asked the boys’ ages in relation to books from the Septuagint. William quickly rattled off, ‘Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus…’ on up to Second Kings. He’d memorized his way only to the Book of Judith, when he’d turn eighteen and take his leave from the orphanage. Because the Book of Judith represented his own personal exodus, he’d read it over and over, until he imagined Judith as his forebear – a heroic, tragic widow, courted by many, who remained unmarried for the rest of her life. But he also read it because that particular book was semiofficial, semicanonical – more parable than truth, like the stories he’d heard about his own, long-lost parent. ‘Well done, Master William,’ Mother Angelini said. ‘Well done. Twelve is a marvelous age – the precipice of adult responsibility. Don’t think of yourself as a teenager. Think of yourself as a young man. That’s more fitting, don’t you think?’ He nodded, inhaling the smell of rain-soaked wool and Mentholatum, trying not to hope for a letter or even a lousy postcard. He failed miserably in the attempt. ‘Well, I know that most of you are anxious for word from the outside – that God’s mysteries have blessed your parents with work, and a roof, and bread, and a warm fi re, and that someone might come back for you,’ the old nun said with a delicate voice, shaking her head as the skin beneath her chin shook like a turkey’s wattle. ‘But…’ She glanced at her ledger. ‘We know that’s not possible in your situation, don’t we, dear?’ It seems that’s all I know. ‘Yes, Mother Angelini.’ William swallowed hard, nodding. ‘I suppose, since this is my birthday, I’d just like to know more. I have so many memories from when I was little, but no one’s ever told me what happened to her.’ The last time he saw her he’d been seven years old. His mother had half-whispered, half-slurred, ‘I’ll be right back,’ as she had been carried out the door, though he might have imagined this. But he didn’t imagine the police officer, an enormous mountain 28

We present… a second opinion

of a man who showed up the next day. William remembered him eating a handful of his Set in Seattle in both the booming Jazz Age mother’s butter-almond and the harrowing Great Depression, this is a cookies and being very patient while he packed. Then William beautiful and heart-wrenching story about guilt, sacriﬁce and love. had climbed into the sidecar William Eng lives at Sacred Heart of the policeman’s motorcycle Orphanage and, at the age of twelve and and they drove to a receiving being of Chinese descent, has given up all home. William had waved hope of being adopted. Only his adventurous to his old friends, like he but haunted best friend Charlotte eases his was riding a float in Seattle’s knowledge of his fate. Golden Potlatch Parade, not On the group birthday trip to downtown realizing that he was waving Seattle, William sees his mother on the silver goodbye. A week later the screen and wonders why, if she is alive and sisters came and took him in. well – famous even – she has not come back If I had known I’d never see for him. my apartment again, I’d have The writing is melodic and occasionally taken some of my toys, or at ruthless. The importance of family and history, least a photo. but also friendship and cultural adjustment William tried not to stare underline this stunning tale of a son and as Mother Angelini’s tongue his mother. I loved it. I think it would make a darted at the corner of her fantastic reading group choice as well, as there mouth. She read the ledger are so many concurrent themes and emotions and a note card with an to talk about. official-looking seal that Tracey Ann Street had been glued to the page. Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ ‘William, because you are Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ old enough, I will tell you what I can, even though it pains me to do so.’ That my mother is dead, William thought, absently. He’d accepted that as a likely outcome years ago, when they told him her condition had worsened and that she was never coming back. Just as he accepted that his father would always be unknown. In fact, William had been forbidden to ever speak of him. ‘From what we know, your mother was a dancer at the Wah Mee Club – and quite popular. But one day she made herself sick with bitter melon and carrotseed soup. When that didn’t work, she retired to the bath and tried performing…’ Performing? His mother had been a singer and a dancer. ‘I don’t understand,’ he whispered, unsure if he wanted to know more. ‘William, your dear mother was rushed to the hospital, but she had to wait for hours and, when they did get around to her, the admitting physician wasn’t entirely comfortable treating an Oriental woman, especially one with her reputation. So he had her remanded to the old Perry Hotel.’ William blinked and vaguely understood. He knew the location. In fact he used to play kick the can on the corner of Boren and Madison. He remembered being frightened by the ominouslooking building, even before bars were added to the windows and the place was renamed the Cabrini Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford is published Sanitarium. in paperback by Allison Mother Angelini closed her ledger. ‘I’m afraid she & Busby, price £7.99. never left.’

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The Vanishing Witch by Karen Maitland

TH E VA N I SH I N G W ITCH BY K AREN MAITLAND

The Vanishing Witch

by Karen Maitland is published 14 August in paperback by

Headline Review,

Headline present their new reading-group friendly title

price £12.99.

T H E Y S AY

W E S AY

aren Maitland, author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed Company of Liars, has set her new novel, The Vanishing Witch, against the backdrop of the tumultuous events of The Peasants’ Revolt of the 14th century and was inspired to do so by the August riots of 2011, whose simultaneous eruption around the country was blamed on social media and mobile devices. Karen was fascinated that similar rioting occurred around the country in the summer of 1381 at a time when there was no such means of communication. How did news spread so quickly between remote communities? Is there more to it than first meets the eye? Karen’s imagination was off and running… The Vanishing Witch is set in Lincoln and primarily within the household of Robert, a wealthy wool merchant, who has recently been befriended by Catlin, a generous and kind widow seeking his financial advice. Gradually, she inveigles herself into Robert’s inner sanctum and when his wife becomes ill, Catlin is the person to tend her. For news is reaching Lincoln that the peasants are unhappy and Robert, along with other land and business owners, is often called away to keep his tenants in line. When Robert’s wife dies, Catlin and her two children move in to Robert’s household, but his own two sons are deeply suspicious of Catlin’s motive. Karen Maitland has a deft touch; the dark ages have never felt so alive in fiction. With her unusual perspective on historical events and insight into a less familiar period of British history, Karen writes novels that lend themselves to discussion and debate. The historical notes alone always elicit terrific dinner party conversation.

Effortlessly weaving supernatural elements with historical fact, the interpretation of The Peasants’ Revolt from its ungainly beginning in 1380, runs alongside the story of Robert of Bassingham, a wealthy Lincolnshire wool merchant, whose unwise relationship with an inscrutable widow, will have farreaching consequences. Walking the medieval streets of Lincoln in the company of Karen Maitland is like stepping from a superior time travel machine, and even though you know that the world outside your door belongs to the 21st century, your mind is easily convinced that medieval England actually co-exists in the here and now. The book has more than enough content to generate an interesting book group discussion particularly amongst those groups who enjoy good historical fiction. Josie Barton Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ This darkly gothic tale is a story of treachery and revenge with an air of menace and foreboding woven through the story linked to the charms used to ward off evil that start each chapter. Set mainly in Lincoln it follows Robert, a wealthy merchant whose life changes after he meets the mysterious widow Mistress Catlin. I thought the book was excellently written and it kept me turning the pages long into the night. I loved the vivid sometimes grotesque descriptions of medieval life which really brought the period to life for me. Emma Barraclough Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★

I could wax lyrical about Karen Maitland’s clever blend of historical fact and folklore, about her clever use of the omnipotent ghost narrator, but what made me stay up reading into the early hours of the morning was that it is a brilliant story, the sort that instantly drew me in and the characters captivated me with their idiosyncrasies. I adored Mavet, the ghost ferret, even if he is symbolic of death; he and his ghostly fleas amused me. Set around the time of The Peasants’ Revolt when witchcraft or the suspicion of witchcraft was rife, there is plenty within the book for book groups to discuss. A perfect blend of crime, the supernatural, and the complexity of human relationships. I loved it. Jan Smith Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ This book is easy to read, well written and compelling. I found it difficult to put down because the writing so engaged me that a mere glance at the following page gripped me and obliged me to continue reading. The plot guarantees a multitude of mischievous predicaments and horrors all set within the later fourteenth century. I enjoyed reading Maitland’s descriptions of life, which enable the plot to foreground against a background of life where danger was always present, where people lived shorter lives, and their dead, the supernatural, religion, medicine and magic lay close together; and where only justice and equality were out of reach except where roles are reversed in moments of unusual empowerment during The Peasants’ Revolt. Jim Aird Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★

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The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

WHEN THE WORLD CHANGED I

The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear is one of this issue’s featured books and you can sample it on the facing page.

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Featured author Jacqueline Winspear talks about the inspiration for her latest novel

was twenty-five years old when the idea of writing The Care and Management of Lies first began to form in my mind – some twenty years before I wrote my first novel. At the time I worked for an academic publishing company in London, but at weekends I worked on a friend’s stall in London’s Portobello Road market. We sold art deco pottery, china and jewellery – I loved the buzz of the market, it was great fun. However, a market has to be kept stocked with good things for people to buy, so if I had a day off from the market, it was invariably spent at jumble sales or church bring and buy sales, keeping my eyes open for items I could sell on the stall. It was during one of my expeditions to fi nd more stock – I was at a jumble sale in Hastings – that I came across what at fi rst glance appeared to be a book on household management. It was battered and well-used, with the cover just about hanging on by a few threads of binding and the pages heavily foxed. I have always enjoyed vintage ‘instructional’ books for women, but this one – The Woman’s Book, fi rst published in 1911 – was different. Yes, it had all the hallmarks of a tome meant for the housewifeto-be, but there was so much more. It was about demonstrating the very best of womanhood in all domains of endeavor. More than anything it was the inscription that made me linger, for the book had been given to a

young woman on the occasion of her wedding in July 1914 – just before the outbreak of what became known as the Great War. I literally held my breath as I wondered if the bride’s husband went off to war within months of the wedding. Had she been widowed? What happened to this young woman who had walked up the aisle on her father’s arm, fi lled with hope for her new marriage? What of her family, and friends – how did they fare? The book was given at a time of optimism during a wonderful, hot summer – then the world changed almost overnight. At that point in my life, only in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would ever become a published author, yet I knew I would one day write about the bride and her husband. The kindling was laid by my curiosity, and over the years I held a match to the story, giving the woman my great-grandmother’s name. She goes to live on her husband’s farm in Kent – it would always be Kent, for it’s where I’m from, and where part of my heart will always reside – and then, within months of marriage, he goes to war. I wrote The Care and Management of Lies because I wanted to tell the story of a woman who was given a copy of The Woman’s Book as a wedding gift on the eve of what would become arguably the twentieth century’s most terrible war. I hope I’ve done her story justice.

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The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

A N E X T R AC T F R O M

The Care and Management of Lies

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mme

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Jacqueline Winspear Publication date 1 July Our featured book left a lasting impression on Directory reviewer Eleanor Baggley… ‘Kezia Marchant has only been Mrs Brissenden a matter of months before war casts a dark shadow on her life. Her husband quickly enlists leaving her in charge of the farm, and her sister-in-law and childhood friend, Thea, is also drawn to the battleﬁeld. Told partly through Kezia’s correspondence with her husband and Thea, this is an emotive novel that paints a vivid picture of one war-torn family. Providing comfort to her husband in France through her letters becomes Kezia’s new way of life and it is these letters that make the novel truly stand apart from the crowd. In giving the characters their own voice Winspear has created individuals who seem to reach out from the page and leave a lasting impression.’ A good housewife will not rest content with the fact that the meals in her house are well-cooked. She will also see to it that they are well-served, knowing that dainty table equipment and skilful service does much to enhance the enjoyment of the fare provided. The Woman’s Book

Tom looked up from his plate and began to laugh. ‘What’s the matter with it?’ asked his wife of two and a half weeks, herself smiling, unable to resist her husband’s apparent amusement. ‘Kezzie, love, what have you done with this cauliflower?’ ‘What do you mean?’ asked Kezia Brissenden, rubbing her hands on a pinafore still bearing the crisp creases of newness amid a garland of stains. ‘What’s wrong with the cauliflower?’ She leant across to look at the food she had set before him. There as a meat pie; admittedly, she’d

had some trouble with the pastry, and it seemed pockmarked. The mashed potato was quite well divested of the lumps she’d fought against earlier, and the cauliflower appeared well cooked. Tom liked his vegetables well cooked, colour drained from the green to the extent that it appeared bleached, with creamy white florets almost indistinguishable from the mash. ‘I just wondered why there was string in it.’ ‘Oh, dear, you’ve got the string. I didn’t see it when I dished up. Here, allow me…’ Kezia leant towards him, pulled at the string he’d lifted with his fork,

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The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

and removed it with a flourish. Gravy splattered the tablecloth. She giggled as she carried the length of twine towards the sink to wash in cold water and hang to dry on a pipe running from the copper at the side of the stove, which supplied hot water to the tap. ‘Waste not want not. Your mother would be proud of me!’ ‘I daresay she would, but why did you cook the cauli with string in the fi rst place?’ ‘To keep the bits in, silly. All those little flowery bits might drop off, if you don’t tie them up.’ And with that Tom shook his head, tried not to laugh, and slipped his fork into the pie. They were in the fi rst flush of marriage, and this was another source of fascination for the young husband, that this wife of his had no attachment to her prowess as a cook. She didn’t seem to care that pastry might be underdone, meat overdone, that bread was too doughy in the crumb, too hard on the crust, or that the men looked at their eggs and bacon and then at each other every morning. She seemed like a sprite assigned to a factory job, fl itting from stove to table, then out to the kitchen garden, cutting rosemary to garnish an egg on toast – and not one of the farm workers had ever seen garnish, nor would the word ever be part of their vocabulary. Other women, Tom knew, set stock by their accomplishments in the kitchen, as if their identity, their essential wifeliness, were attached to the range, the mixing bowls, knives, crockery, and cutlery. His mother had entered her rich eggy sponges in the annual show, though at home cake baking was generally left until Saturday so that Sunday tea might have something special about it. She’d had a limited repertoire, his mother, though the food she set upon the table was good and hearty, each day assigned a menu that never changed. You knew it was Monday when pie topped with mash was dished up, the meat minced and left over from the Sunday joint. Tuesday toad-in-the-hole, Wednesday hotpot. And so on. No fish on Friday, though, unless one of the men had brought trout from a summer’s eve spent with rod and line. Experimentation was not his mother’s forte; setting up a good table for hungry men who showed appreciation with the doffi ng of a cap or a nod in her direction as they set off for their day’s work was good enough for her. She did not ask for more. But Kezia had taken to heart a nugget of advice discovered in a hardly used recipe book found in her late mother-in-law’s larder: Never omit that trifling touch of decoration which makes the simplest dish seem appetising, and the homeliest table attractive. Even a jar of woodland or hedgerow blooms makes all the difference – a meal at once appears, something more than merely eating to satisfy the wants of the body. It becomes a pleasant affair, beneficial and a tonic to the soul. So she set the table with best silver brought from the parlour for men who tied their trousers in place with rope. On her fi rst day as the farmer’s wife, she’d put out fresh linen towels on the kitchen draining board 32

We present… a second opinion

as the men walked in through the back door, and soon it became a habit for them to Girlhood friends Thea and Kezia have form a line at the sink as they grown apart as Kezia marries her friend’s waited to wash their hands. brother and becomes a farmer’s wife and At fi rst they looked at Tom in Thea becomes involved in the Suﬀragettes. dismay, wondering what life When war is declared and Tom and Thea ﬁnd must be like with this woman themselves on the front line, all three have who didn’t appear to know her to rely on letters, and lies, to keep the others place, who pulled up a chair from worrying, but are they enough? to the table, her mug of tea The level of research in the novel is as held with both hands, asking meticulous as in the Maisie Dobbs books – them questions about their Winspear knows her period inside out and it wives, their children, and shows in the details. The letters from Kezia what they thought of this or to Tom are full of the most amazing and, that, when the only thinking poignantly, imaginary meals, and they do that engaged their minds a good job of bridging the gap between the was whether cows were to front line and the home front within the novel. be moved from Barnaby to Some might complain about the slow Pickwick, and whether their pace and lack of a rollercoaster storyline, but wives might get a bit of work, this isn’t a novel that you read for the plot or pin money earned darning the thrills. It’s about the myriad details and pokes up in the oast house, emotions in a snapshot of a year in which still bearing the spicy must of everything changed. last year’s hop-picking season. Sarah Chapman But soon there grew among Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ these men something akin to Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★ envy. Though not a soul could articulate such feelings, it was clear that the farmhouse had been bathed in new light, as if it had been given a stark coat of white paint – and they wouldn’t put that past Mrs Kezia Brissenden, Miss Marchant, as was. They could see that Tom had a freshness to him too, as he left with his workers to go out into the fields each morning. And it wasn’t that Kezia didn’t respect her role, or Tom, or the farm she had married as much as the man. She took it as it was, loved it for what it would forever be, just as she loved her husband. Kezia was Kezia, and nothing, it seemed, would change who she was, or who she might be in her world. Tom knew all this, could see and feel her establishing her place. She was not simply fi lling the role of another woman before her. It entertained him, this Kezianess that was enveloping Marshals Farm, named for a dark prison in Dickens’ day. And it never bothered him; he knew that at the centre of Kezia’s rural life, they stood together, hand in hand, and all else would grow from there.

