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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

Dislocation: The Lost Lights of St Kilda & Gun Island

21/2/2020

10 Comments

 
These two novels feature the displacement of people and the unique cultures and environments they left behind. The first introduces us to the remote Scottish island of St Kilda whose depleted population was evacuated to the mainland in 1930. The second links Venice with the Sunderbans in the Bay of Bengal via folklore and cli-fi. Despite their complementary covers, they’re very different books.

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The Lost Lights of St Kilda by Elisabeth Gifford

In 1927, Fred Lawson spends the summer vacation on the remote Scottish island of St Kilda with Archie McLeod, his Cambridge friend. There he’s beguiled by the beauty of the rugged landscape and of the spirited young woman, Chrissie Gillies, hired as the young men’s cook. At the end of the summer, he considers staying but Archie, whose father owns the island that he’s visited since childhood, persuades him to return to his studies.
 
Three years on, Chrissie has moved to the mainland along with her baby daughter. Harsh winters, illness, social isolation and a dwindling population, has led to the entire community’s evacuation and the loss of traditional skills and customs, such as abseiling down a precipitous cliff to collect fulmar chicks for food. But the novel opens with Fred in 1940 in a prison cell in Nazi-occupied France. In the two years he’s on the run, trying to make it home to Scotland, thoughts of Chrissie keep him alive.
 
Despite the painful topics, of survival, in poverty and in war, this is an undemanding read, with a beautifully realised portrait of a lost way of life. The emotional themes – a love triangle, a culture clash, betrayal and trust – are fairly familiar; although there’s a poignancy to the abandonment of the island, and tension in Fred’s dependence on the resistance movement to get him out of France, I’d have preferred the characters to have shown more of the dark sides. That says more about me than the book, which I can’t fault! Thanks to publishers Corvus for my review copy.


Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh

A sixty-something dealer in antique books based in New York, Deen returns each winter to Kolkata where he grew up. When he hears about a mysterious shrine deep in the mangrove swamps of the Sunderbans, Deen sets out to investigate. Before too long, he’s entangled not only in the legend of the Gun Merchant but in the lives of nature conservationist Piya and of Tipu, a young hustler slipping back and forth across the border between India and Bangladesh.
 
Cinta, a charismatic professor of Venetian history and one of Deen’s oldest friends, is intrigued by the story, finding links between the strange symbols on the shrine in the Sunderbans and the Italian city on the lagoon. Travelling to Venice, Deen follows not only the trail of the sixteenth century Gun Merchant but of modern-day migrants from Bangladesh.
 
In his twelfth novel, Amitav Ghosh weaves folklore and global history with the contemporary crises of climate and refugees into a mystery-cum-love story with a hint of magic realism thrown in. The thread on precognition / intuition didn’t appeal so much to me, but the history certainly did, learning a little more about the mini ice age preceding the Thirty Years War (which cropped up in Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann) and the origins of Bangladesh.
 
I wrote about my visit to Bangladesh in a review/memoir post: The Book of Dhaka. Being in the country on February 21 ensured I learnt about the language martyrs of the separation struggle from West Pakistan, and fell in love with the Ekushe song (which you can hear if you follow the link to the post). What I hadn’t known until reading Gun Island, was that the push for independence wasn’t solely about language but also rage at the lack of government support following the deadliest cyclone on record which killed 300,000 people in 1970. So thanks to the author for that and to publishers John Murray for my review copy (although someone needs their knuckles rapped for a couple of editorial slipups including “their supporters had come a long way to support their cause” p298).

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This week’s challenge is to write a 99-word story about a library cat named Rainbow who escapes. If there was a cat in either of these novels, she made no impression on me. I decided, instead, it would be fun for my cat to leave the university library in Dhaka on February 21. If you want to know what she was met with, follow this link for the video.

Rainbow leaves the library / রামধনু লাইব্রেরি ছেড়ে যায় / Rāmadhanu lā'ibrēri chēṛē yāẏa
 
Stirred from sleep by the siren, Rāmadhanu refused to open an eye. She’d retired from sex and mousing; it took more than a randy tom to tempt her from between the library stacks.
 
But the sound insisted. Nature obeyed. Rāmadhanu pawed the scorching pavements, dust tickling her nose.
 
Humans! She’d abandoned her nest for this? Yet instinct prevailed once again. As they meowed by drawing bows on tautened strings, Rāmadhanu joined in, her voice soaring heavenward.
 
Until muzzled by a memory, a tale of students martyred here for their mother tongue. Rāmadhanu tuned into the haunting melody. Music, bittersweet.
 

On the topic of fictional cats, one has a minor role in my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, about a woman who has kept her past identity secret for thirty years. But even Marmaduke had her moment of fame when she was “interviewed” last year on Lisa Burton radio. Click on image to check it out.
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Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
10 Comments
Susan Zutautas link
21/2/2020 10:46:36 pm

Great story!

Reply
Anne Goodwin
23/2/2020 04:56:52 pm

Thanks, Susan.

Reply
Charli Mills
24/2/2020 05:27:10 am

Both books appeal to me, and it's likely that each reveal something of another culture and history. I know so little about Bangladesh. I can't even fathom the loss of 300,000 people to a single weather event. And to think that happened in my lifetime. Worse, it the killing of the students. I marvel at how you drew a cat into the bittersweet melody.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
24/2/2020 05:31:53 pm

Thanks, Charli, I hope that wet your appetite to learn more. Sadly, my reading rarely takes me to Bangladesh so maybe I need to work harder to find suitable fiction.

Reply
Charli Mills
1/7/2021 04:32:56 am

It did make me want more! Thanks for re-sharing, Anne!

Anne Goodwin
1/7/2021 02:31:33 pm

Thanks for letting me cheat on the end of June 2021 prompt and recycle this piece.

Norah Colvin
24/2/2020 11:04:15 am

I agree with Charli. I think I would find both books interesting, and am appalled at this incident in Bangladesh's history, which occurred in my lifetime, but of which I was unaware. Well, I was aware of the cyclone, (Wasn't there a concert in aid of Bangladesh?) I wasn't of the push for independence.
I also love the way you add the cat's mewing to the wailing.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
24/2/2020 05:38:47 pm

It's funny what you remember – I'd completely forgotten about the concert for Bangladesh, but it might not have been for humanitarian aid due to the cyclone but casualties of the independence war soon after.
Glad you liked my cat although I think the failings in the video are much more musical.

Reply
eLPy link
27/2/2020 06:41:26 pm

Great post! Neither of the books you mentioned are on my radar by I might be inclined to add Gun Island to my TBR thanks to your post. :)

I like your story about Rainbow and that she's this sassy little thing of a cat! Very original. :D

Reply
Anne Goodwin
28/2/2020 10:40:21 am

Thanks for visiting. Glad you liked it.

Reply



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