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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

A year of SMART objectives or a year of letting go?

27/1/2023

9 Comments

 
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When I emailed my newsletters with a foretaste of what to expect from me in 2023, I thought I’d do something similar here on Annecdotal, plus a more detailed list of goals to monitor privately myself. So how come I’ve almost reached the end of January without doing that?
 
I’ve always felt a little uneasy about setting concrete objectives when I don’t possess a crystal ball. But this is the year I’ve got a marketing plan stuffed with SMART objectives for my next novel. Yet I’m more conflicted than ever.

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9 Comments

I’m mourning my lost identity as physically healthy

25/7/2022

14 Comments

 
I pulled out of a leading one walk through Jane Eyre territory when Mr A remarked I was breathless just getting from a hospital bed to the bathroom. I pulled out of the second (scheduled for tomorrow) when, although much improved, I realised I couldn’t walk, talk and carry a backpack simultaneously, especially not uphill. Now even the dog walkers have noticed I’m tramping the fields uncharacteristically slowly. How to explain to acquaintances that’s not the real me?
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Supernatural identities: Woman, Eating & Witches

31/3/2022

6 Comments

 
Two novels about women whose identities stem from the supernatural: the first, a vampire who moves to London to work in a gallery; the second, a traditional healer in rural Mexico and the journalist who wants to write her story.
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The sibling bond: A Sister’s Story & The Sky Above The Roof

15/1/2022

3 Comments

 
Here I introduce two translated novellas – the first from Italian, the second from French – about the bond between siblings, survivors of damaging childhoods. They illustrate the difficulties of closing the door on the past.


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Fictional biographies: Sacred Country & The Stone Diaries

7/1/2021

4 Comments

 
Two novels that have sat on my bookshelves for a while, the first waiting to be read, and the second loved and waiting to be re-read. Written by acclaimed female novelists – the first British and the second, Canadian, now deceased – read on to see what this unacclaimed female novelist, also the author of a fictional biography, thought.

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No place in the American dream: Stoner & Interior Chinatown

8/11/2020

4 Comments

 
No, I'm not going to mention the election, although I read the second of these two novels as a certain world leader screamed for the count to be suspended in some states and accelerated in others. And I wouldn't want to speculate on whether the status of these fictionalised ordinary Americans might shed some light on how half the country lost its mind. But I do love a story that upends the American dream. Where is the space for those who don’t strive for success and fame? Where do the American Asians fit in the narrative? Prepare to be provoked and entertained!

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Adoption aftermaths: Helen and the Grandbees, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? & Red Dust Road

30/10/2020

4 Comments

 
I suspect I’m drawn to adoption narratives because of the way they can make concrete a vague sense of loss and yearning some of us feel as a result of early maternal neglect. It’s one of the themes of my forthcoming novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home, and its follow-up, 100 Candles, my current WIP. In fact, I read/reread the two memoirs reviewed in this post as research for the latter. The other book is a debut novel offered to me by the publisher.

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The emotional climate in the age of Trump: Right after the Weather & Weather

22/5/2020

3 Comments

 
The titles themselves are reason enough to pair these recently published American novels. What I didn’t expect when I picked them from my TBR shelf is that they’d both feature the painful shock, especially among women, of Donald Trump’s election to president. The first zooms in on alienation, perceived inadequacy and a painful discovery of one’s own propensity to violence. The second forefronts the anxiety engendered by the climate crisis and rampant capitalism. I wonder if either of these authors is considering a sequel about their characters’ relationships with the coronavirus pandemic!

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My first month of lockdown reading and recommendations

28/4/2020

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After a full month of lockdown, am I any closer to answering the question I posed to myself at the end of March: Do you read differently in anxious times? Of course not! While my preference for fiction remains, I’ve enjoyed both long and short novels this month, both sober and comic, and, as for theme, read wherever I took my fancy from my dwindling TBR shelf. I’ve shed cathartic tears in response to a political satire – thank you Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony – and laughed deep into my belly reading a novel about the experience of depression – Rabbits for Food. We’re strange creatures, we human beings!


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Slavery’s shadow: A Tall History of Sugar & Tender Is the Flesh

10/2/2020

12 Comments

 
Both of these novels defy easy classification, but I’ve chosen to pair them for their themes of the legacy of slavery, or the way in which owning another person demeans us all. In the first, we follow a young man, marked by his unusual appearance, from babyhood in Jamaica shortly before independence to England and back. The second is a translated Argentinian dystopian novel about cannibalism. In both novels, a character, or characters, withhold or are denied their voice.

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12 Comments

Do short stories sell? Discuss!

22/11/2019

12 Comments

 
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It’s a year since my short story collection was published, and I’ve really enjoyed having it out in the world. Not only does it look gorgeous, it’s been received more positively than I expected, although that might be down to the fact that my expectations were rather low. As I wrote in a prepublication guest post, Greater than the sum of its parts? Assembling a first short story collection, it wasn’t a long-standing ambition to produce a collection partly because, I assumed, short stories don’t sell. Although mine has sold in very low numbers, I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

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12 Comments

What’s your favourite novel about mental health?

