Young Lit Fix By Nicky Mathewson

national newspapers for its performances and recordings. Winners of the First Prize at the Gianni Bergamo Classic Music Award in Lugano, Switzerland in September 2019, the quartet maintains an active performance schedule across the UK and Europe, performing in venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Conway Hall, and the Purcell Room.

The Concerts in the West programme includes quartets by Haydn, Webern, Schubert and Dvorak.

Bread, hope and home

PORTESHAM

PORTESHAM village hall is the venue for The Syrian Baker, a powerful and touching story about refugees, food and the things we all have in common. The play, by Farnham Maltings, is being presented by Artsreach on Friday 28th October at 7.30pm. With almost five per cent of the The Syrian Baker comes to Portesham in October world’s population on the move, desperate to get away from trouble, this is a story of two people who have decided to go home despite the state of their country. The Syrian Baker is a human story about coming home, knowing where you belong and how small actions can make a big difference in one’s life and in re-building a community.

It is a piece about humanity, hope and courage told with affection, irrepressible humour and bread—because without bread nothing else will happen—and about how we all have so much more in common than we realise.

Small is beautiful

POWERSTOCK NORWICH Puppet Theatre, one of the UK’s few dedicated puppet companies, Comes to Powerstock Hut at 11am on Tuesday 25th October with a half-term show, Thumbelina, an enchanting retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen story.

There was once a little girl so small she could float on a lily pad and ride on the back of a dragonfly ... Thumbelina’s adventures with a frog, a mouse, a mole and a swallow are gently played among gardening tools, leading her to happiness in the kingdom of flowers.

Using traditional glove, rod and shadow puppets, Norwich Puppet Theatre’s productions are an excellent introduction to the magic of theatre for children aged two and over, and their families.

Purbeck Film comes to the Electric Palace

BRIDPORT PURBECK Film Festival, back this year, from 14th to 29th October, with a full programme for the first time since the start of the pandemic, makes its first appearance at Bridport this year, with screenings at the Electric Palace.

For 27 years, the Purbeck festival has been showing films in venues including village halls, hotels and cinemas, particularly the historic Rex in Wareham, Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre and Swanage’s Mowlem Swanage. This year there are two new venues, Bridport’s splendid art deco cinema and Boscombe Art Depot.

There will be four films at the EP which bookend this year’s festival. On 4th and 5th October, there will be two Spanish films—The Good Boss, starring Javier Barden, director, Fernando Leon de Aranoa on the 4th, and Almodovar’s Oscarwinning All About My Mother, on 5th. On 5th November, the festival offers a French double bill, Petite Maman, directed by Céline Sciamma (of Portrait of a Lady on Fire fame), and La Famille Bélier, directed by Eric Lartigau, which tells the original French story of the hearing daughter of deaf parents, which was adapted to create the Oscar-winning Coda.

Unraveller By Frances Hardinge

Pan Macmillan 9781509836970 Hardback £14.99

Reviewed by Nicky Mathewson

“DO cursers really exist? (Yes.) Can cursers really set someone on fire, steal their shadow or turn them into a swarm of bees? (Yes.) Is it true that the power to curse comes from spiders? (No, the Little Brothers are not spiders, however much they look like them.)

Only those consumed by hate are able to curse. The Little Brothers gift them with a curse egg. Whilst inside them, the curse egg feeds their hatred, it wants to be released.

Kellen is an unraveller, living in the country of Raddith, paid to rid people of their curses. In order to lift it, he needs to unravel the reason why they were cursed in the first place. This is not easy, but not impossible. When his task is complete he moves on to find more work, abandoning the once cursed person to pick up the pieces of their life.

Nettle is Kellen’s constant companion, who survived being cursed by her stepmother. She was turned into a bird along with her siblings. Kellen unravels Nettle and returns her to her human form but she cannot forget how it felt to be a bird. She is quiet and fierce and never leaves Kellen even though he is rash and selfish. It is Kellen’s rashness that sees them thrown into prison without a penny.

Gall is a Marsh horseman, fearsome and bound to his Marsh horse, a creature from the deep wilds. The price for this horse was a single human eye. Gall’s eye. It is a bond that cannot be broken.

He has come to make Kellen and Nettle an offer to free them from prison in exchange for their help. There is a conspiracy afoot and a curse to be unravelled, but can Gall be trusted? And can Kellen find the source of his own curse before his whole world unravels?

Frances Hardinge has conjured up a fragile, gritty, and dangerous world where no one can be trusted and hatred is bubbling just beneath the surface.

I love all of her books and this did not fail to blow me away. Perfect for fans of gothic world building and macabre mysteries. 12+.