annethology
  • Home
    • About Annethology
    • About me >
      • A little more about me
    • About my books
    • Author talks
    • Contact me
    • Forthcoming events
    • World Mental Health Day
    • Privacy
    • Sign up for my newsletter
  • Sugar and Snails
    • Acknowledgements
    • Blog tour, Q&A's and feature articles >
      • Birthday blog tour
      • S&S on tour 2022
    • Early endorsements
    • Events >
      • Launch photos
      • Launch party videos
    • in pictures
    • Media
    • If you've read the book
    • Polari
    • Reading group questions
    • Reviews
    • In the media
  • Underneath
    • Endorsements and reviews
    • Launch party and events
    • Pictures
    • Questions for book groups
    • The stories underneath the novel
  • Matilda Windsor
    • What readers say
    • For book groups
    • Interviews, articles and features
    • Matty on the move
    • Who were you in 1990?
    • Asylum lit
    • Matilda Windsor media
  • Short stories
    • Somebody’s Daughter
    • Becoming Someone (anthology) >
      • Becoming Someone (video readings)
      • Becoming Someone reviews
      • Becoming Someone online book chat
    • Print and downloads
    • Read it online
    • Quick reads
  • Free ebook
  • Annecdotal
    • Articles >
      • Print journalism
      • Where psychology meets fiction
    • Fictional therapists >
      • Themed quotes
      • Reading around the world
      • Reading and reviews >
        • Reviews A to H
        • Reviews I to M
        • Reviews N to Z
        • Nonfiction
  • Shop
    • Inspired Quill (my publisher)
    • Bookshop.org (affiliate link)
    • Amazon UK
    • Amazon US
    • books2read

About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin writes entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice. She has published three novels and a short story collection with Inspired Quill. Her debut, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. Her new novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home, is rooted in her work as a clinical psychologist in a long-stay psychiatric hospital.

TELL ME MORE

Farming the story: Soil by Jamie Kornegay, plus Holy Cow by David Duchovny

16/3/2015

13 Comments

 
Picture
Jay Mize thought he’d be at the forefront of a revolution in agriculture, when he moved with his wife, Sandy, and six-year-old son, Jacob, to a stretch of river-bottom farmland in the Mississippi hills. But a summer of drought followed by incessant rain has ruined him. After his father’s suicide, Jay becomes obsessed with doomsday scenarios. In order to protect their son from his increasing negativity, Sandy moves out (p168):

I cannot believe that I’m arguing with you about the end of the world. I cannot live this way, thinking like this. Every day that you harp on this gloom and doom is another day you miss the blessed life you have here, right now, this instant.

When Jay discovers a corpse on his flooded fields, his sanity gradually leaches away. Watched by a vengeful woodsman and the playboy deputy sheriff, Danny Shoals, Jay is heading towards an apocalypse partly of his own making.

Soil eloquently revisits several of the themes I’ve enjoyed discussing with readers on Annethology. Jay’s weltschmerz has driven him to try to create a better world for his son but, like another father, Michael in The Ship, and James in Our Endless Numbered Days, the extreme nature of his survivalism alienates the very people he longs to save. Sandy, coping with her father’s medical crisis on top of her failed marriage, appreciates real compassion but cannot bear to be an object of pity (p162):

She couldn’t imagine going back to sit with Tina and her family and wait for the reverend to pray for the damaged Messlers and Mizes. She could see herself after the service, besieged by all manner of well-wishers with their questions and blessings and guilt-inducing blather. They weren’t bad people, they just wanted her to be happy and exactly like them.

Jay’s methodical disposal of the dead body reminded me of Lizzie in Season to Taste, and I admired the description of his flashbacks in relation to the trauma of his father’s suicide (p66):

He’d never truly grieved for his father, maybe because he couldn’t stop visualising the act itself – his father’s half-blown-off face, his mother’s horrible surprise, the hot tub’s roiling pink water. The shock was that it was unimaginable but that it was too imaginable. As if it had happened to him as well.

Deputy Dan is a love-to-hate creep, while Sandy’s struggles to keep her head above water in her second year of teaching arouse our deepest sympathies, as does the emotionally-inarticulate woodsman, grieving for the dog Jay has shot. Additionally, I have a particular interest in well-written novels exploring an attachment to land. All of which would have added up to a glowing review from me, had it not been for the first fifty pages.

