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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 featuring supernatural rescues

9/9/2017

6 Comments

 
Apart from featuring supernatural rescues, these two novels have very little in common. But since I rarely read anything that takes me away from the rational, that’s enough to pair them in a post. While in A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars the spirits of the drowned migrants – plus a magic flute and a clutch of snakes – are firmly on the side of the good guys, the miracle cure in Fever Dream has a be-careful-what-you-wish-for flavour. Intrigued? Read on!

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A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars by Yaba Badoe

Sante was a baby when she was washed ashore in a sea-chest laden with treasure. It seems she is the sole survivor of the tragic sinking of a ship carrying migrants and refugees. Her people.

Fourteen years on she's a member of Mama Rose's unique and dazzling circus. But, from their watery grave, the unquiet dead are calling Sante to avenge them:

A bamboo flute. A golden bangle. A ripening mango which must not fall... if Sante is to tell their story and her own.

Rich in the rhythms and colours of Africa and glittering circus days. Unflinching in its dark revelations about life. Yaba Badoe's novel is beautiful and cruel and will linger long in the memory.


I don’t normally begin my reviews with the publisher’s blurb. But then, I don’t normally feature novels I’m not qualified to review. This description on the Head of Zeus website intrigued me and, when they kindly sent me a copy, it didn’t occur to me that it was intended for children from twelve years up. It’s quite possible I’d have got right to the end without realising I wasn’t the author’s ideal reader and it was only by chance that, fifty pages in, I glanced at the bar code and discovered I was almost half a century too old.
 
Not having read anything for that age group since I was a teenager myself (apart from a single chapter of a Harry Potter which, although better than I expected, didn’t entice me to read any more), I can’t tell you how it compares with other novels for children. I can tell you that I heartily enjoyed it and would happily read whatever
Yaba Badoe writes next.
 
The lively pace and language had me turning the pages and, if the teenage protagonist occasionally got out of scrapes as easily as they slipped into them, I didn’t mind. How could I not enjoy a novel about
the importance of adolescence in forging our identities when I’d written one myself? Even so, I’m not generally drawn to novels about childhood, even when they’re targeted at adults.
 
A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars is a life-affirming magic-realism adventure story against a  backdrop of
Ghanaian culture, tackling serious issues of migration and forced prostitution in a realistic yet sensitive manner, neither sugar-coating the issues nor zooming in excessively on the horrors. An impressive achievement: it’s not only younger readers who appreciate being protected without being patronised.

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin translated by Megan McDowell

Young children do and say the most surprising things. Often cute and amusing, sometimes confusing and intriguing, their antics are occasionally disturbing to adults, even to their own parents. This fear of children’s difference is mythologised in tales of changelings and suchlike, and it’s this, alongside its more readily acknowledged counterpart fear for young children, that celebrated Argentinian short-story writer Samanta Schweblin explores in her recently published debut novel.
 
While her husband is working in the city, Amanda has rented a rural holiday home for herself and young daughter, Nina. She’s barely unpacked when she meets Carla, who tells her a shocking story about her son, David, being brought back from the brink of death by a shamanistic procedure involving the transmigration of souls. Witnessing Carla’s coldness towards her son, Amanda doubts her sanity. But she soon finds that, even as a visitor and as a mother ever conscious of the “rescue distance” between herself and her child, she can’t escape the poison leaching out across the entire town.
 
Structured as a dialogue between Amanda, feverish in a hospital bed, and David, prompting her to record every detail of the terrible events that brought her there, I could imagine Fever Dream as a spooky TV film. In contrast to the feverish Guardian review that brought it to my attention, I found this novel enjoyable but slight, both in its conception and length (I read the 150 small pages in the time it would have taken to watch the film, if it existed) and the structure, although unusual, a bit gimmicky.
 
Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, Megan McDowell’s translation is published by Oneworld who provided my review copy. Since I missed it last month, this fable of maternal anxiety and the degradation of the countryside wrought by agrochemicals stands as my belated contribution to Women in Translation month (although I did manage to
review four relevant novels last year).

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Remember the snakes I mentioned in the introduction? If the spirits were watching out for me, that would have been the subject of this week’s flash fiction challenge. I wanted to show off my photo of the adder I met on the moors a couple weeks ago, but I can’t contribute a story about a slippery creature to a collection about busy characters. I’ll have to hang back for my post on September resolutions. If I’m not too busy to pull it together before Tuesday’s deadline.