Kezia chopped the vegetables, simmered the broth, plundered the larder for peas she’d dried in summer and beans that had been soaking since the day before. She went to her kitchen garden and searched among the tied-back and cut-down sprigs for thyme and rosemary, savoury and parsley. And as she cut into each, she held them between fi nger and thumb to breathe in the aroma. She added curcumin bought in London, and some tiny peppery seeds found in a

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The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

jar in the larder, seeds she could not identify because the label had fallen off ages ago. She thought the bittersweet flavour that settled upon her tongue when she bit into a single seed would add something to Tom’s soup. And it wasn’t until Ada came in from the front of the house, where she had scrubbed the doorstep – not that anyone ever came to the front door – and asked, ‘Was someone here, Mrs Brissenden?’ that Kezia realised she had been talking to Tom, telling him all about his soup as she moved vegetables to the pot, as she peppered and salted the broth, and as the beans and peas and lentils merged with carrot, onion, swede, parsnip, and celery root. And just because she liked the idea, she added a chopped pear brought from the cold shed next to the kitchen garden. This would be the very best soup Tom had ever tasted, and she would write to him as soon as it was on the simmer, as soon as she was ready to pour it into a small saucepan and take it to Bert and Danny. She would serve them soup in her china bowls, and give them white linen napkins to wipe across their chins when they ate so fast the liquid dribbled into their stubble. Dearest Tom, Marshals Farm misses you. The men miss you, Sloppy and Squeers miss you, and I miss you most of all. But we are all looking after the farm, so you must not concern yourself. We know you have enough to worry about without wondering if this or that has been done. It’s all well in hand. We’ve still got Ted and Mabel, thanks be to the Lord. The men from the army came again last week, but they were both looking a bit tired (the horses, not the men), and Mabel was ready to knock a fly’s eye out if anyone but Bert came near her. I think she misses you too. I told them I was a woman trying to run the farm on my own, with only two men left and one of them lame, and I told them we had already been under orders to plough up a meadow and take down an orchard for more growing, and asked how they thought we would feed their army without our horses. I mentioned that my father had enlisted as an army chaplain – not that he’s gone any farther than a London barracks, as far as I know – and I would like to think the word of God settled in their ears and kept Ted and Mabel with us. I don’t know what we would do without the horses. Kezia read the letter, and shook her head. No, she could not tell Tom of her concerns. It was unfair to tell him he was missed, and she could not possibly worry him about the horses, about the orchard to come down – she realised it had not been mentioned before, and would keep him awake at night. She decided it would be best to write the letter in pencil as a draft, then edit it before copying out her fi nal version on writing paper. It took her two hours. Tom was hungry. His hunger gnawed at his backbone. Nevertheless, he wondered if he could eat what was put in front of him. He had never been among savages, but he thought jungle tribes must be like men in a mess hall. Hundreds of men, hundreds

A sergeant stood in attendance to make sure the new recruits ate, to make sure they didn’t linger a moment where a moment could not be spared. The line shuﬄed along, elbows into ribs, knee into the back of another knee, man moving man. Tom hated it, could hardly stand the lack of space around him. Dinner was supposed to be private, personal, just him and Kezia, together. And no one else. of khaki ants, and big men, cooks – men cooks, mind – men serving up food, not with spoons but with their bare, soiled hands, hands that became cleaner as dirt adhered to the meat, potatoes, and bit of bread they shoved onto the next plate. Move along, move along, no slacking. A sergeant stood in attendance to make sure the new recruits ate, to make sure they didn’t linger a moment where a moment could not be spared. The line shuffled along, elbows into ribs, knee into the back of another knee, man moving man. Tom hated it, could hardly stand the lack of space around him. Dinner was supposed to be private, personal, just him and Kezia, together. And no one else. Her hands were clean, the tablecloths laundered and crisp. Flowers were on the table, and all for him. Now this. He felt as if something were being taken from him, that he was no longer Tom Brissenden but a private among many privates. Funny, that – now he was Private Thomas Brissenden, yet everything was far from private, or personal, or individual. It was one lumbering beast of man animal. An army. ‘Come on, move along, lads. Get on, move your arses and get that food down yer! On the double!’ Some of the men laughed; others paled – in particular the younger lads, many not even with a bit of fluff around their chops – and looked sick. Food had always been cooked by a mother or a wife. And even if the lad had been in a family of six children and one pot of broth, and the army food looked better than at home, home and mother were still a long way past. Weeks, even. ‘Scum, that’s what it is. Look what they’re feeding us.’ The speaker sat down next to Tom. It was a hut mate, Cecil Croft, who now pushed his food around on his plate. Croft had been a teacher before enlisting, a university man. ‘I’d get on with it, mate, if I were you. That sergeant over there sees you playing with your food, you’ll be on a charge,’ said Tom. He nodded The Care and towards his neighbour’s tin plate. It held stew, Management of Lies by potatoes, and a hefty slice of bread. Jacqueline Winspear ‘It’s not as if we’re not getting the calories, is it?’ is published 1 July in said Croft. ‘It’s what they do with the food to make hardback by Allison & them add up that makes me suspicious. I mean, it all Busby, price £16.99. looks the same. And brown bread.’

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I loved that opera made it totally acceptable for two people to meet and say,

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Penguin

Runner by Patrick Lee Ex-soldier Sam Dryden was done being a hero. But when he hides a terrified young girl from a group of well-armed pursuers, his fate is sealed. Rachel can't remember much, but she knows she was imprisoned by the men trying to kill her. And that she is important to them. But hunted and on the run, it's only as Rachel's memory returns that Dryden begins to fully appreciate the scale of the dangers they face. And then only one thing matters: Don't. Get. Caught.

Runner by Patrick Lee is published 19 June in paperback by Penguin,

‘Patrick Lee is a huge talent and Runner is his best book yet – breathless, involving, smart, and completely convincing’ Lee Child

price £6.99. It is also available in e-book. You can read a review of this book in The Directory.

Established American author Patrick Lee talks about his latest thriller

What was the initial spark for Runner that made you put pen to paper? I'd have to say it was the complexity of Rachel's character. On the one hand she's the most vulnerable person in the story, at least in the beginning, and yet certain people are terrifi ed of her, for reasons we don't understand early on. Those elements made the story a lot of fun to write. Warner Brothers won the bidding war for film rights – are there any actors you can especially see playing the lead, Sam Dryden? I think if I could cast anyone, it would be Matt Damon. He's able to pull off realism in a way not many other people can. You’ve been praised by some of the biggest writers out there – what does that mean to you as a fan and as a fellow author? That's still one of the most surreal parts of this whole experience, to me. Just fi nding out that someone like that has read your book, when you've already been a big fan of their work – it's a moment that really hits you.

13:03

Do you know what Sam will face over the next few books or will you discover it as the character grows with the series? So far I haven't planned anything beyond the next book, and I should probably only say a little about that one, because some details of it may still change. It takes place two years after the events of Runner, when an old friend of Dryden's shows up in his life with a strange machine that lots of dangerous people are after. What are some of the books which have most captured your imagination as a reader? Some of Stephen King's recent work has been pretty incredible. Under the Dome and 11/22/63 were both amazing, I thought. It was interesting to learn that both of those were books he started writing decades ago, but set aside at the time. I'll have to remember to hold on to all my false starts.

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YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE WEDDING OF THE SUMMER One groom. One best man. What if you were in love with both? His hesitance to look up struck a chord within me, momentarily making me wobble on my decision. Suddenly, something within me urged him to look at me. Part of me wanted him to stop the wedding, to show me exactly how much he cared. Wanted him to stop me from making a terrible mistake . . . but is that what I thought I was actually making? A terrible mistake? I loved Robert, but I loved Ben too. Both men had known me for seventeen years – each of them had seen me at my worst, picked me up when I’d been caught in despair, been my shoulders to cry on when I’d needed to sob. They were my rocks. Plural. Not singular. But, as the service got underway, as the congregation was asked for any reasons why we should not have been joined in matrimony without a peep from Ben, it started to sink in that he was not about to start fighting. He was letting me go . . .

Format: Paperback ISBN: 97814059009976 RRP: £7.99 Pub Date: 22/05/2014

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29/04/2014 17:24

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Hesperus

A story of exile Over the Ocean by Erica Fischer Austrian author Erica Fischer discusses Over the Ocean, in which she tells her parents’ extraordinary wartime story

You are an experienced biographer, but is this the first time you have written about your own family? How did the process of writing it compare to your previous work? No, before Over the Ocean I wrote Himmelstrasse (Road to Heaven, published in 2007) which has only been translated into Polish. It is the story of three generations: my grandparents on my mother’s side, killed in the extermination camp of Treblinka, the story of my parents briefly also covering my father’s deportation to Australia; and my own story, along with my brother who committed suicide after my mother’s death in 1999. The process of writing both Himmelstrasse and Over the Ocean was, of course, much more intimate than other biographies I wrote, but basically the work was the same: interviews, research and the attempt to find a literary form for real life events and experiences. In Himmelstrasse I also wrote about my own life, so the writing process was a continuous reflection on how personal memories differ from material I found, for example, letters. This feeling was even stronger with Over the Ocean, for what my father told me as a child was much more joyful and adventurous than the actual historical events and my parents’ feeling at the time. I never knew that the voyage on the ‘Dunera’ was so horrible, and I never knew how unhappy my parents were about their separation. Later in life my father described his Australia experience as an exciting and interesting period of his life. My mother never talked about the anguish she experienced in the blitz. Knowing about the horrors of the Holocaust she might have thought it not worthwhile recounting. Writing Himmelstrasse was immensely relieving. The burden of my family history that had cast a shadow over most of my life disappeared after I had concluded the book and made me a happier person. Did you learn anything about your parents that you didn't already know? It was a pleasant surprise to realise how much my parents missed each other. Knowing I was a child of love was healing. When I was older this love was no longer palpable.

Writing about my own family allowed me to look at my parents from the distance of a writer trying to find the best words, which corrected the feelings of the hurt child in need of a love she often didn’t get. Tell us more about the materials you already had access to and the additional research you had to undertake to complete the story? I had about eighty letters which my parents wrote to each other while he was in Australia and on the Isle of Man. I had interviews with about ten ‘Dunera Boys’, whom I interviewed in Sydney and Melbourne in 1995. And I consulted all available resource books as well as two – long forgotten – wonderfully detailed autobiographical novels written by authors who travelled on the ‘Dunera’ and later moved to East Germany. One of them made exactly the same trip as my father, to Australia on the ‘Dunera’ and back to Europe on the ‘Largs Bay’. Over the Ocean is based on 'forbidden' love and letters, much like your earlier book Aimee & Jaguar – are you aware of recurring themes as you write? That’s a coincidence but, of course, having personal letters is the best thing that can happen to an author specialising in biographies. Other books of mine are based exclusively on interviews and background research. What links these two books, as well as quite a few others, is the ‘Jewish question’. Most certainly because of my family history I’m interested in stories about persecuted and discriminated groups of people: Jews, refugees, war victims (e.g. Bosnia) and women. What feeling would you most like readers to take away from Over the Ocean? Bad experiences may have a good ending. In spite of the injustice of my father’s deportation and the painful separation of my parents, they never lost their love and respect for Britain and conveyed this feeling to their children born in 1943 and 1948. Historically speaking it is important to know what terrible and unjust mistakes governments make in times of crisis and war.

17:24

Over the Ocean by Erica Fischer, translated by Andrew Brown, is published 20 June in paperback by Hesperus, price £9.99. It is also available in e-book.

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Polygon

Losing myself The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth by Stuart Clark Author Stuart Clark combines his two loves

never remember a time when I wasn't fascinated by space. From the earliest age I would find my attention drawn to the twinkling beacons of light in the night sky. I would gaze at those iridescent jewels that sparkled in the frosty winter, when moonlight lay silver all around, and I would let my imagination take flight. To me the stars were both beautiful and mysterious. My love of stories grew early as well. I remember the anticipation of story-time at primary school, when I could be taken to a place beyond my own small experience. Although I could not articulate the thought at the time, I now realise that my fascination with stories was and is driven by the way they expose us to lives that could have been, might have been, or indeed still could be. For my fifth birthday, I asked for a desk so that I could write stories. My father, a carpenter, made me one of beautiful blond-coloured wood with an inlaid green baize top. The wood matched the colour of my hair at the time. In future years I may have to think about another bespoke desk, but this time veneered by silver birch. Then came Star Wars. I was the right age to be utterly captivated. It blended my two loves perfectly: outer space and storytelling. I particularly remember how hard it was to sit still in my cinema seat when a spacecraft blasted off from a planet; the cinema would plunge into darkness as the screen filled with stars and the music soared to a magnificent crescendo. I wanted to jump from my seat and pump my fist in the air. I was 10 years old when my parents bought me an encyclopaedia about space. I devoured it faster than the Christmas turkey accompanying it, and discovered that truth was in many ways stranger than fiction. What a magnificent universe we lived in. And just as mind-blowing was the way we could learn about it by looking and measuring. The die was cast really. After a few years of trying to get a 'sensible' job, I realised that only astronomy would do. I studied at the University of Hertfordshire and financed my PhD by writing Star Trek video sleeves. In lectures I learnt the science, in my spare time, I began to research the lives of the great astronomers. The result of this life-long interest is ‘The Sky's Dark Labyrinth’ trilogy. These are dramatised 4 2

biographies of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. The title of each is taken from an astronomer featured in the book. Galileo said that without science the night sky was a dark labyrinth, hence the title of the first book. Newton thought science could unlock the secret for God’s omnipotence, and so called the universe The Sensorium of God. In the twentieth century, a Belgium priest and physicist called Georges Lemaître found that Einstein’s great theories explained the universe had a beginning. This moment was when space and time came into existence. Lemaître called this very first day, The Day Without Yesterday. In creating them, I was inspired by the works of Philippa Gregory and Robert Harris in their dramatised historical novels and figured that I could do the same for the greatest astronomers in history. They are the only novels to be endorsed by The Science Museum of London. Initially I began investigating the history and philosophy of what drove these men to reach for the stars. What I found were stories of such drama and intrigue that all they needed was a little fictional glue to bring the known events to life. All of these breakthroughs came at times of great upheaval in Europe: the Catholic Church striking back with the counter-reformation during Galileo’s life, the restoration in England and the move to constitutional monarchy during Newton’s lifetime. In Einstein’s life, nothing less that the First World War played a crucial role in him shaping his theories. Most importantly, I discovered that these were stories about belief, both religious and personal. I was exploring questions such as how much are we ‘The Sky’s Dark prepared to take on faith? What do we need proof for? Labyrinth’ trilogy by And how do we deal with the fault line between the Stuart Clark consists of: two? Each of us must strike this balance. It forms a The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth central pillar to our personalities. (Book I), price £7.99; As I brought these characters to life, one thought The Sensorium of God struck me – almost literally between the eyes. It (Book II), price £8.99; was late. I was outside, sweeping my gaze across the The Day Without summer star fields and I realised that I was looking at Yesterday (Book III), the same stars that Galileo, Newton and Einstein had price £8.99. looked at and taken their inspiration from. All are published in They stand today as mute witness to history and paperback by Polygon, human achievement. They are beauty and mystery and are also available as made manifest. And they are freely available to e-books. anyone who cares to look up.

