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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

Nine mini reviews

11/8/2022

4 Comments

 
It's not often I showcase a bunch of exclusively male authors, although there's no reason why not. This includes two translations, a short story collection and a crime novel in addition to my usual literary novels. Of the latter, two prioritise illustrating 20th-century sociopolitical changes in England over story. The other three take us to Punjab, Yemen and and fantasy library midway between life and death. Read on to see what I thought of them.
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4 Comments

The startling story of Nellie Bly: Madwoman by Louisa Treger

21/7/2022

6 Comments

 
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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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6 Comments

A certain kind of freedom: Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont & The Men

25/6/2022

11 Comments

 
I’ve linked these two very different novels via the theme of compromised freedom, partly because that’s how I feel myself right now. In the first, an elderly widow frees herself from pity by casting a stranger as her grandson but fears being found out. In the second, women are magically freed from misogyny at a cost of losing the men and boys they love.

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11 Comments

Micro fiction and 9 micro reviews

18/5/2022

6 Comments

 
This latest batch of micro reviews – the first of this year – features a Nigerian classic novel; a non-fiction book about Britain’s black communities during the First World War; a novella about the bond between a woman and her granddaughter; a psychological thriller set in a care home; a memoir about psychiatric abuse; a novel about love against the odds; a classic novel about a young woman’s breakdown; a whimsical fantasy and an Indian retelling of King Lear.
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6 Comments

Sidelined women: The Dance Tree & Lacuna

12/5/2022

4 Comments

 
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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4 Comments

If you read only one of my reviews, make it this: Patience by Toby Litt

29/4/2022

4 Comments

 
A reader does need to be patient with this novel initially but the rewards are great take it from one who generally finds textual quirks an irritant you quickly accommodate to unpunctuated paragraphs that perfectly encapsulate the narrator’s voice not voice as in audible speech he Elliott barely able to move due to cerebral palsy is using some kind of device to relate the great adventure of his childhood when in the late seventies without communication aids he made a new friend.

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If you’re daft enough, you can watch me unwrapping this book on TikTok.

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4 Comments

Mourning a marriage: The Chosen & So Long a Letter

15/4/2022

6 Comments

 
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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6 Comments

Moral compromise: Mouth to Mouth & Booth

28/2/2022

4 Comments

 
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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Sisterly rivalry: The Betrayed & Only Ever Yours

16/2/2022

12 Comments

 
Do you remember that song about the sisters, devoted to each other … unless a man should come between them? Here are two versions of the novelisation of that story. In the first, set primarily in the Philippines, the two daughters of a former dissident compete for the affections of a powerful man. In the second, a YA dystopian novel, thirty teenagers who’ve been raised together, and think of each other as sisters, also hope to be chosen a high-status man. In both cases, their position is bleak, but the culture and politics of the society they inhabit render the alternative bleaker still.

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12 Comments

Unconventional couples: Devotion & Love Marriage

26/1/2022

5 Comments

 
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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5 Comments

Post-truth worlds: A Time Outside This Time & Scary Monsters

2/1/2022

3 Comments

 
When I selected these books for my first reviews of 2022, I thought all they shared was their UK publication date of January 6th. I was wrong. Both are unconventionally structured novels by and about migrants, from the Indian subcontinent, to rich countries founded on the genocide of their indigenous populations, where truth is sometimes sacrificed on the altar of populist politics and the realities of racism and the climate crisis denied. Read on for the different ways these authors handled their theme.

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3 Comments

9 new micro reviews: literary fiction, short stories, a thriller, a dystopia and crime

27/12/2021

8 Comments

 
This latest batch of micro reviews – the fifth and final one for this year – relates to novels about a Nigerian victim of child marriage and domestic slavery; white people’s funerals in post-apartheid South Africa; adolescence by the sea in North Yorkshire and Greece; pimps and drug pushers in the City of London; uses and abuses of mental health services in England; the residents and staff of a Canadian assisted living scheme for older adults; life and love in ancient Greece; a suspicious death and the boy’s disappearance in London; and a law-enforcer in a besieged futuristic city with no natural light.

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8 Comments

10 books I reread in 2021: hits and misses

23/12/2021

2 Comments

 
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Last January, I decided that this was the year I’d reread some of my all-time favourite books. I thought one per month would be reasonable; I actually read ten, although I’m awarding myself double points for the single non-fiction book. By sheer chance, they divided equally into five I found well worth revisiting and five that didn’t thrill me so much second time around. Read on to see which was which.

