Category: Work

Changing zeitgeists: Unsheltered & Old Baggage

6/11/2018

I’ve recently relished two novels focusing on under-acknowledged women at points of political and ideological change. In the first, Mary Treat, a real-life scientist and correspondent of Charles Darwin, is seen through the eyes of Thatcher Greenwood, a fictional schoolmaster blocked from exposing his Christian pupils to evolutionary ideas. Unsheltered also includes a contemporary strand which all-too-recognisably depicts the casualties of a culture consuming its way to its own destruction. Old Baggage is set in a period between the two, when, ten years after (some) British women had won the vote, the heroism of those who fought for the franchise is largely forgotten in a battle between socialism and fascism for the minds of the youth.

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The end of Empires: The Radetzky March & Like a Sword Wound

11/10/2018

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Two translated historical novels set at the beginning of the twentieth century about empires in decline. Through them, I’ve slightly narrowed the gap in my ignorance of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, and whetted my appetite to learn more. Although it’s refreshing to take the focus away from the British Empire in fiction, I’d prefer to take a female perspective next time or, failing that, to zoom in on a key character right from the start. See what you think!

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Is there a new trend for fiction with footnotes?

29/9/2018

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I might have mentioned before that I’m something of a traditionalist in my reading. Print suits me better than ebooks and, while I’ve enjoyed novels narrated on the radio, I don’t think I’ve ever chosen an audiobook in preference to text. Regarding the content, while I relish originality, novelty for its own sake can be a turnoff. Post-modernism gives me the shivers. So I was surprised to read three novels in as many months with footnotes. Is this a new trend?

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Psychologists Write: Suzanne Conboy-Hill

25/9/2018

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It’s almost a year since the Harvey Weinstein business blew, sparking the #metoo movement in which more and more women spoke out about unwanted sexual attention and rape. So timely to welcome Suzanne Conboy-Hill to this series, along with her novella, Fat Mo. Like When I Hit You, it’s a painful read in places, but an important one. While the reader can find relief in the elegance of the language, there’s little consolation for Mo in a community that colludes with the systematic abuse of women, young and old, until she finds the strength within herself to say no. But let Suzanne tell you more about it …

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Boy slaves: Beyond the Rice Fields & Washington Black

18/9/2018

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Two tales of boy slaves in the nineteenth century, both of whom gain their freedom and travel overseas. Born into slavery, Washington Black’s story begins on the familiar territory of a Caribbean sugar plantation, but his adventures take him right around the world. Tsito’s enslavement in his native Madagascar is one many English readers will be unaware of; although beginning less brutally, he’s witness to a terrifying purging of Christians and suspected traitors by a vengeful queen. (Follow this link for reviews of two other less well-known slavery stories.)

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Taking our characters to work

10/9/2018

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If there is one area where struggling-to-be-noticed writers have the advantage over those who’ve been published since they were barely out of school, it’s our inside knowledge of the world of work. Coming to writing later in life, or merely being part of the majority unable to support themselves through writing, we have the experience to bring our characters’ jobs alive. But there can still be challenges in taking our characters to work.

For example, while setting your novel in your current workplace obviates the need for a research trip, you might have to smooth some colleagues’ ruffled feathers once the book is out in the world. From another angle, if you’ve gained your work experience in settings crowded with colleagues, you face the challenge of rendering it authentically without overwhelming the reader with an overabundance of characters.

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

21/8/2018

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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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Lonely females on the family farm: Meet Me at the Museum & All Among the Barley

8/8/2018

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Having decided to pair these novels on the basis of the unlikely friendships I’d gleaned from the blurbs, I was pleased to discover other commonalities that caught my attention more. Both authors bring a female perspective to life on an East Anglian farm, albeit almost a century apart. While Tina Hopgood is in her 60s and Edith Mather only fourteen, both narrators are lonely, despite having family around them, and unsure about their right to choose their own future.

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Death-defying customs: The People in the Trees & The Tree of the Toraja

26/7/2018

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I’m linking these novels less for the arboreal coincidence of the titles but because each is about the impact of another culture’s approach to death and/or ageing on a Westerner’s life. For the first, six months as a young man deep in the forest of a remote Micronesian island determine the course of his professional and domestic life; for the second, a glimpse of the culture of the Toraja people in Indonesia in middle age helps him mourn the loss of a close friend.