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Polygon

Dancing on the hard shoulder Jam by Jake Wallis Simons Author Jake Wallis Simons talks about the inspiration behind his latest novel

few years ago, I was caught up in a traffic jam on the M1 that lasted for four hours. To say it was boring would be a gross understatement. But at the same time, it was strangely fascinating. There were various stages that everybody went through. Firstly, men – they were almost always men – would get out of their cars and crane their necks like so many meerkats, trying to catch sight of the obstruction. (Interestingly, they tended to repeat this several times, despite the fact that nothing could be seen.) The second stage was turning off the engine, which was a surprisingly monumental gesture. Then, once the noise of the engines had died away, there was a prolonged period of sitting. What followed was particularly intriguing. People began to get out of their cars and talk to each other. Before long, the vehicles lost all significance as instruments of perambulation, instead acquiring new roles as de facto houses. Everyone met people that they would never usually encounter. The road became a sort of autopolis. A gang of twenty-something travellers went on an expedition to a local pub, and brought back packets of prawn cocktail crisps for us. Someone taught a group of people Irish dancing on the hard shoulder. And as the opposite side of the road was deserted – the obstruction must have blocked both sides of the motorway – people started playing football on it.

This became the inspiration for my new novel, JAM, which is set entirely in traffic. But I made two important changes. Firstly, whereas the real traffic jam had only lasted for a few hours (only!), the fictional jam lasted all night. This was because when I was writing the novel, I met a woman who told me that once she had been driving a few junctions down the motorway to have dinner with her mother, and had got caught up in a jam that lasted until nine the following morning. Once I’d heard that, there was no turning back. The second alteration I made was to relocate the traffic jam to the M25. The reason for this should be obvious: the M25 is a simply wonderful motorway, for the novelist at least. For a start, it is circular, which provides rich metaphorical potential. Secondly, it acts as a boundary around London, which again makes an important statement in a novel about the state of Britain today. Because although the M25 is undeniably an important character in JAM, this is a book about the British people of 2014. A traffic jam is one of the few occasions in which our intensely classstratified society is shaken up, and the pieces are allowed to fall randomly. Writing the book forced me to confront the social fragmentation of British life, and also to acknowledge the thread of humanity that unifies us.

JAM by Jake Wallis Simons is published in paperback by Polygon, price £12.99.

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Ebury

The Kill by Jane Casey An extract from the latest explosive Maeve Kerrigan thriller

Richmond Park Sunday 22 September 2013

T 00.43

he cold was like a living thing. It had sunk its teeth through the layers of clothing Megan wore, sliding through her skin to get to her bones. They ached. They hurt even more than the muscle cramping in her calf. She pulled her sleeves down over her hands and tucked her arms under her body. Slowly, she let her head sink down too, so her face was pillowed on the grass. She wanted to sleep so much. Her eyes kept closing. Maybe it would be easier to stay awake if she paid attention to the sounds of the night: Hugh’s breathing beside her, the wind in the trees, a rustle in the undergrowth, the music of the stars… ‘See that?’ The voice was little more than a whisper but it stabbed through the lovely, soft darkness that had wrapped around Megan like a blanket. ‘Hm?’ She jerked her head up and looked keenly into the night at absolutely nothing. ‘Ten o’clock.’ It took her a second to work out what Hugh meant, and by the time she’d looked where she was supposed to, there was nothing to see. Beside her, Hugh’s leg twitched in what she guessed was irritation. ‘What was it?’ ‘Great big sow. Lovely lady.’ ‘I missed it.’ ‘Shh. She might be back.’ Megan rubbed her eyes and peered at the featureless undergrowth again. All she needed was one flash of black and white, one sighting that she could take home like a trophy to prove that she’d been right to spend Saturday night sprawled in the mud in Richmond Park. She couldn’t shake the unworthy thought that she’d missed The X Factor for this. Bloody Ruby would have watched it, hours ago, curled up on the sofa in their flat. Ruby, who’d be asleep now. Ruby, who’d suggested she was only going out looking for badgers with Hugh because she fancied him. Megan had thought he was cute, but in an abstract, on-thetelevision-and-therefore-attractive way. She wouldn’t even kiss him, never mind anything more. Even the 4 4

thought made Megan gag a little, but she turned it into a cough, just in case Hugh asked her what was wrong. She was no good at lying and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. That good deed earned her a glare from Hugh, and a twitch that made his beard move in a very disconcerting way. Badgers were shy, he’d told her. They had to be quiet and still. With the two of them there, they’d be lucky to see anything at all. And now she’d missed the only thing to happen for hours. Who knew when Hugh would give up? The silence settled around them again. Megan made herself concentrate. She would make the best of this. She would see a beautiful badger in the wild, and have an experience to remember for ever, and she would never, ever do this again. The bang was shatteringly loud. It echoed around them and rolled out across the dark open spaces below, and as it faded Megan wasn’t altogether sure she hadn’t imagined it, until the second one came a moment later. ‘What the eff was that?’ Hugh abandoned any attempt to be stealthy, sitting up, bristling with outrage. He was still too conscious of his image to do anything as uncouth as proper swearing, Megan noted. Minor television personalities did not swear. ‘It sounded like a gun,’ she said timidly. ‘It can’t have been. Must have been a car backfiring.’ ‘I don’t think it was a car.’ ‘Must have been.’ Hugh was older than Megan by at least ten years, and he didn’t like it when she offered opinions, she’d noticed. He liked it when she listened to him and agreed with what he was saying. But she knew what she’d heard. ‘We should call the police.’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ ‘I’m not being ridiculous.’ But she let her phone slide back into her pocket anyway, recalling that there was no signal where they were. ‘Look, I don’t like The Kill by Jane Casey is published in it. Let’s go.’ She stood up, assuming that adventures in hardback by Ebury badger-watching were over for the night since Hugh Press, price £16.99. was practically shouting. ‘Get down!’ He grabbed her leg, just above her knee. Also available in e-book.

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Ebury

Who is Tom Ditto? by Danny Wallace An extract from this smart and witty novel

he evening of June the 12th was unusual for many reasons in the end, of course, but it was unusual mostly because the evening of June the 12th was the evening my girlfriend did not leave me. Tom, I have not left you. But I am gone. Please just carry on as normal. Love always Hayley I stared at the words and sat down in my chair. I am not saying I’m not a trusting man. I’m not saying you can’t trust most people. But usually, when you meet someone you can trust, you know. It was as obvious with Hayley as her big blue eyes; as the curl of hair she’d keep tucking behind her ear. Here, her – Hayley – this was a girl you could trust. The second she gave me her number, I did the thing I always do when someone gives me their number. I looked at it, then said, ‘Wow, no way! That’s my favourite number!’ It’s a pretty good thing to say. All you have to do after saying something like that is sit back and wait for the laughter to subside. It’s a banker. A deal-sealer. If that doesn’t get a laugh, you’re doing it wrong, and maybe you should start questioning how you do everything else in your life, too, because maybe you can’t even make a sandwich properly. And now I sat in my flat, in the dark, on the chair in the corner, dialling that number again and again and again and again and again. It was fast becoming not-my-favourite. A strange thing, being left, while being assured you have not been left. What are you supposed to do with that? Just switch to solo behaviour? Just think ‘fine’ and start buying meals-for-one? Four hours had passed and I was still sitting in that chair. Jangling my keys. Listening to the dogs outside. Dusk had turned to dark. Confusion had turned to anger and settled, lump-thick, deep in my stomach. Where had Hayley gone?

I guess that was my main question. But also, and obviously … why? How long would she be gone? Was she gone gone? Why didn’t I know where she’d gone? Why didn’t I know she was going? Why was she saying she was going but not gone? Almost two years we’d been together. We had responsibilities. We had direct debits. I’d left messages, of course, tonight. I sounded confused on the first one. Furious on the second. Worried on the third and fourth. Desperate as I hit the fifth, and sixth, and then silent seventh. I’d texted. Where are you? Where have you gone?

Danny participates in our Quirky Q&A on page 7.

Hayley, call me.

I’d made calls to other people, too. Lots of calls. Her best friend, Fran. Her brother, her sister … ‘Annie, it’s Tom,’ I’d said, head down, shoulders hunched, headache starting, standing by the window, one hand against the wall, phone pressed too hard against my cheek, because this feeling, these nerves, they had to go somewhere. It was loud where Annie was. Restaurant? Maybe drinks? ‘Is Hayley with you?’ A moment. ‘No, Tom…’ She knew. She knew she’d gone. It was right there slotted between the pause and where a ‘What do you mean?’ should have been. So yes, her sister knew she’d gone, but worse – she’d known she was going. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ ‘Hayley wanted it to be a surprise for everyone.’ ‘A… surprise?’ She sounded distant. What did that mean? Was Annie preparing to say goodbye to me? Backing off? Fading me out of her life? That was bad. The ex you can keep hold of for a while, they owe it to you while you talk things out, they’re still in your life, but the friends, the family … they start drifting away the Who is Tom Ditto? by second they see the iceberg from the ship. Danny Wallace ‘Well, it’s definitely a surprise,’ I said, loudly, is published in hardback angrily, trying to keep her engaged, stop her from by Ebury Press, jumping overboard. ‘What does it mean, Annie? price £12.99. Where is she?’

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s u m m e r r e a di ng 20 1 4

Orion

The Beach Hut Next Door by Veronica Henry Return to Everdene Sands, setting for The Beach Hut, and discover secrets, love, tragedy and dreams. It’s going to be a summer to remember… In Everdene, and for those lucky enough to own one of the beach huts, this was the summer of their dreams. For Elodie, returning to Everdene means re-awakening the memories of one summer fifty years ago. A summer when everything changed. Vince and his brother are struggling to come to terms with the death of their father – but they have very different ways of coping. And for Jenna, determined to put the past behind her, the opportunity to become 'the ice cream girl' once again might just turn her life around. But this summer is not all sunshine and surf – as secrets unfold, and some lives are changed for ever…

A N E X T R AC T F ROM T H E B E AC H H U T N E X T D O OR ummer appeared from nowhere that year in Everdene. Most people had given up hope of ever seeing it again, after two years of endless grey and wet with barely any respite. But suddenly the sun burst back onto the scene with unapologetic ebullience, throwing her golden rays with abandon onto the three miles of beach, turning the sand from sludgy beige to roseate gold. There was the touch of the show-off about her: the girl who knows she is the belle of the ball; the girl who relishes being the centre of attention. Some, with typically British pessimism, said the glorious sunshine would never last, but those with a beach hut at Everdene exchanged secretive, gleeful smiles as day after day broke cloudless and bright. Fifty-seven huts, painted in icecream colours, some immaculate, some dilapidated; some tiny, with barely room for a bucket and spade; others sprawling and substantial. You couldn’t walk past them and not want to be inside one; to share the heavenly

luxury of falling asleep and waking up with the sandy shore on your doorstep, and the sea itself only a few feet beyond that. For the people lucky enough to have one, this was the summer of their dreams – a summer of hazy days and balmy nights, of the kind read about in books; of the kind recalled in distant memories. A summer of picnic baskets and bicycle rides and ripe strawberries. Freckles and ice cream and stolen afternoon naps. And love. Love blossomed and unfurled. The heat healed rifts and forged bonds and mended broken hearts, reaching across miles and spanning decades. Love in many different guises. Sometimes the love had waited patiently to re-emerge, blinking, into the sunlight. Other times it sprang up unexpectedly and surprised itself. It was undoubtedly the sun that had coaxed love out of hiding, though, a golden, glittering orb The Beach Hut Next that stayed fixed in the sky for Door by Veronica Henry weeks on end, only standing aside is published 3 July in occasionally for the rain to moisten paperback by Orion, the parched earth. price £7.99. Nobody wanted it to end.

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Orion

The Storms of War by Kate Williams The first novel in esteemed TV historian Kate Williams's groundbreaking new series which opens in 1914. For fans of Atonement, Birdsong and Downton Abbey. In the idyllic early summer of 1914, life is good for the de Witt family. Rudolf and Verena are planning the wedding of their daughter Emmeline, while their eldest son, Arthur, is studying in Paris and Michael is just back from his first term at Cambridge. Celia, the youngest of the de Witt children, is on the brink of adulthood, and secretly dreams of escaping her carefully mapped-out future and exploring the world. But the onslaught of war changes everything and soon the de Witts find themselves sidelined and in danger of losing everything they hold dear. As Celia struggles to make sense of the changing world around her, she lies about her age to join the war effort and finds herself embroiled in a complex plot that puts not only herself but those she loves in danger. With gripping detail and brilliant empathy, Kate Williams tells the story of Celia and her family as they are shunned by a society that previously embraced them, torn apart by sorrow, and buffeted and changed by the storms of war.

