Paper Cup - Karen Campbell

 

Karen Campbell is an experienced novelist. So as a reader you know you’re going to get something pretty good when you start a book by her. This isn’t the first novel about a homeless person, but I think Kelly is one of the most original characters from that genre and it was so good to see a story feature an older protagonist.

But Kelly is more than “just“ a homeless person. I think some of us have become too immune to homeless people on the street, and we can pass them by without a thought. This story highlights the old adage “there but for the grace of God go I“. Kelly’s present and her past play out in tandem throughout the book so we learn that she is an intelligent and educated woman. And despite the challenges life throws at her, her compassion, determination and resilience rarely leave her. Of course that hasn’t always been the case as her backstory reveals but I’m not going to offer any spoilers.

In many ways, there are a number of coincidences in the story which the purists may take exception to but this is a fiction and it works. Two chance events set the wheels in motion for Kelly’s Odyssey, I suppose you might call it. And she embarks upon a journey that takes us from the streets of Glasgow, so palpably portrayed, through to the paradox of a raw, beautiful, Scottish countryside. It’s very much a Scottish book, and this is mere Sassenach took a page or two to tune into the Scottish dialect but now I think I might be fluent!😉

The story pulls no punches but there is humour to balance out the stark brutality of Kelly’s story. Alcoholism and mental illness can deceive the true nature of the person. Another chance encounter shows Kelly’s understanding of responsibility for another life and what a powerful motivator that can be. The novel is also populated with many different characters that Kelly meets along the way. 

There is a redemption in the book, whether you would call it a happy ever after I’m not sure, but you close the book feeling a little happier about Kelly’s future.

I read this as part of a Canongate Books read along, and I’m very grateful for the copy they gifted me.

Disobedient - Elizabeth Fremantle

19/04/2023

 I’ve never made a secret of my antipathy toward e-reading and kindle reading. Sometimes I have to use devices for reading to meet a deadline, but it’s with reluctance. However, when you’re desperate to read the latest book by one of your favourite writers, which won’t be published for a few months, and there is an opportunity to download it on Net Galley. It becomes a no brainer!! I love Elizabeth Fremantle’s books so much I was prepared to read it digitally rather than wait for my physical copy.

Disobedience is the story of Artemisia Gentileschi, the baroque painter, seemingly “rediscovered“ of late. The National Gallery had an exhibition of her work which was in the middle of lockdown, so I couldn’t behold her works physically, but the National Gallery did do a zoom lecture on her, which I took advantage of. And somehow, in my ageing, illogical brain, reading a digital copy of this book, seemed in harmony with my digital viewing of the exhibition.

Something that I admire so much in Ms Fremantle’s work is her ability to create the most palpable scenarios right from the off. There’s no need to “get into“ the book, you’re there from the first word. It’s as if you’re immediately enveloped into 17th century Rome, the lifestyle and habits of these artists. Is that the mark of impeccable research, skilful writing or a fusion of both. I’ve experienced it in all her books. And for the duration of your read, you’re there in that very world as if you were born to it.

Artemisia is an artist, and also a woman subject to the societal codes and dogmas of her time. Chaperones and marriage, limited choices. Strong and brave is the woman who opposes. Artemisia is ambitious, certainly, in terms of her art and the vision she has of what her art can do. This story revolves around a certain period in the painter’s life. It’s not seeking to tell us her whole history, but it’s showing how one individual deals with a set of circumstances that would surely crush a lesser person. Many readers may well be familiar with Gentileschi’s story I don’t want to spoil it for those who don’t. What I’d like to focus on is how well the story is told. This writer has an uncanny knack of seeing into the hearts and souls of the characters she writes about. And that’s more than impeccable research. It demonstrates such a feel for the period and people about which she’s writing. The characterisations are superb. From the artist’s father, Orazio, to Zita, her chaperone and model, these characters are so fully formed they leap off the page at you And you believe. I think that in historical fiction to believe in the characters is so vital for the history to come alive. And it does come alive here. The narrative is superb. The pacing is so well balanced. The plot is so satisfyingly crafted that there’s almost a sigh of relief at the book’s conclusion. Not because you’ve finished the book, but because Artemesia has stayed true to herself, and not been cowed, or capitulated to other people. You want to raise a fist in celebration at her triumph. 