I can imagine the author deliberating long and hard over where to begin his story – and if he didn’t, I wish he had done, because the choices he made detracted from my enjoyment of the book. The novel forefronts the main character’s decline but, quite rightly, it’s placed within the context of the events that preceded it. Apart from the prologue featuring two anonymous characters (referred to as ‘the woodsman’ and ‘the stranger’), I detected an excess of telling over showing in the early chapters, a gaping psychic distance that reduced my curiosity about a character who was already behaving rather oddly. Perhaps other readers wouldn’t be as suspicious as I was about someone adding leaves to the compost heap (in the UK, since you’re asking, these have to be composted separately as they would otherwise prevent the heap from hotting up), but would you be happy to wait until page 51 for any acknowledgement that it was strange that Jay didn’t immediately report the dead body to the police? His reasons, based on shame passed down through generations, are extremely interesting but I needed his wife, who doesn’t start walking and talking until Chapter 8, to revive my curiosity about this family.

I think openings are one of the trickiest areas for novelists. We need to attract the reader’s attention without implying promises we can’t deliver. We need to give them enough information to navigate our characters’ landscapes without bombarding them with figures and facts. We need to drop teasers to keep those pages turning without evoking a sense of frustration that we are holding too much back. We probably can’t get it right for every reader. If you’re curious about this one, don’t let the turgid start put you off an otherwise impressive debut. Thanks to Two Roads for my review copy.

Picture
My review of a second farming novel is framed a writing exercise. To save time, why not try it as a thought experiment? Suppose you get an urge to write novella for adults about a cow who learns that her future is to grace someone’s dinner plate and determines to escape her fate by travelling to India where cows are sacred. What’s the best way to get readers turning your 200 pages? Should you
  1. make it hilariously funny?

  2. ensure your prose sings with poetry?

  3. draw unexpected parallels with human society?

  4. jack up the jeopardy to tighten up the tension?

  5. be the star of the popular TV show, The X-Files?

While some have proposed that David Duchovny has managed a mixture of 1 and 3 – I’m looking at you, The Guardian – I think he’s gone for 5 and is taking the piss. Headline provided my proof copy and, fun as they can be, I didn’t want to waste your time with a proper poll.

Finally, still on the theme of growing your food, here’s my response to Charli Mills’ latest flash fiction challenge to write a 99-word story that shows the bully mentality countered with a different, unexpected or kind action:

“This is gonna have to go!”

For weeks they’d loitered at the fringe of my plot, smirking and scowling at each new development. I’d dismissed their comments as gentle teasing, the old-timers’ traditional defence. Yet now I was back in the playground, the wrong kind of shoes on my feet.

Where I saw innovative recycling, they saw mountains of junk. “The judges will be here on Sunday. You’ve got five days to clear this mess.”

I tapped in the number as they marched off to their regimented gardens.

“The organic allotment award? You can come on Saturday? That’s great!”

Follow this link for an earlier post of mine on allotment gardening, where you’ll also find links to three of my longer stories on this theme.

Any feedback appreciated. Do feel free to mention your own favourite farming novels in the comments box below.

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.
13 Comments
Charli Mills link
16/3/2015 09:02:34 pm

My American Heathcliff! David Duchovy! Ha, ha...oh, I was a HUGE X-Files fan back when I was getting my writing degree, too! I had no idea he wrote a book! Here's a song for Mulder fans: https://youtu.be/nOP5wsSXY8w. So, if I was going to write Holy Cows, I'd make it a hilarious comparison of colorful Bollywood culture and cowboy culture. :-)

Soil, now that sound like a gritty read. Not far off from what it is like to be an American farmer. I know so many who have that doomsday attitude. Organic farming, local truck farms an other innovations have reinvigorated farming in America, though. It's still tough. I'd definitely read the book. And agree that beginnings are tricky. More often than not, I've read awkward or over-the-top beginnings and I can't help but wonder if it's because we put too much emphasis on the first 30 pages and the writing is different from the rest of the book?

Interesting take that allotment gardening is akin to being back on the playground and not fitting in. I understand those comments, too. Suburban gardeners are the worst for wanting aesthetics over health and practicality. One of my neighbor's complained all winter about the "junk" I had under my deck and he nearly died of fits when I installed that junk as recycled trellises for my very un-suburban garden! What a rich post!

Reply
Annecdotist
18/3/2015 05:01:05 am

You're so right about those first 30 pages being so overworked they differ from the rest. I'd gone through mine for Sugar and Snails so many times I was surprised my editor had anything to add. (Or take away) but it was all to the good.
When I got that flash I had in mind the allotment I used to have when I lived in Newcastle. In real life, people were much nicer, but they did find my methods somewhat peculiar. Now it's all hidden away in my back garden. However, we do have a front garden that we try to keep as a bit of a meadow in the summer. People often pause as they go by, I think disapprovingly, is the English do like their manicured lawns!
I'd love to see your garden and I'm sure we'd have great fun swapping tips.