A N E X T R AC T F ROM T H E ST OR M S OF WA R s soon as they had moved in, Rudolf had set about what he called modernising the house. He had repainted it, put up new wallpaper and even installed electric lights in the parlour, the dining room and the front hall. Verena, however, tended to decline to turn them on, and the staff were afraid of them – Smithson told Celia that they had heard that an electric light in a house near Winchester had burst and cast yellow stuff all over the entire company under it, and they were burnt quite to a cinder. Rudolf had recently installed a telephone in a special small booth in the hall, even though no one had yet used it and Verena complained bitterly about the expense. Celia sometimes crept to look at it when nobody else was around. She would pick up the receiver and speak into it. ‘Hello,’ she whispered. ‘Is there anyone there?’ The line crackled and fizzed; no one spoke. ‘I think the place looks better for all his work. If you’ve got the money, why not spend it, I say?’ Something caught her heart then, and she could not help herself. She pulled his hand. ‘Tom.’ She could almost feel urgency flooding between her lips. ‘You will never leave. Promise me you won’t leave.’ He looked up at the sky, away from her. ‘I won’t. I don’t have anywhere to go. You will, though. You’ll go somewhere else.’ ‘No. Say it to me, promise me. If we leave, we go together.’ She stared at the grime on the back of his hand, begging him to answer. ‘Life is different for me.’ ‘What makes you so sure? Please, Tom. Promise me you won’t leave.’ He shifted on to the other foot. ‘I promise. Things will always stay the same.’ That was enough. She pulled her hand free and took three steps away. ‘Race you first!’ she cried at him, waving, and then gathered her dress in her hand and began running, hurtling headlong to Stoneythorpe.

The Storms of War by Kate Williams is published 3 July in hardback by Orion, price £12.99.

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Orion

The Sea Garden by Deborah Lawrenson Following her TV Book Club success with The Lantern, Deborah Lawrenson returns to the south of France with another captivating story of wartime love, secrets and bravery. Present day. On a Mediterranean island, Ellie restores an abandoned garden. It seems idyllic, but the longer Ellie spends there, the more she senses darkness, and a lingering evil. Second World War. Two women have their lives irrevocably changed: Iris, a junior intelligence officer in London and Marthe, working in Provence’s lavender fields. As secret messages are passed in scent and planes land by moonlight, danger comes ever closer…

‘ A superbly crafted novel that deserves to be called the new Captain Corelli or perhaps the new Birdsong’ Daily Mail

A N E X T R AC T F ROM T H E SE A GA R DE N he island lay in wait, a smudge of land across the water. From the port at La Tour Fondue, the crossing to Porquerolles would take only fifteen minutes. Ellie Brooke put her face up to the sun, absorbing the heat. On the deck of the ferry, there were few other passengers this late in the afternoon. The young man had his back to the curve of the deck rail, facing her. It was his T-shirt that drew her attention: the lead singer of a heavy metal band thrust a tongue out from the boy’s chest, an image that invited reaction but succeeded only in making its thin, blond bearer appear innocuous in comparison. The engines thrummed and the boat powered up to full speed. The island was already sharpening into focus when the young man climbed over the deck rail, spread both arms, and then let himself slip down the side of the ferry, a silent movement so quick and so unexpected that Ellie was not the only passenger to admit that she had at first doubted her own eyes. No splash was heard in the churning water close to the hull. Perhaps their shouts to the crew were seconds too late, the choking of the ferry’s engine not fast enough. The young man had gone over the edge too close to the bow to have had any chance of swimming away safely. As soon as he hit the water he would have been sucked under and pulled towards the propellers, it was said later. In the moments immediately afterwards, though, in 4 8

the stomach-churning calm as the engine noise died and the ferry drifted, it seemed quite possible that he would be fished out spluttering, shrinking with embarrassment at the gangling weakness of his limbs, the idiocy of his stunt. Someone threw a life belt. On deck, more passengers emerged from the cabin. They were drawn to one another, wanting to help but frightened of getting in the way as the crew set about a rescue procedure. Ellie did not speak French well enough to understand much of what they were saying, but it was clear that the middleaged couple with a small yappy dog, the man carrying a briefcase, and the elderly woman were united in their furious incomprehension of the young man’s actions. The man with the briefcase was particularly vocal, and his tirade sounded like condemnation. A man in a panama hat hung slightly back, making no comment. ‘Did you see what happened?’ she asked him in English, hoping he would understand. ‘Yes.’ ‘One moment he was fine. It didn’t look as if anything was wrong. The next he was gone.’ ‘It’s terrible.’ ‘Was it an accident, or—’ ‘He climbed over.’ There were shouts from the water, but they were not cries for help. ‘Don’t look,’ said the man. She turned away. Bright sunlit sails slid across the sapphire sea. A small aircraft cut across the sky. Waves churned by a dinghy, very quickly joined by a police launch, slapped against the port side of the ferry. Shouting cut through the buzz of the crew’s electronic communications. Falling cadences of conversation on deck marked the transition from irritation with the delay to understanding. The fear felt by all was primitive: the oldest sea story of all, the soul lost overboard. Within minutes, invisible modern signals brought the emergency services. Ellie stood up and went over to the rail. Not for the first time, she wondered why she had come.

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The Sea Garden by Deborah Lawrenson is published 31 July in paperback by Orion, price £7.99.

s u m m e r r e a di ng 20 1 4

Tinder Press

A summer selection All books published by Tinder Press T H E L E M ON G ROV E by Helen Walsh

T H E G O OD C H I L DR E N by Roopa Farooki

B L AC K L A K E by Johanna Lane

Paperback / 19 June / £7.99

Hardback / 19 June / £16.99

Hardback / 1 May / £16.99

Each summer, Jenn and her husband return to Deià, on Mallorca's dramatic west coast. This year the arrival of Jenn's stepdaughter and boyfriend Nathan threatens to upset their equilibrium. Beautiful and reckless, Nathan stirs something unexpected in Jenn. What follows is a highly-charged liaison that puts lives and relationships in jeopardy.

1940s Lahore. Two brothers and their sisters are brought up, beaten and browbeaten by their manipulative mother, to study, honour and obey. The boys escape to study medicine abroad, abandoning their sisters to their mother and marriages. Their sisters in Pakistan refuse to remain trophy wives, and disgrace the family while they strike out to build their own lives.

The idyllic estate at Dulough, home to the Campbells for generations, is to be taken over as a tourist attraction, forcing the family into a small, damp caretaker's cottage. The upheaval strains the already tenuous threads that bind the family, and when a tragic accident befalls them, long-simmering resentments and unanswered yearnings are forced to the surface.

S E A S ON T O TA S T E by Natalie Young

SM ALL ISL AND 10 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y E DI T ION by Andrea Levy

S T R A N G E G I R L S A N D OR DI N A R Y WOM E N by Morgan McCarthy

Paperback / 17 June / £8.99

Trade Paperback / 3 July / £13.99

Small Island is a delicately wrought and profoundly moving novel of empire, prejudice, war and love, set in 1940s Britain. Celebrate the 10th anniversary of Andrea Levy's iconic, multi-awardwinning, million copy bestselling novel with this new edition.

They say you know instinctively who to trust. But do you? Alice. Vic. Kaya. Three very different lives come crashing together in this dark, lyrical and enthralling story of warped perceptions, female intuition and 'the other woman'.

Paperback / 3 July / £7.99

Meet Lizzie Prain. Ordinary housewife. Likes cooking; avoids the neighbours… No one has seen Lizzie’s husband, Jacob, for a few days. That’s because last Monday, Lizzie caved in the back of his head with a spade. Now she needs to dispose of his body, and her method is not for the faint-hearted.

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Myriad

Catching the imagination Alarm Girl by Hannah Vincent Author Hannah Vincent introduces an extract from her debut novel

was travelling in Africa when I came across a newspaper article about a woman who died on the eve of her young daughter’s birthday. The woman’s parents suspected their son-in-law of his wife’s murder. Their story stayed with me for years; something about the image of a mother preparing for her child’s birthday – wrapping presents and buying party food – caught my imagination and wouldn’t let go. In Alarm Girl, I have given the suspicions about the circumstances of the woman’s death to her child and the story is told through her eyes. In my novel, the husband of the dead woman has relocated to South Africa and 11-year-old Indigo and her older brother, who now live with their grandparents, are visiting him for the first time. The ‘otherness’ of Africa for Indy – the heat she finds uncomfortable, the landscape she doesn’t recognise, the encounters with people she doesn’t know – all of these elements help to create the foreign state that is a child’s parentless world. Finding Indy’s voice was crucial to the writing process. It helps if you like your main character – if you are writing a novel you are going to be spending a long time with them! I enjoyed Indy’s company immensely. She will be okay, I think, in spite of the tragedy that has marked her early life. She’s a feisty little girl. A N E X T R AC T At the beginning the air was so thick I couldn’t breathe it properly. When we got off the plane I had to hold on to the handrail like an old person. I was afraid my rucksack would tip me over. The air stewardess’s shoes clanged on the metal steps and Robin told me to hurry up. We were walking so fast we had to run. Robin’s arms were flapping and the 50

light was so bright and glinty my eyes went weird. Through some doors it was suddenly as noisy as the swimming pool. A big crowd was pressed up against the barrier. There were posters for Nelson Mandela and a man was wearing a T-shirt with his face on. Another man in a suit was holding a piece of cardboard with a funny word that had lots of ‘o’s. A woman had a turban that made her the tallest out of everyone. I saw Dad straight away but the stewardess kept going, whizzing our suitcases along on their noisy wheels with her high heels clicking and clacking. She looked like she would click-clack past all the people waiting, past Dad, and out the other side of the airport, keep on click-clacking until she came to the sea. He was wearing a white T-shirt and a denim shirt over the top. The shirt was open and the T-shirt was so white it made his eyes look extra blue. It had the words Taylored Travel written on it. Luckily Robin couldn’t tell I was crying, because we were both squashed up in his hug while he kissed us and pressed us into him and said Welcome to South Africa. Every time we see him I forget the smell of him, then I remember it again. The stewardess wrote down the number of Dad’s passport. He asked if she wanted his phone number as well and she laughed and tipped her head so far back you could see the edge of her make-up. He said What do you say, babies? I knew he wanted us to say thank you to her for looking after us, but I pretended not to understand. I said bye instead. Robin said Alarm Girl by Hannah Thanks for looking after us and the stewardess called Vincent is published him a gentleman but really he was just a bum-licker. 7 August in paperback It was very nice to meet you, Indy, she said, and I had by Myriad Editions, to say Nice to meet you too. She said to Dad She’s got price £7.99. quite a stare, hasn’t she?

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Myriad

Living with the consequences Living With It by Lizzie Enfield Journalist and author Lizzie Enfield discusses her latest novel

hen the MMR controversy began in 1998 measles epidemics were a distant memory. Yes, people remembered having had the disease as children but it was no longer something to be scared of. Autism, on the other hand, appeared to be on the increase. No wonder, therefore, that in the wake of Andrew Wakefield’s since discredited report, parents were fearful of the triple vaccine. I was amongst them. But, mindful of the damaging effects of diseases it offered protection against, I bit the bullet and had my kids vaccinated. Fourteen years later, when there was a measles outbreak in Wales and in Brighton where I live, I was thankful that I had. What if I’d been too scared to have my kids vaccinated and they’d caught measles when it reemerged? What if they’d passed it on to the baby of a friend and their baby had been damaged or worse? Could I have lived with the consequences of a decision made years previously? It was this thought that gave me the idea for Living With It. In my novel, an unvaccinated teenager catches measles and passes the virus on to the baby of her parents’ best friends. The baby becomes completely deaf as a direct result. When the parents of the deaf child start legal proceedings, friendships, relationships, loyalties and beliefs are tested to the limit. Can both sets of parents and their children learn to live with the effects of decisions taken years ago – decisions which have come back to haunt them? Can they reconcile their pasts with a future which is now uncertain? We’ve all done things we later regret and all have to live with the consequences. In my novel, I wanted to examine how we behave when faced with difficult moral dilemmas and how we react when our decisions, which we thought were the right ones, turn out to be wrong.

A N E X T R AC T Ben, Wednesday afternoon

[…] ‘I didn’t want any of this,’ I say, my voice rising vehemently. ‘I didn’t want Iris to be deaf, obviously. I didn’t want to be put in a position where I’m even considering taking legal action against two of my oldest friends. I feel so powerless. But we are in this position.’ ‘I know.’ ‘I have to do something and I can’t think of anything else to do. Can you?’ Maggie says nothing. We walk home in silence and I wonder if she does have another plan, something she’s not telling me. ‘It will be worse for you, Ben,’ she says, finally as we near our house. ‘They’re your friends and you could lose them. Not just Isobel and Eric: the others will take sides. Are you prepared for that?’ I nod. ‘It’s not just us – ’ I begin to say. I have a rant prepared, but I don’t need to go on. ‘OK.’ Maggie bends down to unbuckle Iris. ‘Tell Hedda to send the letter to start with. Let’s see how they react.’ Isobel, Friday morning

It’s like the aftershock from an earthquake, I imagine. You think it’s stopped, that the worst is over, and then there’s another quake and the ground beneath you shifts again. I know that Eric is looking at me, but I don’t know what he’s thinking. Can he see that I’m freshly shocked and upset? Is he going to ask what’s wrong? If I tell him, will he try to reassure me? Or will he give me the silent, accusing look, the look that says this is my fault entirely and that everyone’s suffering because of it? If I’m honest, I was beginning to get used to it – the fact that Iris is deaf, that I am partly to blame and that this was going to affect us all. For the first few days after the party, I thought about nothing else, but I actually woke up this morning and went through all the usual motions without doing so. Then the post arrived.

Living With It by Lizzie Enfield is published 26 June in paperback by Myriad Editions, price £8.99.

