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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

What’s haunting Peterborough Railway Station? Platform Seven by Louise Doughty

5/3/2024

8 Comments

 
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Would you want to read a novel set on Peterborough Railway Station? If you don’t live in England, you might not have even heard of Peterborough but, for me, having spent a bit of time hanging around that particular station, it was a pleasant surprise to pick up this book and find it located there.
 
Even so, it doesn’t have the charm of London St Pancras with the drop-in piano sessions or the glamour of New York’s Grand Central. So it takes a skilled writer to render that ordinary setting intriguing and Louise Doughty is certainly that.

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8 Comments

Families in recovery? Grown Ups by Marian Keyes

13/1/2024

6 Comments

 
Three brothers in their forties gather periodically with their wives and children for holidays, weekend breaks and celebratory meals. On the surface, everything is rosy, but secrets threaten every marriage; will the extended family survive?

​I’d heard of this much-loved author but didn’t expect to pick up one of her books until an agent recommended them as a model for my own writing. Reading the prologue, I wondered how I’d plough through the next 600+ pages.
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6 Comments

On trial for murder or the colour of his skin? A Stranger in the Kingdom by Howard Frank Mosher

5/1/2024

4 Comments

 
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In early 1952, a new preacher arrives with his teenage son in a small town in northern Vermont from across the border in Montréal. Walt Andrews is hard-working, intelligent, friendly and enterprising. As a bonus, he’s good at sport. Most of the congregation is happy with his appointment, although some are offended by the colour of his skin.

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4 Comments

My 12 favourite reads of 2023

30/12/2023

0 Comments

 
I’ve read over 100 books this year – according to Goodreads that’s more than 30,000 pages. Six were non-fiction, a couple were short story collections, and the rest were novels, thirteen of which were translations.
Read on for my twelve favourites.
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Families forced to change: The New Woman & Unless

26/12/2023

2 Comments

 
Here are two moving recent reads about families confronting a life-changing decision by one of their members and the changes they must make to accommodate this. The first is a trans novel published in 2015 which I’ve only just discovered; the second is a story I loved when I first read it on its publication in 2002.
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2 Comments

Two more fictional therapists: Other Women & The Family Retreat

21/12/2023

0 Comments

 
I’ve now collected over ninety fictional therapists, but I’ve always got room for a couple more. In the first of my reviews, the therapist is a relatively minor character in a recently published psychological thriller. In the second, she is one of two main characters in a novel published in the 1980s that purports to be about therapy. Hopefully, forty years on, she’s no longer practising. Let me know whether you agree.

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Young women battling to survive: Year of Wonders & The Marriage Portrait

5/11/2023

10 Comments

 
I’m sharing my thoughts on two historical novels I’ve read recently, both featuring young women struggling to survive against the odds. The first is set in England in the 1660s, the second in Italy a century earlier.

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10 Comments

Of Cattle and Men and 11 Other Books by Women in Translation

22/8/2023

2 Comments

 
August is women in translation month, a time when readers prioritise books by women in translation – yes, it does what it says on the tin! – and I share the qualifying books I’ve read over the last twelve months. This year’s dozen represents nine languages (two up from last year) – Bosnian, Catalan, Danish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Portuguese, Spanish – and six publishers (Bloomsbury, Charco Press, Europa editions x3, Maclehose Press x 2, Peirene Press x 3, Quercus).
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Here I share one new review, summaries and links to reviews I’ve published over the last twelve months, plus mentions of three I didn’t get round to reviewing.

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2 Comments

Too much too young: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

4/8/2023

7 Comments

 
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Dickens’ David Copperfield brought to contemporary South Virginia is a worthy winner of both the Pulitzer and Women’s Prize. It’s a story of inequalities, addiction, child protection failures and attachment to community and land.
 
Demon’s voice grabbed me from the first page and never let go and the tragedies of his early childhood – kidult mother; dead-end education; foster carers starving the children and working them like slaves – wrenched my heart. True to the source material, it’s not totally bleak: people do care for Demon, although not always with the power to put things right.

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7 Comments

Nationalism’s victims: Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

28/6/2023

8 Comments

 
Twelve-year-old Bird doesn’t know why his mother disappeared three years ago. He doesn’t know why he and his father had to move from their large house to a tiny flat at the university, nor why his father lost his prestigious academic job. It can’t have anything to do with PACT, can it? The Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act was introduced to rescue the USA from the economic and social crisis around the time that he was born.
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8 Comments

A powerful state-of-the-nation novel: Spring by Ali Smith

16/6/2023

2 Comments

 
An ageing filmmaker, disillusioned by the moral bankruptcy of his current project, loses the will to live after the death of his mentor. A young woman working as a security guard at a migrant detention centre is literally and metaphorically taken for a ride by a precocious twelve-year-old girl. They meet up at a railway station near the site of the Culloden massacre in Scotland where an off-duty librarian driving a coffee van without any coffee picks them up.
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2 Comments

