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

Women taking stock: Mirror, Shoulder, Signal & Making Space

23/11/2017

8 Comments

 
The common theme in these two recently published novels is a woman experiencing an existential crisis, taking stock of where she’s got to in life by ordering the elements that make up her external world. Sonja, the older of the two, does this through taking driving lessons, and it’s no coincidence that she struggles to take control. Miriam, past adolescence although not yet fully fledged adult, tries to achieve something similar by jettisoning her surplus possessions, and through those of a compulsive hoarder she’s employed to help. Needless to say, neither woman’s path to a more comfortable accommodation with herself is straightforward. Curious? Read on!

Picture
Picture

Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors, translated by Misha Hoekstra

Sonja is learning to drive, but her first teacher won’t allow her to change gear and her second covers her hand on the gear stick with his. Spending her working hours at the keyboard, translating the gruesome crime novels of a popular Swedish author into Danish, she visits a massage therapist to alleviate the tension in her back and shoulders, but Ellen is partial to the supernatural and perceives psychic metaphor in physical pain. This is particularly irritating when it comes to the positional vertigo, with which it might not be such a good idea to drive.
 
Now in her 40s, Sonja moved to Copenhagen as a student, glad to leave behind
smalltown life in rural Jutland. Although she’s always been happy with her own company, she’s now lonely, unable to reconnect with her sister and nostalgic for the dramatic landscapes of her childhood. It’s perhaps no coincidence that she finds herself better at reversing than driving forward, but can she embrace the future without backtracking on life?
 
With just the right balance of poignancy and humour (I didn’t laugh once, but I certainly smiled) and, while definitely a novel of character, just enough plot, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal is a lovely story about navigating contemporary life as a
single woman. Or indeed, as a city dweller who yearns for the countryside; an introvert who craves authentic intimacy; or anyone unsure how to respond when others fail to respect their boundaries. (In addition to the driving instructors and massage therapist who go beyond their professional boundaries, Sonja’s best friend, Molly, is a psychologist who chats about her clients when they meet up for dinner.) Thanks to Pushkin Press for my review copy.
 
My TBR shelf has been overflowing in recent months, but I was prompted to read this one by
Irene Waters’ Past Times prompt for November on the subject of driving which seems to have provoked some humorous memories. Why not pop over and share yours?

Making Space by Sarah Tierney

Reading Sarah Tierney’s debut novel, I was careful to ensure Mr A didn’t see the cover. Not that it isn’t a great cover, but I didn’t want to raise his expectations that I was researching a solution to my own hoarding habit. But my reluctance to jettison anything that might come in useful later is nothing compared with Erik’s, a forty-five-year-old photographer and collage artist who has filled almost every room in his large house with stacks of books and magazines. When the narrator, Miriam, is employed to help catalogue and eventually reduce his stock of paper, she’s just taken almost all her possessions to a charity shop as part of an attempt to break away from her image as dull and aimless. Can she help Erik create sufficient space in the house for his teenage daughter to move back home?
 
Although the wit and polish the opening pages raised my expectations of something deeper, this is a competent exploration of our relationship with stuff, and its origins in
attachment issues, framed by a May-to-September romance. While mostly set in the city of Manchester, I was delighted when Miriam and Erik took a trip to Morecambe, calling in at the same hotel (although unnamed in both) where Liesel and Steve stayed my second novel, Underneath. Although no longer the season for holiday reads – unless Christmas counts – Making Space would merit a space in your suitcase, especially if staying in an Art Deco hotel in a rundown northern seaside resort. Thanks to Sandstone Press for my review copy. For another novel about overzealous collectors, see my review of Lost Time Accidents.

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.
8 Comments
Norah Colvin link
25/11/2017 07:17:58 am

Both sound to be interesting stories, Anne. I wonder what you thought about the psychologist friend who discussed her clients with Sonja, but maybe I already know. :)
I smiled at the thought of you accumulating "stuff". I wouldn't have expected it of you. As a teacher, I was a great collector. I still have lots of stuff I need to discard, but I do try to not collect so much any more.

Reply
Annecdotist
25/11/2017 02:56:56 pm

I’m sure you guessed right about the psychologist, Norah, although in the context of the novel I was able to forgive her because the inappropriateness was acknowledged and it was consistent with an overall theme. It annoys me much more when presented without comment as a way of building tension.
I like that my hoarding confession surprises you. It’s a mixture of not wanting to lose things I might need one day and dislike of perfectly good whatevers going to waste.

Reply
Irene Waters link
26/11/2017 06:02:59 am

Thanks for coming back with your review Anne. Both books sound as though they would make good holiday reading. Like you my TBR list is massive.

Reply
Annecdotist
27/11/2017 12:27:02 pm

Thanks, Irene. Actually, my TBR shelf is now below twenty and I’m getting withdrawal symptoms! But that’s not counting the invisible ones on the Kindle. I’m intrigued to see what next month’s theme will be for Times Past.

Reply
Caroline link
26/11/2017 06:25:49 pm

I thought that Mirror, Shoulder, Signal was excellent. At first I found it a but slow, but then it really grabbed me, as I realised that for many people in middle life the pace of it is really slow, and that by asserting herself a little she could achieve a great deal. And she does.
A great novel in translation.

Reply
Annecdotist
27/11/2017 12:29:54 pm

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this novel, Caroline. I also wasn’t sure about the opening – in my case, I couldn’t quite believe in the first driving teacher. Although I’m not the most assertive of people, I might have found a way to tell the instructor to shut up and let me concentrate!

Reply
Charli Mills
1/12/2017 01:02:21 am

The cover of the second book does look like a guide to cleaning up in our own lives. It sounds like a good novel read, but I do find the cover odd for some reason. Ah! I missed Irene's prompt, but I don't think I have any good travel stories. I might add the first book to my own TBR stack.

Reply
Annecdotist
2/12/2017 04:33:12 pm

I wonder what it is about the cover? Looking at it again, it strikes me that any of the items displayed could have sentimental value – especially the old photographs – so not such an accumulation of junk that could go in the bin. Of course, one person’s junk is another’s treasured memento, so how to judge?

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