Blog Archives

What constitutes a holiday read?

30/7/2017

Now that I rarely go away, I tend to forget that normal people go on holiday in the summer. Now that I read well over 100 novels a year, I also forget that holidays are when most people pick up a book or e-reader. But at this time of year I can’t help noticing that both the broadsheet weekend supplements and the blogosphere abound with holiday reading recommendations, which got me wondering what constitutes a holiday read?

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Two novel views of disillusionment within South African healthcare

27/7/2017

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Two authors with their own lived experience of the challenges of working in South African health care. Two fictional healthcare professionals forced to confront their own privilege within the system and the limitations of what they can achieve. One black, one white; one psychologist, one medical doctor; one in contemporary post-apartheid, one in an imagined dystopia in which it never ends. Two political novels; two engaging reads. Let me know which of them takes your fancy.

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Stronger Than Skin & Siren: Youth’s Scandalous Secrets Brought to Light

24/7/2017

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Should mistakes made in adolescence be allowed to blight a life? Both having spent over two decades safeguarding their own secrets, the protagonists of these two novels would hope not. While both Mark and Sheen’s mistakes have had serious consequences, they’d argue they were seduced into situations they were too young or too blinkered to understand. But now their pasts are catching up with them: Mark’s because his former lover has confessed to murder; Sheen’s because the man who stole her future refuses to face the truth. Can they confront their own responsibility without losing everything they’ve gained? And how did these students get embroiled in such a mess?

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A writer’s audit of desk time

21/7/2017

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While our creativity might be without bounds, our time available to deploy it is limited. With so many potential distractions, it’s inevitable that we might wonder whether we’re using that time efficiently. Too many days leaving my desk feeling tired but unsatisfied, I decided to monitor how I was apportioning my time. Read on to see how I did it, what I learnt and how you can help me decide what to do next.

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Three novels about people whose brains work differently

18/7/2017

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Okay, perhaps not the most elegant title to sum up the common thread between these three debut novels from small and innovative independent publishers. But they’re all, in very different ways, about life with a brain or mind that functions a little differently from average. In the first, we meet an elderly voice hearer on a mission to bring hope to his granddaughter. In the second, a retired teacher with dementia is convinced a former pupil can save him from the persecutory antics of his deceased father. The third takes the reader even further into the realms of fantasy as a teenager with unexplained blackouts is drawn into a world she thought existed only in her dreams.

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Two novels about a passion for vinyl

14/7/2017

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The digital revolution has massively changed the way we listen to music, yet vinyl has been revitalised in some quarters in recent years. Perhaps it’s no surprise that contemporary novelists should review their record collections in search of new ways of exploring the human condition. But two published within three months of each other? That’s quite a coincidence. Read on to see how these established British authors have addressed the topic in very different ways.

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Two novel encounters with foxes

11/7/2017

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What’s special about the fox? What do we project into these beautiful, furtive and sometimes highly disruptive creatures? Two impressive debut novels depicting an individual in crisis locking eyes with a fox might go some way towards answering these questions – and other enigmas of the human condition. The first, in which the fox takes centre stage, takes place in an urban setting; the second, where the fox is only one of several animals encountered, is in a rural context. Although I have less to say about the second, I can heartily recommend both.

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What life is actually like: In Extremis by Tim Parks

8/7/2017

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[T]his is what life is actually like. Your mother is going through every kind of hell, in excruciating pain, not knowing what bed she will die in, your sister sounds relaxed and jokey, and you are thinking of your old friend Dave and the precariously double life he always led.

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How a one-star review is a gift to people pleasers

5/7/2017

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After being turned down by multiple publishers and agents, I was pleasantly surprised at how well my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was received, even going on to be shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. But you can’t take anything for granted in this business. Two years later, my second novel, Underneath, brought me, on the eve of publication, my first one-star review on Goodreads (and a little later on Amazon). Ouch! Someone has looked at my baby, declared it ugly and wants the world to know.

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When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy

2/7/2017

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I must remember that the responsibility of the female body belongs to me, and that I must not move or walk in such a fashion that makes others feel it is an object of allurement and enjoyment (although I should respectfully tolerate the gropes, the whistles, the hissed invitations); I must learn that a Communist woman is treated equally and respectfully by comrades in public but can be slapped and called a whore behind closed doors. This is dialectics.

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