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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

From quirks to vice: how do you like your characters?

27/4/2015

14 Comments

 
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When Charli Mills posted her flash fiction prompt at the end of last week to write a 99-word story that includes a vice, I thought it would be easy. Isn’t a vice just another notch along a continuum that leads from quirky through the compulsory character flaws to the evil villains we love to hate? But I’ve struggled. I didn’t have a character waiting in the wings of my to-be-reviewed and to-be-read piles I could pounce on or, at least, not one I could persuade to perform.

Kicking off with a conversation about marijuana, I expected Charli’s post to ignite a galaxy of ideas. Yet we know, even if vicariously, it’s a drug that tends to lull the senses. Even though I have a dope-smoking narrator in my possibly-second novel, Underneath, it’s a minor transgression relative to what else he gets up to, put there to give him something to do with his hands while he’s waiting for his girlfriend to come back to bed. And although there’s a drug dealer in Lisa McInerney’s audacious debut, and I’ve mentioned crack in the heading of my review, I’m not sure it’s entirely accurate (all these different names for drugs do confuse me) but there is purely for the alliteration. Fact is, I’m not terribly interested in mood-altering substances, whether legal or otherwise, and it took me a little longer than I might have expected to lose myself in Tim Winton’s magnificent Eyrie because it kicks off with the hangover from hell.

Of course, there are other kinds of vices. Compulsive sex is often considered a vice, but I’d be loath to label it as such when it’s what puts food on the table for The Ladies of the House or leads to the cruel banishment of a lonely man in A Place Called Winter. Even for Anna in Hausfrau (my review coming soon), the sex serves as a distraction from her alienation, a symptom of a disturbance too deep to touch.

I suppose that exemplifies my difficulty with the notion of “vice”: it’s either too strong (and possibly judgemental) a word for a behaviour that might be an expression of an individual’s unhappiness or powerlessness, and too weak a word for the harm that a character’s vice might do to others. So, for my flash, I’m setting that aside and taking a less serious look at vice, sparked by this being the time of the year to get serious about gardening, I’m continuing with a thread which began with my flash on standing up to bullies and picked up in the one on neighbours. If you’re familiar with my Twitter profile, you’ll probably see where this one is going:

Really I’m doing them a favour, encouraging the birds into their patch. If there’s one thing about my neighbours, they like their birds. Fuck knows why: damned squawking things, carpet-bombing the patio with their white splodges. Takes a thorough blitz with the steam cleaner to get them off.

I used to squidge them when I caught them chewing my hostas, but it never felt right. Grey slime coagulating my fingers, even through gloves. Since I’ve been tossing them over the fence into their lettuces, I’ve felt positively Zen-like. It’s bad karma to kill another living creature, even a slug.

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By popular request (i.e. two people asking about it in the comments box) I’ll be posting about how I read for my reviews in a couple of days’ time. Also, because only a third of the way through the year I’ve read over forty books, I’m upping my Goodreads target from 80 to 100. If you’ve missed any of my eleven novel reviews this month, now’s the time to catch up before my review and Q&A as part of the Mrs Engels blog tour when a new month kicks off again on Friday!

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
14 Comments
Geoff link
27/4/2015 12:22:15 pm

Ok so how have you read 40 books? No sleep? They play to you while you're in bed? You pay a series of sweat shop readers? Or you read ridiculously fast? If the latter I am beyond jealous. And I tried the tossing over the fence until I heard that snails and slugs home... Neat flash though, thus battle over the fence.

Reply
Charli Mills
27/4/2015 10:39:50 pm

Sweat shop readers! That would be a vice of a prolific literary reviewer!

Reply
Annecdotist
28/4/2015 07:34:32 am

I'm not a fast reader and I do sleep (and, of course, reading and writing are one of the few things we can't subcontract) – just don't have a social life. Most evenings I'll have a good couple of hours with a book after dinner, summer mornings too if I'm not particularly early.
You're right about how far slugs and snails can travel – wasn't there a programme about that on TV? (Not that I've got time for TV, too busy reading.)

