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What’s your favourite novel about mental health?

8/10/2019

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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A meadow of our own

5/7/2019

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When we moved to this house over twenty years ago, I was most excited about the garden. Although I’d previously worked an allotment, I’d never had custody of shrubberies and trees. That first winter, we cleared a patch of ground for ten raised vegetable beds and another for fruit bushes, fenced-in to keep out the birds. Along with that and creating a pond and patio, we didn’t pay much attention to the grass.

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

22/3/2019

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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!)

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Seven novels by female Australian authors

25/1/2019

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Last summer when I tweeted my post Why aren’t I reading more books by women?, someone commented that she didn’t read as many women as she’d like as her focus was Australian and New Zealand writers. While I must confess to a failure to review New Zealand writers of any gender, I’ve collected a few Australians in the last couple of years. What better prompt to give them another shout than Australia Day?

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The Annethology Christmas message: Just say no!

7/12/2018

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Okay, so moaning about frenzied shopping and family fallouts is as integral to Christmas as turkey and tinsel and, for some, that’s part of the fun. But if the pain of Christmas surpasses your pleasure, I’ll let you into a secret: unless you have young children, or frail parents to whom you haven’t yet paid your dues – in which case, bookmark this post for when you’re free to prioritise yourself – you’re not obliged to join in. Okay, it can be tough to go against expectations, and it might require some negotiation with your nearest and dearest, but isn’t life too short to stick to the familiar, if the familiar isn’t what you want?

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Becoming Someone is coming to an armchair near you!

19/11/2018

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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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The refugee voice: Shatila Stories & Ukelele Jam

16/6/2018

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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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Celebrating female literary friendships: A Secret Sisterhood blog tour

8/3/2018

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For International Women’s Day this year I'm taking part in the blog tour for the paperback publication of A Secret Sisterhood, an erudite and engaging celebration of literary friendships between Jane Austen and amateur playwright, Anne Sharp; Charlotte Brontë and the feminist Mary Taylor; George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield. The book is the product of a contemporary literary friendship between the authors who, in addition to writing and teaching, host the website Something Rhymed, profiling a range of additional female writing buddies.

Follow the link for my review (originally posted for the hardback publication in May 2017).

Read my review of A Secret Sisterhood

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The importance of fictional pee and poo #WorldToiletDay

17/11/2017

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There wasn’t much traffic at a book fair I attended recently, but at least it gave me the opportunity to chat with other writers on nearby stalls. The discussion drifted to writing sex, but they thought I was joking when I moved the conversation to writing toilets. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that safe and hygienic toilets are no laughing matter (and now those other writers know too) and the foundation of women’s emancipation and girls’ education worldwide. So I’m proud to have marked World Toilet Day on this blog every year since I started in 2013. There’s more to discover about this year’s theme Where does our poo go? if you follow the link. As I did last year, for 19th November 2017, I’m celebrating the novels I’ve read in the last twelve months that acknowledge our dependence on toilets.

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No feelings? #amwriting #mentalhealth #Flash4Storms

9/10/2017

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One day last summer, I had an errand to do ten minutes’ drive or half an hour’s walk away from home. Even though the route, along a fairly busy road, isn’t particularly pleasant, I prefer to walk, both for the exercise and to feed my writing. So I grabbed my raincoat (it was that kind of summer) and laced up my boots. On the way back, the sun came out at the moment I levelled with a track I’d never previously taken. It was time to investigate.

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In praise of proper poets

27/9/2017

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If it’s irritating for novelists to be told by friends and acquaintances that they too could write a novel if they weren’t so busy doing more important things, then think how it must be for poets. Anyone with even a passing interest in words, or emotions, is likely to have composed a poem at some point, whether inspired by a sense of occasion or adolescent angst. You don’t even need a pen or a keyboard when you can juggle those lines in your head.

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A writer’s audit of desk time

21/7/2017

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While our creativity might be without bounds, our time available to deploy it is limited. With so many potential distractions, it’s inevitable that we might wonder whether we’re using that time efficiently. Too many days leaving my desk feeling tired but unsatisfied, I decided to monitor how I was apportioning my time. Read on to see how I did it, what I learnt and how you can help me decide what to do next.