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2 Comments

My 12 favourite reads of 2021

10/12/2021

8 Comments

 
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I’m always loath to share my year’s favourite reads before Christmas, in case a cracker comes along before New Year’s Eve. But, having selected a neat dozen (actually a baker’s dozen as I slipped in one more as you’ll see below), I’ve decided to take the plunge. With themes of the climate crisis, slavery, the impact of unprocessed trauma, kidnap, hearing voices, the pandemic of 1918, refugees, unexpected love, nonconformity, dysfunctional families and painful group processes, you’re sure to find something to ask Santa to put in your stocking. Or, if you follow the Icelandic tradition of Jolabokaflod, to gift to friends and family on Christmas Eve.


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Most of these books are avaiable to purchase from bookshop.org by clicking this image (affiliate link)

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8 Comments

What makes Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections my perfect Christmas read?

3/12/2021

8 Comments

 
On Christmas Eve last year, when many were struggling to adapt to a curtailed coronavirus Christmas, I was in my element with a long walk in the Peak District followed by settling down with a mince pie to reread one of my favourite novels. This would be the third time I’d spent the festive season with the Lamberts, and I relished their company as much as the first time I met them in the freshly-published hardback I gifted myself (with money from my mother) almost twenty years before. I love this book at the sentence level, at the level of the eternally disappointed characters, and at the level of the ridiculously sprawling 500-plus page plot.
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8 Comments

Ten more mini reviews and a fun flash about the flying penis

26/11/2021

10 Comments

 
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These ten new reviews might be condensed, but the books they represent are vast in scope. The settings range from a small town half an hour’s drive from me (where I hope to go tomorrow to sing choruses from the Messiah) to Scotland, Belgium, Libya, Southern Africa, the Philippines and North America, from past atrocities to a hi-tech future. Themes range from scarred families, writers’ fragile egos, identity, corruption and the climate crisis. My selection includes one memoir, one literary translation and two novels aimed at young adults. Let me know if any take your fancy.


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10 Comments

Keeping going: The Life of the Mind & The Retreat

12/11/2021

10 Comments

 
I was going to call this post hopes dashed, but that would be too sensational for these two lovely novels about women getting on with it after disappointment, not because they’re heroic survivors but because they’re ordinary flawed human beings. In the first, an untenured academic carries on as normal despite a drawn-out miscarriage; in the second, an aspiring artist continues painting despite a lack of talent and community support. Both stories unfold in elegant understated prose with touches of humour.

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10 Comments

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

20/10/2021

4 Comments

 
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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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4 Comments

10 new mini reviews … and a virtual bookshop

14/10/2021

2 Comments

 
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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2 Comments

Memories and mothers: The Leftovers & Small Forgotten Moments

22/9/2021

6 Comments

 
The human mind has a wonderful capacity to protect us from unbearable memories, but there’s always a cost. As the narrators of these two novels discover when circumstances compel them to spend time with the mothers from whom they’ve grown apart. Read on to see which takes your fancy; I can heartily recommend reading both.
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6 Comments

Science, bias and belief: The Atomics & Hurdy Gurdy

11/9/2021

8 Comments

 
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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8 Comments

Otherwise forgotten: The Girl Behind the Gates & Stephen from the Inside Out

5/9/2021

10 Comments

 
I’m sharing my reflections on two books I read recently, which I enjoyed despite not being my usual reads. I bought them because they relate to my interest in mental health issues, but there must have been more than that. Both are based on true stories - the second is actually creative non-fiction - about the author’s friendship with someone who has a psychiatric diagnosis and has been subjected to a care system that is often uncaring. Like my latest novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home, they celebrate marginalised lives.

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10 Comments

Reading Women in Translation Sept 2020 to Aug 2021

14/8/2021

12 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. My twelve are down on recent years - two years ago I read twenty-four! - but, with six languages represented (French, Georgian, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish) and six publishers (Atlantic, Bloomsbury, Europa Editions, Granta, Peirene Press and Portobello Books), I’m doing okay in terms of reading diverse.

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12 Comments

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

4/8/2021

4 Comments

 
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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4 Comments

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

18/7/2021

10 Comments

 
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.

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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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    Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin: 
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    slug-slayer, tramper of moors, 
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