Category: Coming Of Age

If adolescence was the invention of the baby boomers, it’s the millennials who’ve shown – along with recent(ish) research into the developing brain – that this interlude between childhood and adulthood lingers well into one’s twenties. At this stage of our lives, many of us are still experimenting with who and how to be, as these two debut novels illustrate in thoughtful and entertaining ways. The young female narrators juggle the legacy of patchy parenting; love triangles; envy and class privilege; and platonic and sexual relationships at the boundary between intimacy and privacy – and city living, one in London and the other in Dublin. Read on!

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The refugee voice: Shatila Stories & Ukelele Jam

16/6/2018

Annecdotal is marking refugee week with two new translations: a novella and novel by authors with direct experience of being a refugee. The first is an innovative collaboration between current residents of the Palestinian camp in Shatila and a London-based publisher; the second is by and about a Bosnian Muslim exiled to Croatia who later arrived in Scandinavia as a refugee.

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Disgraced daughters: Circe & The Butcher’s Daughter

15/5/2018

These two novels reimagine well-known stories from the perspective of women who find themselves banished in disgrace from their parents’ homes. The first is about a witch who features in Homer’s Odyssey; the second about a nun who proves to be a keen observer of Tudor politics. In carving out her own place in the world, each woman discovers there’s not much to envy in the upper echelons of society.

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After art school: The Chalk Artist & You

4/5/2018

After my last post featuring two novels about fictional teenagers going missing in the Peak District, the link between these reviews is more tenuous. While both feature men who have found a salaried position after art school – the first going into the gaming industry without completing his degree; the second joining the ranks of fictional therapists as a rare art therapist – these novels seem quite different. Yet both also feature obsession: the first with the alternate reality of computer games; the second with an estranged daughter. See what you think.

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Two novel types of depraved love of fathers for their daughters and sons

5/12/2017

I recently featured four novels depicting the impact on children of a father’s absence. These two debut novels present the other side of the story: the terrible harm that a father’s presence can do. In both, the fathers control their children’s minds and bodies through violence and a perverted kind of love. Although fiction, each reflects the darker side of society today.

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Women taking stock: Mirror, Shoulder, Signal & Making Space

23/11/2017

The common theme in these two recently published novels is a woman experiencing an existential crisis, taking stock of where she’s got to in life by ordering the elements that make up her external world. Sonja, the older of the two, does this through taking driving lessons, and it’s no coincidence that she struggles to take control. Miriam, past adolescence although not yet fully fledged adult, tries to achieve something similar by jettisoning her surplus possessions, and through those of a compulsive hoarder she’s employed to help. Needless to say, neither woman’s path to a more comfortable accommodation with herself is straightforward. Curious? Read on!

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Two mysteries against a backdrop of rampage and riot

11/11/2017

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These two novels are worlds apart in terms of style and genre, but both involve mysterious deaths set against real-life moments of rampage and riot in England during recent hot summers. In the first, a lone gunman on the rampage in 2010 Cumbria is integral to the story. In the second, the 2011 London riots provide the perfect backdrop for a domestic noir thriller.

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Alienation in contemporary England: Missing Fay & Jihadi Jane

24/10/2017

Has my country always been this conflicted, or is the second decade of the twenty-first century a particularly sour time for England? Can fiction help us understand our current disaffected state? If so, these two very different novels – the first a gentle exploration of fear of difference among the largely white population; the second addressing the attractions of Islamic State to young people of South Asian descent, and its more violent repercussions – might help.

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The Visitors by Catherine Burns #blogtour #giveaway

15/10/2017

Middle-aged siblings, Marion and John Zetland, rattle around the crumbling Georgian townhouse that has been their home since childhood. Timid and childlike, Marion has never had a job, and her more educated brother hasn’t worked since being dismissed from his teaching post at a boarding school twenty years before. She spends her time with her large collection of cuddly toys, dozing in front of the TV and heating the tinned food on which they subsist. John occupies himself with making model aeroplanes and attending to the visitors in the cellar, an unpleasant part of life which Marion does her best to ignore. Who is she to judge whether it’s right or not? John has always known better than her and, as the reader discovers as the story unfolds, her parents, teachers and schoolmates were never any help in teaching her how to be a person.

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Two fictional young Americans wondering what it’s all about

6/10/2017

If we leave home at eighteen, it’s often to a particular kind of institution. For me, as for Selin in The Idiot, that means university; for Billy Lynn, as for many young working-class adults who are less academically inclined, it’s the military. While, as Selin discovers, universities encourage questioning, not all questions are received with equal relish. On the other hand, as Billy learns, the army might discourage independent thought, it can’t prevent his wondering. Will these young people find the answers they’re looking for? Read on!

