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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

We can be heroes: Vigilante by Shelley Harris

8/1/2015

14 Comments

 
“You’re not Superwoman, Anne!”

It was no doubt a combination of tussles with my current WIP, Charli Mills’s post on her horror of perfectionism and reaching the end of Shelley Harris’ second novel that reminded me of this feedback from a colleague over twenty years ago. Tasked with resettling longstay psychiatric patients into more ordinary lives within the community (incidentally, the subject of my current WIP), youthful idealism made me susceptible to setting unrealistic goals, both for myself and the service. Not recognising my misguided heroics, my colleague’s comment helped me to take a step back. However much I might have wished to, I couldn’t save the world!

So, although I’ve never been tempted to don a cape and mask and strut about my home town righting wrongs, I don’t find it too difficult to identify with the protagonist of Vigilante, who does exactly that. Jenny Pepper has abandoned her career as an actor to become a mother; now she finds herself increasingly marginal in her teenage daughter’s life and unstimulated in her work as the manager of a charity bookshop, the spark long having gone from her marriage. Rendered virtually invisible by dint of her age, unglamorous job and gender, tidying-up has become her life’s purpose until, en route to a fancy dress party, she witnesses a woman being attacked. Although lacking the skills of a comic-book superhero, Jenny does manage to rescue the woman from her assailant. Soon, her secret identity has become an addiction, threatening her marriage, friendship and her own safety. When a masked villain stalks the town, preying on girls the age of Jenny’s daughter, her alter ego is tested to the limit.


Having enjoyed Shelley Harris’ debut, Jubilee,
and explored it with her here, I was interested to see where her imagination would take her next. When I came across her YouTube trailer, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy. It’s such an appealing premise, but does it live up to the hype?

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Having convinced the reader of Jenny’s ordinariness, with splendid descriptions of how housework is such a Sisyphean task, Shelley Harris does an admirable job of showing how and why her main character takes on an extraordinary role that might appear dangerous, narcissistic or downright ridiculous. Jenny’s motivation emerges gradually through a series of minor events that kindle an inner rage that has lain dormant for years:

What I felt … was huge, a fury which seemed to arrive in a single instant; it came to me massive and complete, destabilising. But this wasn’t the sort of anger you could create all in one go. It was the sort that is laid down over years and years like sediment, each layer seeming so slight that I hadn’t justified doing anything about it (p104)

This is an engaging, funny, and ultimately moving novel that can be enjoyed on various levels. There’s a mystery/thriller element in the quest to prevent another attack by the masked rapist. It’s a feminist novel in terms of the awakening of a woman’s ambition; reminiscent of Love and Fallout in the husband’s initial difficulties in accommodating to the main character’s need for self-expression. It’s about family, women’s friendship and the parenting of teenagers. In Jenny’s wish to keep her vigilante persona a secret even from her husband and her best friend, and in her own respect for her daughter’s emerging sexual identity, alongside a smalltown community under threat, it explores the tensions between our need for privacy and our need to belong. Like A Replacement Life, the novel raises questions about how to fight injustice, represented by the two extremes of the ostentatious vigilante versus the more mundane charitable fundraising of Jenny’s day job (with echoes of Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase in the photographs and letters found within the pages of the second-hand books).

Congratulations to Shelley Harris on writing such a fabulous second novel and thanks to Weidenfeld and Nicolson for my trade paperback review copy. For another angle on female fictional heroes, see my post How to Be a Heroine.

Have you ever attempted to be a hero and, if so, how did it work out?

 

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
Sarah link
8/1/2015 04:54:00 pm

I love this. The review is, as always, fantastic. The book sounds amazing. (Love the trailer, too, and find it hilarious that no one in London looks twice at a masked & caped woman walking around the streets.)

I can't find this on Amazon. Is it out in the U.S. yet?

Reply
Annecdotist
9/1/2015 08:29:25 am

Thank you, Sarah, I will consult with the .author on your behalf. I'm sure she'll be delighted the Yanks are waiting to read her novel!

Reply
Charli Mills
8/1/2015 09:39:24 pm

Listening to David Bowie after reading your review and I want to take a heroic stance! I love the Shelly Harris trailer, her passion for this story and character is catching. She's so right, that women long for adventure and to be heroic, too. This is a theme I'm grappling with in my WIP. The heroes at Rock Creek were men, but I plan to break through that myth. Don't expect Sarah in a cape though! I'm excited to read another's author's treatment of that core idea. Maybe as writers we get to be heroes. Fab review and we share in common being told the same thing. I was warned by a professor that I wasn't Superwoman and that I'd eventually feel like a fraud. Hard words, but every time I felt disappointed with my work, I reminded myself that I wasn't Superwoman.

Reply
Annecdotist
9/1/2015 08:33:59 am

Well, Charli, you do sometimes come across Superwoman with the amount you are able to pack in, but there must be a balanced way of being heroic without expecting to be perfect.
Yes, I think you are bringing a new hero to light in your WIP, which fits beautifully with the theme of this novel.

Reply
Gargi link
9/1/2015 01:44:01 am

Interesting premise for the novel as well as your current WIP. Will keep an eye out for both!

Reply
Annecdotist
9/1/2015 08:35:27 am

Thank you, Gargi, it will be a long time before my WIP sees the light of day but hopefully Shelley's novel will be available over there?

Reply
Norah Colvin link
9/1/2015 04:01:34 am

I do like the sound of this book, Anne - both fun and meaningful. I really enjoyed listening to Shelley Harris talk about her writing so enthusiastically and lacking nothing in confidence. What a wonderful role model for young female writers. For many of us, a cape is not required for heroic deeds in our little corners of the world. The professional work you did sounds very heroic to me. It would have positively impacted the lives of many.

Reply
Annecdotist
9/1/2015 08:38:04 am

Glad you liked the video, Norah I did wonder if I could just post that and dispense with my review!
Mm, not sure about being heroic in my work – will have to go away and think about that one!

Reply
litlove link
9/1/2015 07:27:21 am

This sounds rather delightful! I absolutely long to be a Superwoman (which, given my chronic fatigue is especially futile!) and could certainly relate. I'll look out for this one.

Reply
Annecdotist
9/1/2015 08:39:41 am

I think one of the nice things about Shelley Harris's hero is that she is such an ordinary woman and not even all that good at self defence (although she does take lessons) so quite easy to identify with.

Reply
Paula link
10/1/2015 12:54:23 pm

It does sound like an interesting book; I look foward to finding out whether it's been released here. You've also made me aware of an excerpt from a longer story about my grandmother that might make a good blog post. Frittering my time away online? Nah....gathering ideas.

Reply
Annecdotist
11/1/2015 06:18:08 am

Looking forward to your grandmother's story, I think it's great how we get ideas from each others blogs.
Apparently, Vigilante isn't yet out in print in the US but it is available on Kindle if that's any use for you?

Reply
geofff link
11/1/2015 02:15:34 pm

Bit late to the party, Anne but love the comments. It made me realise that, in my own little life the heroes I've known, in the sense of those who really struggled and sacrificed themselves and were real role models were nearly all women. The men, well, some were valiant and brave but often led by their egos rather than by a sense of personal sacrifice; more about the glory. My mother and maternal grandmother top the list, but my first legal boss too in her way. Hadn't thought about that before

Reply
Annecdotist
12/1/2015 02:41:40 am

That's lovely, Geoff, you are a true feminist and thereby a hero yourself in recognising women's worth.
and thanks for coming, never too late to join this party, whether in fancy dress or otherwise.

Reply



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