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Fatherless boys: Little Boy Lost & My Grandmother’s Braid

12/3/2021

10 Comments

 
I’ve been reading about fictional male vulnerability in this contemporary translation and this classic from seven decades ago. In the latter, a man has lost his infant son in Nazi-occupied France. Although he’s had an easier war in England, he’s almost as lost as the child. In the other, a family flees poverty in Russia, ostensibly in the hope of better health care for an orphaned boy. But perhaps it’s not him, but his grandparents, who need help most.

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London friends: A Net for Small Fishes & Open Water

3/2/2021

2 Comments

 
What’s the impact of inequality and injustice on friendship? These two London-set novels might go some way to helping us understand. In the first, two women unite to claim a degree of personhood and agency within the culture of misogyny in the court of James I; in the second, a young Black man struggles to maintain a loving relationship within a contemporary climate of institutional racism.

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Sex and the consulting room: Lying on the Couch & Portnoy’s Complaint

26/12/2020

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Two novels featuring sex and psychotherapy: can you guess which one I couldn’t finish? The other is both entertaining and educational, so put your feet up and read on.

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Twins groomed for jihad: Home Fire & The Orange Grove

12/12/2020

4 Comments

 
A novel and a novella featuring twins pulled apart when one is targeted to be a pawn in a war they don’t fully understand: in the first, nineteen-year-old Londoners; in the second, boys in an unnamed Arab country brainwashed into self-sacrifice at only nine.


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Avocado on toast, anyone?

17/11/2020

8 Comments

 
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I don't recall when I first tasted avocado. It might have been as a starter in the kind of restaurant that thinks it's sophisticated to use the term hors d'oeuvre. For a while, I regularly added a pack to my supermarket trolley until the millennials got a taste for avocado on toast. Although I don't object to being on trend occasionally, it makes it hard to eat ethically where we have to import them: I don't want to be responsible for the loss of rainforests to get my fix.

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What are you reading for Black History Month?

6/10/2020

6 Comments

 
Black History Month comes after a summer of confronting the legacy of white interference in black history. Painful for many, from my safe distance the toppling of the statue of the flavour in Bristol has been a beacon of hope in a crazy year. It’s even altered the course of my WIP. But will we learn anything? Will we take the lessons of 2020 into the rest of the decade? Will reading – fiction and non-fiction – keep these issues where they need to be, at the forefront of our minds?


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12 recommended reads for World Refugee Day

20/6/2020

8 Comments

 
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Twenty people a minute abandon their homes to escape war, persecution or terror. The United Nations has designated June 20 as World Refugee Day in solidarity with refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, stateless persons and returnees. The global pandemic means they need our support more than ever; having made my donation, I’m ready to share some fiction books you might like to read. All were published within the last ten years and are loosely arranged in historical order of the story setting, beginning with two set in the Second World War and ending with two which are timeless. I’ve limited myself to twelve, but could have chosen more. I hope you find something here to tempt you.

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Coming-of-age novels with a difference: Abigail & The Wysman

18/6/2020

4 Comments

 
The young protagonists of these two novels are worlds apart in time, geography and social class and expectations. The first is a Hungarian translation about a girl sent to an elite boarding school during the Second World War; the second is a fantasy about a street kid trying to rise above his physical and social disadvantages. Both feature endearing teenagers grappling courageously with injustice and, in the process, learning about themselves.

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Racism, entitlement and political protest in the age of covid

12/6/2020

10 Comments

 
Recently I was first-world-problems moaning about the deluge of emails from individuals and organisations offering to fill my apparently endless lockdown free time. Now it’s people shouting their condemnation of the murder of George Floyd and either flaunting their antiracist credentials or vowing to do better. My immediate reaction was: does it need to be said? On the one hand, if you’re sitting in my inbox, abhorrence should be your default setting. On the other, white people’s silence could be taken as support for the status quo.

