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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

Bending the truth: Inland & Liar

22/10/2019

3 Comments

 
Only in court are we required to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. In our ordinary lives, we stretch, bend and turn it inside out. Not always intentionally, or even consciously, but simply to smooth human interactions and present the best version of ourselves. In the first of these two novels, a Wild-West outlaw needs to create an alter ego to survive, while a frontiers woman needs to revise the details of a family tragedy in order to live with herself. In the second, a lie gives a teenage girl a reprieve from loneliness, and an elderly woman a chance to be heard.

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Inland by Téa Obreht

If truth is stranger than fiction, a strange truth that lends itself to fiction is a gift to authors and readers. In the follow-up to her Orange-prize-winning debut, Téa Obreht has fictionalised a little-known twist to the foundation myth of the Wild West: the short-lived experiment introducing camels to the US Army as beasts of burden.
 
Lurie, like his creator, comes to America from the Balkans as a child. Unlike his creator, hopefully, circumstances force him into a life of crime. A wanted man while still young, he takes refuge in the US Camel Corps, passing as a Turk. Initially repulsed, his camel becomes his soulmate, his ally and friend.
 
Accompanying him on his travels are the ghosts of his early companions, including the acquisitive younger boy who urges him to steal. Of course, that brings further trouble, but the memories seemingly lodged in his water pouch prove a source of comfort.
 
Nora, an Arizona frontier woman whose story dominates a second strand, would have no patience for the outlaw’s hauntings, but she’d understand his thirst. Her husband’s return from an expedition to collect water has been delayed and she hasn’t had a drink all day. Her elder sons, tasked with keeping the newspaper going in his absence, believe their father has been murdered and have gone missing too.
 
Back at the homestead, Nora continually finds fault with Josie, an orphaned relative who helps around the house. Most galling is the way the girl has fed the fears of Nora’s youngest son with stories of the mysterious beast prowling the edges of their land. Although Nora herself communes with the spirit of her first child and only daughter, who died of heatstroke at only five months, she dismisses Josie’s claim to hear the voices of the “other living”, whom most would call the dead.
 
Beautiful language and vivid descriptions, along with a wonderful capacity for storytelling, make this novel a pleasure from beginning to end, even for someone as intolerant of the spiritual side as me. Thanks to Weidenfeld & Nicolson for my review copy.


Liar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen translated
by Sondra Silverston

Summer is almost over, but it hasn’t provided Nofar with the much-needed ticket to teenage popularity. Instead, when a bunch of students from her school turn up at the ice cream parlour where she’s working, most don’t even know her name. But why should that surprise her? For most of her life, or at least since her sister Maya was born, she’s been overlooked by someone prettier, cleverer or more charming.
 
When a customer insults her, it feels like the last straw. But, almost immediately, people are viewing her with a mixture of concern, and admiration for calling him out. Suddenly, everyone’s interested, from her schoolmates to the media. And then there’s Lavi, the nerdy boy who steps into the gap between what actually happened and what the police and press believe.
 
While this is an entertaining and thought-provoking story, the mismatch of playful tone and serious topic, especially given the ongoing conversation around #metoo , make the novel difficult to place. Perhaps the publishers felt so too since a minor plot concerning a Holocaust survivor, which doesn’t raise its head until over halfway through, is flagged as more central in the blurb. Suffice to say that Nofar isn’t the only liar, and that the consequences aren’t always bad.
 
In the ending, there’s a nod to novelists as a breed of liars, as Nofar is encouraged to pick up her notebook and pen. But, for me, the old woman, Raymonde, is more like a writer: in borrowing her friend’s identity as a Holocaust survivor, she is able to speak honestly about her own trauma in a different setting. Sometimes our stories can’t be heard unless we can bend the truth into a shape our audience is open to receive.
 
The Israeli author’s previous novel, Waking Lions, although vastly different in tone, is also about covering up a lie. But in Liar, the themes of young love and sibling rivalry are equally prominent, as well as the drama of being sweet seventeen. Thanks to Pushkin Press for my review copy.
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My debut novel, Sugar and Snails, is about a woman who has kept her past identity secret for thirty years, afraid she’ll lose everything if it ever gets out. But living a lie distances her from other people, denying her the love and support she’s always craved. Will she find the courage to be more open? Will the world stop turning if she does?


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.
3 Comments
Norah Colvin
23/10/2019 12:06:19 pm

Hi Anne, I didn't quite get the connection between the two stories in Inland, but your reviews make both these stories sound quite interesting. Placing your novel Sugar and Snails alongside them makes sense for the secret it holds, but perhaps Underneath could also find a place with them.
This comment "Sometimes our stories can’t be heard unless we can bend the truth into a shape our audience is open to receive." gave me pause. Sometimes we need to do so in order to be open to sharing also.

Reply
Anne
23/10/2019 05:20:52 pm

The characters don’t connect until near the end and I wasn’t sure what to say about that so left it out!
You’re right, Underneath also involves some deception – actually quite a lot of deception – so thanks for pointing that out.
Also true that we sometimes have to bend the truth in order to be able to share it – sometimes consciously, sometimes not – perhaps a dance back and forth between speaker and audience.

Reply
Norah Colvin
29/10/2019 10:57:10 am

Life is a dance, sometimes with ourselves as both speaker and audience. :)


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