The Second Cut - Louise Welsh

 Something I loved about this book was the sense of being enveloped in some kind of black and white B movie, film noir thriller from a past age - except - it is all so very contemporary! Topical issues are covered here; LGBTQ+, migrant workers, and drugs, but all seamlessly contained within a tight plot.

This book is apparently the second in a series featuring antiques auctioneer Rilke, I’m not sure what his christian name is, it might be in the text somewhere, I don’t recall and I can’t think of him as anyone but Rilke, but it matters not, I didn’t feel my enjoyment of this book was ever in jeopardy from not having read the first. (I certainly want to, now!).

Rilke is an engaging character, he comes across as sometime the good guy, sometimes not and he’s not averse to bending the rules to achieve a desired outcome. He’s flawed and real. I thought all of the characterisations were well drawn and believable. People behaved as you would expect them to throughout the book which I always think is the mark of good characterisation.

The plot is complex but cleverly executed with plenty of tension and a few nail biting moments. The first part of the book creates a palpable a mood of Glasgow and does some effective scene setting and character introductions before we progress to the nitty gritty and the plot intensifies. It’s not exactly a slow paced narrative, rather, a balanced and controlled one, There’s humour in amongst some of the more brutal and explicit sequences. It’s not overtly political in terms of that overshadowing what is predominately a mystery story yet the book has something to say about gay issues, policing, the generation divide -  and even the pandemic is referenced.

It’s a substantial book, meaty, and hard to second guess and the conclusion was enigmatic without being unsatisfactory. I hope for more in the series.

My thanks to Olivia-Savannah Roach at Canongate Books for a gifted copy.

Should I Tell You - Jill Mansell

 Sometimes I think books should be offered on repeat prescription. Only a certain kind of book, mind you. And I think that Jill Mansell’s ‘Should I Tell You’ would be perfect. For anybody who is looking for some light-hearted, (for the most part), upliftment a book like this is just what the doctor ordered. Set in the fictional Cornish seaside town of Lanrock, three people, Lachlan, innovative chef, Raffael, talented hairdresser and Amber, creative artist,  whose lives were entwined as foster children, find their adult lives intertwined in different ways. We hear their present day dilemmas and we get the stories of their pasts that bring them to that present. And alongside our protagonist trio there are some captivating characters - from the flamboyant Olga to the hesitant Benjie who have their own stories to complement the main thrust of the narrative. The reader is invited to walk alongside their lives and perhaps, most importantly, their loves. Uplit, chicklit, romantic comedy - call it whatever you like but let it take you out of yourself while you escape from the rigours of our current world. A sparkling narrative from an experienced author -  there’s going to be some very happy Jill Mansell fans.

Thirty Things I Love About Myself - Radhika Sanghani

 So, you’re primarily a fiction reader but someone offers you a self-help book about loving yourself. Asks you to find 30 things you love about yourself? You’d probably turn it down? But what if someone very cleverly created a fiction around that self-help book? That’s what author Radhika Sanghani has done with this witty, amusing, yet heart wrenching novel. There’s some gritty issues being dealt with here but ultimately it’s all about positivity and working through the crap that life throws at us. Nina Mistry spends the night of her 30th birthday in a prison cell! She acquires a self-help book there that is the catalyst for her self improvement. She’s a journalist, passionate about her ethnic and cultural origins and keen to share her views with the world. Doesn’t all work out quite as she thought, though!  Keenly observed with a balance between the amusing and the serious with a well paced narrative populated with diverse characters. Some of these characters will make you laugh and some will make you cry. But ultimately it’s a feel good book about loving yourself, warts and all. It also has a great deal to say about family and friendships. It’s quite a deceptive work for at times you can be fooled into thinking it’s “just another“ chicklit/romcom tale but it has a greater depth in terms of demanding its reader consider some of the contemporary issues facing our world; considerations of racism, body image, social media,  the place of women in the world to name a few. It’s the work of a very astute writer who is going to reach a far wider audience than would’ve been possible with “just“ a self-help book.

My thanks to team bookends for a gifted proof.

The Sky Above the Roof - Nathacha Appanah - Translated by Geoffrey Strachan

 A novella weighing in at just over 130 pages but the depth of emotion contained within it makes it a bigger book than the sum of its pages. Quality not quantity. With poetic and elegant prose this story is an exploration of trauma and dysfunction created between the generations. As the translator advises us in his opening note the French title refers to a poem by Paul Verlaine, the French Symbolist poet, and it was as if Verlaine were overlooking the whole story.