8/10/2019

6 Comments

 
Having spent the bulk of my wage-earning life in mental health care, it’s not surprising that the theme crops up in my writing. But, as a reader, my professional experience can make me more picky. For World Mental Health Day this week, I’m asking for your favourite novels about mental health, sharing some of my own reading recommendations and illustrating how I’ve drawn on the theme in my fiction. Continue reading also for news of how to be in with the chance of winning a signed copy of my next novel, which is set in a psychiatric hospital in the process of closing down.
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6 Comments

Mothers missed and missing: The Dutch House & Patsy

24/9/2019

12 Comments

 
Two novels featuring mothers who leave a child/children when they’re still quite young, following the implications over several years. In the first, the narrator doesn’t know why his mother has disappeared, or even whether she’s still alive, and claims not to miss her as his older sister fills the gap where the mother belongs. The second is a dual narrative from the perspective of both mother and daughter as each suffers, in different ways, from the mother’s decision to leave Jamaica for New York. The theme gives me an excuse to sound off about attachment and share some of my own fiction, including a new 99-word story.

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12 Comments

Fighting for reform: The Parisian & The Song of Peterloo

8/8/2019

4 Comments

 
Two historical novels about the fight for political reform, in which a peaceful gathering of protesters is savagely put down. The first is about the Palestinian people’s struggle for independence in the years between the two world wars. The second is set in Britain a century earlier and focuses on the working-class battle for basic human rights. Of course, both are packed with interesting characters too!

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Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

16/7/2019

2 Comments

 

What does it mean to be a woman in contemporary Britain? What does it mean to be female, black and queer? Having published a collection of short stories on the theme of identity and already being a fan of the author’s writing, and even having attended one of her workshops, I knew I was going to like this, but it’s hellish tricky to review.

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2 Comments

Cults: Nina X & Beautiful Revolutionary

15/6/2019

7 Comments

 
Have you ever wondered what draws people into a cult, or what keeps them there? Do cults always start with good intentions and end in tears? Although neither of these novels can give us all the answers, they do provide interesting insights into what it’s like to outsource your autonomy to a community with a megalomaniac at the helm. Both are informed by real cases: the first in contemporary Britain, the second in 1970s USA.

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7 Comments

Novelistic explorations of identity through road trips with magic realism: Lost Property & Bird Summons

3/5/2019

6 Comments

 
While very different in style and focus, both these recently-published novels send women on road trips to learn about their individual identities within the context of contemporary Britain. In the first, three Scottish Muslim women with origins in the Arab world leave the city for a lochside holiday where they meet a talking hoopoe. In the second, a Londoner travels with her partner across Europe in a campervan encountering figures from the political and artistic past.

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6 Comments

Childhood obsession rekindled: If I Had Two Lives & Poet and Dancer

1/5/2019

6 Comments

 
I’m here to introduce two novels about girls who become fixated on another girl in childhood and pick up the relationship again as young adults. In the first, set in Vietnam and the USA, the main focus is on the friendship in childhood; in the second, set in New York, the adult obsession is in the foreground. In both books, the main character has a problematic relationship with her mother: in the first, the mother is painfully distant; in the second, mother and daughter are initially enmeshed.
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6 Comments

Young idealists: Godsend & Deviation

25/2/2019

8 Comments

 
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?

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Picturing identity: Mothlight & Trick

10/2/2019

4 Comments

 
I wondered, initially, whether the fact that these two short novels include images would be sufficient reason to pair them in a post. But, while different in style, they’re both about identity (among other matters). In the first, a young man uses photographs he has inherited to try to understand the woman who kept them, as his own identity seems to merge with hers. In the second, an older man finds his identity as an illustrator losing out to his role as grandfather.

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4 Comments

Now with more books than hands

30/11/2018

6 Comments

 
Out on the soggy trails near my home a couple of days ago, I fell into conversation with a man walking his dogs. Discovering he was a visitor to the area, I wished him better weather before he left. When he replied that there’s no life without rain, I was ready to play my part in a climate-change script. So I was surprised, and somewhat disappointed, when he said he’d tell me something that had been kept from people since the beginning of time.
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Where we came from and where we are now: Homeland & Farewell, My Orange

27/11/2018

2 Comments

 
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.

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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.
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Becoming Someone is coming to an armchair near you!

19/11/2018

6 Comments

 
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I’ve been so busy with preparations, I’d forgotten how it feels when that first box of books arrives. So I was especially touched when the delivery man remembered bringing my debut more than three years ago. If a man who doesn’t even know me could connect with that excitement, surely I could too. If that weren’t enough to celebrate, this is my 700th post!

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6 Comments

Women’s work identity: Convenience Store Woman & The Librarian

21/8/2018

4 Comments

 
Too few novels recreate the reality of the working environment, so hurrah for another two about women at work. From a contemporary Japanese supermarket to a library in a late 50s English country town, these depict women who take their work identity very seriously indeed. But the arrival of a man, alongside their own passion for the work, brings complications. Can Keiko and Sylvia hold onto their jobs?


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    Free ebook: click the image to claim yours.
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    The poignant prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home
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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 third 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
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