Annecdotal - annethology

10 new mini reviews … and a virtual bookshop

14/10/2021

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.

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.

The past lingers on: Ever Rest, Old Bones and This Other Island

18/7/2021

Three short reviews of novels about how the past keeps hold of us. The first two are connected by the discovery of a body and a sleepy Shropshire village; the third novel, This Other Island, is, like Ever Rest, mostly set in London and, like Old Bones, it’s about family secrets.

Rereading Mr Loverman & The Secret Scripture

5/4/2021

These two recent rereads focus on older characters who have been diminished by their culture’s punitive attitudes to their sexuality. In the first, a contemporary Londoner has hidden his love for his closest friend on account of the Caribbean community’s homophobia. In the second, a woman has been ostracised in twentieth-century Ireland because of the misogyny and genophobia among the powerful Catholic clergy. Yet a degree of redemption is offered to the characters, albeit late in life.

Black and gay in America: Memorial & The Prophets

23/2/2021

It was good to read these two American novels about Black gay men, especially during LGBT history month: the second set in 19th-century Mississippi and an unnamed part of Africa; the first set in contemporary Texas and Japan.

Have I swallowed a horse to catch a fly?

22/1/2021

If I can't tell whether I'm coming or going, it might be because I'm doing both. Promoting my first novel while checking proofs of the next is making me dizzy, but there's a logic to it. I think.

My next novel is my best yet and I want as many people as possible to read it. In order to read it, people need to be aware of it, and the ideal way of bringing it to the attention of potential readers is through email. So I set myself the objective of finding 100 new subscribers by April.

Fictional biographies: Sacred Country & The Stone Diaries

7/1/2021

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.

For better or worse (or much worse): An American Marriage & Soldier Boy

29/9/2020

These two recent reads are about marriages under severe strain. In the first, set in the southern USA, a woman turns to a mutual friend when her husband is sentenced to twelve years’ in prison for the crime of being black in the vicinity of a sexual assault. In the second, set in the UK, a family is in crisis as a result of the husband and father’s combat PTSD.

Ordinary coupledom: Footnotes to Sex & Laura Laura

10/9/2020

These two recent reads bring touches of humour to the serious extraordinariness of ordinary cohabiting relationships, and the impact on the couple of friendships and obsessions outside the partnership. The first features a thirty-something lesbian twosome in London (with one of the partners making frequent visits to Paris). The second focuses on a heterosexual marriage of some duration, the couple having moved to Bath on retirement.

A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom by John Boyne

23/7/2020

From his birth of the night King Herod’s men slaughter baby boys, we follow the unnamed narrator through multiple incarnations across numerous countries to election night in North America and the unlikely presidency of Donald Trump. Scorned by his soldier father, bullied by his beefy brother, betrayed by his beloved cousin, he survives to be thrice widowed, imprisoned for murder and to make a success of a creative career. Braving war, slavery, colonialism, he finds temporary respite in monasteries Christian and Buddhist, and fathers a son who will send a rocket to the moon.

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

22/5/2020

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!

Unrecognised: Rabbits for Food & Miss Iceland

24/4/2020

Is there discrimination against women writers? (Is there even more discrimination against older women writers?) Probably but, there being even worse things to get hung up about right now, I’ll gloss over the fact that these two novels about under-appreciated female writers – one in 1960s Iceland, the other in 21st-century New York – come from fairly successful female authors. With a couple of caveats, either or both would make great lockdown reads.

A perfectly cathartic political satire: Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony (#review and #giveaway)

23/4/2020

In those innocent days before Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, Republican Congressman Alexander Wilson might have seemed a cartoon caricature, but I found his fictional hypocrisy and narcissism – and unwarranted optimism – immensely consoling in these rage-inducing times. We join him as the doorbell rings at his comfortable home in Virginia, on a hot day in August at the start of his re-election campaign. He’s surprised at the size of the parcel left by the FedEx delivery driver, and even more so when he unwraps it to find a stuffed aardvark and an unsigned card from his ‘lover’ (Congressman Wilson is incapable of love) Greg Tampico, President of the Namibian charity, The Happiness Foundation.