Told from the perspectives of three family members, Wolf, a seventeen year old boy, fragile, probably on the spectrum, his sister Paloma whose leaving of the family home ten years previously, was the slow catalyst for Wolf’s ‘joy ride’, and Phoenix, the mother, damaged and troubled, this story eloquently offers us a consideration of the emotional bruising created by lack of understanding, a paucity of affection and fractured relationships between parents and children. At the beginning of the tale Wolf is detained in prison - as the narrative develops we realise that the story is also about symbolic prisons, the ones that are created, or we create, for our own selves.

The subject matter is not uplifting to put it mildly but there is a underlying beauty rendered through the prose in spite of the tensions underpinning the story. It is not without redemption and the final chapter is a refined, exquisite piece of writing with subtle emotion and wisdom that serves as a salve for the reader after the events of the book. It is one of those stories that imprints itself upon your head and heart and stays with you long after you’ve finished it. Beautifully translated by Geoffrey Strachan nothing is lost in his treatment of the prose.

My thanks to Milly Reid and MacLehose Press for a gifted copy.

I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness - Claire Vaye Watkins

 I remember when I read Gold Fame Citrus back in 2016 I got that strange, tingly feeling that I get when I have a sense of experiencing something special. I thought the writing was incredible, the imagery and language expressive and evocative. I expected great things of the book but it didn’t seem to garner the accolades I thought it should. I began to doubt my instincts!!

So I was intrigued to read Watkins’ new novel. Although classified as a novel I suspect much of it is autobiographical since the author uses real names, certainly of her own family. But, like Jared McGinnis and The Coward, an autobiographical work expressed as a fiction can do what the hell it likes with the actual truth! But much of the Watkins’ family history is documented elsewhere and I often wondered whether the notoriety of having a father associated with Charles Manson has been a blessing or a curse but what better way to exorcise any effects by expressing them in a novel.

Something I love about this book was how contemporary it is in many ways, motherhood in our current age, but also how it seems to palpably echo a previous time in literature, I was reminded of Kerouac but with punctuation, the roman de clef, I thought of Tom Wolfe and The Electric Kool Aid Acid test, Kesey and his Pranksters, Manson and his family, and, I suppose inevitably, Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, something about the mood created in the novel, a kind of timelessness but a paradox in that the novel covers a very specific time in the protagonist’s life.

There’s humour in the book and there’s a raw honesty particularly regarding the equivocation of motherhood. A poignancy to revisit the past and try to understand its place in the present. A look at the preoccupations and self absorption of a teenage girl growing up in ’70’s America realised quite brilliantly with several epistolary sections and I was left wondering whether these letters penned by Watkins’ mother in the book are real or imagined? And in reading the mother’s letters the reader is subliminally required to consider the effect on the child and her sister? There’s a sense of them both needing some closure from a past, of living with unfinished business from the past that impacts on the present. It’s powerfully executed.

The title derives from a tattoo on a deceased boyfriend’s collarbone and it provokes considerations about what constitutes the author’s own ‘darkness’.  Or rather what she perhaps perceives as darkness. It’s an eloquent, literary soliloquy almost,  to mid life crises, motherhood, marriage and the pursuance of ones own creativity, however that is manifest. It’s frank, uncompromising writing, it may bother some but I applaud the candid sincerity of the protagonist and I delight in the masterful prose writing.

My thanks to Ana McLaughlin of riverrun books for a gifted copy.

Foolish Heroines - June Wentland - Blog Tour

If you’re looking for something a little different then I do believe you can find it in June Wentland’s debut novel, Foolish Heroines. It has been described as magic realism but there’s a quirkiness here that might allow the book to fit into the absurdist fiction genre too. Nothing is quite as it seems as we explore the seemingly ‘normal’ surface lives of several women and find that our understanding of normality is challenged in a most delightful and mind expanding way.

The  characters are diverse; for example, there’s recently widowed Lily, who is one of my favourite characters, there’s Janina who struggles to communicate with her husband, belly dancing Shaz, Fatima the florist, a collection of enlightened and skilled felines - Frida Kahlo is one -, Gladys the spider!  And the interactions between all the characters and the meshing of the, sometimes, crazy events makes for an unpredictable read! But unpredictable in an uplifting sense. I am loathe to give too much away because much of the joy of the book is coming across these bizarre events and occurrences. In that sense it is a difficult book to summarise because there is so much going on in it.

Although the story starts innocently enough and you think you’re getting another dysfunctional family tale with people trying to sort out the niggles and challenges of life you are soon confronted with this out of kilter world that Ms. Wentland has constructed. It’s a little unnerving to begin with but as the narrative gathers momentum and you adjust to the characters, the situations and the landscapes you find that it is a ride you just don’t want to end.

On a broader level it could be seen as a voyage of self discovery for a group of women. It’s colourful, vivid writing with warmth and wit. If you are a female reader this might alter your perception of Horlicks forever! It’s contemporary yet contains within in it a sense of traditional, almost fairy tale story telling that is refreshing. It often felt like I was experiencing the book rather than merely reading it!

