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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

Beyond the sum of their parts?

26/12/2016

6 Comments

 
Every novel is comprised of different parts that writers, readers and reviewers hope will combine into a satisfying whole. My last two reviews of 2016 – before I reveal my favourites of the year – are of novels for which finding that coherence is a particular challenge, but extremely worthwhile if achieved. Both published this summer, neither seems to have attracted many reviews on Goodreads, but I’m impressed with both (albeit one more than the other) so I hope you’ll at least give my reviews a chance.

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A child in Dublin who wants a dress for her first communion; an English woman recalls how her brother refashioned hers. But both have bigger concerns: while Georgie’s mother is dying of cancer and her father becoming increasingly disengaged, Georgie struggles with her gender identity and with peers both real and imaginary, and their confusing expectations and demands. Lotte, recruited as an informal childminder, is on the run from her own painful childhood, and her memories of her abusive stepfather and her beloved twin. Their stories resume in two distinct but intertwining contemporary strands: Georgia, her body now feminised through surgery, records an extended message to her estranged father as she spends St Patrick’s Day alone, trying to avoid dwelling on her own cancer scare; Lotte’s mother is filmed for a documentary on the abuse of Sudeten German women in the wild days following the end of the Second World War.

This hefty book of almost 500 pages of small print is fat with fascinating stories and beautiful prose, but it does require some effort from the reader if she is to partake of all that’s on offer and especially if she is to grasp the full force of the links between them all. Not a fan of the post-modern, I chose to skip the sections inviting me to take a tour of the virtual cabinet of curiosities exploring the lost homeland of the title across the centuries, and read it as a more conventional novel told across different timelines and different points of view. Although I might have missed out on some of its deeper meanings, I enjoyed the beautiful pictures the author painted, especially in the focus on Georgie’s childhood and gender identity struggles. It’s a novel about identity and the processing of trauma, big and small, my first from Irish publisher New Island who kindly provided my review copy.
 
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One January night, a fire starts deep in the bowels of a large old house divided into flats rented to an assortment reclusive individuals. The landlord is the only one awake at the time, but he’s up on the roof, stargazing, and attributes the odd smell to the malfunctioning of the ancient projector through which he’s been spooling through the memories of his life. Inserted between the landlord’s tale which bookends this intriguing and clever novel, are separate stories of his six tenants who, before succumbing to the flames, revisit their pasts at a point of personal and/or professional crisis.

I changed my mind about this novel several times in the course of my reading. Initially, the frame evoked Chaucer’s pilgrims, although their landlord is a different character. I then wondered if it were a flimsy device to brand what was really short story collection as a novel. But as I discovered the connections, large and small, between the narratives, I became excited. From minor details – rotting fruit; long, high-veined hands; cliff paths; photographs; a beautiful, slant-eyed woman – to their personal histories – deceased or dying mothers; distant fathers; unwelcome tokens of love; living in the shadow of a favoured older sibling – the lives of these six men and one woman, all
named Steven or one of its derivatives, were clearly connected, but why?

The epigraph, from psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips, points to “phantom histories … that … linger on as thwarted possibilities”, while the third narrator, a neurosurgeon, flags up that the “impression of a coherent self … is an illusion” emerging from “a babble of competing soliloquies in our neural channels” (p142). While I’m comfortable with the latter (see also
The Voices Within), the logic of the former, that these were all alternative possibilities of a single life felt as if the ground were crumbling beneath my feet, as I longed for some sense of a single “true” story among them, perhaps the author’s own, even if it could not be told.

But Night of Fire proved more thought-provoking than fictional explorations of alternative histories I’ve come across (e.g.
My Real Children; The Versions of Us; The End of Days), and I regained my footing as the novel’s themes – memory, different forms of knowledge and belief in the divine – became more defined. Another psychoanalytic idea, referred to tangentially by the neurosurgeon, is of a house as the psyche, rendering the characters different aspects, as opposed to versions, of the self. Underlining that, a Buddhist monk tells one Steven, a lifelong traveller – and, incidentally, the author is a renowned travel writer – “life is a burning house” (p353). It seems to me, then, it’s a novel about the big questions: how do we capture or conceptualise our own or another’s being? What is truth and do we even exist? As Steve, a photographer who creates a whole new name and identity to woo a woman, says when he’s unmasked: “Because I created it, it seemed to happen.” (p267) Many writers will identify with that.

Although I steer away from the superficial in my reading, I don’t look for too much of an intellectual challenge. But this manages to be profound without
bamboozling; I’m not even sure I understood it completely (and I certainly didn’t get all the references across the different stories), but I enjoyed it and am left in awe of the author’s mind. Thanks Chatto & Windus for my review copy.

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Once again, I’m joining in the Carrot Ranch Flash Fiction Challenge; this time it’s to write a 99-word story
that steps beyond. I composed my contribution, recording it on my phone on my solitary walk on Christmas morning, counting syllables on my fingers (I’m currently obsessed with iambic pentameters, despite being tone deaf for poetry):


Beyond, she learned to save the only one she could: herself

Each year she pushed a little more to meet the magic she’d been told was there for all
It teased her like a dancing butterfly she could not capture in her tiny net
She courted it with turkey, tinsel, bells and baubles, carols but without success
Until she turned her back on mock constraints to shape a Yuletide worthy of her truth
Beyond illusion, rule or etiquette she found the sparkle hitherto denied
Within herself; she’d be her own messiah sent to save the only one she could.