Traditional cultures in transition: The Butchers & Hashim & Family

18/3/2020

My two most recent reads are of novels that map cultural changes within two very different communities. The first is set in rural Ireland during the BSE crisis at the end of the twenty-first century, as more and more people turn their backs on a traditional form of butchering. The second starts and finishes in the two decades before the first begins, in the community of recent migrants to the UK from Bangladesh. While both include scenes of violence, the second is overall a cosy story of adaptation and resilience, while the first is a literary novel of linguistic and psychological depth.

Classics reimagined: The Mere Wife & The River Capture

5/12/2019

Here are two novels inspired by classic tales: the first, a feminist retelling of Beowulf; the second, a homage to Ulysses and James Joyce. No need to have read the source material to appreciate them – I haven’t – although the first probably works better as a stand-alone than the second.

Shatterings from soil and sky: Aftershocks & Nightingale Point

8/11/2019

Here I’ve paired two recent British novels inspired by real-life disasters affecting entire communities: the first being the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand; the second a plane crashing into a tower block in 1996 Amsterdam. I didn’t find either easy to get into, but both rewarded patient reading. See what you think!

Charismatic teens: Royals & The Lost Estate

26/10/2019

Two novels, written and published almost a century apart, about adolescent boys moonstruck by a slightly older teenager. You don’t have to share the narrators’ fascination to enjoy the novels, although it would probably help! The happenstance of coordinating covers suggests to me the novels are thematically well matched.

When the wanderer returns: Older Brother & Arturo’s Island

7/10/2019

Two translated novels in which the return of a beloved family member, after an unexplained absence, irrevocably alters the situation for those left behind. In the first, the wanderer is a younger brother who left Paris for Syria; in the second, it’s a father who has abandoned his son at their home on an island in the Bay of Naples. Both novels are narrated from the perspective of a motherless male.

Mothers missed and missing: The Dutch House & Patsy

24/9/2019

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.

Unethical experiments: The Rabbit Girls & The Confessions of Frannie Langton

18/8/2019

Two debut novels from female British writers featuring dodgy scientific experiments on nonconsenting participants within very dark periods of history: the holocaust in the first and the transatlantic slave trade in the second. Yet, despite both also featuring women disempowered by their husbands, and voluntary and involuntary drug abuse, each contains a thread of hope in a love story.

Three-handers between Britain and the Indian subcontinent: Dignity & The Runaways

21/7/2019

As my next novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home, has three point-of-view characters, I’m always curious to see how others handle three-handers. But that’s not the main reason I chose to read these two novels. Both are set against the backdrop of the tangled web of history tying the Indian subcontinent with Britain. The first links the dying days of the Raj to a British-born woman of Bengali heritage settled in Wales. The second brings characters from Karachi, London and Portsmouth to the deserts of war-torn Iraq.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

16/7/2019

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.

Scaling gritstone and concrete: Black Car Burning & The Wall

28/5/2019

Two novels set in Britain that feature climbing. In the first, it’s the hobby verging on obsession of three of the four main characters, in a homage to Sheffield and the nearby Peak District National Park; in the second, a cli-fi thriller, surmounting the wall is what the narrator and his peers are conscripted to prevent. Thanks to publishers Chatto and Windus and to Faber for my review copies.

Fascism in the ascendant: The Fourth Shore & In the Full Light of the Sun

16/5/2019

I have no hesitation in recommending both of these literary novels, intriguing stories set against the rise of fascism leading up to the Second World War. The first is a coming-of-age story set in Italy and Libya; the second about vested interests in the art world set in Berlin.

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

1/5/2019

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.

Communists and post-communists: Zuleikha & Virtuoso

4/3/2019

Two very different novels about women’s lives under and after the Soviet system: the first about a young mother from a Tatar village who finds a certain kind of freedom when she’s transported to the Soviet Gulag; the second about girls growing up in Prague in the dying days of communism.