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Lockdown dis-easing and risk assessment, personal and political

5/6/2020

6 Comments

 
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Arrive late, leave early! Excellent advice for fiction writers pruning the unnecessaries from our scenes. Equally useful for introverts who quickly tire of socialising. But for a public health initiative in a pandemic? The UK is showing the world how not to do lockdown, introducing it too late and loosening the restrictions too early. Could it be that the occupant of number 10, having achieved his ambition of becoming prime minister has been using his undoubted spare time to brush up his skills in creative writing? Could it be that covid-brain has mangled his already
muddled pathways so that he’s imposed a strategy for achieving his next unlikely ambition – if a man of his talents can “lead” first a capital city, then a country, why not go for the Booker Prize? – upon the one of which he’s tired?

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Shadowed by violence: The Revolt & The Disaster Tourist

14/5/2020

4 Comments

 
Strange bedfellows these two translations: the first an historical novel from France; the second a contemporary slipstream novel from South Korea. My excuse for linking them is an issue that was on my mind the day I finished the first and started the second, thanks to a non-fiction book I had ordered. Although women being blamed for sexual abuse and harassment is only a minor issue in these novels, it’s so important I make no apology for ushering it into the limelight.


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In which Anne disappears down the rabbit hole

11/5/2020

13 Comments

 
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Image by Prawny from Pixabay
At 15.55 one Sunday in mid-April, Anne decided to go stark raving bonkers. Of course she was conscious of the contradiction: madness that’s chosen, isn’t madness at all. Nevertheless, she was earnest in her objective, if unclear how it would be achieved. She even made a note to that effect on the information sheet for the novel she’d just been reading. The novel about depression with rabbits in the title that had just made her laugh out loud.

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Moral issues: The Strange Adventures of H & Upturned Earth

6/5/2020

4 Comments

 
I’ve recently read two historical novels about morality with surprising echoes of our current pandemic. The first is a fun story set in 17th-century London about a young woman concerned about losing the respect of her relatives when she turns to prostitution after becoming homeless during the Great Plague. The second is set in a copper mining community in 1850s South Africa, where lives are lost because the owners put profit before people.


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Darkness brought to light: The Sin Eater & Soot

15/4/2020

6 Comments

 
I’ve recently read two alternative histories about what we do with the darker or unwanted parts of ourselves: how we reveal them to, or hide them from, ourselves and others; how societies develop rituals to manage the exposure and cleansing; how power effects what’s allowed. If that sounds overly intellectual, don’t worry; both of these have story at the heart.

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Silver linings: 9 good things about the coronavirus pandemic

20/3/2020

14 Comments

 

These are strange times, scary times, depressing times. If the virus doesn’t get us physically, we’ll be hurt psychologically through anxiety, grief for lost loved ones and the claustrophobia of social isolation. It will harm us economically and socially too. But there are silver linings and, although they might not balance the negatives, these potential benefits are real.

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Survival skills for wintry weather: The Year without Summer & Snow, Dog, Foot

14/2/2020

4 Comments

 
These two recent reads explore physical and psychological survival, or otherwise, in extreme weather conditions. The first is a historical novel about the devastating human, climactic and economic consequences of a volcanic eruption in Indonesia. The second is a translated novella about vulnerable hermit overwintering in the Italian Alps. If you choose to read either of these, you won’t be disappointed.

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Short stories: Protest & The Best of Fiction on the Web

14/1/2020

10 Comments

 
Having begun the year’s reviews with a Kindle catch-up, including a couple of single-author collections, my attention was drawn to another couple of multi-author short-story anthologies waiting on my physical shelf. I don’t know why I’d neglected them. Perhaps because anthologies are harder than novels to review? Whatever reason, I’ve finally read them. Enjoyed them. And now I’m here to tell you why.
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Bicultural: The Topeka School & The God Child

22/12/2019

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Amid the painful aftermath of the UK ‘people’ voting in our pig in a poke, I had reason to remind myself of the literature on the cognitive advantages biculturalism. While I doubt our new PM possesses the skills or intellect to unite an increasingly polarised country – or even the desire, whatever might spout from his mouth – it’s essential if we’re to avoid civil war as we helter-skelter into economic and climactic ruin. So, although neither of these very disparate novels is primarily about straddling two cultures, I make no apologies for linking them via this theme.