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Two novels and a memoir about caring for babies

24/9/2017

As far as I’m concerned, the welfare of babies and young children is a collective responsibility, so I offer no apologies for linking these three books. The first is a historical novel that begins with a fascinating account of the experience of a wet nurse in nineteenth century Spain, before moving on to the adult lives of the princess who had first turn at the breast and her milk brother, the woman’s own baby. The second is a contemporary novel set a century later, about a young American woman working as a nanny to a Japanese toddler. Both novels show the strength of attachment we can have to other people’s offspring. The third book is an uncompromising and moving memoir about a young Englishwoman who becomes pregnant as a student and decides to keep the child. Finally, because a baby is a kind of harvest of the womb, we finish with this week’s flash.

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Two novels featuring supernatural rescues

9/9/2017

Apart from featuring supernatural rescues, these two novels have very little in common. But since I rarely read anything that takes me away from the rational, that’s enough to pair them in a post. While in A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars the spirits of the drowned migrants – plus a magic flute and a clutch of snakes – are firmly on the side of the good guys, the miracle cure in Fever Dream has a be-careful-what-you-wish-for flavour. Intrigued? Read on!

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Two novel perspectives on childhood friendship lost

6/9/2017

After reading The Things We Thought We Knew shortly before its publication back in June, I decided to hang back for another novel on psychosomatic illness or acquired disability with which to pair my review. But picking up The Burning Girl more recently, I was struck by the commonalities between these two novels, not only in the obvious sense of a girl in her late teens looking back on an intense friendship, but in the depth of disturbance resulting from its loss. As happened when I coupled two novels on male infidelity, discovering the similarities enhanced my appreciation of both. While neither pairing uncovered themes of particular personal relevance for me (which can enhance my enjoyment), the fact that they matter sufficiently for more than one author persuades me that other readers might find more to savour. Do let me know if that applies to you!

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Two historical novels about love and land appropriation in Scotland and Australia

3/9/2017

With my shameful disregard for non-fiction, I glean many of my facts from fiction. So I was delighted to receive advance copies of two debut novels published this month that I hoped would extend my knowledge of shameful periods of Australian and Scottish history that still resonate to this day. Lucy Treloar and Mhairead McLeod have woven engaging stories around historical facts of land appropriation in the 19th century. Although my reviews focus more on the psychological aspects, these novels clearly articulate the socio-political context of the European colonisation of Australia in Salt Creek and the Highland Clearances in The False Men.

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Two novel takes on family secrets and vulnerability

14/8/2017

I didn’t expect to pair these two novels. I’d already begun reading another Second World War novel to accompany The Sixteen Trees of the Somme, and The Angel in The Stone was going to wait for another novel on mental health. But the latter seemed a good fit for the latest flash fiction challenge and, as I’ve mentioned recently, it’s fun to find unexpected links. Both these novels feature families across three generations; address conflict between brothers; are wholly or partly set in Scotland; and showcase the characters’ musical tastes. Both fictional families have hidden some of their history from the younger generation in a manner that makes life just that little bit harder. Read on, and see what you think.

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

24/7/2017

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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Four Fictional Absent Fathers

17/6/2017

In a companion essay to her novella, Her Father’s Daughter, author Marie Sizun asks:

What is a father? That’s the real question. A father – even if he’s imperfect or absent – is a mythical, irreplaceable ﬁgure, especially for a girl. If he’s not there during her childhood, she’s likely to spend a long time drifting in vain in search of him.

Having deprived the male narrator of my second novel, Underneath, of a father, I would argue that the gap is equally damaging for a boy, as outlined in my recent guest post The impact of the absent father in Underneath.

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Blame by Paul Read

28/4/2017

Lucas is slightly inebriated when he calls in at a funeral parlour to discuss the disposal of his father’s remains. His intoxication might account for his making a pass at the mortician when it’s Mariana, the IT expert at the pharmaceutical company where he works as a researcher, he’s most keen to impress. But it’s hard to engage in romantic pursuits when everyone thinks he should be grieving. And so he is, although not for his father’s passing but for the terrible event he witnessed in the summer of 1989 that tore his family apart.

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Two new novels about the lives of Nigerian women

1/4/2017

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Both these novels are about Nigerian women and their relationships with their culture, politics, their children and their men.

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A necessary nip of narcissism?

26/3/2017

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It had been a great night at the Polari salon in Nottingham, and the audience was waiting for the final performer to take the stage, when a woman bounded from the back of the room. Scowl framed by the hood of her black anorak, and ignoring the compere’s insistence that she wasn’t on the programme, Barbara Brownskirt barked out a series of poems from her numerous unpublished collections about, among other things, her unrequited love for Judi Dench. She was scary. She was hilarious. She was – and still is – the unsuccessful lesbian Poet-in-Residence at the 197 bus stop, Penge, and the brilliant creation of writer and performer Karen McLeod.

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Coming-of-age translated: Echoland & Swallowing Mercury

23/3/2017

Today I’m sharing two short reviews of short translated novels about coming-of-age in Europe at the end of the last century.

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Family dynamics: Swimming Lessons & Our Magic Hour

26/1/2017

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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Guapa & Shylock Is My Name

22/12/2016

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This post, my last before Christmas, features two novels about men with marginalised identities. Read on and see if either takes your fancy for your holiday reading.

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Fictionalising the famous: de Beauvoir & Freud

9/12/2016