Humans are social creatures, and the social systems we create can serve as both help and hindrance. Bullying is one of the more disturbing things that can happen when we gather together, but the dark side of human nature can catalyse engaging fiction. In Bone by Bone, childhood bullying is at the core of the novel, while in Hush it’s a consequence of a family trauma, but both make for gripping reads. On a lighter note, I’ve followed these too short reviews with a memory of a more positive aspect of human association, the childhood crazes from which no-one is excluded.
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What would you do if your child was being bullied? What if the bullying extends beyond the playground into your own home? What if, through one misguided action, the whole community sees you as the perpetrator rather than the victim? These are the questions Laura needs to face when, recently divorced and relocated to Bristol from London, her nine-year-old daughter, sweet but shy Autumn, is made miserable by a boy in the year above at her new school. For Autumn, when her mother’s bungled intervention seems to make things worse, there’s the despair of feeling totally unprotected, especially as her father and grandparents are abroad. When the name-calling gives way to attacks on her person and property, when the cyberbullying starts and someone seems to know all Laura’s passwords, for both mother and daughter life gets very scary indeed.
I was very keen to read Bone by Bone after (virtually) meeting the author on Isabel Costello’s Literary Sofa in a post about writing her first psychological thriller after successfully publishing four literary novels. With my next novel, to be published in May 2017, about a man who keeps someone imprisoned in a cellar, seeming to fit that genre, I was sure I could learn from her experience. Sanjida writes that, in a thriller, “the plot needs to be tighter, more dramatic and corkscrewed with twists and turns”. There’s certainly a strong plot in Bone by Bone, without being overbearing, although personally I’d have sacrificed some of the tension for more character depth. While the mother and daughter were convincing, I’d have liked to gone deeper into the motivation of the “villains”: while this does come out at the end, it seemed a little too convenient. But I don’t think that’s a criticism of the novel, rather my ambivalence about the genre (and, interestingly, perhaps why I’ve written Underneath from the point of view of the perpetrator). Thanks to Corvus books for my review copy.
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Apart from in her mesmerising mathematics lectures, and in very brief exchanges with her sister, Connie, and partner, Richard, Lily Emmett tends not to talk. Connie, married to a doctor and the mother of two boys, meets monthly with Richard to check her sister’s okay. Their widowed mother’s death brings the sisters back to their childhood home, reminding them of the event that triggered Lily’s mutism at the age of only eight. But Lily’s silence is merely an extreme version of the hush at the core of the entire family system: no-one talks about the mysterious death of the girls’ friend, Billy.
While Connie is dragged to his funeral, Lily is packed off to her grandparents to be home educated. When that fails to get her talking, she’s admitted to “the institute”, a psychiatric unit I found no more convincing, with the bars on the windows and the moratorium on family visits, than the one in which Madeleine was incarcerated in The Offering. Fortunately this is only a very small episode (as are her more credible sessions with a fictional therapist whom she sees on return to her ordinary school) in a gripping and psychologically astute story of bullying and family breakdown and the damaging impact of secrets on developing identities. Congratulations to Sara Marshall-Ball on an engaging debut, and thank you Myriad Editions for my review copy. If you enjoy stories about disturbing family dynamics (such as Everything I Never Told You) crossed with childhood vulnerability (for example, as in Truestory) and sisterhood (like The Insect Rosary) with a generous helping of suspense, Hush might be your kind of novel.
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There's a fair amount of childhood bullying in my novel, Sugar and Snails. But I want to focus on something lighter for the remainder of this post. If bullying is the dark side of the pack instinct, fashion – not just for clothes, but for a whole way of being – reflects the more benign. Yet, when Irene Waters proposed crazes for this month’s Times Past memoir prompt, I read it first as crazies and my voice activated software did the same.
I was very keen to read Bone by Bone after (virtually) meeting the author on Isabel Costello’s Literary Sofa in a post about writing her first psychological thriller after successfully publishing four literary novels. With my next novel, to be published in May 2017, about a man who keeps someone imprisoned in a cellar, seeming to fit that genre, I was sure I could learn from her experience. Sanjida writes that, in a thriller, “the plot needs to be tighter, more dramatic and corkscrewed with twists and turns”. There’s certainly a strong plot in Bone by Bone, without being overbearing, although personally I’d have sacrificed some of the tension for more character depth. While the mother and daughter were convincing, I’d have liked to gone deeper into the motivation of the “villains”: while this does come out at the end, it seemed a little too convenient. But I don’t think that’s a criticism of the novel, rather my ambivalence about the genre (and, interestingly, perhaps why I’ve written Underneath from the point of view of the perpetrator). Thanks to Corvus books for my review copy.
############################################################
Apart from in her mesmerising mathematics lectures, and in very brief exchanges with her sister, Connie, and partner, Richard, Lily Emmett tends not to talk. Connie, married to a doctor and the mother of two boys, meets monthly with Richard to check her sister’s okay. Their widowed mother’s death brings the sisters back to their childhood home, reminding them of the event that triggered Lily’s mutism at the age of only eight. But Lily’s silence is merely an extreme version of the hush at the core of the entire family system: no-one talks about the mysterious death of the girls’ friend, Billy.
While Connie is dragged to his funeral, Lily is packed off to her grandparents to be home educated. When that fails to get her talking, she’s admitted to “the institute”, a psychiatric unit I found no more convincing, with the bars on the windows and the moratorium on family visits, than the one in which Madeleine was incarcerated in The Offering. Fortunately this is only a very small episode (as are her more credible sessions with a fictional therapist whom she sees on return to her ordinary school) in a gripping and psychologically astute story of bullying and family breakdown and the damaging impact of secrets on developing identities. Congratulations to Sara Marshall-Ball on an engaging debut, and thank you Myriad Editions for my review copy. If you enjoy stories about disturbing family dynamics (such as Everything I Never Told You) crossed with childhood vulnerability (for example, as in Truestory) and sisterhood (like The Insect Rosary) with a generous helping of suspense, Hush might be your kind of novel.
############################################################
There's a fair amount of childhood bullying in my novel, Sugar and Snails. But I want to focus on something lighter for the remainder of this post. If bullying is the dark side of the pack instinct, fashion – not just for clothes, but for a whole way of being – reflects the more benign. Yet, when Irene Waters proposed crazes for this month’s Times Past memoir prompt, I read it first as crazies and my voice activated software did the same.
At secondary school, the girls had a craze for wicker baskets instead of satchels at one time, and the craziness of this, along with the first confused stirrings of sexuality, is reflected in my short story “Kinky Norm”. But it was Irene’s reference to the game of “elastics”, which we called “French skipping” – in the way that France seemed so far away to us that anything could happen – that sent me scouring through my old photos. I’m at the back in fetching pleated miniskirt, at nine the same age as Autumn in Bone by Bone, and my sister is the one between my two brothers in mid-air. I find the photo interesting in that the boys are joining in a girls’ game, especially unusual when those two girls were significantly younger than them. Maybe they were indulging us; maybe we were a good excuse for them to play. I can’t remember, but I like the photograph, and hope you do too.
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