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d ou bl e e x p o s u r e

Robert Goddard

Robert Goddard – a more expansive approach Double Exposure provides the chance to sample an author’s earlier and latest works

mystery, explored in The Corners of the Globe. My previous novel, Fault Line, explored a mystery thriller plot across more than forty years. These two novels and the third that will follow are a contrast to that. They are not a traditional saga-style trilogy. They are fast moving, connected stories covering a few months in 1919. The challenge of this – and the pleasure – is the development of characters and the honing of a plot that will interact in ways that will surprise as well as satisfy the reader. Some of these interactions surprise me as well. No matter how thoroughly I plan a story, the behaviour, the relationships – the choices – of the characters I create always take the story in unexpected directions. They will have their way and I have to let them have it. Resistance, as they say, is useless. This has never been more apparent than in these two novels. People not being who you think they are is not unusual in mystery thrillers. In this case, they are not necessarily what you think they are either. This is actually a reflection of the historical event that planted the idea behind these novels in my mind. The Paris peace conference of 1919 could be described as the bloodiest and longest battle of the First World War if you take account of its consequences. Its decisions were blamed by many for the outbreak of the Second World War and are still being blamed today for conflicts around the globe. The more I learned about it and the scheming and plotting of those involved in it, the more certain I was that a story based on it had to have a fitting largeness of scale. Though the story begins in Paris, it does not stay or end there. The titles of these novels tell you that much. For the rest, you will have to join Max in his quest for the truth about his father to fi nd out just where we’re going – and who will still be standing when we get there. © Graham Jepson

henever I’m asked why I started writing, I generally say – because it’s true – that I couldn’t fi nd enough of the sort of books I wanted to read in the shops. Well, I discovered that a lot of other people agreed with my idea of how the writing of mystery thrillers should be approached. And we’ve gone on together very happily over the years since. I believe they’ve enjoyed reading the books as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. One of the things I was determined to avoid from the outset was the repetitive nature of a serial format – a detective hero, for instance, who would crack the case every time. Writing stand-alone novels has meant I’ve been able to range widely in time and place, shaping stories from real people and events, exploring themes that have seized my imagination. With The Ways of the World and The Corners of the Globe, I’ve done something slightly different. The two novels form part of a trilogy set in the year 1919, during and immediately after the Paris peace conference that shared out the spoils at the end of the First World War. The reason for this more expansive approach is simple: the idea for the story simply couldn’t be accommodated within one book. There are also two natural break-points in the story as I planned it that work perfectly within the trilogy format. The two (eventually three) books have selfcontained story arcs. At the start of The Ways of the World, former RFC pilot James Maxted, known as Max, is summoned to Paris following the apparently accidental death of his father, a member of the British delegation to the peace conference. He soon begins to suspect his father has been murdered and is plunged into a maelstrom of intrigue surrounding attempts to alter the outcome of the conference. Before the end, he discovers who murdered his father and why, but that leads him to another, deeper

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We have copies of The Corners of the Globe and The Ways of the World to give away FREE. See page 35.

d ou bl e e x p o s u r e

Robert Goddard

A N E X T R AC T FR O M

The Corners of the Globe R O B E R T G O D DA R D

ax could only wish he had made the crossing from Scotland in such weather: calm, cool and benign, the sea sparkling, the sky blue, with puffs of cloud herded at the horizon like wellbehaved sheep. He stepped out of the Ayre Hotel into the peace of early morning, lit a cigarette and gazed around him. The few locals already up and about would probably have identified him as a visitor even if they had not seen him leave the hotel. Tall, lean and youthfully handsome, dressed in clothes that were just a little too well-cut to have been bought from an Orcadian tailor, Max looked what he was: a man out of his element. Yet he also looked relaxed and selfassured: a man as unlikely to attract suspicion as he was condescension. He turned towards the harbour and started walking. The staff of the Ayre had warned him that Kirkwall Bay did not normally appear as it did now: an anchorage for dozens of US minesweepers and support vessels, most of them stationary at this hour, but some with smoke drifting up from their funnels. They were there to clear the thousands of mines laid around the Orkneys during the war, a task expected to take them many months. Max knew little of the sea war, sharing the general prejudices of those who had engaged the enemy on the Western Front that the Royal Navy had had a cushy time of it, Jutland notwithstanding. His gale-tossed passage across the Pentland Firth had forced him to reconsider, however. He did not envy anyone who had spent the past four and more years in these waters. Of all the places in the world where he had never expected to fi nd himself, the Orkneys were high on the list. But he was aware that there were currently a good many people there who wished themselves elsewhere, doubtless including the crews of all those American minesweepers he could see strung out across the bay. The same was certain to apply to the crews of the interned German High Seas Fleet, under Royal Naval guard in Scapa Flow. Until glancing at an atlas shortly before his journey north, Max had supposed Kirkwall overlooked the Flow and he would therefore have

The Corners of the Globe

a good view from the city of the captive ships. But Kirkwall was on the northern side of Mainland, the Orkneys’ principal island, albeit at its narrowest part. To the south, enclosed by Hoy, South Ronaldsay and various other smaller islands, lay the vast natural roadstead of Scapa Flow, where seventy-four German warships were corralled at anchor. Max would see them soon enough, of course. He knew that. They were why he had travelled to Orkney. And they were why he was out so early. But early or not, he was not proof against unlooked-for encounters. As he passed the Girnel, the old grainstore facing the west pier, he saw a woman he recognized approaching along the harbour front. It was too late to think of avoiding her. She smiled and raised a hand. He smiled too and waved back. Susan Henty was clearly no local herself, a tall, big-boned young woman with a horsey look about her, dressed in newish tweeds. She had auburn hair and a broad, open smile. Max imagined her as an enthusiastic rider to hounds in the Leicestershire countryside she had already told him she hailed from. She was impossible to dislike, which was half the problem in itself. He could not afford to appear secretive. But neither could he afford to reveal much about himself, least of all the truth. ‘An early riser too, I see, Max,’ she said as they met. ‘I thought I’d take the morning air.’ ‘Me too. I walked down to the cathedral. Rather a fi ne structure, actually.’ ‘Selwyn not up yet, then?’ ‘Probably still in bed, poring over a map. He’s very excited about seeing the Ring of Brodgar. As you are, I trust.’ ‘Well, I…’ ‘Selwyn’s so pleased you agreed to help him.’ Most women looked up at Max. Susan Henty engaged him levelly eye to eye. She lowered her voice confidentially. ‘I’m not sure he believes I’m completely reliable when it comes to surveying.’ ‘I’m not sure I’m completely reliable.’ ‘Perhaps not, but you’re a man, which makes all the difference.’ She smiled. ‘This trip’s doing Selwyn no end of good, Max. I’m more grateful than I can say for your willingness to indulge him.

by Robert Goddard is published 3 July in hardback by Bantam Press, price £18.99.

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d ou bl e e x p o s u r e

Robert Goddard

A N E X T R AC T FR O M

The Ways of the World R O B E R T G O D DA R D

hey could ignore the telephone. That was one of the unwritten clauses of the Armistice. No telephone would have rung unanswered for long at the squadron base in France where their paths had fi rst crossed in the summer of 1915. But they were not in France. And the war was over. So there they stood, side by side, aware of the importunate ringing in the unattended office in the corner of the hangar, but unmoved by it, lulled by the scent of oil and varnish and the fluttering of a pigeon in the rafters and the vernal brightness of the light flooding in around them. It was a silvery late-morning light that gleamed on the fuselages of an array of aircraft that had never strained through dives or loops in combat, or been strafed by enemy fi re, because they had been constructed just as the war was ending and were now as redundant, for all their elegance and cunning of design, as the pair of youthful Royal Flying Corps veterans who were admiring them. Even at a glance the two men would have struck an observer as dissimilar, so dissimilar that probably only the war could account for their ease in each other’s company. The taller and slimmer of them was James Maxted, former lieutenant, known to all but his family as Max. He had a good-looking face that held a promise of rugged handsomeness in middle age, boyishly flopping fair hair, pale-blue eyes and an ironic tilt to his mouth that hinted at cynicism. His companion, a shorter, bulkier figure, was Sam Twentyman, former sergeant. Max had served in the RFC as a pilot and known Sam as the most reliable and resourceful of the engineers who kept his plane in the air. Sam was five years older than Max, but looked younger, despite some greying of his curly brown hair, thanks to his round, rosy-cheeked face and general air of terrier-like eagerness. ‘You’re sure Bristols are the ones to go for?’ Max asked, arching a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Some of the lads who flew them said they preferred the Sopwiths.’ ‘They did at fi rst, sir,’ Sam replied. He still addressed Max as an NCO would an officer and showed no sign of breaking the habit. ‘But after all the modifications we made the Bristol was the best twoseater by a long chalk. You were out of circulation by then, of course.’ 54

The Ways of the World by Robert Goddard is

By ‘out of circulation’ Sam meant held for the published in paperback duration in a prisoner of war camp in Silesia. Max by Corgi, price £7.99. smiled at the euphemism and stepped close enough to the nearest plane to run an appreciative hand over the burnished wood of its propeller vanes. ‘Well, you’re the boss, Sam.’ Now it was Sam’s turn to smile. They were spending Max’s money, not his. He had no illusions about who would be calling the tune in their future enterprise. ‘Will the budget stretch to a couple of SE5s, then? Beautiful machines, they The date is 1919 when half the world’s are. Ten quid the pair. A real nations faced the aftermath of the bargain.’ Great War. The location is Paris where ‘Is that what Miller said?’ diplomats, politicians and statesmen have Max nodded towards a gathered for a post-war peace conference. scurrying, overalled figure The mystery is the sudden death of Sir who had just entered the Henry Maxted, one of the expert advisers hangar by a side-door and for the British delegation; he fell from was heading towards the the roof of a building in Montparnasse. stillringing telephone in the Was this an accident, suicide or murder? office. He wore an irritated frown on his thin, oil-smudged The elder son, Ashley, wants a speedy resolution for this potentially scandalous face. ‘The air-worthiness situation but younger son, Max, wants to certificates will treble that discover the truth. price, remember.’ From the start I found Max a very ‘You’re right. They will. But…’ ‘But?’ Max turned and gazed engaging character. He is an ex-Royal Flying Corps ace: brave and cool-headed at Sam expectantly. as well as resilient and determined, ‘Our customers will want to having survived several months in a fly solo eventually.’ ‘If I teach them well enough?’ prisoner-of-war camp after he was shot down. I was with him all the way as he Sam grinned. ‘You’re a became embroiled in a world of duplicity, natural, sir. You gave quite a espionage and manipulation. few of the Hun a flying lesson, At every turn he is thwarted, blocked as I remember.’ or deflected in his dangerous quest The telephone had stopped for justice; as one riddle is solved, yet ringing. Miller had fi nally another is posed. As the plot unravelled, answered it. In the welcome I was surprised, challenged and utterly silence Max recalled the absorbed. I gasped when I read the fi nal intoxicating pleasure of his words: ‘to be continued’. I hope the second fi rst fl ight, a joy-ride from this part of the trilogy is published soon: I am very aerodrome eight years defi nitely hooked. before, in the summer of 1911. Jean Marshall Was it only eight years? It Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ seemed longer, so very much Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ longer, in so very many ways.

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a n a p p r ec i a t ion

Barbara Pym

So lovely to read Miss Pym… Libby Tempest of The Barbara Pym Society recalls her ﬁrst introduction to the author

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r ec om m e n de d

Go Swift and Far by Douglas Westcott

Enthusiasm, passion and sheer drive Marketing maestro Alastair Giles ﬁnds his cynicism is no match for the dynamism of debut novelist Douglas Westcott

Go Swift and Far by Douglas Westcott is one of this issue’s featured books and you can sample it on the facing page.

We have copies to give away FREE – see page 35. 56

I’ve advised him on a few things over the last few months: how you might go about titling, packaging and publishing a book. Some of that advice he’s even taken on board…but in all my years of publishing I have never seen any author work as consistently hard as Gordon has to make it work. Perhaps, you remember a media story last year, when JK Rowling wrote a fi rst crime novel for adults. She did so incognito. She was eventually ‘outed’ and the book went on to sell millions around the world, but initially, even with the might of a major publishing house behind her, the book had only sold just over 1,000 copies as a modestly well-reviewed novel from a new novelist. That was sales across the whole of the world and is a measure of how difficult it is to launch a new author today. When we were planning the Bath-focused launch of the hardback of Go Swift and Far, I stupidly laid a small tenner wager with Gordon that he’d sell around 850 copies. In addition to getting the book edited, printed, marketed, publicised and packaged properly, Gordon turned silver-tongued salesman and persuaded over 60 retailers in Bath to display the book and, even hired his own chalet in the Bath Christmas Market for two weeks in fancy dress pressing Welsh day-trippers to buy copies as mementos. In less than three months, and in Bath alone, Gordon has sold over 2,500 copies and I’m £10 lighter. Now, on to the paperback. The new edition has been extended to include lots of reviews and a whole new section for reading-group use at the back. There’s also a competition to win £250 worth of National Book Tokens, open to any group that orders five or more copies of the book directly from Valley Spring Press, PO Box 2765, Bath BA2 7XS or by email: goswiftandfar@outlook.com Simply, complete and submit the entry form on www.douglaswestcott.com giving your best written answers to the nine reading-group questions at the back of the book.

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Douglas Westcott

ouglas Westcott is a pseudonym for successful Bath businessman Gordon Bloor, who has now written and self-published a bestseller. I fi rst met Gordon about twelve months ago in a cafe in Bradford on Avon. He’d been tipped off that I was local to Bath, where he has lived for 30 years and that I had been in the book business. Gordon engineered the meeting to pick my brains and he proudly announced that he’d written a book, ten years in the making. At that point I rolled my eyes as a by-product of working in publishing is that everyone you meet has written a novel. Most, of course, are unpublishable and generally the authors of these products of often limited imagination have no idea just how much work is involved. Once written, even if good, that’s not the job done…The labour required, not just in getting it published, but, crucially, also, trying to get people to read it and turn it into a bestseller is IMMENSE. I needn’t have worried. Gordon doesn’t seem afraid of a bit of hard work….Nor, does he take ‘No’ for an answer….And neither is he dissuaded by jaded or cynical people like me who think they’ve seen it all before. He had embarked on a series of writing classes with Arvon and has crafted a fantastic saga loosely based on his own life. In short, amongst the world of irresistible forces, he’s certainly an irresistible force to be reckoned with… I was immediately drawn in by his wellresearched opening tale of Bath in April 1942 and the fascinating, hardly-known story of the German bombing as a reprisal for the RAF attack on Lübeck. Gordon was born to Polish immigrants in England, and amongst the citizens of Bath devastated by the blitz. Like the central character of the novel, Yann, he too was orphaned at 17. I was also blown away by his enthusiasm, his passion for his subject and his sheer drive to do something outside his experience as professionally as possible.

r ec om m e n de d

Go Swift and Far by Douglas Westcott

A N E X T R AC T F R O M

Go Swift and Far Go Swift and Far PB AW 2_Layout 1 04/03/2014 11:04 Page 1

SPINE 30.6mm

‘Author’s first book is a big seller…’

reco

Go Swift & Far is a sweeping coming of age saga that exposes the deceit and hypocrisy lurking behind the genteel facades of the famous City of Bath

Douglas Westcott

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THE BATH CHRONICLE

COMPOSITE DO NOT PRINT CMYK. Emboss, Super Matt Laminate, Foil.

Born in the wartime German raids on Bath in the Spring of 1942, an orphan boy, alone and destitute, is determined to survive.

The City is immersed in a cycle of greed, abuse of privilege, corruption and demolition as it struggles out of post-war gloom and austerity. Demolish and rebuild or preserve and protect at all costs?

Go Swift and Far is a sweeping coming-of-age saga that exposes the deceit and hypocrisy lurking behind the genteel facades of the famous City of Bath. The boy, now a man, is bent on success and wealth, whatever the personal sacrifice and cost to England’s Finest Georgian City.

www.douglaswestcott.com

Born during the wartime German raids on Bath in the Spring of 1942, an orphan boy, alone and destitute, is determined to survive. £7.99

VALLEY SPRING

PRESS

The City is immersed in a cycle of greed, abuse of privilege, corruption and demolition as it struggles out of post-war gloom and austerity. Demolish and rebuild or preserve and protect at all costs? The boy, now a man, is bent on success and wealth, whatever the personal sacriﬁce and cost to England’s ﬁnest Georgian city.