The facts of her story could be read in some kind of biographical account of her life. But you wouldn’t get the same frisson or the same sense that you are there with her. With this story, you can almost smell the paint, feel the injustice. This book brings Artemisia Gentileschi to life.

My thanks to Net Galley for a digital copy. 

27/07/2023 And today my hardback copy arrived, so I can now read it “properly“.🤣

Crushed Roses - Ibiere Addey

 

This was just such a pleasure to read. A story told through prose poems. The story of a woman searching for meaning. A woman suffering heartbreak, looking for love, but ultimately finding a path through all the obstacles that life threw at her. In a sense, I suppose it’s not an original premise for a story. But what is original is the structure and style of this book which I thought rendered it quite unique.

It’s full of images and metaphor that should delight the poetry lovers, and it has a story which should delight the fiction lovers! Some original descriptions - the attractive Wale Badmus described thus;

‘Either greedy

at the table of body parts

or he was God’s favourite being.’

And there are poems within the poem if you will. Verses that would stand on their own outside of this narrative including the titular Crushed Roses which is quite beautiful.

‘The beautiful things in life are best left untouched.

For when touched, irreversible complications may arise,

which washes away a savour.’

Because it is a fiction, it therefore has a plot, and I do not wish to divulge the details of the plot suffice to say that it’s a fairly simple one, but it’s the thoughts and feelings contained within that give the book its substance and its meaning. 

What I also found quite exciting was that when I reached the end of the book there was a link to the trailer for a film of the story. As I was reading I felt the work had a very visual feel to it so this was like a validation of that thought.

https://www.ibiereaddey.com/films

I won this book in a Librarything giveaway, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity to read it.

Becoming Us - Jake & Hannah Graf

 I borrowed this book from my local library and read it over a couple of days. It was so uplifting and hopeful. Transgender issues are very contemporary at the moment and seem to be quite contentious fodder for many folk out there. Reading a story like Jake and Hannah’s is illuminating and can educate those people who can’t quite grasp the bigger picture. I’m not talking about the professional trolls who do their trolley dashes through the social media supermarkets but people who offer a degree of vitriol purely through ignorance. We see it, so often today, people offer their opinions without any real understanding or knowledge of the issue. I think a book like this can offer people the chance to become more informed. But, for me anyway, it is not ‘just’ a book about transgender, it’s a book about love and overcoming potentially insurmountable odds, staying strong and true. It’s an easy read, written in a relaxed style with Jake and Hannah sharing the narrative throughout and taking us on their journeys both as individuals and as a couple. I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Second Best - David Foenkinos - translated by Megan Jones

 

One of my first thoughts when I was reading this was  - has J. K. Rowling read it! And then my second thought was - has Daniel Radcliffe read this?!  Somehow, I think they should! I love the thought of them reading it. 

 I was intrigued by the main character being called Martin when the last David Foenkinos book I read was called The Martins. I was wondering if there’s anything in that? Martin Hill is the boy who was nearly given the role of Harry Potter. And this fictional imagining conjures a life for Martin that sees him struggling to cope with the failure of not being Harry Potter. It’s a quirky novel and a curious premise also, but if you read the book and think about it more, what happened to Martin happens to all of us time and time again, doesn’t it? We all have to deal with failure. Sometimes when you’re very young and what you fail at is very big it becomes harder to cope with. But the book’s conclusion throws everything on its head and it’s a quite joyous denouement in so many ways. This is a perfect ‘life we wish we’d had’ story overflowing with compassion and understanding.

Martin broke my heart. There were times when I wondered whether he might be somewhere on the spectrum but some of his “idiosyncrasies“ were self-imposed because of his perceived failure. Foenkinos is a master of navigating the tightrope between comedy and tragedy, subtle, nuanced so you can laugh while you’re crying and vice versa. Martin dominates the narrative, while the other characters meander around him, some nurturing him, some inhibiting him. I also found the character of John, his father, very poignant. There’s a great deal of love in this book.