Farmer, writer, influencer, tour guide, oxherd

8/6/2023

6 Comments

 
There must be more than six degrees of separation between a boy who attends his oxen in rural Thailand and a contemporary social media influencer in the USA. But the farmer could be one steppingstone between them and the writer a link from the other end. The tour guide could be the bridge in the middle because they might need to shit in the woods. What am I on about? The answer is in these five mini reviews.
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6 Comments

Marriage at a Crossroads: The Fire & The Motion of the Body through Space

5/6/2023

4 Comments

 
Two novels about a difficult patch in a long marriage, complicated by difficult relationships with the couples’ offspring. The first is the best book I’ve read so far this year. The second, by a more famous author, doesn’t come anywhere near.
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4 Comments

Political fiction: A House for Alice & Henry VIII The Heart & the Crown

20/5/2023

4 Comments

 
Here are reviews of two different types of English political novel. The first is contemporary and addresses how political events impact on an ordinary London family. The second is a historical novel that gets right to the heart of one of the most turbulent periods of British history.
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4 Comments

Overburdened: The Plimsoll Line, Starling Days, Cat and the Dreamer, Unsettled Ground & Sorrow and Bliss

5/4/2023

8 Comments

 
Five recent reads about characters facing life challenges that are almost too much to bear: bereavement; chronic illness; relationship crises and more. See what you think.
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8 Comments

Woman Power: Daisy Jones and the Six; The Birdcage; The Witches of Vardø; Amazing Grace Adams

14/2/2023

8 Comments

 
I think there is a deep-seated fear and resentment of female power even in situations where we don’t have much of it, so I make no apologies for grouping these novels that touch on the theme from vastly different angles. The first is a historical novel about misogyny manifest in a fantasy of witchcraft. In the second, three half-sisters are haunted by the harm done when they tried to claim their power in adolescence. In the third, a seemingly powerless and self-loathing woman takes a tortured journey through her city and her mistakes. The final novel contemplates the relative power of the singer with a rock band versus the homemaker wife who stands by her man.

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8 Comments

Exiled: All Your Children Scattered & Sisters

2/2/2023

9 Comments

 
I’ve recently read two very different novels in which traumatised mothers suffer a second blow in being distanced from both their children, albeit the separation is for very good reasons. The first is a translation set against the backdrop of the Rwandan genocide. The tragedy in the second is less widespread, restricted to one particular family, but nevertheless extremely painful for those concerned. Read on to discover how these books are about so much more.
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9 Comments

History, humour, testimony, short stories and dystopia: there’s something for everyone in these 9 new mini reviews (and 1 mention)

29/1/2023

4 Comments

 
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4 Comments

Compassion and cruelty: Feeding Time & The Dolphin House

30/12/2022

8 Comments

 
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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8 Comments

My 12 favourite reads of 2022

18/12/2022

2 Comments

 
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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2 Comments

Black, Queer and marginalised: Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta & Crosshairs

12/12/2022

4 Comments

 
Two novels about the shit that can happen when you’re Black and gender nonconforming that also acknowledge the joy of living true to oneself.

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4 Comments

A few books I've read recently

11/12/2022

2 Comments

 
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Another block of mini reviews: short stories, literary fiction, commercial fiction, and a translation.


You're sure to find something here to suit your tastes.

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2 Comments

Pandemic fiction: The Fell & Wish You Were Here

28/11/2022

8 Comments

 
I’m busy working towards the publication of my next novel, Lyrics for the Loved Ones, the sequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home, in May 2023. It’s set mostly in a care home leading up to, and in the early weeks of, the pandemic. So I’m happy to showcase a couple of other novels on the theme, with the bonus that they feature places I’ve been. The first is set during the second UK lockdown in November 2020; the second in North and South America when the world closed down in March that year.

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8 Comments

What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron #review #99wordstories

14/11/2022

6 Comments

 
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A husband and wife have travelled for days from New York to an unnamed town in another country, masked by a blanket of snow. The woman has terminal cancer and they’ve come to adopt a baby before she dies. The anxieties they’ve brought with them wax and wane in response to the alien culture, the frosty weather and the interference of other guests at the strange hotel.

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6 Comments

9 recent reads and a 99-word story inspired by one of them

11/11/2022

4 Comments

 

A couple of jewels and a few disappointments amongst these nine recent reads, including a rare one-star for a Booker-prize shortlisted book. I’m happy to recommend The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (which I came across on TikTok) and Mrs England, but do browse through the others – you might find something that appeals.

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    Free ebook: click the image to claim yours.
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    Available now
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    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 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
    Anne has read 2 books toward their goal of 100 books.
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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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    author of three fiction books.

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