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Intergenerational dependence: Akin & The Last Children of Tokyo

10/12/2019

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In both these novels, the first set in contemporary New York and Nice and the second in a hypothetical future Tokyo, an older man is looking after a young relative in less than ideal circumstances. In different ways, they illustrate generational interdependence and how the past actions, or inactions, of the older generation have brought about some of the difficulties experienced by the young.

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Can you crack Christmas or does Christmas crack you?

9/12/2019

14 Comments

 

Hark! Is that the jingle of an overladen shopping trolley or the bells on Santa’s sleigh? Is that the screech of a fractious parent or a chorus of preschoolers singing “Away in a Manger” out of tune? Yes, Christmas is out to get you, whether you dread it or welcome it with open arms. To help you prepare yourself for the onslaught, I’ve identified four different Christmas personality types; which one are you?

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Is this where self-interest is leading us? Zed & The Divers’ Game

3/12/2019

2 Comments

 
How far should we go to maintain order? Are the winners responsible for the wellbeing of those who’ve drawn the short straw? I’ve recently read two quirky novels in which character is secondary to situation, exploring dystopian societies with elements uncomfortably mirroring our own. The first focuses on tech infiltration of the political and personal; the second on the violence inherent in safeguarding resources for ourselves.

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8 more fictional toilets: inequalities and cultural differences #WorldToiletDay #amreading

19/11/2019

9 Comments

 
World Toilet Day on November 19th is an opportunity for those of us fortunate enough to have safe, clean and accessible toilets to put aside our prudishness and acknowledge our gratitude and to support the 4.2 billion people worldwide don’t have this luxury. Apart from last year, when I was wrapped up in preparing for the launch of my short story collection (although even then I gave it a mention), I’ve tried to raise awareness with a relevant post every year since I started blogging in 2013. Since 2016, I’ve been celebrating the novels I’ve read which in some way remind us of our dependence on toilets. Today I’m adding 8 more, bringing my grand total to 18.
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Women behind and before the camera: Delayed Rays of a Star & The Girl with the Leica

15/11/2019

10 Comments

 
Here we have two recently published novels about women caught on camera, or doing the catching, casting a wide-angle lens on the turbulent politics of the first half of the twentieth century, with Fascism on the rise. The first zooms in on movie stars and/or makers: Anna May Wong, Leni Riefenstahl, and Marlene Dietrich. The second on Gerda Taro, a lesser-known (at least to me) feminist photojournalist, who died documenting the Spanish Civil War.

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Reconnecting with figures from childhood: The Far Field & A Small Silence

4/11/2019

2 Comments

 
My first post of the month features a couple of debut novels in which young women seek to reconnect with a man who had a major influence on their childhood. Both men are – intentionally or accidentally – involved in local politics, but the personal is equally vital to the women. In the first, set in India, it’s a friendship forged by her mother in defiance of class and convention; in the second, set in Nigeria, it’s the courage and compassion to advocate for the underdog. The orange hue on the covers is pure coincidence; likewise that both authors’ surnames begin with V!

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Teenagers trapped in houses of no hope: How We Disappeared & The Nickel Boys

30/9/2019

9 Comments

 
Two historical novels in which young people are subject to brutal institutional regimes: in the first as comfort women in Singapore under the Japanese invasion; in the second as supposed offenders in Jim-Crow-era Florida. Both novels contrast the main character’s aspirations prior to captivity with their struggle to survive unspeakable cruelties with their sanity intact, and the scars they carry for the rest of their lives. Thankfully, for the reader who can vicariously accompany them, there’s some hope of redemption by the end. Read on, or jump to the end of the post for this week’s 99-word story.

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    Short stories on the theme of identity Published 2018
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    Annecdotal is where real life brushes up against the fictional.  
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    Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin: 
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    slug-slayer, tramper of moors, 
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    My second novel published May 2017.
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