S ‘

mashing fi lm,’ Fred said as he unhooked his white helmet and greatcoat from the stand in the hallway of the ground floor flat. Although exempt from conscription because of his reserved occupation as an engineer, Fred Miller still had to spend his nights as an Air Raid Warden. ‘It was OK, I suppose,’ Doreen replied. She put his usual thermos of Bovril and a sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper on the side table before folding her arms across her ample bosom as she watched him get ready to leave. Stagecoach, like all Westerns with the likes of John Wayne, offered little attraction for her, but the trailer for Mrs Miniver with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, was much more her cup of tea. Due at the air-raid shelter at 11 pm, Fred put the food and hot drink into his canvas bag and bent to kiss Doreen goodnight. ‘Sleep tight, love.’ After sixteen years of marriage, he still enjoyed the touch of her puckered lips and knew he was a lucky man. As Fred stepped into the communal hallway of the house, his downstairs neighbour, Ruth Morris, arrived from the opposite direction, closing the street door behind her. Heavily pregnant, she stood with her legs apart and splayed outwards, but despite this duck-like pose she was still a beauty with dark brown eyes, a velvet olive complexion and thick black hair falling to her shoulders. ‘Good evening, Mr Miller.’ The Polish accent only added to her attractiveness as did the hesitant smile

that showed small even teeth. She moved towards the stairway down to her basement flat and Fred had to turn sideways to let her pass. ‘How are things, Mrs Morris?’ He manoeuvred awkwardly around her. ‘Not long now, I imagine.’ ‘Maybe one week, if the baby is on time.’ She patted the floral print of her dress that protruded through the opening of her coat. ‘All four of ours were, so chin up, not much longer,’ he reassured. ‘And don’t forget that Mrs Miller is just upstairs if you need her.’ Fred shut the front door behind him and, stepping onto the pavement, adjusted his helmet strap. She needs a man to protect her, he thought as he strolled along the blacked-out New King Street towards Kingsmead Square. She rarely mentioned the husband, and Fred wondered if he’d been posted abroad. Even when around he was a sullen type drinking alone in the Griffi n, and not much support for his pretty wife; not a real man, not like John Wayne. Fred’s gait almost grew into a swagger as his mind went back to Stagecoach. Colonel John Bradshaw checked his watch as he signed in at Apsley House; it was a few minutes before 11 pm. Best yet. The tour of the wardens’ posts and back to Newbridge had taken only ninety-three minutes. He looked in the mirror. Not bad for fi fty, he thought and instinctively flexed his stomach. He knew there wasn’t an ounce of fat on his wiry six-foot frame. Fingering the perfect knot in his regimental

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r ec om m e n de d

Go Swift and Far by Douglas Westcott

tie, he turned smartly, stiffened his back and strode into his office. Still feeling like a professional soldier, he wished he had never retired from the regiment back in 1936. But the lure of the inheritance including the Georgian house at the top of Bathwick Hill had proved irresistible. A Bradshaw had lived there since the Battle of Waterloo, but he still wondered if it wouldn’t prove to be his own downfall. He picked up that morning’s edition of the Bath Weekly Chronicle and Herald but, as usual, there was no real news. It was a city of ‘old crocks’ with many who had fled the London Blitz occupying the best hotel rooms, because Bath was of no strategic importance, only a place for rest and recreation. Apart from an influx of evacuees back at the very beginning, part of the programme that removed three and a half million children from vulnerable cities, the war had barely touched Bath. The fi rst bomb to land near the city was in late 1940 – and it killed a rook. A month later, another two bombs from a straying German plane hit the football ground and killed a pony. Bathonians felt immune. They were unaffected by modern warfare, especially after the article in the Chronicle suggesting that it was protected from enemy bombing, because the valleys around it were too narrow for the German planes to navigate. The red telephone with a direct line from the Regional Commissioner rang and roused Bradshaw from his musings. That’s strange, he thought as he picked the receiver up, there hadn’t been a raid on Bristol in months. It was 10.58 pm. ‘John, Red Raider Imminent Warning for Bath. No doubt it’s Bristol, but better sound your sirens to be on the safe side.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ He pushed down the switch on the console. Instantly a wail arose. Then another starting fractionally later, and another and another, each one fainter than the last. It was as if echoes answered the call from every part of the city. Action at last, he thought, but he didn’t expect anything to come of it. Still, he tingled with the pleasure of having power. To instigate, to control, to command, even if it was only the push of a switch with just one fi nger for a fraction of a moment. The black switchboard telephone rang. ‘Marlborough Lane ARP on the line, sir,’ the operator said. ‘Put them through.’ There was a roaring sound with distant shouting and for a moment Bradshaw wasn’t sure if the commotion he could hear was around Apsley House or if it was from the receiver. Whichever it was, he knew that the action he had sought for the last three years was upon him. ‘Hello? Hello?’ There was no answer, just a mangle of deafening noise and crackling before the line went dead. It was 11.03 pm and it took a few seconds for 58

What we think…

Bradshaw to realise that he had lost his entire means Mr Westcott has made Bath the backdrop to of communication. He was a cracking story of one man’s attempt to drag unaware of the high himself up the ladder from humble beginnings. explosive bomb that had Born in the wreckage of one of the few landed in the Lower Bristol German bombs to have landed on the city, Yann Road and detonated causing Morris starts life disadvantaged when his father a twenty-foot deep crater. fails to return from active service. His mother Amongst the shattered Ruth is lucky enough to make acquaintance and twisted gas and water with Isaac and Naomi Abrahams, he being the sewerage pipes lay the severed doctor involved in the rescue and birth. Fortune eleven communication cables smiles on Yann and he wins a scholarship to the linking Apsley House to every UK’s premier Jewish public school, although rescue service centre in Bath. this means he has to leave his mother at the In less than ten seconds, tender age of five. another six bombs containing Meantime, the great and the good of ten thousand pounds of high Bath plan for the post-war redevelopment explosive fell in the three of Bath. This bit of skulduggery – the hundred yards between flattening of much of Bath’s (lesser) Kingsmead Square and New Georgian heritage for redevelopment – King Street. The fi rst blew off falters as the privileged classes lose their the front of the oldest building grip on British society. Peacetime brings a in Bath, Abbey Church House. new climate and Clement Atlee’s government Soon after, the roof and floors is driving through the National Health Service of the nearby St Lloyd Church and other nationalisations. As Yann reaches caved in, exhuming fourteen maturity he becomes a player in the intrigue long-buried corpses. although remaining untainted by any whiff The next bombs straddled of wrongdoing. Kingsmead Street, exploding Events move apace and the four hundred twenty yards apart; the local plus pages fly by. The style is engaging and primary school folded like a words aren’t wasted. Those you might consider pack of cards, and the seven key characters are rapidly dispatched when houses on either side of the their purpose has been served; Yann’s sexual road instantly imploded, initiations are similarly speedy and varied. with the Holy Trinity Church In an interview at the end of the book, collapsing into its crypt. One the author reveals that much of the story is bomb ploughed into the centre autobiographical and that 40 real people of Kingsmead Square, twenty have ‘walk-on parts’. I smiled when reading yards from the deep warden that Mr B’s Reading Emporium and Toppings shelter, where Fred Miller was – two of Bath’s independent bookshops re-enacting John Wayne in – get a mention decades before they were Stagecoach for the benefit of established. Smart move by an author who his fellow Wardens. The roof is obviously a keen self-promoter having sold collapsed, burying everyone. many thousands of copies locally. The last bomb dropped Douglas Westcott set out to write a pagedirectly in front of 37 New turner and I for one believe he succeeded. King Street; it crashed into the Guy Pringle vaults under the pavement Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ and exploded. The detonation Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ wave from the blast expanded at a speed of over 20,000 feet per second, pulverising the bottom of the front wall. Unsupported, it tumbled into the crater in the street, setting fire to the severed gas main. The wave climbed vertically up the middle wall, slicing through each of the four floors as it went. In less than a second the blast overpressure in the house reached four tons per square inch, and the temperature had risen to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Roof, walls and severed floors crashed down. The 200-year-old Georgian house had been reduced to sixty tons of rubble in less than three seconds.

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Go Swift and Far by Douglas Westcott

Mrs Miller would never see Mrs Miniver, and her husband, trapped under a ton of Bath stone, would never see her or their four children again. Ruth Morris was not instantly killed by the bomb. Her electric meter had clicked off a minute or so before it struck, and she was in the vault at the back of her basement flat, away from the destruction at the front, feeding it a shilling. The wave of tightness, as the muscles around her swollen belly contracted, was unlike anything she had felt before.

‘

ere’s the score sheet, Dr Abrahams.’ David Medlock, the junior houseman, passed him the admissions book. ‘When stumps were drawn the Germans were 248 without loss, the follow-on was slightly better at 106 for 1.’ Even now, some forty years after his arrival from Poland, Isaac Abrahams never ceased to be surprised by the manner and attitude of the English middle class. He wondered if it was worth a paper for The Lancet; ‘Cricket – The public schoolboy’s ability to cope with death and trauma.’ Isaac opened the heavy leather book with the list of every patient admitted to St Peter’s hospital over the previous twenty-four hours. The afternoon and early evening had been unusually quiet for a Saturday – just a chap with a fractured wrist from a football match, and a couple of drunks who had collided with something in the blackout. The first entry following the bombing raid was timed at 12.31 am on Sunday morning: Samuel Mendelssohn, a fifty-year-old hit in the face by flying glass. Despite a heavy dose of morphine, the man had screamed as they removed the last layer of field dressing, glued to the skin with blood. His face had become a swollen sponge, red and pitted with glass shards. Isaac looked across at the prognosis column: ‘One hundred and seven glass fragments removed, sent to opthalmics at 2.06 am’; and in a different hand and ink: ‘Irreparable damage to both corneas. Sedated. Condition stable.’ After that, casualties had poured in from dressing stations. The pattern was much the same as he had read about in the London Blitz. First had come the glass wounds, then the burns, followed by the shrapnel. Finally, there were the crush victims with serious multiple fractures. The whole scenario repeated itself twice more as the bombers returned. Some cases remained clear in his mind. There was the unconscious woman with the bandaged head where the skin and hair had simply come away with the dressing. Scalped by the blast, she had died within the hour. Then there were those from the shelter outside the Scala Cinema in Oldfield Park. Most had died when they were blasted into the two-foot gap between the outside wall of the shelter and its inner row of sandbags. Unable to breathe, their chests and lungs crushed, they suffocated. Against the twenty-four wickets, as the houseman called them, the movement officer had printed in

capitals in red ink ‘DEAD – MORTUARY’ and the time the bodies had arrived. Rapid footsteps interrupted his reading and he looked up from the ledger to see the dispatch rider from Apsley House standing in front of him. ‘Colonel Bradshaw has asked that I wait, sir,’ the Civil Defence motorcyclist handed over a black pouch. Isaac opened it and, pinned to a sheaf of fl imsy pink sheets of paper, he found a hand written note.

Self-published books Don’t talk to me about self-published books. I can spot a self-published book at 40 paces. The Jiﬀy bag is probably recycled and Sellotaped to within an inch of its life. The writing on the label – stuck over the previous addressee – is copperplate. Inside are clippings of local coverage that the author has managed to garner in local bookshops and schools. One can’t help the feeling that they said nice things to make him – and it’s usually a him – go away. And now that it’s easier than ever to selfpublish, anyone with a reasonable budget and the dedication to type up their memoirs/ poetry/entertaining story for children (delete as appropriate) can do so. But oh, my heart churns as I wonder how much time, money and eﬀort have been lavished on this?

Apsley House Sunday 26th April – 17.30 hours

Covers are cartoons, pictures by friends – often slightly out of focus – or line drawings amateurishly trying to illustrate the author’s

Isaac, I have divided the bundles between those that include fatalities and serious injury and those that are less urgent. The Ministry is pressing for information on estimated casualties. Just two figures needed from you for the time being: Serious (unlikely to survive), and Others. Do you have any immediate requirements? Whitehall has promised assistance. John

vision. How many of these were put on a shelf in an actual bookshop and viewed from the other side of the space to genuinely judge how visible it is against the competition? Is the title at the top of the cover or lost at the foot? Is the spine legible if not shelved face out? There is a reason for the existence of publishers – quality control. And all that’s before you start to read. So top marks to Douglas Westcott – Go Swift and Far looks, feels and smells like a ‘proper book’. He has undoubtedly thrown money at this project – taking professional advice along the way – and it has paid oﬀ. Having made a success of Go Swift and Far within the boundaries of Bath, the next step of

Isaac went back to the admissions ledger. He rummaged in his pocket for paper, found only a small yellow prescription pad and wrote: Sunday 26th April – 18.00 hours

his master plan is to reach a national readership. And having read and thoroughly enjoyed this book, I am happy to help him on his way. This is a fun book to read and we all need those between our reading of Dostoevsky and Proust. So, enjoy and look out for volumes 2 and 3 in a bookshop near you in the not too distant future. Guy Pringle

Go Swift and Far PB AW 2_Layout 1 04/03/2014 11:04 Page 1

SPINE 30.6mm

COMPOSITE DO NOT PRINT CMYK. Emboss, Super Matt Laminate, Foil.

John, Serious 49 Go Swift & Far is a sweeping coming of age saga that exposes the deceit and Others 281 hypocrisy lurking behind the genteel facades of the famous City of Bath We have an acute bed shortage and cannot admit more patients. Transport and alternative accommodation is urgently needed for 100 noncritical injuries in case of a repeat attack. Isaac ‘Author’s first book is a big seller…’ THE BATH CHRONICLE

Born in the wartime German raids on Bath in the Spring of 1942, an orphan boy, alone and destitute, is determined to survive.

After the messenger had left, Isaac started to look through the fi rst bundle of ‘urgent’ pink fl imsies – copies of records that were sent to the Civil Defence by the rescue services digging out victims from collapsed or burnt out houses and shelters. They described the human misery that had resulted from the previous night’s bombing. www.douglaswestcott.com

£7.99

VALLEY SPRING

PRESS

Go Swift and Far by Douglas Westcott is published in paperback by Valley Spring Press, price £7.99.

