Category: Childhood

Two novel encounters with the wild: Under a Pole Star & Green Lion

21/8/2017

A historical novel about Arctic exploration or a novel set in a near-future South Africa? A romance or an account of a relationship falling apart? A motherless girl or a fatherless boy? Wild animals or ice? Both of these novels explore the conflict and compassion that connects us to the natural world, but it was a bonus for me to read that the protagonist of Green Lion told his friend that his father was killed in a hunting accident in the Arctic, the setting of Under a Pole Star. Read on to see if I was right to pair these reviews.

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Games in the schoolyard: New Boy by Tracy Chevalier

11/6/2017

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Dee is excited when she spots the new boy in the playground. The son of a Ghanaian diplomat, Osei Kokote is the only black child in the school. When their class teacher entrusts her to show him around, their friendship develops an intensity that takes everyone by surprise. But bully boy Ian can’t let that happen. He rules the playground. He knows how to split the couple apart.

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School of Velocity by Eric Beck Rubin

28/5/2017

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It doesn’t seem such a promising start to a friendship when Dirk steals Jan’s girlfriend. But before too long, Jan de Vries feels more at home at Dirk’s house in the city of Den Bosch than at his own in a village a cycle ride away. For years they’re inseparable, the more reticent Jan emboldened by his friend’s daredevil charisma, until, the day after Dirk’s drunken high-school graduation party, they go off to separate universities, Dirk to drama school in America, Jan to study piano at the Conservatory in Maastricht.

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Crossing the line: The Teacher’s Secret #blogtour

19/5/2017

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Terry is an experienced primary school teacher, popular with pupils, parents and the rest of the staff. But Laurie, the new acting principal, bristles at his intuitive laid-back style. As a much younger woman in a senior position, she’s conscious of the need to assert her authority right from the start; unfortunately, her approach rubs everyone up the wrong way. Alarm bells start to ring when she catches sight of Terry at a student’s house in the evening, contrary to child safeguarding policies.

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Ireland’s Subterfuge and Fury

10/5/2017

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Allow me to introduce you to two novels looking back on Ireland’s recent history through the eyes of a man whose life has been limited by secrets, subterfuge and hypocrisy.

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Hitler’s Forgotten Children by Ingrid von Oelhafen & Tim Tate

2/5/2017

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We believe in the God of all things

And in the mission of our German blood

Which grows ever young from German soil.

We believe in the race, carrier of the blood,

And in the Führer, chosen for us by God.

The last time Annecdotal took a peek at the craziness of the Nazi project was with a fictional account of Mengele’s perverted twin studies. Today we’re visiting related territory with a memoir and social history of the Lebensborn programme, both literally and metaphorically Himmler’s baby.

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The Messiah Narrative

13/4/2017

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Even if you’re not a fan of Baroque music, you’d probably recognise at least one of the magnificent choruses from George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. If not the jolly “For Unto Us a Child Is Born”, perhaps the main justification for its popularity at Christmas, then you must know the exuberant “Hallelujah”. But there are fifty-one other choruses and solos that make up the three-hour long oratorio. This beautiful book tells the story of its composition and musical afterlife.

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Amid the splendid scenery of Orkney and the Monros

10/4/2017

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Let’s take a look at a couple of debut novels with some fine evocations of the natural world and a strong sense of place published by small independent presses based in Scotland.

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An adopted child goes missing …

6/4/2017

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Do take a moment to read about these two different, but equally engaging, novels in which a child, adopted as a baby, goes missing.

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Coming-of-age translated: Echoland & Swallowing Mercury

23/3/2017

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Today I’m sharing two short reviews of short translated novels about coming-of-age in Europe at the end of the last century.

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Family dynamics: Swimming Lessons & Our Magic Hour

26/1/2017

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I decided to pair these novels after reading blurbs suggesting both were about young women adapting to significant losses: the mother’s disappearance in Swimming Lessons and a close friend’s suicide in Our Magic Hour. But, on reading the latter, I felt the main character’s issues predated that particular tragedy, originating with a highly ambivalent mother in a difficult marriage. Unfortunately for the character, but very accommodating for my reading and blogging schedule, the same applies to the first novel. I hope one or both of these will appeal but, if not, you’ll find several other posts and reviews on the theme of family dynamics if you follow the link.

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Quarry: The Trout by Peter Cunningham

23/1/2017

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All trout eat each other, including females, who regularly consume their young. In the case of the alpha male, the choice and preferred size of prey is an adolescent fish, one-third of the predatory trout’s body-length.

Alex and Kay have traded in thirty-year careers in Toronto – he as a teacher and she as a psychotherapist – to pursue more creative pursuits in rural Ontario, but things aren’t working out as well as they’d hoped. The financial crash has put their travel plans on hold and, alongside her painting, Kay is working part-time at the hospital in the next town, perhaps as much to escape their limping marriage as to boost the household’s economy.

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Cry, Baby, Cry!

16/1/2017

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Sue Gerhardt's book nails the argument much more clearly than I can.