Reply
Charli Mills
18/3/2015 09:56:02 pm

I'm more of a meadow person, too! When I return from LA, the planting begins! I like to dig in the dirt. :-)

Norah Colvin link
23/3/2015 03:04:50 am

I want to see photos of the recycled trellises. Please. Sounds awesome!

Reply
geoff link
18/3/2015 02:10:39 pm

Openings are crucial aren't they; how I ever made it through the first 50-60 pages of Captain Corelli I will never know but I'm glad I did. And tis land attachment reminds me of the Graham Swift Waterland with his attachment to the water and how that impacts everyone's life. And the flash is delightful. That need to be tidy; I can hear my mum and dad debating just that down the years. Mum had so many 'useful' pieces of wood and glass which I deliberately left behind when we moved her from the family home to a bungalow and which she never once let me forget in the five years she was there. Her worst insult (of many) about my duplicity was 'I took all that crap bout tidiness from your father - I don't see why I have to take it from you too'!

Reply
Annecdotist
19/3/2015 08:06:15 am

Thanks for sharing, Geoff, I'm with your mum on this one. We're in the middle of the annual (yes) house clean. I'm being brave and throwing a fair bit away, but can only cope with it in small doses.

Reply
Gargi link
19/3/2015 12:57:24 am

I had recently read David Duchovny’s interview in the Guardian so I knew he was writing this book. The premise alone attracted me to it. I’m disappointed that its not as good as made out to be, but I guess it’ll get some attention anyway based on the strength of his fan base alone.

Reply
Annecdotist
19/3/2015 08:08:46 am

Well don't let me put you off, Gargi, you might enjoy it more than I did. But it seemed pretty shallow from my point of view, especially in relation to the veneration of the cow in Hinduism.

Reply
Gargi link
20/3/2015 07:43:08 am

Fair point. Guess I'll add it to my wishlist after all.

Irene Waters link
20/3/2015 05:10:11 am

You are right that the first chapter is the most difficult - not only for novellists but also for creative non-fiction (including memoir). You really have to hook your reader in the first few pages or you've lost many of them before they've even begun.
I like the sound of the story about the cow, knowing he is destined for the pot decides to make his way to India. I think that could be a lot of fun. The English taking the piss can be very funny.
We don't have allotment gardens but I bet they can be a bit like home unit living. Organic definitely seems to be the way to go.

Reply
Annecdotist
20/3/2015 06:37:57 am

Good pint, Irene, any writer needs to work hard on their beginnings.
Interesting point about Holy Cow, that taking the piss can be fun. I know from other reviews I've seen others felt this way but let's say that if I'd actually bought it I'd probably be asking for my money back.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
23/3/2015 03:18:17 am

I don't know where to start with this one Anne, so I'll start with the flash! Brilliant. I know you are a keen organic farmer and I can just imagine the displeasure of the neighbours. I'd prefer the meadow too, but really I'd have the unkempt look. I'm not much of a gardener. I do know some that prefer the manicured garden. It does look nice but would be hard to maintain. It's a bit like schools trying to squeeze kids into the same shape when they would rather be a tangled web of individuals and ideals.
I love the premise of "Holy Cow". It made me think of a Roald Dahl short story that ended up with people on the abattoir hooks. Pity he made such a botch of it and ruined it for anyone else who might have had a better go. Your non-poll was a lot of fun.
"Soil" sounds like an interesting read, but I'd probably find it confusing the way the author skips around in time.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about these.

Reply
Annecdotist
24/3/2015 06:27:44 am

Thanks, Norah. I haven't read the Roald Dahl story you mentioned but it sounds like an excellent ending – nothing so dramatic from David Duvochny I'm afraid.
When I was growing up our garden was on a slope and the ground quite uneven so, although we had grass, we never had a proper lawn and I envied those who did. But now, knowing how much fertiliser and weedkiller has to go into maintaining them, I see them as just a step up from a paved courtyard. Although, I must admit, that when I refer to our front-garden meadow, it's about a third moss. Not so pretty, but lovely and springy underfoot.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Free ebook: click the image to claim yours.
    Picture
    Find a review
    Picture
    Fictional therapists
    Picture
    Picture
    About Anne Goodwin
    Picture
    My published books
    entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice
    Picture
    My latest novel, published May 2021
    Picture
    My debut novel shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize
    Picture
    Picture
    My second novel published May 2017.
    Picture
    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.
    hide
    2 of 100 (2%)
    view books
    Picture
    Annecdotal is where real life brushes up against the fictional.  
    Picture
    Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin: 
    reader, writer,

    slug-slayer, tramper of moors, 
    recovering psychologist, 
    struggling soprano, 
    author of three fiction books.