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p oe t r y rou n d - u p

Poetry round-up Directory reviewer Jade Craddock takes a look at some current poetry books P OE M S T H AT M A K E G ROW N M E N C R Y – E DI T E D B Y A N T HON Y A N D B E N HOL DE N (Simon and Schuster)

In this wonderful anthology, father and son team, Anthony and Ben Holden ask one hundred eminent men to pick one poem that moves them. Despite its gimmicky title, this is a really thoughtprovoking and special book as Hollywood actors, bestselling authors and even religious figures choose the poems that affect them, often with poignant explanation and moving description that really brings the emotion of the poems to the fore as you read. The range of contributors leads to a wonderful range of verse. And the overall result is a wonderfully powerful and moving experience. Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .HHHHH Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HHHHH S OM E L E T T E R S N E V E R S E N T – NEIL CURRY (Enitharmon)

Neil Curry’s concept for this latest collection, epistolary poems, a classical form that doesn’t have much exposure today, was hugely appealing. And I’m so glad I satisfied my curiosity, for this book is a real treat. Each poem takes the form of a letter addressed to a different personage, from the famous to the personal, including friends, lovers, naturalists, monks, physicians, sailors, musicians, artists and scholars. But they all share a sparkling wit and contemporary realism that belies a more serious and philosophical side. Curry really masters and sells the epistolary form, but it is in the way he selects his recipients and uses their lives and histories seemingly trivially to actually open up discussion on non-trivial matters that he gets the most out of the form and triumphs. For readers and reading groups alike this collection is fun, interesting and engaging, a real surprise find. Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .HHHHH Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HHHH 6 0

L E T T E R C OM P O S E D DU R I N G A LU L L I N T H E F IG H T I N G – K E V I N P OW E R S (Sceptre)

Iraq war veteran, Kevin Powers rose to prominence with his highly-acclaimed novel The Yellow Birds and now he has turned his talent to poetry in this his debut collection. War obviously looms large, but what is striking about this collection is not those poems that are based on the battlefield but those that are not. The way the poet’s experiences of war infiltrate all aspects of life, normality and meaning is the most poignant reminder that war transcends place and time. Even though geographically he is not on the battlefield, psychologically he is right there. The poems bring us closer to understanding the particular, peculiar predicament faced by servicemen and women. This is a valuable collection giving much-needed focus to the human costs of modern warfare. Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HHHH Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HHHH B E YON D – S A R A H WA R DL E (Bloodaxe Books)

‘Let in the light! No more melancholy, Sing of life!’ If there were ever any words to sum up Sarah Wardle’s fourth collection Beyond, it is these from the aptly titled poem ‘Hope’. For the poems in this collection are all about moving forward, counting one’s blessings and ultimately finding peace and hope. Many of the poems share in an aesthetic of despair, the literal darkness of night or the sterility of winter, as well as a portrait of an almost Dickensian modern-day city full of deprivation, tragedy and degeneration. Yet through all of this, the poet finds light, understanding and optimism as she makes sense of life, her place in the world and the things that matter. Much more than a poetry collection, this book is an awakening. Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .HHHHH Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HHHH

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P I T C H – T ODD B O S S (WW Norton)

In its title, Pitch, is captured the very essence of Todd Boss’s collection – a poetry whose rhythms and music sing off the page. Boss really has a wonderful gift for creating and manipulating sound, for exploring the different rhythms of language and for reminding readers of the joy and art in language. And combined with this is an appreciation of the everyday and a coherent imagery, which has the right amount of ambiguity to be poetic but with the right amount of lucidity to be understandable, that makes Boss’s poems accessible and enjoyable. Although the poems are largely satisfying, for me however, there are none that really take your breath away. Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HHH Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HHH L OV E P OE M S – DA N T E A L IG H I E R I (Alma Classics)

Best known for his Divine Comedy, Dante is not a poet we necessarily associate with love poetry. But this collection shares over one hundred examples of il Sommo Poeta’s love poetry. Very much in the classical tradition, these sonnets and ballads are replete with heartbreak, anguish and unrequited love and share in the grand lineage of the lovelorn male poet-lover. Although the imagery and emotion establish this classical context, unfortunately I didn’t feel that the language always lived up to the billing and didn’t really have the poetic power commensurate with this tradition. Nevertheless there are some wonderful poems and some great meditations on love. Crucially, the collection also gives us a more complete portrait of this masterful poet, reinforcing his immense quality. Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HHH Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HH

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The Directory T H I S ON E I S M I N E by Maria Semple

“With a wonderfully colourful cast of characters, this is a deliciously acerbic, yet essentially compassionate, exploration of a modern-day search for more – for fulfi lment, for happiness.”

In the following pages you will ﬁnd a selection of titles recently, or about to be, published. Each book review has been written by a reader like yourself who is also a member of a reading group. Because the criteria for a reading group choice often diﬀer from those of a personal read we have asked our reviewers to provide a separate star rating for each. N AG A S A K I by Éric Faye

“Nagasaki will stay with me for a long time. The writing is simply beautiful, presenting not only vivid visual images of the city but also evoking the sweltering heat and the ceaseless noise: the racket of cicadas, the trilling of trams and the wail of sirens. This little book is brilliant – a real gem.”

I F I S HO U L D DI E by Matthew Frank

T H E WOR D E XC H A N G E by Alena Graedon

“I really enjoyed this book; combined with the discussion of language, there is also a disappearance to solve, clues to follow and it was action packed – something for everyone to like.”

THE BEES by Laline Paull

“The Bees is an amazing achievement. The style is simple but almost poetic in its descriptions of the scents which control the entire community, and the beauty of the hive itself.”

A P O C A LY P S E N E X T T U E S DAY by David Safier

“David Safier is a laugh-outloud comic writer with an international reputation. He examines our obsession with celebrity and self-indulgence and we don’t come off well.”

“This is a very powerful novel. The writing is so good that it is difficult to believe that this is a debut novel. I loved all the characters in this book, including Stark who is so deep and dark, keeping secrets not only from his colleagues but also the reader.”

T H E V I S I T OR S by Rebecca Mascull

“I felt this was a beautifully written debut novel, which showed that Mascull had researched her subject thoroughly. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Susan Hill’s ghost stories, or Diane Setterfield’s Thirteenth Tale.”

A F T E R I ’M G ON E by Laura Lippman

“The story is set both in the past and present with the two strands flowing together to fi ll in all the details. I really couldn’t put it down, especially towards the end. All the characters are interesting; they all have flaws and secrets.”

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t h e di r ec t or y

Hardback Paperback Trade Paperback Audio CD Audio Download E-book Flipbook Abridged

Curious Arts Festival

Curious Arts Festival is set to be a glittering celebration of talent from the worlds of literature, music, film and the visual arts with an ambitious programme of events, talks, debates, and live gigs showcasing some of the best contemporary artists from the UK and beyond. For three days in July (18–20) the breathtaking grounds of Pylewell Park in the New Forest will provide the stunning backdrop to lose yourself in an enchanting and immersive world. With a fantastic lineup already confirmed, expect to enjoy an unforgettable weekend of sensory stimulation, delicious and unusual food and drink sourced from local suppliers and lots of other curious happenings. Website: curiousartsfestival.com Twitter: @curiousartsfest Facebook: /curiousartsfest

Available now C A N A N Y B ODY HELP ME? by Sinéad Crowley

Beware when going to an online chat room; you never know who is there. A group of young Irish mothers meet via the internet to get support and advice from each other while coping with children, husbands, tiredness and all the other worries that go with having a new baby. The body of a young mother is found and then another. Is someone from netmammy responsible? Sergeant Claire Boyle, herself pregnant, is in charge of the case. A modern version of Can Any Mother Help Me? but with grislier consequences. I feel that this book has a limited readership as it is so overwhelmingly about babies and coping with them that few men or even women who aren’t keen on children would read it. Being a Dubliner I enjoyed the Irishness but as I don’t tweet, text or belong to a chat room some of the abbreviations left me flummoxed. Carole Fitzgeorge Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Quercus N AG A S A K I by Éric Faye

This extraordinary novel is based on a true story which appeared in several Japanese newspapers, in May 2008. Éric Faye is a journalist and the prize-winning author of more than twenty books. Nagasaki was winner of the Académie Française Grand Prix in 2010. Shimura Kobo, a meteorologist, lives alone in a modest house in the suburbs of Nagasaki. One day he comes home from work a little earlier than usual and feels almost as if he is trespassing. He has a problem; while he is out someone is entering his kitchen, opening the fridge and taking food. This is no figment of his imagination for he has proof. My curiosity was instantly roused. The endearing Mr Kobo was the detective and I was his side-kick. What is going on here? With the aid of a web-cam the mystery is soon solved

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and the culprit is punished. However, this is not the end of the story. Shimura Kobo senses that he is not quite the same man as before and he knows he will not escape unscathed. He even wonders whether the stowaway’s absence has made his life more incomplete than ever. His observations on modern society are perceptive and poignant, as well as thought provoking. Nagasaki will stay with me for a long time. The writing is simply beautiful, presenting not only vivid visual images of the city but also evoking the sweltering heat and the ceaseless noise: the racket of cicadas, the trilling of trams and the wail of sirens. This little book (about 100 pages) is brilliant – a real gem. Jean Marshall Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gallic I F I S HO U L D DI E by Matthew Frank

Vicious attacks on vulnerable homeless people in South London have escalated with the death of one victim, sparking alarm in the Met. What had begun as a series of ‘happy slapping’ attacks has now become a murder hunt. When another body is discovered it becomes clear that this is not just a case of a gang of youths looking for kicks, but something much more sinister. Thrown into the investigation at the deep end is trainee Police Constable Joseph Stark. Carrying the physical and mental scars of army service in Iran and Afghanistan, Stark is anxious to make a good detective, but with constant nightmares that keep him awake at night and the mind-numbing pain of his war injuries, he is fi nding it difficult to stay the pace. This is a very powerful novel. The writing is so good that it is difficult to believe that this is a debut novel. I loved all the characters in this book, including Stark who is so deep and dark, keeping secrets not only from his colleagues but also the reader, that at times he is not easy to love! This wasn’t a quick read for me and at times I felt while reading this book as if I was trying to make my way with difficulty through a very muddy field, but as well as dark times there are

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also light moments between Stark and his colleagues which add humour at just the right moment to lift the mood. I was delighted to discover that this is the fi rst book in a new crime series featuring Joseph Stark. Fantastic! Stark is such an intriguing character that I want to learn more about him, and more about the delightful and witty Detective Sergeant Fran Millhaven, as well as the insightful head of the department DCI Groombridge. If you like crime fiction I’m sure you will really enjoy this, and if you are a reading group looking to try a crime fiction novel, you will fi nd plenty in this book to spark lively discussion! Teresa O’Halloran Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Penguin T H E WOR D E XC H A N G E by Alena Graedon

What a powerful and truly frightening book. Set in the future this book imagines a world where we have become so reliant on the internet, technology and futuristic smart phones that we become susceptible to ‘word flu’ and we forget the meanings of everyday words. It makes you reconsider the way you communicate and think about our future. This book is a languagelover’s dream: it explores the meaning of words and language and dictionaries and the link with everyday life. At times it does become a little technical and at times I found myself skipping paragraphs because I neither understood the meaning nor could follow the language. There are also chapters narrated by a victim of word flu, suffering aphasia, and these are difficult to follow at times. However it is refreshing to read a book where you have to think about the words being used and the challenge was one that I relished. I really enjoyed this book; combined with the discussion of language, there is also a disappearance to solve, clues to follow and it was action packed – something for everyone to like. Victoria Brown Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Orion

GIRLCHILD by Tupelo Hassman

This tells the story of Rory Dawn Hendrix, who describes herself early on in the novel as a ‘… feebleminded daughter of a feebleminded daughter, herself the product of feebleminded stock. Welcome to the Calle.’ The Calle is the trailer park she lives at with her mother, and from the beginning of the novel you’re aware that this is going to be a story about America’s underclass. The narrative structure of the novel tells Rory’s story and that of her family through short chapters, historical social services reports, mock test questions and even redacted chapters – the latter as the reader learns about the abuse Rory suffers. There are some unpleasant characters in Rory’s life and some unpleasant scenes in the book, but woven through the novel is the thread of hope; that Rory can escape from the cyclical abusive lives of the Hendrix women. I’ve wanted to read this book for a while and am glad that I did. It’s not the most uplifting of reads (but then I didn’t expect it to be), and a few of the ‘test paper’ chapters didn’t really work for me. I felt that at times the author was trying too hard to make the novel’s structure different, when it didn’t always need to be. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting read of life (albeit fictional) for those with little chance of attaining the American Dream, and I think it portrays a realistic picture of this. There is plenty of scope for discussion on a number of topics, from parenting to the cycle of abuse and even American legal judgements. Judith Griffith Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Quercus A G U I DE F OR T H E PERPLEXED by Dara Horn

I chose this book to review in large part because of its wonderful title. But within the covers the book is wonderful from start to fi nish. Dara Horn is an author I haven’t read before, but now I shall certainly catch up with her other books. This is a complex, layered story which

visits various times and places, and along the way poses questions about memory, family, and truth. In the present is Josie Ashkenazi, a computer whiz (actually a whiz at everything) who has made her fortune by creating a computer programme which allows users to archive their whole lives. Everything in Josie’s life is perfect – career, husband, daughter – except for her sister’s extreme jealousy. The relationship between Josie and her sister is examined, tested and reformed when Josie takes a business trip to Egypt. Alongside the main events which unfold around the two sisters, there are two other stories which examine related themes. There is Solomon Schecter, a nineteenthcentury Cambridge don whose life also takes a turn when he visits Cairo in search of an old archive hidden somewhere in the city. Then there is the twelfth-century physician and philosopher Maimonides, who is confronted with challenges of his own. These three stories are skilfully interwoven and despite their very different characters and settings, work together to illuminate the central themes of the book. The novel confronts some weighty issues, but the author has such a deft touch that the reader never gets bogged down. Quite the contrary – the book is an exciting pageturner and I flew through it in no time. Willow Thomas Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WW Norton T H E S E PA R AT ION by Dinah Jefferies

Returning from a visit to a sick friend with polio, Lydia arrives home to an empty house. There is no sign of her husband, her daughters or the servants. The telephone line is dead. Lydia embarks on a dangerous journey across civil war-torn Malaya to fi nd her family. In England, Emma, Lydia’s eldest daughter, is struggling to cope but determined to keep the memory of her beloved mother alive and refusing to believe Lydia would ever have abandoned them. She embarks on a quest for answers. This is a powerful story of love and loss. There are some wonderfully vivid and atmospheric descriptions of Malaya. You can smell the tropics, feel the heat, and hear the birds and the bullfrogs.

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The book is captivating and powerful and is the story of a mother’s undying love for her children and the bonds that can never be broken. It is a little slow at fi rst and takes some getting into, however, once you do get into it, it is a page-turner and a wonderful debut novel. This would be a good book for a reading group as there are lots of areas for discussion. Dorothy Flaxman Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Penguin T H E J U DA S S C A R by Amanda Jennings

This is a very exciting novel and had me totally engaged from the fi rst page. At the beginning we meet Will and Harmony a couple living in a flat in London and seemingly they have an idyllic marriage. However, sadly Harmony loses her fi rst baby and from thereon their relationship seems doomed. But later we realise that Will is struggling to face his own demons as he was brought up mainly in a boarding school and more or less abandoned by his parents. He was subject to bullying and cruelty by other pupils and also staff. Their whole lives seemed to fall apart and Harmony has an affair with Luke an enigmatic stranger who later proves to be Will’s childhood friend from boarding school. I found this book very moving and also so frightening as we are fed bits of the story quite slowly which increased my fear and concern. A wonderful novel that held me very tightly in its grip until the very end. It is the sort of story you fi nd very hard to put down and I was totally entranced. A perfect read for a long-haul aeroplane fl ight as it is so cleverly written and keeps you guessing until the end. It’s a great book to be discussed by book clubs but it’s not for the fainthearted. This is the author’s second book and I will now be seeking out her debut novel Sworn Secret which I feel will be just as alluring. Mags Fisk Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cutting Edge Press 64

RU N N E R by Patrick Lee

Sam Dryden feels compelled to go for a run in the middle of the night when he literally bumps into a young girl who is petrified and running for her life from six men who are trying to kill her….finding out why makes this book a seat-of-your-pants thrill ride. I defy you not be turning the pages to find out what happens. I couldn’t wait to read this book while simultaneously not wanting it to finish. The main protagonist is a sympathetic and likeable man with a shady past and I am pleased that there are more books planned. If you like fast-paced adventure novels, then read this book. There is also plenty for book groups to discuss. Carolyn Fraser Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Penguin A F T E R I ’M G ON E by Laura Lippman