Absorbed in a third draft of my current WIP, with the working title Closure, I’d expected to find the focus for my flash in the beyondness of things in that world. But, on reflection, my flash isn’t only about failing to conform to expectations of Christmas, but, with a nod back to Night of Fire, about living the life you’ve got rather than the one you wish you’d had. That’s a strong theme for all the point of view characters in Closure: Matty retreats into madness when life is stolen from her; Janice speculates on the life she might have had if she hadn’t been adopted; Henry’s longing for the impossible means he can’t appreciate what he has. It’s also pertinent to Diana, narrator of my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, who is eaten up with shame at not being the one she feels she ought to be. Meanwhile, Steve, the narrator of my forthcoming second novel, Underneath, goes to extremes in an attempt to hang on to what he’s already lost. And of course, as I thought in relation to the author of Night of Fire, they are all modified versions of me.

I heartily enjoyed my Christmas walk and (copying
Charli Mills) returned with (less dramatic) photos as my gift to you. The moors look better in full sun, but I was pleased it stayed dry and mild, and very excited to discover the guidestoop that I’d seen in a book but never realised was so close to one of my familiar walks.

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.
6 Comments
Charli Mills
26/12/2016 11:00:17 pm

Thank you for the Christmas day walk across the moor, Anne! The guide stoops are fascinating. I take it the hand points to a town? But what about the squabbling hands? Was that misdirection? The moors are a beautiful expanse. It must change from season to season. Do you have a favorite time of year to walk?

I'm amazed that you can construct a story (in iambic pentameter!) while you walk. I process stories in my head on walks of my own, or even while sweeping or washing dishes, but I've rarely created one, word for word.

Your flash speaks volumes to me. I put much effort into creating holiday traditions with my children that now they are grown and on their own, I have a sense of not conforming, yet uncertain how to recreate the season to be tolerable and hopefully enjoyable once again.

I'd love to further discuss how your writing process is unfolding, too! Enjoyed your review and thank you for the flash and photos!

Reply
Annecdotist
27/12/2016 11:27:03 am

The moors are at their best in late August when the heather’s out, but I like them the whole year round. Yes, the hands point to the towns, but the other stone, although it looks quite old, is fairly recent (I can’t remember but it might have been a millennium project installing companion stones for most of the guide posts with bits of poetry) and I assume referring to the fact (or myth) that some of the stones were taken down during the war and actually put back in the wrong position. Interestingly, I didn’t even check whether this one pointed the right way! I clearly preferred the romance of it to the facts.
Yeah, I often get ideas out walking, but also the odd sentence which I might lose if I don’t record it. But I don’t often bother, especially as often what I get to hear back is more wind than words, but I really needed to do that for this one. (Better words came into my head, but they didn’t match the rhythm.)
It’s amazing how much pressure there is a Christmas – both internal and external – to conform. It’s easier the fewer major attachments you have – easier for me not having kids – but still an expectation. I’ve reached a stage in my life where I’m pretty contented with my lot, and can choose to reject that pressure to enjoy, which means that I normally do. I had a lovely day on Sunday, which would even conform to some Christmas traditions (fizzy wine, the TV premiere of some film for kids), but I’m happy to say no to magic, thanks.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
27/12/2016 04:11:06 am

Thank you for your reviews of the books, and the photographic review of your walk. The moors are beautiful. I didn't get to see them while I was in England. We had thought to take a drive, but time eluded us.
While Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland sounds interesting, I won't be tackling it now with its 500 pages of tiny print. Night of Fire has much more appeal for its psychological/philosophical themes. I think I would very much enjoy being challenged by the ideas. Sounds like a great book to discuss with others, such as in a book club. The complexity and inter-relatedness of ideas seems to have been done quite well.
I like the way you have drawn our attention to similar threads in your own writing. It must be difficult for writers to not put a little bit of themselves into each of their characters.
I'm impressed by your interest in and maintenance of iambic pentameters in your flash. I like the way you have used it to further your right to choose the way you "celebrate" the Christmas season. It is great that you put "saving yourself" ahead of the recognition of a festival that holds no meaning for you. Well done.

Reply
Annecdotist
27/12/2016 04:14:55 pm

I think I tend to take the moorland for granted, but it’s a lovely habitat, although a bit of a trek from London.
I wondered about you and your interest in philosophy when reading Night of Fire – I hope you do read it and let me know what you think. It would indeed be ideal for a book group discussion.
I think there are some writers who claim not to put themselves into their characters, but that seems quite strange to me.
I’m glad you picked up on the line in my flash about saving herself. I didn’t know that was where it was going to end up, but needed another line to bring it near to the ninety-nine words. It was partly inspired by a poem that spoke a lot to me about fifteen years ago (but I’m much more selfish now) I then wanted to go back and insert another near the beginning to show my character sacrificing herself for others, but I’d had enough by then!

Reply
jan huebner link
15/3/2017 05:24:19 pm

I loved your review of Night of Fire, and you picked up on many of the same clues I did and came to the same conclusion about the book's meaning. A profound, beautifully written, haunting book.

Reply
Annecdotist
15/3/2017 05:57:08 pm

Welcome to my blog, Jan, and glad you liked the review. And now you’ve reminded me how much I also liked the novel, I feel I want to read it again.

Reply



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