Blog Archives

Do spoilers spoil? The impact of personality style on narrative selection and enjoyment

30/1/2017

Having written a novel with a secret at the heart, I’ve been touched by the care taken by reviewers to avoid divulging the truth behind my character Diana’s façade. In fact, I’m aware of only one review with a spoiler, and that was posted with my approval on the valid assumption/aspiration it might attract readers interested in the novel’s gender theme. But, even if bloggers were less conscientious, I wasn't worried, as research suggested that spoilers don’t spoil, and might even enhance the reading experience. However, when I blogged about this some time ago, my fellow booklovers didn’t seem convinced. Now that new evidence has come to light, it seems that they were right and I shouldn’t have been so complacent.

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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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What’s marriage, anyway? Wait For Me, Jack blog tour

20/1/2017

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Blinded by the sun as they walked slowly back to the car, they leaned towards each other. They felt wrong together, mismatched, a mistake taken too far. But from a short distance they looked like many couples did to outsiders – exclusive, close. From a greater distance, they looked like a single person.

Jack and Milly’s marriage is like the weather, with sun either too fierce or blocked by clouds. They inhabit a climate with myriad variations of hot and cold, seeming different from the inside than from outside, from morning or evening, when filtered through a prism of the promise of happiness or resignation to “for better or worse”.

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Land and sea survival: Beast & Cove

18/1/2017

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I’m sharing my thoughts on two short books from independent publishers, in which a lone man, estranged from himself and the community he’s come from, has to fight for survival after being injured in a storm, the first on land and the other at sea.

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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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A great #amreading start to 2017: The Golden Legend & Homegoing

5/1/2017

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My first two reads of 2017 are linked by one of last year’s favourites: like The Underground Railroad, The Golden Legend is about outsiders on the run, while Homegoing explores the before, after and meanwhile of the slave trade between Africa and America. Both novels also reference the role of literature in challenging partial accounts of the lives of the powerless.