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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

Two Novels about Bullying and a Craze from Times Past: Bone by Bone by Sanjida Kay & Hush by Sara Marshall-Ball

26/4/2016

7 Comments

 
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.
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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.
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.
7 Comments
Irene Waters link
27/4/2016 01:45:42 am

Bullying is such a common problem and yet a major problem to solve. Cyber bullying just extends its reach although I have to say I struggle to understand why people allow it to upset them to such a degree that some will suicide because of it.
I had to laugh at the crazies. Some of our crazes were indeed crazy. Interesting craze the girls had with wicker baskets. When I was at school everyone had globite cases but I wouldn't say it was a craze so much as regulation uniform. Thanks for joining in again Anne and so glad you found the picture of you and your siblings playing French skipping (elastics).

Reply
Annecdotist
28/4/2016 01:53:24 pm

Thanks for prompting me to share this photo, Irene. Regarding the bullying, it does seem strange to me, too, that children don’t turn their cyber bullies off. But I suppose even for us who haven’t grown up with it, social media is quite compelling, so I can see how it must be difficult for today’s teenagers and preteens. On a basic level, belonging is essential to our well-being.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
29/4/2016 07:37:55 am

Hi Anne,
Both books sound interesting in a disturbingly dysfunctional kind of way that makes me think I might identify with and be repelled by their content in equal measure. I particularly like the sound of "Hush" but probably won't add it to my list at the moment.
You mentioned meeting Sanjida and that you thought you may have been able to learn from her. I wonder did you learn anything you applied in your novel.
I love the photo of you playing elastics. We used to play it also. It has made a few attempts at a come-back but none have been quite as successful as it was in my day. One day, I intend to put together a list of these old games. I think it is important for children to learn how to play them. So many lunchtimes see children hanging around the playground wondering what to do. They are so used to being entertained every waking moment they don't know what to do if there's a spare one. I think it leads to a lot of the negative behaviour, such as bullying, that goes on.
Interesting read as always. Thanks.
I was going to make a nasty comment about your brothers, insinuating they may have been there figuring out what other uses they might make of the elastic. Perhaps I was thinking more of my brothers. It's a good thing I forgot to mention it! :)

Reply
Annecdotist
1/5/2016 11:45:15 am

Mmm, what did I learn? I think that a standard thriller is heavier on plot than Underneath, which is more about character, although reassuringly some early readers have found it thrilling.
What you say about kids in the playground not knowing how to entertain themselves is really sad, and fits with your own most recent post about not needing proper toys to play with. Your point about my older brothers is also interesting. You’d certainly expect in a big family they might have another agenda than supporting their younger sisters, but my memories of that age aren’t very reliable. I do remember the older one (six years older than me) as quite protective, but that’s unlikely to be the whole story! I’m wondering now if there was some unconscious motivation to post that particular photograph (not that I’ve got another version of playing elastics I could have used) along with novels about bullying – when I thought the picture represented the opposite I might have been hinting to another side of the story.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
1/5/2016 01:20:32 pm

Every time you mention "Underneath" I am feeling more excited about reading it. As you know it is character that interests me, and it is the characters that make a thriller; perhaps their unpredictability, maybe in timing more than action.
I shouldn't have mentioned that about your brothers. That's the reader bringing her own understandings and making false assumptions. I'm sure your brothers were lovely, protective and kind. You have previously mentioned your desire to have been like one of them (not sure which). I'm sure you had only admiration for them and that you all had fun joining in.

Annecdotist
1/5/2016 05:21:33 pm

Well I hope Steve does justice to the buildup I’ve given him!
Not at all, your comment about my brothers was really interesting and I have to smile at the thought of the adjectives going in the other direction! I do remember any previous mention of admiring them, unless it was in connection to the desire to be a boy which I think was in recognition of their greater flexibility, as well as skill merely by dint of being older. I’m thinking of coming back to this theme when Underneath is published as there is an issue in the novel about differing memories between Steve and his sisters about his childhood.

Leonard link
19/6/2022 03:29:34 am

Good posst

Reply



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