    LATEST POSTS HERE
    I don't post to a schedule, but average  around ten reviews a month (see here for an alphabetical list), 
    some linked to a weekly flash fiction, plus posts on my WIPs and published books.  

    Your comments are welcome any time any where.

    Get new posts direct to your inbox ...

    Enter your email address:

    or click here …

    RSS Feed


    Picture

    Tweets by @Annecdotist
    Picture
    New short story, “My Dirty Weekend”
    Picture
    Let’s keep in touch – subscribe to my newsletter
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Popular posts

    • Compassion: something we all need
    • Do spoilers spoil?
    • How to create a convincing fictional therapist
    • Instructions for a novel
    • Looking at difference, embracing diversity
    • Never let me go: the dilemma of lending books
    • On loving, hating and writers’ block
      On Pop, Pirates and Plagiarism
    • READIN' for HER reviews
    • Relishing the cuts
    • The fast first draft
    • The tragedy of obedience
    • Writers and therapy: a love-hate relationship?

    Categories/Tags

    All
    Animals
    Annecdotist Hosts
    Annecdotist On Tour
    Articles
    Attachment Theory
    Author Interviews
    Becoming Someone
    Being A Writer
    Blogging
    Bodies
    Body
    Bookbirthday
    Books For Writers
    Bookshops
    Candles
    CB Book Group
    Character
    Childhood
    Christmas
    Classics
    Climate Crisis
    Coming Of Age
    Counsellors Cafe
    Creative Writing Industry
    Creativity
    Cumbria
    Debut Novels
    Disability
    Editing
    Emotion
    Ethics
    Ethis
    Family
    Feedback And Critiques
    Fictional Psychologists & Therapists
    Food
    Friendship
    Futuristic
    Gender
    Genre
    Getting Published
    Giveaways
    Good Enough
    Grammar
    Gratitude
    Group/organisational Dynamics
    Hero’s Journey
    History
    Humour
    Identity
    Illness
    Independent Presses
    Institutions
    International Commemorative Day
    Jane Eyre
    Language
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Live Events
    Marketing
    Matilda Windsor
    Memoir
    Memory
    Mental Health
    Microfiction
    Motivation
    Music
    MW Prequel
    Names
    Narrative Voice
    Nature / Gardening
    Networking
    Newcastle
    Nonfiction
    Nottingham
    Novels
    Pandemic
    Peak District
    Poetry
    Point Of View
    Politics
    Politics Current Affairs
    Presentation
    Privacy
    Prizes
    Psychoanalytic Theory
    Psychology
    Psycholoists Write
    Psychotherapy
    Race
    Racism
    Rants
    Reading
    Real Vs Imaginary
    Religion
    Repetitive Strain Injury
    Research
    Reviewing
    Romance
    Satire
    Second Novels
    Settings
    Sex
    Shakespeare
    Short Stories General
    Short Stories My Published
    Short Stories Others'
    Siblings
    Snowflake
    Somebody's Daughter
    Storytelling
    Structure
    Sugar And Snails
    Technology
    The
    Therapy
    TikTok
    TNTB
    Tourism
    Toxic Positivity
    Transfiction
    Translation
    Trauma
    Unconscious
    Unconscious, The
    Underneath
    Voice Recognition Software
    War
    WaSBihC
    Weather
    Work
    Writing Process
    Writing Technique

    Archives

    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Picture
    BLOGGING COMMUNITIES
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from havens.michael34, romana klee, mrsdkrebs, Kyle Taylor, Dream It. Do It., adam & lucy, dluders, Joybot, Hammer51012, jorgempf, Sherif Salama, eyspahn, raniel diaz, E. E. Piphanies, scaredofbabies, Nomadic Lass, paulternate, Tony Fischer Photography, archer10 (Dennis), slightly everything, impbox, jonwick04, country_boy_shane, dok1, Out.of.Focus, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Midwest Region, Elvert Barnes, guillenperez, Richard Perry, jamesnaruke, Juan Carlos Arniz Sanz, El Tuerto, kona99, maveric2003, !anaughty!, Patrick Denker, David Davies, hamilcar_south, idleformat, Dave Goodman, Sharon Mollerus, photosteve101, La Citta Vita, A Girl With Tea, striatic, carlosfpardo, Damork, Elvert Barnes, UNE Photos, jurvetson, quinn.anya, BChristensen93, Joelk75, ashesmonroe, albertogp123, >littleyiye<, mudgalbharat, Swami Stream, Dicemanic, lovelihood, anyjazz65, Tjeerd, albastrica mititica, jimmiehomeschoolmom