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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.

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Women in translation: History. A Mess & Ada’s Realm

27/3/2023

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Two translated novels, both with a contemporary and historical element, which address the female struggle for autonomy and self-expression in a misogynistic and racist world.

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Occupied Lands: Arrested Song & Camp Zero

1/3/2023

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Let me tell you about these two novels about women’s lives in terrain under occupation by external powers. The first is a historical novel about the struggle for personal and political freedom in 20th-century Greece. The second is a futuristic dystopia about how, in the climate crisis, the wealthy lay claim to the coolest lands.
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History, humour, testimony, short stories and dystopia: there’s something for everyone in these 9 new mini reviews (and 1 mention)

29/1/2023

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Testimonies of historic inequalities rooted in racism: The Help & In the Upper Country

14/1/2023

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I’m pleased to share my thoughts on two recent reads which focus on collecting the testimonies of women wounded by policies and practices rooted in racism: the first set in the early 1960s and the second century before.
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Compassion and cruelty: Feeding Time & The Dolphin House

30/12/2022

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My final two reviews of 2022 are tenuously linked by being set in closed communities in which unempathic people hold vulnerable creatures in their power. I refer to creatures less because the staff of the nightmare care home in the first novel don’t seem to regard their charges as human and more because the inmates of the second – where the compassion of the lowliest employee almost compensates for the attitude of her senior colleagues – are dolphins.
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My 12 favourite reads of 2022

18/12/2022

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The year’s not quite over, but I’m taking a risk and committing to these as my twelve favourite reads of 2022. Scroll down for single-sentence reviews of eleven recently-published novels (a couple in translation) plus one modern classic. Not unusually for me, there’s a strong social justice theme addressing both contemporary and historical issues, including the on, LGBTQ rights in fiction, climate crisis, religion, race and culture, migration and LGBTQ rights, coupled with strong characterisation, fine writing and touches of humour. Click on the title for my full review of any that take your fancy.

Do let me know which, if any, appeal to you and what have been your favourite reads of the year.

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A woman’s place? Lessons in Chemistry & Daughters Beyond Command

6/12/2022

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These two recent reads are about challenging women’s traditional roles as homemakers in the mid twentieth century. The first focuses on the barriers facing a woman seeking a career in science in early 1960s America. The second follows the fortunes of three sisters and their mother as the times change in 1970s France.
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When and where was Britain’s first Black policeman?

30/10/2022

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I love the freedom fiction gives me to make things up, but I also enjoy the facts I discover in the course of my research. In my novella, Stolen Summers, I gave my character, Matilda, a dancing partner who attracted and intrigued her, partly because he came from a different background.

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Disturbing the peace? The Hush & The Sweetness of Water

13/10/2022

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A woman lives with her husband on a farm a short distance from a small town. There’s a distance between the partners also but they’re bound by habit and circumstance. When strangers arrive on their land, convention dictates they should chase them away. Instead, a tentative friendship develops, much to their neighbours’ disapproval and it’s not too long before violence ensues.
 
The link is often tenuous when I pair my reviews. But, even when there’s a common theme, it’s unusual for a four-sentence summary to serve both. Heck, even the covers match! Yet, while both brilliant debuts, these are very different novels: the first a near-future cli-fi dystopia; the second a historical novel set at the end of the American Civil War. Read on to see which you’ll pick up first!
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Swimming through Stolen Summers

10/9/2022

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When the prompt arrived for this week’s 99-word story, I immediately thought of my character Matty. Not only because I’ve been reading and rereading and scrutinising a part of her history I want to publish next month, but because swimmingly is exactly the kind of word she’d use (although I don’t think she ever has).

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Fostered: Lily & Careless

19/8/2022

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I’ve recently read a historical novel and a contemporary YA novel featuring fostered girls. In the first, it’s idyllic, especially in contrast to the institution she’s sent to at the age of six. In the second, it’s more problematic with a foster mother who can’t put her own needs aside to support the child in her care.
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Chasing the King of Hearts by Hanna Krall translated by Philip Boehm #WITmonth

3/8/2022

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When word reaches the Warsaw ghetto of the terrible consequences Nazis have in mind for Jews, Izolda feels a great responsibility to save her family. And if she can’t protect her parents and in-laws, she is determined that she and her husband will live.

Changing her name, her hair, her religion, she sets about finding hiding places, travelling in and out of the ghetto via the sewers. She faces rape, imprisonment, forced labour, torture and a spell in a concentration camp, surviving on her wits and her love. But is that enough and is it worth it? As an old woman with no language in common with her Israeli granddaughters, she’s not sure.

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The startling story of Nellie Bly: Madwoman by Louisa Treger

21/7/2022

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Her closeness to her lawyer father has given her a respect for facts. The tales heard at her mother’s knee have fired her passion for story. So, after her father’s sudden death and her mother’s ill-advised marriage to a violent drunkard means the teenager must earn a living, a career as a reporter seems a logical step.
 
At the end of the nineteenth century, respectable women weren’t expected to work, and especially not in a male-dominated environment like a newspaper office. So Nellie Bly – her pen name – must fight prejudice to be taken on by the Pittsburgh Dispatch. But she soon outgrows the provincial newspaper and takes her passion and her ambitions to New York.

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Aftermath: The Tin Nose Shop & The Wilderness

12/7/2022

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These two novels are about the consequences of untimely deaths on those left behind. The first is set during the First World War when a grieving soldier is set to work making masks to hide the horrific facial injuries of those wounded in the trenches. The second is about two orphaned sisters and an anthropologist with unconventional ideas about mourning rituals.