Knowing I’ve never had children, readers have expressed surprise that I’m interested in reading and writing about mothers and babies. To me, however, it makes sense politically, (past) professionally and personally. A socialist by inclination, I believe in collective responsibility for the vulnerable, and who could be more vulnerable than a neonate? In psychology, although there are different and opposing models of the impact of early months and years, curiosity about the human mind necessitates at least a passing interest in our origins. Finally, I’m very much in touch with how it feels to be totally dependent on someone who doesn’t heed my cries. So, yes, I give a crap about attentiveness to babies, and not just when they’ve soiled their nappies.

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Guilt and betrayal: The Fall Guy and All We Shall Know

12/1/2017

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Today’s two novels focus on characters whose lives have been blighted by past betrayal. Although their inability to forgive others or themselves results in episodes of apathy, their plights keep us turning the pages to the end. While we’re on the subject, here’s a link to my creepy flash fiction piece, “Betrayed”.

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Weaving stories and rattling words

9/1/2017

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Two novels I read recently – The Underground Railroad and Homegoing – touched on how, historically, the production of cotton depended on slave labour. A lot of that cotton came to Britain and helped transform weaving from a cottage industry to, with the invention of Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny and Arkwright’s water frame, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the bedrock of the industrial revolution. The legacy of this rich industrial history can be explored within about an hour’s drive from where I live; unfortunately, while I’m interested in how past generations earned their livings, I haven’t yet prioritised visiting the museums.

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Music and movement: Swing Time by Zadie Smith

16/11/2016

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In contrast to the three women who shape her through childhood to early middle age, the female narrator of Zadie Smith’s fifth novel is so insipid, she doesn’t even bother to tell us her name. Her mother, a beautiful Jamaican-born feminist, autodidact and activist who resembles Nefertiti, delegates parenting to her less ambitious husband while she plots her escape from the confines of gender, race and class. She barely tolerates our narrator’s intense friendship with Tracey, the only other brown-skinned girl at their North London dancing class. With her doting, but foul-mouthed white English mother and absent African Caribbean father (whom the little girl claims is on tour with Michael Jackson, when he’s actually in prison), Tracey’s allotment of advantage and disadvantage mirrors hers. Their relationship pirouettes around a shared passion and a suppressed mutual envy: while Tracey has the skill and talent to make it to the stage, the narrator’s relative stability with a loving father provide some compensation for her flat feet.

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Can you imagine? The NHS, then and now: The Tidal Zone & The Dark Circle

3/11/2016

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Let me introduce you to two novels by established female authors about young people struck down by serious illness, set in the social context of the British National Health Service, the first in its contemporary incarnation and the second at its inception.

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The lodger’s hands: Fell by Jenn Ashworth

8/9/2016

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We hated them but we never, ever suggested we should have them taken out. It might have been the money but more likely it just didn’t occur to us. You worked round things and played the best hand you could with the cards you’d been dealt. That was our way. Whatever the neighbours said and however badly we needed the money, we clung on, as if the house wasn’t a gift to us from Jack’s dead parents, but their flesh and blood itself.

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Country (dis)connections: The Other Side of the World by Stephanie Bishop & His Whole Life by Elizabeth Hay

2/9/2016

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For my first post of meteorological autumn, I bring you two novels with a strong sense of season and climate. But what particularly connects them is their explorations of how conflicting attachments to place risks fragmenting family life. The first takes us from England to Australia, with a brief visit to India, and the second back and forth between Canada and the USA, so between them these novels cover a large proportion of the English-speaking world.

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Any advice on questions for book groups?

30/8/2016

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Children’s need to belong, or the fear of exclusion, can be as intense as the need for sleep and sustenance, so they often band together in cliques and clubs. One of the weirdest fictional clubs I’ve come across, is the arson club in Jesse Ball’s novel, How to Set A Fire and Why. Memoirist, Irene Waters, is after your memories of joining a club: when did you join, why did you join and are you still a member?

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<<Previous

Two novel encounters with the wild: Under a Pole Star & Green Lion

Games in the schoolyard: New Boy by Tracy Chevalier

School of Velocity by Eric Beck Rubin

Crossing the line: The Teacher’s Secret #blogtour

Ireland’s Subterfuge and Fury

Hitler’s Forgotten Children by Ingrid von Oelhafen & Tim Tate

The Messiah Narrative

Amid the splendid scenery of Orkney and the Monros

An adopted child goes missing …

Coming-of-age translated: Echoland & Swallowing Mercury

Family dynamics: Swimming Lessons & Our Magic Hour

Quarry: The Trout by Peter Cunningham

Cry, Baby, Cry!

Guilt and betrayal: The Fall Guy and All We Shall Know

Weaving stories and rattling words

Music and movement: Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Can you imagine? The NHS, then and now: The Tidal Zone & The Dark Circle

The lodger’s hands: Fell by Jenn Ashworth

Country (dis)connections: The Other Side of the World by Stephanie Bishop & His Whole Life by Elizabeth Hay

Any advice on questions for book groups?

2017 Reading Challenge

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