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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 young men forced to face the real world

23/6/2017

6 Comments

 
Let me introduce you to two debut novels about young men forced out of their retreat from life by a determined young woman. Both feel responsible for the deaths of a younger sister, both have absent fathers and serious mental health issues induced by trauma. Both are about to get a rude awakening. But, as you’ll see, the authors have dealt with these bare bones in very different ways.

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Epiphany Jones by Michael Grothaus

With no friends, a tedious job in a back room of a Chicago museum and an addiction to fake celebrity porn, Jerry doesn’t seem to have a heroic bone in his body. Since the death of his younger sister over a decade before, visual hallucinations, or figments as his psychiatrists calls them, have stood in for real relationships. More recently he’s been plagued by recurring dreams. When his colleague is murdered as a priceless van Gogh is stolen from the museum and the finger of suspicion points to him, his life becomes entangled with that of a woman even crazier than he is. Beautiful and troubled, Epiphany Jones believes she hears the voice of God and God’s got big plans for the pair of them.


I give up on this novel twice: the first time because I didn’t think a novel beginning with a man masturbating to an image of an Audrey Hepburn lookalike was for me; the second time, further in, because, gripped as I was, I was finding it too disturbing. But the blandness of the novel I’d picked up as respite (not the other one reviewed here) soon had me heading back to Epiphany Jones begging for more.


Addressing themes of mental health, sex trafficking and the emptiness of Hollywood, this is a page turning thriller with genuine psychological and sociopolitical depth and a wide emotional range through humour, pathos, shock and horror. While one can never be sure
how closely fiction mirrors real life, the author, with a degree in filmmaking and years spent researching sex trafficking, has the right credentials to tackle these complex and disturbing subjects. Published a year ago now, and reminiscent of the Pulitzer prize winning The Orphan Master’s Son, I can only wish I’d read it earlier.


If the plot seems to creak ever so slightly in places, it’s just the sound of another piece of the jigsaw being transferred to a more intriguing place. In the end, everything fits: character, back story, setting and incidentals building an outstanding debut novel. Thanks to Orenda books for my review copy.

Me, Myself and Them by Dan Mooney

Denis Murphy has everything under control, from the one hundred and twenty minutes he’s prepared to spend with his two friends in a cafe to his carefully ironed socks. And he really doesn’t mind the mess made by his eccentric housemates, their antics merely providing an excuse for some intensive cleaning. Otherwise, apart from a barely tolerated visit from his mother on a Sunday, Denis doesn’t do people. Fortunately, as a data analyst, he’s able to work from home.


Everything’s hunky-dory until his former girlfriend, Rebecca, arrives back in town. Before he knows it, she’s got him going out to restaurants, tolerating touching and even having a dance. His housemates warn him nothing good will come of it, but at least they have the grace to hide away when she moves in. Yet, as Denis becomes more human, they pile on the pressure, determined to drive her away.


Like the figurines in
The Zoo by Jamie Mollart, Denis’ monstrous housemates are, of course, projections of his own mind. They help distance him from thoughts and feelings that might otherwise overwhelm him given his sense of responsibility for the tragedy that’s befallen his sister and another friend. What others might term obsessive-compulsive disorder, Denis considers an alternative lifestyle, freely chosen, not acknowledging what he’s lost in maintaining an illusory control.


Dan Mooney’s debut is published by Legend Press, who provided my proof copy. While neither the style nor the story got me particularly excited, it’s great to see men’s mental health addressed in accessible fiction, and others without much background knowledge might warm to it more.

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
Norah Colvin link
25/6/2017 08:08:57 am

Interesting reviews, Anne. I was surprised to see you rate the first so highly after having given up on it twice. Perhaps having an even less good novel to read as an alternative makes a weak one look better? (How's that for a statement/question?) Sounds like you are happy to have read it after all, though.

Reply
Annecdotist
26/6/2017 12:23:39 pm

Yes, it is interesting that I liked it so much after my initial difficulties with this novel. Very often I don’t only judge a book by its cover up by its first page, particularly whether the voice draws me in. But sometimes it takes a little longer to adjust to the style and subject matter and is worth persisting.
I’m sure my approach to the book is influenced by whatever I’ve read before it but that’s lost a few chapters in when it stands off walls of its own merits. (Might be a topic for a blog post on how we read at some future point – your comments often spark these musings about reading).

I don’t think Epiphany Jones was weak at all but the subject matter was challenging. I’ve flagged it as long as the year’s favourites.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
4/7/2017 11:15:49 am

Very happy to prompt thoughts for new posts, Anne. I look forward to reading them.

Annecdotist
4/7/2017 06:49:32 pm

Yes, great how we can spark off ideas between blogs. However, a lot of mine burn themselves out before I get time to write anything.

Charli Mills
6/7/2017 06:11:46 pm

Your reviews show how two books with a similar premise can be vastly different. And as you say, I'm interested too, to see men's mental health popping up in novels outside stereotypes of wounded soldier or serial killer (and perhaps that's indicative of the gaze in the US). Fireworks for the 4th of July in the US has brought up the issue of why we blast them in honor of men and women for whom the celebrations are terrorizing, reminding them of bombs. It's becoming a mainstream thought that all wounded soldiers are terrified by fireworks and that's not the case. PTSD manifests differently. My husband loves fireworks at village gatherings for the 4th, but when he hears them unexpectedly he feels the need to go secure the premise and often meets new friends, others not knowing he thought then unsafe. My rambling point is that perhaps we've merely touched the surface of men's mental health and expect it to look one way, and good to see different portrayals in fiction. Literature had the power to get us thinking outside what we believe are norms. Both these books seem to do that. Which does bring us back to how we read and what are our expectations as readers. As writers do we write commercially to satisfy those reader expectations or do we were to surprise them and break away from the expected?

Reply
Annecdotist
6/7/2017 06:55:18 pm

Yes, mental health is a complex area with so many individual differences but from the outside I’d be reassured that people were at least trying to be sensitive about PTSD and loud noise.
The final point is of interest given my current WIP. I think I need to take account of the general public’s knowledge and assumptions about severe mental illness but I can only write the story that feels true to me. I think there are too many ways of getting it wrong if we try to satisfy supposed reader expectations because not all readers will think the same.

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