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Holiday settings: Murmuration & The Summer House

8/7/2018

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If you’re going on holiday this summer, you might be tempted to take one of these novels with you. The first focuses on the people who entertain and assist the visitors to a Victorian pier at an English seaside resort across a period of over a century; the second on a family taking a long holiday together on the coast of Finland. But, of course, while it might be all smiles and bonhomie on the surface, there are disconcerting undercurrents to keep you turning the page. Let me know which takes your fancy.

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Psychoanalysis, friendship and failure: Jott by Sam Thompson

10/6/2018

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The world poses impossible questions and the future is in darkness, you have no claim on health or peace or the way that you feel things ought to be, you are required to live without knowing what comes next, you must carry on in hope as best you can, and you must begin by attending to one another.

Despite differences in lifestyle and temperament, the friendship between Arthur and Louis, begun as pupils at an Irish boarding school, has endured through university in Dublin to early adulthood in 1930s London. Arthur, a junior psychiatrist, has always been overshadowed by his friend, an unpublished writer with the flair and determination to live by his own rules. While Arthur is shy and socially awkward, Louis can charm anyone, including Arthur, such that the psychiatrist often finds himself sacrificing his own needs for the sake of his friend.

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Gravity Well & The Gravity of Love

13/5/2018

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No prizes for guessing why I’ve connected these two novels; I don’t think I’ve ever read another book with gravity in the title – although The Weightless World is about a antigravity machine – and then I find two published in the same month. But rest assured, they’re very different reads: in the first, Lotte feels a stronger pull towards the stars in the sky than her earthly attachments; in the second, love is a force that can furnish reconnections across continents and years.

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Where religion, art and science coincide: In the Blink of an Eye by Ali Bacon

8/4/2018

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In 1843, 400 ministers broke away from the Church of Scotland in protest at state interference in matters of faith. Known as the Disruption, the establishment of the Free Kirk was a momentous event that moved the renowned artist David Octavius Hill to celebrate in paint. With the aim of depicting everyone who played a part, his ambitious project took twenty years to complete, and might have taken longer but for the new art of photography, or less time had real life not intervened.

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Time to end it all? Hotel Silence & The Zero and the One

3/3/2018

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Two novels in which men consider suicide; doesn’t sound very jolly, does it? But there’s rather more to both these stories, as well as the coincidence of texts punctuated by philosophical aphorisms. Read on and see what you think! And before you leave, check out my latest 99-word story linking suicide, unlikely weather and ravens.

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A thriller and a satire about women at work: The Night Visitor & The Beautiful Bureaucrat

16/1/2018

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I like fiction that shows the characters at work, but it can be difficult to pull off convincingly. While approaching it from very different angles – British writer Lucy Atkins in a thriller about a highflying TV presenter and historian; American Helen Phillips in a satire about a data entry clerk – both have produced extremely satisfying reads.

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Three single-author short story collections

20/12/2017

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With my own short story collection scheduled for November next year, I thought I should give more blog space to the short story. But although I managed to pick the winner of the BBC short story award, the first two of these collections knocked my confidence in my ability to review the short form. Listed in the order I read them, the third has me fizzing with excitement about what the short story can achieve. See what you think!

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A day / week under the skin of a community: Johannesburg & Histories

14/12/2017

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From a day in the life of a city in mourning to a week in a busy hospital, in both these novels a large cast of characters tell not only their individual stories, but the story of the settings that shape their interlinked lives.

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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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Two novels and a short story about marginalised females

21/9/2017

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Life’s tough on the fringes of society, perhaps particularly if you’re female. Not only have you your own vulnerability to contend with, but the projections of others who feel safer dwelling on your difference than on your similarity to them. Let me take you into the worlds of three such fictional females: The Parcel is harrowing novel about sex workers in Bombay; Dance by the Canal is a lighter novella about a homeless woman in East Germany; my recently published short story, “Ghost Girl” is about an African girl with the wrong colour skin.

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Two novel encounters with the wild: Under a Pole Star & Green Lion

21/8/2017

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A historical novel about Arctic exploration or a novel set in a near-future South Africa? A romance or an account of a relationship falling apart? A motherless girl or a fatherless boy? Wild animals or ice? Both of these novels explore the conflict and compassion that connects us to the natural world, but it was a bonus for me to read that the protagonist of Green Lion told his friend that his father was killed in a hunting accident in the Arctic, the setting of Under a Pole Star. Read on to see if I was right to pair these reviews.