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Bunnies and chocolate eggs: does Easter work for marking time in fiction?

16/4/2017

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If the events of a story unfold over more than a season, how do you evoke the passage of time? We can allude to the weather, seasonal flowers and the nakedness or otherwise of trees, but not all readers, and especially those looking in from other climates, will be grounded by these changes in the natural world. We can also, as I sometimes do for blog posts, draw on key events in the annual calendar to show that time has moved on. Christmas is an obvious choice, but what about Easter, when the date changes from year to year?

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The Messiah Narrative

13/4/2017

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Even if you’re not a fan of Baroque music, you’d probably recognise at least one of the magnificent choruses from George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. If not the jolly “For Unto Us a Child Is Born”, perhaps the main justification for its popularity at Christmas, then you must know the exuberant “Hallelujah”. But there are fifty-one other choruses and solos that make up the three-hour long oratorio. This beautiful book tells the story of its composition and musical afterlife.

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Debunking the gendered myths: Testosterone Rex by Cordelia Fine

8/3/2017

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Having written a novel about the enigma of gender, I remain fascinated and baffled that something so vague and ill-defined should impact so strongly on our social structures and beliefs about ourselves. Fortunately, Cordelia Fine, psychologist and Associate Professor at the Melbourne Business School, is somewhat sharper in demolishing the dodgy science surrounding sex and gender and International Women’s Day seems the perfect time to review her new (non-fiction) book.

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Bloody revolutions? The Last Summer & Birdcage Walk

5/3/2017

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In literature, as in life, revolution often entails blood loss and drama. In these reviews we eavesdrop first on an assassination plot at the beginning of the Russian Revolution, while the second features an unexplained domestic death against the backdrop of the French Revolution.

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The Book of Dhaka by Pushpita Alam and Arunava Sinha (eds)

21/2/2017

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I visited Dhaka by accident. Twice. Back in the days when there were no affordable direct flights from London to Kathmandu I travelled with Bangladesh Biman via Dhaka. On the way out the first time, I don’t even remember changing planes at the airport. On the way back, after a month in Nepal and three and a bit in India, it occurred to me I could visit some Bangladeshi friends I’d made on a work camp in Gujarat and fly home via Dhaka.

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Don’t be seduced by the allure of romance!

14/2/2017

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If love makes the world go round, it’s hardly surprising that romance crops up as a subplot across most genres of fiction. But, as writers, we need to beware of letting the love interest get out of hand and obscure the more complex themes of our novel. As readers, we need to be alert to publishers dressing up a gruelling narrative as a modern Pride and Prejudice because, let’s face it, sex sells.

For Valentine’s Day, I’m reviving a post that appeared in October 2015 on the Reading Writers website, which is now defunct.

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More of the same, please, but with nicer politics

31/12/2016

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We approach the New Year as if we’re trading in the old one for a better model, but it’s not like replacing a car. Or if it is, it’s with the old car rusting in the garage while we’re driving around in the new one, hoping the weather won’t tarnish its shine. Alas, a change of digit won’t cancel out our bad decisions – I’m looking at you Brexit and Trumpeteers – but it can provide the impetus to strive to fail better next time. While I think it’s weird that the traditional time for taking stock and recalibrating our intentions for the future should be now – rather than synchronised with the winter solstice the first day of spring (for those of us in the northern hemisphere) – I am sufficiently obsessional to join in.

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Beyond the sum of their parts?

26/12/2016

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Every novel is comprised of different parts that writers, readers and reviewers hope will combine into a satisfying whole. My last two reviews of 2016 – before I reveal my favourites of the year – are of novels for which finding that coherence is a particular challenge, but extremely worthwhile if achieved. Both published this summer, neither seems to have attracted many reviews on Goodreads, but I’m impressed with both (albeit one more than the other) so I hope you’ll at least give my reviews a chance.