Category: Ethics

Two recent debuts about women on an unplanned journey of self discovery: the first by finding a place of healing after years of trauma; the second by uncovering the truth about her parentage. Both women must travel to another part of the British Isles to find redemption; both must overcome obstacles to their understanding, to loving and being loved.

2 Comments

Schooldays: Agnes Grey & The Governesses

26/3/2019

Pity the poor governess: an educated woman obliged to earn her living finding few other options in nineteenth century Britain. But this lesser known of the Brontës’ novels led me to pity her charges too. The three governesses in the second novel are worlds away from Agnes Grey, not only because they’re in France. Although employed by the couple who own the sprawling estate, they’ve brought their charges with them, so aren’t subjected to the condescension of the mini monarchs of the house.

6 Comments

Life, death and doctoring: Memoirs of a Woman Doctor & Night Theatre

22/3/2019

Two short novels about doctoring, by authors with direct experience of the profession. The first, set in Egypt, is a semiautobiographical novel first published over half a century ago by one of the world’s most eminent feminists; the second, set in India, is a magic-realism story by a male author (but we won’t hold that against him). By sheer coincidence, neither of these authors names their characters, instead referring to them by role. (At least they don’t distinguish them by diagnoses!)

8 Comments

Growing pains: The Choke & He Is Mine and I Have No Other

20/3/2019

5 Comments

Two novels about girls in the painful process of growing up. For Australian Justine, in the first novel, adolescence merely exacerbates a lifetime of neglect; for Irish Lani, in the second, it’s the begins of psychological separation from her family as she falls for a local boy.

5 Comments

Epic novels: Equator & The Old Drift

18/3/2019

Like many words, the meaning of epic has evolved and seems to be applied to various incarnations of big. Both of these novels have been described by others (in the endorsements) as epic: the first, I think for its geographical scope (and, combined with its big brother, can be considered so in length); the second for its length and sweep of history and character.

8 Comments

Violent fathers: The Frank Business & Blood

1/3/2019

4 Comments

Two British novels about the legacy of paternal violence for adult children, although the father’s tyranny in the first isn’t apparent until later on.

4 Comments

Young idealists: Godsend & Deviation

25/2/2019

Two novels about eighteen-year-old women who abandon the advantages of their previous identities to make common cause with oppressed peoples, at great risk to themselves. In the first, set in 2000, Aden travels from a secular society in California to study Islam, and to join the jihad. In the second, set in 1944, Luce leaves her bourgeois family in Italy to experience first-hand the Nazi labour camps. Are these rebellious adolescents idealists or deluded, or a little of both?

8 Comments

More than your standard murder mystery: The Capital & Butterfly Ranch

19/2/2019

Two novels which feature murders, and the police called in to investigate, but with much more about them than that. The first is a German satire on the European Union; the second a love story set in Belize.

6 Comments

Sibling loyalties and multiple murders: My Sister The Serial Killer & The Night Tiger

17/2/2019

While the title declares the first of these novels, set in Lagos, to be about siblings and killings, it’s not immediately obvious how it applies to the second, set in Perak, Malaysia. A boy who feels guided by his dead twin, a young woman strongly attached to her stepbrother, and mysterious deaths that might be the work of a tiger: does that nail it? Read on!

6 Comments

The personal is political: Happening & Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

13/2/2019

Two books using the author’s personal experience and celebrity (although I’d heard of neither) as an entryway for exploring and publicising important socio-political issues. The first is a memoir about abortion; the second is a hard-hitting analysis of race and class discrimination. Which balance of personal-sociological do you prefer?

6 Comments

Irish debuts looking back: A River in the Trees & When All Is Said

18/1/2019

Published this month are the debut novels of two promising Irish writers, both looking back to that country’s history, through the changes wrought by time on a family home. In the first it’s a humble farmhouse and overnight refuge for freedom fighters in the War of Independence, barely inhabitable when an exile considers buying it a hundred years later. In the second it’s the grand house of the local gentry when the narrator first crosses the threshold as a ten-year-old servant, and latterly the hotel where he reviews the eighty-plus decades of his life. And if you’re wondering about the coincidence of the blue covers, why not look back on this post?

8 Comments

Nationalism satirised: Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous & Perfidious Albion

15/1/2019

4 Comments

I’ve recently been reading two satirical novels about nationalism and social media, the first set in India, the second in the UK.

4 Comments

Balancing promo, helping others and self-indulgence in an author blog

14/1/2019

Many of us do it, but what’s the point of an author blog? Is it to promote our writing, to pass on our accumulated wisdom or to indulge ourselves in a less pressurised mode of publication without worrying whether it gets read? Perhaps it’s all of these in different proportions varying according to who we are and who readers are and our priorities at different points in time. When the balance is right, blogging is highly rewarding; when it’s not it can be a frustrating chore.

6 Comments

Families in crisis: The Break & Ferocity

21/12/2018

Two novels about the antecedents and consequences within the family when one of their female members is severely injured, both drawing on multiple perspectives to tell the story. In the first, set in Canada, the women rally around when a teenage girl is assaulted; in the second, set in southern Italy, and focusing primarily on the viewpoints of the men, the violent death of a daughter/sister/wife threatens to lift the lid on a web of corruption.

2 Comments

Afterwards: Land of the Living by Georgina Harding

29/11/2018

4 Comments

Should these things be said, or not be said? If they were said in this dead time of the night, would the night take them away? As if the blackness might absorb the black and then in the morning it would be gone, but he also perhaps gone, sucked away in it.

4 Comments

Where we came from and where we are now: Homeland & Farewell, My Orange

27/11/2018

As if my head weren’t buzzing enough with the enigma of identity, I’ve recently read two translated novels exploring the gap between where the characters come from and where they ended up. In the first, a forty-something German man has given little thought to his origins across the border; in the second, two women, juggle loneliness and language difficulties as they gradually acclimatise to new lives in Australia, far from home.

2 Comments

With gratitude on launch-day and beyond

23/11/2018

14 Comments

While our American friends have been stuffing themselves with turkey, we can all take a moment to appreciate what we have. With my short story anthology published today, I’ve a lot to be thankful for, not only for the fact of being published – and read – in this difficult climate for authors, but for the support from the blogosphere in the run-up to the launch. In Monday’s post – Becoming Someone is coming to an armchair near you! – I shared the links to the first few stops on my blog tour; today I’m sharing a few more, along with a reminder of the party, where I’m putting my gratitude into action by donating to Book Aid International.

14 Comments

Bridging: Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants & Connect

13/11/2018

Excuse me for bridging such different novels, although both are about the challenge of connection, one looking to the future and the other to the past. In the first, translated from the French, a famous artist juggles the contradictions of Christian and Muslim cultures when he’s commissioned to design a bridge between two shores of a capital city. In the second, a teenage boy more comfortable in the virtual world than the human, ends up fighting for his life when he forges stronger connections between the hemispheres of his brain.

2 Comments

I’ve now chosen the charity to support through my online book launch

30/10/2018