Reply
sarah link
27/4/2015 08:05:14 pm

Eew! Nice description there. *squish* Glad he decided to be a "nice" neighbor and throw them into their garden. Well, glad for the slugs. And glad I'm not his neighbor. ;-)

Quirks and vices seem to go together nicely. So many vices... I couldn't decide either. There are the usual suspects but then thought of all the addictions out there: sex, gambling, TV, sports, computers (ahem). Even those adrenaline junkies. ;-)

I look forward to reading about your reading. I am THE slowest reader and have the two little ones so I barely get reading time. It's a bad combination.

Reply
Annecdotist
28/4/2015 07:38:48 am

Yes, slug entrails do tend to stick to your skin – I have a special knife for the job!
You mentioned addictions – and that was partly my difficulty with this, that when something becomes an addiction it's more of a psychological problem in my mind than a vice.
Not a lot of reading time means you need to choose carefully – I hope my reviews have been of some help in that.

Reply
sarah link
3/5/2015 10:07:05 am

Yes. I did use that interchangeably but I completely agree with you. I think of a vice as a...crutch or something one partakes in but does not necessarily need or rely upon. When does a vice become an addiction?

Your reviews are always helpful. But I do need to choose carefully, like you said. I believe I first heard of Orphan Train and Station Eleven from you. ?

Speaking of... Do you have a search feature on your blog? I've often wanted to look up books you've reviewed and I can't find the search.

Annecdotist
3/5/2015 11:10:57 am

Not Orphan Train but certainly Station Eleven – did you enjoy it?
There isn't a search facility unfortunately, it's a bit more staff, but what I do is put annethology and what I'm looking for in the search engine and it always comes up.
But I do have a list of my reviews alphabetically by surname on my Reading and Reviews page (the header is at the top of the page)

sarah
3/5/2015 01:25:08 pm

I must have been thinking of...Girl on the Train maybe? I STILL have Station Eleven sitting here. I keep putting it down to read other books. I can't get into it.

Charli Mills
27/4/2015 10:45:00 pm

Interesting that vice is either too strong or too weak of a word to describe one's habit. The direction you went was a great choice -- not only darkly humorous, but neatly ties into your branding as a slug slayer.

Reply
Annecdotist
28/4/2015 07:41:24 am

Ah, that word again – branding. I did think I could get away with this flash because it's in the context of other aspects of my online presence, but didn't get as far as labelling it that way. But maybe I'm an intuitive brander, as well as learning to keep it in mind, thanks to you.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
27/4/2015 11:30:55 pm

Hahaha! Love it, Anne. What a thoughtful neighbour - get rid of the slugs from his patch, encourage the beloved birds into the neighbour's. A wonderful arrangement, symbiotic almost! Never mind the lettuces! It does fit in nicely with your gardening theme, but you wouldn't. Would you?
I also like your discussion re vices and quirks. Sometimes, like beauty, they can be in the eyes of the beholder!

Reply
Annecdotist
28/4/2015 07:43:23 am

Definitely in the eyes and ears of the beholder!
As to the birds, they never seem to eat enough slugs and snails in my garden. But they do fly back and forth between the feeders in our garden and those next door, which seems to work quite well.

Reply
irene Waters link
28/4/2015 02:28:01 am

Vice certainly has conotations that are possibly far greater than the dictionary definition means. When I hear the word vice I immediately think prostitutes. In reality it can be any immoral or wicked behaviour or in the case of stabled horses a neurosis brought about by boredom.
I loved your vice and with the birds coming in greater numbers to collect them I'm sure your neighbours love you also. Better than the grey slime that's for sure.
Looking forward to reading your post on how you read to review.

Reply
Annecdotist
28/4/2015 07:47:49 am

Didn't know that about horses, Irene, but I suppose most of us would play up if we are kept caged up with little to do.
Your point about prostitution links to my difficulty with the word vice itself. I know that many sex workers claim that they've made a free choice but I don't think that's often the case, and it feels a bit like blaming people for the limited choices they have when they are powerless.
I hope you'll read my "reading for reviews" post – as one of those who enquired about it, I hope you'll find it worth your time.

Reply



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