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 series
    • 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
    • Stolen Summers >
      • Stolen Summers reviews
  • 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
    • Annecdotal blog
    • Annecdotal Press
    • Articles >
      • Print journalism
      • Where psychology meets fiction
    • Fictional therapists
    • Reading and reviews >
      • Reviews A to H
      • Reviews I to M
      • Reviews N to Z
      • Nonfiction
      • Themed quotes
      • Reading around the world
  • Shop
    • Inspired Quill (my publisher)
    • Bookshop.org (affiliate link)
    • Amazon UK
    • Amazon US
    • books2read

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

Horror: Grey Bees, Witch Bottle & Faces in the Water

22/11/2020

6 Comments

 
Only one of these three recent reads is classed as a horror novel and, although not my usual genre, it turned out to be my favourite of the three. But we don’t need to evoke the supernatural to scare ourselves: there are real-life horrors in each of these stories. In the first, a translation, war has killed many and put the survivors’ lives on hold. In the second, set in rural Cumbria, the spooky happenings are extra disturbing for a man with unprocessed memories of violence from childhood, as well as his helplessness in the face of his wife’s agonising three-day labour. The third is a 1960s classic set in a horrific – but typical of its time – psychiatric hospital where the regime seems designed to make a bad situation worse.

Picture
Picture
Picture


Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov translated by Boris Dralyuk

Silicosis contracted in his job as a mining inspector meant early retirement for Sergey; not yet fifty, he dedicates his time to attending to his bees. But there's not much to do in winter, when his story begins, so he lives a quiet life in the village where he grew up. His wife and daughter moved to the city years ago and, apart from one neighbour as stubborn as he is, most homes have been abandoned.
 
Did I say quiet? Well, no electricity means no television, but the village is in the middle of a war zone, no place for his bees. When the snow starts to melt, he loads his hives into his trailer and goes in search of peace, camping first within Ukrainian territory and later in Russian occupied Crimea. In his travels he encounters both the casualties of the conflict and those trying to live a normal life in contested territory.
 
Having heard of the author's previous novel translated into English, the bestselling Death and the Penguin, I was keen to give this a try. Overall, I was glad to read it, but I found the first hundred pages very slow going. There was humour in the rebranding of street names (which actually reminded me of the repeated rebrandings when I worked in the NHS) but it wasn't until he was on the move that I had much interest in Sergei's character or twigged to the symbolism – as creatures with no sense of national boundaries – of the bees.
 
His foray into Crimea was especially moving in relation to the racism and rough justice experienced by the Muslim family – particularly interesting to me having virtually visited almost two centuries earlier in the company of Mary Seacole. But I'm not sure I'm an awful lot wiser about this most complex of 21st-century conflicts. Thanks to publishers MacLehose Press for my review copy.


Witch Bottle by Tom Fletcher

Daniel never meant to get a job driving the back roads of rural Cumbria delivering stacks of vegetables and bottles of milk. But, with his mental health precarious after leaving his wife and daughter, the monotony and the solitude suit him until he starts seeing things that can’t be there. Such as the hooded giant in his sitting room constantly eating what doesn’t look like food.
 
Work starts to get dicey also when he risks losing his boss an important contract for turning up late. He also has to cope with harassment from the drivers for Fallen Stock, a company collecting dead animals from the local farms. Daniel can’t understand why there seem to be more of their vans around than usual, or why these old men in tweeds and plus fours drive so aggressively on the narrow country roads.
 
On a more hopeful note, Kathryn from the baked potato shop seems to like him. As they get closer, he learns she’s a witch. In a good way: the witch bottle she prepares for him banishes the apparition of the giant from his home. When others on his rounds mention mysterious hauntings, he takes witch bottles for them too. But forces with a vested interest in the climate of fear won’t let go without a fight.
 
I wasn’t sure what to expect from “a literary horror novel” and the prologue, with Daniel’s first sighting of the giant didn’t bode well. But, even with my low tolerance for magic realism, and came to enjoy it enough to stay up past my usual bedtime to get to the end.
 
Daniel’s traumatic back story makes it easy for the sceptic not just to accept but to enjoy and admire the supernatural element as projections from a deeply troubled mind. Although he doesn’t realise it, our narrator has been damaged since early childhood by his parents’ violent arguments and the death of his baby brother. The latter complicates his adaptation to his own baby daughter, already compromised by his wife’s traumatic three-day labour. Another layer is how horrors glimpsed in childhood, in this case on TV, registered but not understood, can reverberate years later. Not all terrors are pure fantasy.
 
This gives the novel a political as well as a psychological edge, albeit understated, which I particularly appreciated. Another bonus for me was the setting in the county where I grew up, with lots of familiar place names, and where I’ve set my forthcoming novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home, about a brother and sister separated for fifty years against the backdrop of the longstay psychiatric hospital closures.
 
Tom Fletcher’s sixth novel also brought to mind Our Fathers, by Rebecca Wait, for a theme of toxic masculinity and corrosive guilt and also The Butchers, by Ruth Gilligan, for a disturbing mystery in a rural setting. Witch Bottle joins those two novels as one of this year’s favourite reads. Thanks to Milly Reid at Jo Fletcher Books for my review copy.
 
You’ll find another man who goes to pieces when his partner wants children in my second novel, Underneath.

Picture


Faces in the Water by Janet Frame

Istina is a novice teacher when her thoughts turn strange, possibly due to the unwelcome attentions of the headmaster. Admitted to Cliffhaven, she never imagines she will spend the whole of her twenties there, apart from a period in another of New Zealand’s mental hospitals and a few short weeks with her family at home.
 