I’m not sure what this is then. A BOTS prose-version of WH Davies’ poem, Leisure perhaps?

No time to stand and stare?

 
A shorter walk today, and no dawdling. Busy busy, lots to do back home.
 
The squiggle on the path broke her rhythm. Even here, in its natural habitat, an adder was a rare sight. She’d disturbed one once, only a mile away, but it slithered into the bracken before she could distinguish the diamonds on its back. This one seemed to be posing. How close could she get before it reared its head and spat?
 
A gift. A blessing. She’d stay as long as the snake did. A poor life, if she lacked the leisure to stand and stare.


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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
Irene Waters link
13/9/2017 05:59:16 am

I have put A jigsaw of fire and stars on my TBR list. I enjoy quite a lot of YA literature, usually because they pose some interesting concepts and make me think.
I never think of England as having snakes - probably because their is so much fear of our snakes we don't think of you as having any of your own. It would indeed be a sad world if you were too busy to stop and watch awhile.

Reply
Annecdotist
17/9/2017 02:10:18 pm

I hope you enjoy Jigsaw, Irene. Although I’m not out in the real world very often (!), I’ve been mentioning it to anyone I meet who likes YA.
We do have a few snakes, although the adder is our only venomous snake, although I don’t believe it’s anywhere near as scary as those in Australia. Even so, I was taking a risk in doing so close. Partly, it was because it looked smaller than I expected, so I wanted to check it out with someone more knowledgeable (apparently that’s the standard size for males – females are larger) and partly because I hoped to get even closer – as it hadn’t moved since I had come across it, I wondered if it were dead (it wasn’t) – but that was as close as I could get before it slithered off into the heather. If I’d been more patient I’d have been able to watch it for longer!

Reply
Norah Colvin link
16/9/2017 11:45:56 am

Hi Anne, I find the covers of both books quite appealing. I have to say, though, that I picked the intended readership of A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars before you did. The cover illustration, title and first sentence of the blurb easily gave it away. It reminded me immediately of Joan Aiken's wonderfully original fairy tales. I wonder what Robbie Cheadle would make of this African tale. It would be interesting to hear her opinion. Being another short book, I could consider it. I think I'd prefer it to Fever Dream, though I was initially drawn to it through your references to children.
A snake! In England! And quite a pretty one at that. Like Irene, I don't think of there being snakes in England, but I guess St Patrick had to shoo them somewhere close by.
Your flash is wonderful. I'm pleased the snake didn't rear its head and spit, and that you found the time to stop for long enough, at least, to take a photograph.

Reply
Annecdotist
17/9/2017 02:20:44 pm

Well detected, Norah! Although there are some covers of books intended for adults that are similarly colourful and whimsical. But what do I know when the title of my first novel sounds like a children’s book!
I did enjoy the themes of Fever Dream but I think a longer book could have made more of them, especially the damage wrought by agrochemicals – but perhaps others would appreciate its subtlety.
Ha, I’d forgotten about St Patrick banishing the snakes, but that made me think of the episode of that great philosophical work The Simpsons – which I don’t think we’ve discussed here before – where Lisa tries to protect the snakes on Bashing Day. (Perhaps you’d do a post on the educational value of that focus – assuming you also get/got it in Australia).

Reply
Charli Mills
21/9/2017 04:53:09 am

An adder! Now I've lost all other thoughts about the review. It looks thick like a coiled muscle and surprisingly similar to what we call a rattlesnake. Aren't adders venomous? Rattlers are, too, but we practice caution, except perhaps when I get too fired up to explore beyond caution. I like the last line of your flash and believe that is actually something we should all take more time to do.

I remembered what I wanted to say about your review of A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars -- it reminds me of flash you wrote about an adolescent unicorn. Perhaps younger audiences are yet capable of gleaning truths from myths in a way that adults find logic having merit.

Reply
Annecdotist
21/9/2017 05:50:41 pm

Yes, adders are venomous and we practice caution too but, as I said in my reply to Irene, this one stayed still so long I thought it was dead (it wasn’t).
How lovely that you thought of my unicorn. I did see that you’d included it in the anthology (I hope that’s not a spoiler) – a pleasant surprise as I’d forgotten how much I liked it.

Reply



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