It’s structured in four parts which sees different phases of Martin‘s life. It has a flowing narrative style which is relaxed in spite of the sometimes emotional concepts contained within the writing. Much credit must go to Megan Jones, the translator. I know some of the action takes place in England, but I often completely forgot that it was a book in translation. 

There was a period about three quarters of the way through when I thought the story was losing some momentum but in the final stages it picked up again and how!

Foenkinos tells a good story, it’s hard to second-guess where he’s going to go with the plot, so as a reader, you’ve always got the sense that there’s something waiting, just around the corner or just over the page! I loved The Martins and responded right away to the idiosyncratic style of the writing. But more than just being a good storyteller I think Foenkinos is perceptive when it comes to people and what makes them tick.

I look forward to reading more of his work. And I know I’ve got a lot to catch up on!

My thanks to Claire Hanscombe at Gallic books for a gifted proof.

Faith, Hope and Carnage - Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan

 

Sean O Hagan is a journalist and Nick Cave is, well, he’s Nick Cave ! Legendary Australian musician. When I picked this book up, I thought it would be a rock ‘n’ roll book and I had to chuckle as I read some of the final pages in the book, because Nick thought that’s what he was doing initially! So, I hear you asking, if it isn’t a rock ‘n’ roll book what is it? Good question.

It appears to be a protracted transcription of some telephone conversations between Nick and Sean. Clearly they know each other well and have been friends for some time. So there is an ease within the conversations and an openness that I think you get between two people who  know and trust each other in a way that you don’t get with a interviewer who may in someway be distanced.

If you’re a fan of Nick Cave and you’ve followed his career in music, I guess a lot of this will be familiar. I didn’t know much about him and I had a perception that has been completely blown apart by reading this book. I found it to be a book of raw honesty and emotion. I was been unaware of the tragedy that Nick and his wife faced. And I found it quite moving to read with how they have dealt and are dealing with their loss.

So it’s a book of personal recollections from childhood through to current maturity. There’s a great deal of detailed information about the art of creating music and performing it. It’s also a book of wider philosophies regarding life with some quite profound thoughts that certainly got me thinking long after I put the book down.

‘…..you reconcile yourself to the acute jeopardy of life, and you do this by acknowledging the value in things, the precious nature of things, and savouring the time we have together  in this world. You learn that the binding agent of the world is love.’

Cave has some interesting considerations of religion, not in the narrowest organised religion sense, but within a broader theology that for me, anyway, defined him as a most spiritual person.

‘ Religion is spirituality with rigour, I guess, and, yes, it makes demands on is. For me, it involves wrestling with the idea of faith – that seam of doubt that runs through the most credible religions. It’s that struggle with the notion of the divine, that is at the heart of my creativity.’

Some very powerful words here which offer much food for thought. And I’m left with that almost indescribable, delight at having a read a book that turned out to be very different from the initial perception.

Sean is an engaging interviewer seeming to ask pertinent questions and responding sensitively. And although there was a clear friendship he remained objective.

My thanks to Canongate Books for a gifted copy.

My Week With Him - Joya Goffney

 

This is an engaging young adult romance that looks at following your dreams, overcoming adversity and making right decisions. I’m an old adult and a long way from being the book’s target audience but I still enjoy the occasional YA story that sends me lamenting my long departed youth and remembering……. how it all feels. And that is a testament to this author who writes so convincingly that it stirred my memory.

Nikki is from an impoverished background, close to her half sister but struggling to maintain a relationship with her mother. She is a talented singer and musician and has dreams of a career in California. She has a best friend Malachi (Mal) who is such a lovely character and before she leaves for California he persuades her to spend a week with him as he attempts to offer her reasons why she should stay. And don’t be forgetting that this is a romance. 😉

There are many ups and downs, crises and confrontations but for all that it is ultimately a feel good book and quite uplifting. It’s well written with a well paced narrative for its intended audience and the characters are well defined and believable. 

My thanks to Readers First for my copy. 