Treatment is arbitrary and brutal: Istina relishes her breakfasts because they signify she won’t be sent that day for ECT. Later, she undergoes insulin coma therapy and, this being the mid 1940s to 1950s, there is an ever present threat of personality-fixing lobotomy.
 
The other patients are scary, but their eccentricities are tolerated, and sometimes there is mutual support. The genders are separated apart from at the dances, short bursts of normality that leave the patients overstimulated and unable to sleep.
 
The doctors are distant gods, kept from interfering by the matron; with a hundred patients to a ward, the nurses are both overworked and bored, and intermittent acts of kindness not a source of professional pride but shame. Although attitudes are changing (p210),
 
the idea still prevailed that mental illness was a form of childish naughtiness which might be cured in a Victorian environment with the persuasion of stern speech
 
and those who don’t respond as expected an irritation (p193)
 
for much of living is an attempt to preserve oneself annexing and occupying others
 
(the unconscious motivation of many in the helping professions).
 
Like Stoner, Istina is saved by literature, or more mundanely by a doctor’s willingness to let her explore the mobile library. Partly inspired by the author’s own incarceration, this is an inside view of how mental disorder and distress is intensified by harsh and inhumane regimes which only some survive. I imagine Matty in my forthcoming novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home, would have had similar experiences on admission to Ghyllside at the same age of the other side of the world.

Picture




One of the stories in my freebie collection begins with a horrific premise. Click on the image to check it out.


Picture
Ever since I began blogging, I’ve marked World Toilet Day with a special post. This year, I only managed to flag it on Twitter, but you can find my posts by working backwards from last year: 8 more fictional toilets: inequalities and cultural differences.  But, by the power of community, WTD has become a fixture on other blogs.

Picture
The latest flash fiction prompt from Carrot Ranch provides great potential for toiletry horror stories inspired by real-life injustice or dystopian near-futures. I considered crafting mine around the horrors of toilets in some institutions but, in the end, I took my inspiration from a graphic novel published before we had a name for serious stories that look like children’s comics, Raymond Briggs’ wonderful When the Wind Blows.
Sanitary arrangements at the world’s end
 
How dare he? My hand trembles as I slide the bolt across the bathroom door. We are not savages. Yet!
 
A weekly wash in a bucket of water. Cooking on a fire built from antique furniture. Feasting on food I would formerly have thrown away. But nothing will induce me to shit outdoors.
 
Grime coats the basin. The stench goes beyond my unwashed clothes. But I have three packs of quilted toilet roll with aloe vera. I refuse to straddle a trench.
 
Unzipping my fly, I raise the lid. Recoil in horror as a rat leaps from the pan.
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.
6 Comments
D. Avery link
27/11/2020 10:58:55 pm

Funny thing about shitting outdoors. There are circumstances when it is preferred to indoors. (Like in your flash)
I know of a family tried to bring indoor plumbing to the old aunt who lived alone, had a hand pump and a wood burning cookstove inside an outdoor outhouse. She refused to let them hook up the oil burning furnace they had installed and absolutely no toilet, for why would anyone ever want to shit in their own house? Makes sense.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
29/11/2020 04:26:24 pm

Yes, I don't know about in the US, but in the UK we always used to have a toilet cubicle separate from the bathroom (where the sink and bath were, we didn't have showers in those days much either) and it felt very strange initially to have both in the same room.

Reply
Charli Mills
3/12/2020 07:06:40 am

Not exactly happy holiday reading, Anne, but seems appropriate for 2020. I think magical realism, if done well, can allow an author to explore areas of the psyche as you have describes. I find the barbarism of the mental institution the real horror story. An interesting set of reads with connections to your novels. As for your flash, the detail of quilted tp with aloe makes a great contrast with the dystopian circumstances. Glad that WTD fell on a prompt day!

Reply
Anne Goodwin
6/12/2020 07:37:28 am

A horror story indeed. Yes, great that WTD coincided with the prompt and so glad you remembered when I forgot.

Reply
Norah Colvin
6/12/2020 10:39:48 am

Horror is not a genre I read or watch, Anne. I think there are enough horrors in life, I'd rather escape than explore. I was turned off by a book called Savage Sleep (I think) in my early adulthood, which included shock therapy as 'treatment'. The thought of it has terrified me ever since. I also read The Exorcist about that time and it too gave me nightmares. I think I've avoided horror ever since. That's not to say I don't like to read about the dysfunctional. I'm just not too much into the super- or unnatural, and mental institutions and their punishments have no appeal. Despite that, I'm looking forward to reading your story of Matilda.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
6/12/2020 05:56:11 pm

I agree, generally, Norah, but Witch Bottle intrigued me. I looked up Savage Sleep also, and I would read it for the subject matter if I could buy it new, but it seems to be out of print.

Yup, shock treatment does seem perverse, especially as it was originally administered without anaesthetic or consent. And decades on, if / when it works, no-one knows why.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Free ebook: click the image to claim yours.
    Picture
    OUT NOW: The poignant prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home
    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
    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
    Kidney Disease
    Language
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Live Events
    Lyrics For The Loved Ones
    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
    Perfect Match
    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
    Stolen Summers
    Storytelling
    Structure
    Sugar And Snails
    Technology
    The
    The Guestlist
    Therapy
    TikTok
    TNTB
    Toiletday
    Tourism
    Toxic Positivity
    Transfiction
    Translation
    Trauma
    Unconscious
    Unconscious, The
    Underneath
    Voice Recognition Software
    War
    WaSBihC
    Weather
    Work
    Writing Process
    Writing Technique

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    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