My thanks to Isabelle Kenyon at Fly on the Wall Press and Valley Press for a gifted copy.

Valley Press  have a Jan 2022 sale offering 22% off, you just need to enter code JAN22 when shopping on https://www.valleypressuk.com at the basket stage and the discount will be applied.

 

Red is my Heart - Antoine Laurain + Le Sonneur translated by Jane Aitken

 Joy of joys , a book that defies convention and categorisation. Is this fiction? I’m not sure. It reads as very real emotionally. Is it a graphic novel? No, not ‘comicy’ enough. Is it a picture book? No, there is a textual narrative as well as a visual one. Does it matter? No. Does it work? YES! At under two hundred pages the book presents as a concentration of actions and reactions to the ending of an unrequited love affair.

Heading blurbwards, the book is described as an illustrated novel and offers the reader this precis.

‘How can you mend a broken heart? Do you write a letter to the woman who left you - and post it to an imaginary address? Or get rid of the jacket you wore every time you argues, because it was in some way responsible?

Combining the wry musings of a rejected lover with playful drawings in just three colours - red, black and white - bestselling author of The Red Notebook, Antoine Laurain, and renowned artist Le Sonneur have created a striking addition to the literature of unrequited love.’

It’s a wonderful fusion of the most simple yet effective art work, the symbol of the ladder endures as leitmotiv through so many of the illustrations, and Laurain’s witty yet poignant text. The reader truly believes he is a man shunned and rejected  by the love of his life. Full of extravagant gestures like throwing away a €50 hard drive because it contained hundreds of photos. Replete with philosophical musings on the nature of love - ‘Can you change the path of love by changing your watch?’ Somehow Laurain manages to convey the desperation of his protagonist with his words and Le Sonneur expresses the confusion and disbelief with his drawings. Yet whilst the subject matter could be interpreted as a little depressing Lauren’s treatment of it never really allows the reader to spiral downwards because of the writer’s idiosyncratic thought processes. It is quite bewitching.

I’ve read a couple of Laurain’s previous books, The Reader’s Room and Vintage 1954, and I thoroughly enjoyed the quirkiness of this author. I’m no less delighted by this novella. Another joy is that because of its apparent brevity it is easy to revisit again and again placing few demands on your time but enriching your mind both visually and cerebrally. Beautifully translated by Jane Aitken.

My thanks to Gallic Books for a gifted proof.

Stolen Crowns - L.G.Jenkins

  When I read dystopian series like the Hunger Games or Maze Runner I came to them when the series were all completed by the authors. So as I finished one book in the series I could easily start the next. However when you come upon a series that has not yet been completed it’s a different matter! 

I chanced upon the Merit-Hunter series when I joined a blog tour for the first book, Crowned Worthy. And the cliffhanger ending drove me nuts! I wanted to know what happened next. I wanted the next book. I needed to know what happened next! I needed the next book. It’s been an exercise in patience to wait for author, LG Jenkins, to produce the second book in the series, Stolen Crowns. But……. would you believe it? She’s done it again! Ended it on a cliffhanger and now I want the next book. I need the next book! 

I would say that to fully enjoy Stolen Crowns you do need to have read Crowned Worthy. For much of what happens in the first book has a bearing on what happens in the second. You need to know about SkipSleep, merit scores, being Worthy, being Glorified.  And of course many of the characters are introduced to us in the first book. And in this second story L.G. Jenkins confirms her place as an assured storyteller. The creation of this dystopian world, with its high tech, digital dominant living,  is sustained. The action is exciting and compelling. But alongside all the excitement is some moral and philosophical issues regarding action and motivation, forgiveness and atonement. We are privy to our two main characters, Ajay and Genni, growing and developing as people, questioning their actions and their feelings. 

As the story progresses in the second book you can begin to see where it might be headed. The reader, like the characters, start to question and doubt long established doctrines and beliefs. It is fascinating to see their minds, almost like buds in spring, start to open and question, agonisingly sometimes but you begin to hope that they will reach the right conclusions regarding the system they’ve been forced to live in their whole lives. 

I do so admire the sustained creation of a dystopian world. I wrote this when I was reviewing Crowned Worthy and it still stands for Stolen Crowns - 

‘It is one thing to imagine an alternate society but it’s quite another to construct a palpable and believable fiction around those imaginings. Every last detail has to be accessible, credible and stand up to reader scrutiny. L.G.Jenkins has done just that.’

The attention to detail is key to sustaining reader belief. And it’s immaculate here. You feel that if someone were to teleport you to Tulo you’d know exactly what to do! You’d know exactly where to go -  and where not to go! 

And now, sigh, I must wait for book 3.