Felix has disappeared. He has left his wife, three daughters and mistress behind. Years later his mistress disappears. Everyone assumes he’s made his choice and called for her to join him, that is until her body is discovered. Where did Felix go? Who killed his mistress? What happened to the money he made from his gambling business? This is a great crime fiction book. There are no detailed descriptions of bodies or how they worked out who the killer was. There is a brilliant story about the people left behind which builds up towards the solving of the mysteries. The story is set both in the past and present with the two strands flowing together to fill in all the details. I really couldn’t put it down, especially towards the end. All the characters are interesting; they all have flaws and secrets. It is a very well-written book. If you like crime there is enough suspense to keep you going and if not, there is enough back story and characterisation to keep you reading. Nicky Hallam Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Faber & Faber

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A MAD AND WON DE R F U L T H I N G by Mark Mulholland

This debut novel takes us through the life of a young man who is groomed for war by circumstance, acquaintance and tragedy. In the story the lead character, Jonny introduces us to Ireland in the 1990s and the complexities of life therein. I found it written lightly despite the topic and feel that the author has used a light touch in order to avoid alienating the reader. I felt this book fell somewhere between the style of Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down or the heavier The Woman Who Walked into Doors by Roddy Doyle. With its thought-provoking commentary, eg ‘war is never right until it calls to your door’ and ‘We are born with the tools to destroy ourselves, this is the nature of man’ I feel that reading groups may have much to discuss. Overall I found this a short read and I had fi nished it in a day, it could be a good text for a long train journey or perhaps a lightish holiday read. Debbie Start Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scribe THE BEES by Laline Paull

This book is quite extraordinary. It is the story of Flora 717, a humble sanitation bee, the lowest in the strict hierarchy of the hive. Flora, however, is no ordinary bee, she has powers which mystify her. She can speak, which sanitation bees normally cannot, and has an ability to absorb knowledge from those more highly placed than herself. The Bees is an amazing achievement. The style is simple but almost poetic in its descriptions of the scents which control the entire community, and the beauty of the hive itself. Flora has to pass through many dangers and trials in order to achieve her strange destiny. Once the reader has started the novel, it is both hypnotic and compelling. It is also a gripping read. The author addresses the problems of social restriction, pollution and vengeful emotion, as well as love and hope – all centred

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upon a bee. It is a beautiful work, and I can thoroughly recommend it to the general reader and reading groups alike. Brilliant. Ruth Ginarlis Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fourth Estate T H E I TA L I A N S AT C L E AT ’ S C OR N E R S T OR E by Jo Riccioni

I really enjoyed this book. At heart there is a coming-of-age story. In 1949 Connie is seventeen and has been made to leave school to work in the village shop. Everything changes for her with the arrival of two Italian brothers and their father, who had been a POW on a local farm during the war. The chapters describing village life just after the war with rationing, gossip about neighbours and hostile attitudes to foreigners are very evocative and well written. These alternate with chapters set in Italy during the war and there are quite harrowing details of the hardships and suffering. The time and place of both these settings are cleverly brought to life. I also loved Connie with her dreams of escape from the claustrophobia of small-town life and the way she comes to terms with different relationships. Because both storylines are powerful and have a rich cast of characters, I did feel that the author has perhaps put in too many issues and so a couple of the characters are a little stereotyped but this is a minor quibble in what is a terrific achievement, especially for a first novel. I’m delighted to have had this to review and will certainly be looking out for her next book. Berwyn Peet Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scribe A P O C A LY P S E N E X T T U E S DAY by David Safier

Marie is thirty-five and has fallen through the relationship-andchildren lifestyle net. Gabriel is the angel, now a vicar, and having his fi rst sexual experience with Marie’s

mother. Joshua is Jesus down on earth and working as a carpenter while preparing to tackle the devil, and save the world. Marie falls in love with Joshua who reciprocates although I sense he’s not sure what earthly love implies. In the chaos of Marie’s abandoned wedding, her father’s new Russian girlfriend and her sister’s brain tumour, we join her navigating her way through the implications of the impending Apocalypse to her dream of a future life on earth with Jesus. This book is much more fun to read than it sounds. David Safier is a laugh-outloud comic writer with an international reputation. He examines our obsession with celebrity and self-indulgence and we don’t come off well. Equally it shines a light on the illogicality of religious doctrine but it all might just be a modernisation of the old story. You’ll just have to read it and figure it out for yourself. It’ll be fun. Elizabeth Dicker Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hesperus Press T H E HO U S E OF F IC T ION by Susan Swingler

This is a true account of Susan Swingler’s painful and arduous journey to reveal the extent of a deception by her father, Leonard Jolley and his second wife, Elizabeth Jolley. Elizabeth Jolley is a famous writer in Australia. When Susan was aged four Leonard leaves the family home and doesn’t return. Susan is never told where he went and later in life she is shown a photo that is meant to be Susan and her siblings, however, Susan is an only child. Her story commences in the late 1960s when she is twenty-one years old and she captures this era really well. This novel is enthralling; it is a mysterious and intriguing page-turner. It is a heartrending story and includes photographs and letters which help to reinforce the incredible behaviour of both Leonard and Elizabeth. I was riveted throughout this book. Lisa Carman Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scribe

T H E V I S I T OR S by Simon Sylvester

Nobody moves to the remote Scottish island of Bancree and few leave – but leaving is exactly what seventeen-year-old Flora intends to do. The book evokes life on an island. It describes the ferry to the mainland and back for schools and shopping in such detail you can imagine you are actually on it. It also describes the loneliness of young people growing up in an island environment and how their parents rely on few industries to make their living. The arrival of new people, a man and his daughter, raises Flora’s curiosity. She befriends the girl, Ailsa, but fi nds the man menacing. People are also disappearing from Bancree. Reports of missing islanders fi ll the press and unnerve the community. I really enjoyed this book. It is very atmospheric and the characters are well drawn and realistic. There is even some folklore thrown in for good measure. The book keeps you guessing till the end, when there is a nice twist. I particularly liked the last line of the last chapter of the book, which I found very poignant. We only stay for a short while, and then we go. Sometimes we leave traces of ourselves behind, and sometimes we are remembered. Every one of us is a visitor. The only question in this life is who we choose to travel with. Dorothy Flaxman Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Quercus T H E S E X L I V E S OF SIA MESE TWINS by Irvine Welsh

Only incidentally about Siamese Twins, instead, we have the monologue of Lucy, a Miami-based personal fitness trainer. She, accidentally, rescues some men from a murder attempt and gathers very temporary media interest as Lena fi lms the incident. Lena, a seriously overweight artist, then hires Lucy as her trainer. Lucy resorts to extreme measures to ‘help’. Without giving the plot away, it is sufficient to say that this is a novel on the

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contradictions of life and relationships, some, or maybe all, exploitative. But, it must be added that Lucy is foul-mouthed and much of the novel is focused on ‘sizeist’ misogynist obsessions, with sexually explicit wet dreams thrown in for good measure. So it is not for the fainthearted reader. Whether you take to the novel itself will be very much a matter of personal taste. For me, there was too much verbal rant and obsession wrapped around the developing storylines. I just had no sympathy for a profoundly dysfunctional but undoubtedly fictional woman. Sorry Irvine, but life is too short, thanks. Hilary White Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jonathan Cape SENTINEL by Joshua Winning

In an August which turns from heat wave to winter desperate events are occurring. Fifteenyear-old Nicholas’s life is torn apart when his parents are killed in a train crash and it becomes apparent he did not know them as well as he thought he did. There is something special about him and he needs protecting from the forces of evil that are beginning to gather around him. This debut young adult novel is the first part of a trilogy. There are elements of a darker Harry Potter and this does separate it from the glut of American teen series titles by having a strong British feel and a Cambridgearea setting. I would have liked to have seen more depth to the main character – his grief at sudden loss is convincingly done but there’s not enough teenager in this characterisation. Some of the supporting cast are more strongly portrayed. Plot-wise, does it achieve a balance between setting up the next two novels and providing a wholly satisfactory read? I’m not totally convinced. With so many young adult series novels around I fear this title might get lost, unless someone is willing to commit to a TV/fi lm adaptation and then Joshua Winning could be on to the next big thing. Phil Ramage Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peridot Press 66

Published in July and August T H E G O OD HO U S E by Ann Leary

An interesting read. Without reading a synopsis it would be difficult to realise immediately that this was written by and about an alcoholic middle-aged successful woman. The author gradually unfolds her story in a delightful way which encourages the reader to be surprised at the events. To begin with I thought that the main character was poor but later passages explain that she is one of the town’s wealthy. She has some kind of ‘second sight’ or intuition about events and people, sometimes caused by the effects of her drinking. I found there was rather too much detailed explanation about the businesses, area and people, and so not much story. The climax, I felt, was very weak, and almost missed. On the whole, it’s a slow but readable book about a small American town. Marjorie Coles Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Corvus W H AT M I L O S AW by Virginia Macgregor

Milo is a special nineyear-old boy who has a condition called retinitis pigmentosa. He sees life through a pin hole and will eventually go blind; this does however mean that he is able to focus on things that others may miss. Despite Milo’s condition the story is not downbeat and endeavours to show hope over adversity. Milo’s beloved gran is moved to a care home and he turns detective to uncover the truth behind the lack of care given by the wicked nurse Thornhill. The story gently introduces other themes into the mix including relationships, asylum and world affairs. This debut novel took me on an emotional but interesting journey and has a joy about it that made me smile. It is written in short chapters and is very easy to read.

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The book falls into the young adult section and therefore has a simplicity to it. I would defi nitely recommend this heart-rending novel to those who enjoy reading YA books. Book groups would fi nd plenty of big ideas to discuss but may fi nd the genre a little young. Linda Ryley Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sphere T H E V I S I T OR S by Rebecca Mascull

There is a little bit of everything thrown in to this debut novel by Rebecca Mascull. At its heart it is the story of a deaf, dumb, and blind girl Liza who develops a strong and lasting friendship with a member of her father’s staff – Lottie. Lottie teaches Liza how to communicate and opens up a whole new world to her. But throughout it all Liza continues to see the visitors. These strange apparitions have always been able to speak with Liza – but why can she see them when no one else can? All will become clear when Liza and Lottie travel to south Africa during the Boer War. Whilst the friendship between Lottie and Liza is a huge part of this novel, there is also a love story, a ghost story and a little bit of history of the Boer War. I also learned much about the techniques used to allow deaf, blind, mute persons to ‘talk’ and found this fascinating. I felt this was a beautifully written debut novel, which showed that Mascull had researched her subject thoroughly. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Susan Hill’s ghost stories, or Diane Setterfield’s Thirteenth Tale. Claire Lindley Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hodder THE TEA CHEST by Josephine Moon

Who doesn’t like sitting down to a good book over a cup of tea? This book combines my two great passions so I was delighted when it came through my door. When her boss and mentor dies,

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Australian Kate is left as co-owner of The Tea Chest and is thrown headlong into the world of business. A talented tea designer, she risks losing it all to take the franchise to London and prove to herself and partner that she can save the flailing business. Along the way she meets Leila and Elizabeth; both women are at a crossroads in their lives and unexpectedly become involved in Kate’s vision for the London store. As a light read, I enjoyed this book. I found the three leading ladies to be charming and believable. There is more to the story, as we discover in flashbacks; at times I found them jarring and had to pause to think about what was happening and when. Ultimately though, they provide a gritty balance to the more saccharine present-day story. It’s not one for book groups, but I’d recommend this for personal reading. It would be perfect for holidays or journeys where you can sit back and devour it in one go. It might just make you more adventurous in your choice of tea too. Victoria Jopling Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Allen & Unwin L A S T N IG H T AT T H E B LU E A N G E L by Rebecca Rotert

This is one of those novels that takes you into a place far removed from your own existence. The setting is the early 1960s Chicago jazz scene, where the central character of Naomi Hill is a talented jazz singer, whose self-destructive nature adds to her allure for her audience, but separates her from her precocious ten-year-old daughter, Sophia. The novel is told from the differing perspectives of these two central characters, with Rebecca Rotert’s writing style able to change easily from the voice of a full-grown woman, to a ten-year-old girl. They are both struggling for acceptance; Naomi for her talent in the jazz music she so loves, Sophia for her mother’s love. Although focused on a narrow timescale and a single place, this book has aimed to be universal. The story is simply told, in a way that is both accessible and accomplished, whilst the central relationship between mother and daughter is beautifully rendered, and it is also heartbreakingly unsentimental about

the effect that the times they are living through – civil unrest and civil rights, the Cold War and Vietnam – are having on the lives of the characters. The ending of the novel is both bleakly fitting and realistic. This book won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but anyone who risks it will be amply rewarded by a story, characterisation and detail that mean that the author (this is her debut novel) has a bright future ahead of her. Ben Macnair Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William Morrow T H I S ON E I S M I N E by Maria Semple

Violet is living an apparently perfect life. She is married to affluent, workaholic, David; is a stay-at-home mum to their toddler daughter, Dot; has a live-in nanny; and lives in a big house in a prestigious location. Previously a successful career woman, she in fact feels bored, frustrated, devalued … and fat! Feeling in need of stimulation and adventure, she finds herself drawn to Teddy, a dirty, impoverished, ex-drug addict and alcoholic, now a small-time bass player. David’s highly-strung, debt-ridden sister, Sally, now in her thirties, and, feeling desperate to settle down, is on the prowl for a rich, successful husband and a life-style to match Violet’s, and has set her laser-like sights on Jeremy, a sports-caster savant. With a wonderfully colourful cast of characters, this is a deliciously acerbic, yet essentially compassionate, exploration of a modern-day search for more – for fulfilment, for happiness. All the characters seemed flawed: often thoughtless in their interactions, and dangerously impulsive in their decision-making. Initially there seemed to be little to like about any of them and yet I became increasingly drawn to them, wanting them to, finally, ‘get it right’! This, I am sure, is a testament to the quality of the author’s deceptively simple writing style, which captures emotional complexity, dialogue and a sense of place in a convincing and evocative way. Linda Hepworth Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .★★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phoenix

DAUG H T E R by Jane Shemilt

An accomplished first novel, exploring family relationships and showing how family members view these relationships in different ways. When Jenny’s daughter, Naomi, disappears, the family seems to disintegrate. Beforehand it had appeared to be a normal busy middle-class family – both parents in successful but stressful jobs, the three children doing well at school and with busy social lives and outside interests. Naomi’s disappearance brings the hidden cracks to the surface. I think it is a realistic portrayal of the tensions that can exist within a family. The story is related in two time frames in alternate chapters – before and after the disappearance. This works well as it allows the truth to emerge gradually. It is mainly told from the point of view of the mother, Jenny. At times it is quite painful as she realises how little she really knew about her family. The book drew me in and I read it quite quickly, wanting to know what happened to Naomi but also what was happening to her older brother Ed. Reading groups would fi nd quite a lot to discuss. Maddy Broome Personal read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Group read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★★★★ Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Penguin

Dear Guy

When I placed my most recent order with you I ordered the book Arms Wide Open by Tom Winter, but when the books arrived, I received Tom Winter’s other book Lost & Found. I must admit that I assumed that there had been some carelessness on my part and that I had ticked the wrong book on the selection sheet. Therefore imagine my surprise this morning when Arms Wide Open arrived accompanied by a note from you suggesting that you had sent the wrong book previously. It gave me delight in identifying that I perhaps wasn’t as careless as I had thought. Equally I am impressed at the eﬀectiveness of your Quality Control system. Thank you so much. Kind Regards. David Keay

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July 1914 The de Witt family are rich, privileged and happy. Their world is about to be shattered . . .

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