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Sidelined women: The Dance Tree & Lacuna

12/5/2022

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Allow me to introduce two novels about the marginalisation of women’s experience: the first set in sixteenth century Strasbourg where the church rules hearts and minds; the second in contemporary a South Africa grappling with its colonial past. Both include a scene of arson, but that is not the worst of the violence.
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Mourning a marriage: The Chosen & So Long a Letter

15/4/2022

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These two novels depict a character’s reflections on their life following the sudden death of their spouse. Both the male writer in the first novel and the female teacher in the second are mourning not only the loss of a partner but of the promise of their original romance.

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Ready to change? Peach Blossom Spring & Voting Day

24/3/2022

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Two fabulous fiction books about ordinary people in historically significant times. The first is a family saga set in China, Taiwan and America across six decades of the twentieth century. The second is a snapshot of Swiss history on a single day in 1959 when the male half of the populace denied their mothers, sisters and wives the right to vote.

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Moral compromise: Mouth to Mouth & Booth

28/2/2022

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These two recent reads feature characters who find themselves in morally compromised situations, partly of their own making. The first, set in the contemporary US art world, is about a young man’s relationship with a middle-aged man he saves from drowning. The second, set during a turbulent time in American history, focuses on a family of thespians, drinkers and dreamers.


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A choice of reading for LGBT+ History Month

2/2/2022

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February is LGBT+ History Month, which aims to promote equality and diversity for the benefit of all. Five years ago, I was honoured to be invited to speak at the launch of a project to create an archive of LGBT+ history in Derbyshire, near where I live.
 
That year – 2017 – marked the fiftieth anniversary of Britain’s Sexual Offences Act. I’d naïvely assumed this Act spelt liberation but no! I learnt, from another speaker, that decriminalising homosexual acts between consenting men over 21 in private led to an increase in persecution for behaviours outside the narrow scope of the law.

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Unconventional couples: Devotion & Love Marriage

26/1/2022

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Let me present two chunky novels, both published in the UK on 3rd February, about which I had some reservations but came to love. Despite a decade’s difference in age between the novels’ protagonists, both are coming-of-age stories in which an unexpected kind of love – or unconventional for their particular communities – teaches these young women about family, ambition, identity and themselves.

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Dishonourable histories: Palace of the Peacock & The Bureau of Past Management

19/11/2021

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These two unconventional novels address the difficulties of reconciliation to individual and societal involvement in the exploitation and annihilation of other communities and ethnic groups. Neither tells a straightforward story, but I struggled most with the structure and style of the first. This is a pity, as I’d like to have learned more about the persecution and murder of Guyana’s indigenous people. I found the second, about the legacy of the Holocaust for contemporary Germans, an easier read.

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The Memory by Judith Barrow … a review and a videoed conversation

20/10/2021

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Irene is eight when her sister Rose is born, and she can’t understand why her mother isn’t more excited. Her family used to be fun, laughing and playing, but now her mum hardly does anything, leaving Irene, her dad and her nanna to attend to the baby.
 
Presumably, Lillian, the mother, is suffering from postnatal depression, but this drags on and on. She can’t accept that she has a daughter with Down’s syndrome. As Irene takes on the mothering duties, Lillian seems less and less part of the family.

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10 new mini reviews … and a virtual bookshop

14/10/2021

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Knowing how much I value reviews of my own fiction, I endeavour to pay it forward for other authors. Indeed, I consider posting reviews to be fundamental to literary citizenship. But they can be dreadfully time-consuming.

This year, I'm experimenting with posting mini reviews both here and on Goodreads. As you'll see from the chart – and yes, I'm not getting any of my own writing done when I'm playing around on Canva – these aren't books I haven't enjoyed (a 4 star rating from me is a strong endorsement). Rather, they're books I don't have much to say about.

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I'll continue posting longer reviews of books gifted to me by the author or publisher, but I'll probably keep this up for books I've bought myself. It should work for me, but will it work for you? Let me know in the comments what you think.

Read on for reviews of six contemporary novels, one classic novel, a short story collection and two non-fiction books, all read over the last three months.


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Science, bias and belief: The Atomics & Hurdy Gurdy

11/9/2021

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I’m struck by the similarities between these two novels, despite being of different genres and set six centuries apart. Both are about men who take pride in their knowledge and intellect yet are blind to the biases that limit their understanding, particularly in relation to women and to physical health. The first is about a nuclear physicist dosing himself with radiation, the second about a young monk’s encounter with the Black Death.

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Elder care: Red Crosses, As We Are Now, The Girls from Alexandria & At the Jerusalem

4/8/2021

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Let me tell you about these four novels featuring older women looking back at their lives, and forward, some with dread, to what’s left of it. The first is a translated novel set in Belarus. The second and fourth are set in care homes around the middle of the twentieth century. The third is a contemporary novel set in a London hospital with flashbacks to a glittery Alexandria. All illustrate the vulnerability of old age, but also the strength and spirit of the central characters.


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    Free ebook: click the image to claim yours.
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    OUT NOW: The poignant prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home
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    Find a review
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    Fictional therapists
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    About Anne Goodwin
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    My published books
    entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice
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    My latest novel, published May 2021
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    My debut novel shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize
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    My second novel published May 2017.
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    Short stories on the theme of identity published 2018
    Anne Goodwin's books on Goodreads
    Sugar and Snails Sugar and Snails
    reviews: 32
    ratings: 52 (avg rating 4.21)

    Underneath Underneath
    reviews: 24
    ratings: 60 (avg rating 3.17)

    Becoming Someone Becoming Someone
    reviews: 8
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.56)

    GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4 GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4
    reviews: 4
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.44)

    The Best of Fiction on the Web The Best of Fiction on the Web
    reviews: 3
    ratings: 3 (avg rating 4.67)

    2022 Reading Challenge

    2022 Reading Challenge
    Anne has read 2 books toward their goal of 100 books.
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