Summer Fishing in Lapland - Juhani Karila - Blog Tour

Summer Fishing in Lapland? Salmon Fishing in the Yemen? That’s what came into my head when I first picked up my copy of this refreshingly unique story by Juhani Karila. But the two couldn’t be more different. And that’s putting it mildly!

So let’s have ourselves a crime novel, eh?  Possible murder maybe? Killer on the run, perhaps? Female police officer investigating solo because her partner bailed. And let’s set it in some out of the way place, that not many people visit?  Say a remote village in Lapland? Plenty of folk lore. We could populate it with some diverse and unusual people. And then let’s imagine that Lewis Carroll or even Tolkien bumped their heads together while they were listening for the crawdads singing, and all their thoughts and jumbled imaginings fused together and rained down from a magic faraway tree.  

Given the penchant we have today for categorising and compartmentalising anything, and not just books, this novel may prove to be a challenge. There are those who may want to call it - magical realism, or fantasy, or folklore, or crime or humour - take your pick! But this is one of those deliciously genre-defiant books that exists in a class all of its own.

‘When Elina makes her annual summer pilgrimage to her remote family farm in Lapland, she has three days to catch the pike in a local pond, or she and the love of her life will both die. This year her task is made even more difficult by the intervention of a host of deadly supernatural creatures and a murder detective on her tail.

Can Elina catch the pike and put to rest the curse that has been hanging over her head ever since a youthful love affair turned sour? Can Sergeant Janatuinen make it back to civilisation in one piece? And just why is Lapland in summer so weird?

Summer fishing in Lapland is an audacious genre-defying blend of fantasy, folk tale and nature writing.’

It’s refreshingly comic also. And the characters are just one step short of being caricatures in some cases. But they all play their part so convincingly and so well. some of the characters are of a non human form and I suspect they may have their origins in Scandinavian folk lore somewhere but that’s something I’m not familiar with. They certainly added both humour and tension to the story. 

I found it a snappy and well paced narrative that had me turning the pages, not in the sense that the book was unputdownable, but that my curiosity knew no bounds. I just had to keep reading. Fabulous translation by Lola Rogers.

My thanks to Kate Wilkinson at Pushkin Press for a gifted copy of the book, and a place upon the blog tour.

My Men - Victoria Kielland

 

I found this a curious and strangely compelling book. I thought it was a straightforward novel about a female serial killer. It wasn’t until I reached the end that I realised it was a fictional imagining of real life serial killer, Belle Gunness. I hadn’t heard of her before, so I’ve googled quite a bit. That’s the kind of effect the book had on me!

This isn’t a direct third person retelling of events narrative. Rather, it’s an incredibly deep and profound philosophical imagining of what might have been going on in this notorious woman’s head, from an early age to her murder spree. 

I’ve often wondered what goes on in the head of somebody capable of committing such acts of atrocity. I can’t imagine how the desire to kill somebody even enters your head. It doesn’t enter mine so I guess that’s why I can’t grasp the motivation and the intent to provoke such heinous crimes. I think this may have been the intent of the book. To look at how a young girl in a search for love, for beauty, spirals downwards into a vortex of almost madness. The book is like one long soliloquy of somebody’s search for the unattainable. There is an emphasis on her devout, Christian zeal, and the conversations she has in her head with God. That sounds like an incredible paradox doesn’t it?  Thou shalt not kill drifts across my mind, but somehow Belle rationalises her actions in her own head. And maybe that’s another  intention of the book to show that people capable of murder are able to justify their actions in their own head. It’s scary.

I found it an unsettling book, even before I knew who Belle Gunness was! It’s very poetically written, which, for much of the narrative provoked a sense of empathy towards the protagonist. But there’s always the sense that she’s not quite right. I think the clever prologue subliminally sows the seeds for that sense of disquiet.

Belle is a paradox - in possession of such lofty and deep perceptions regarding love, and yet capable of such brutality.  Emigrating from her native Norway to the United States to escape the anguish of pregnancy, unrequited love and unprovoked violence you sense that Belle begins a new life with the best of intentions. Well we know about best intentions don’t we?

It’s an unconventional read, original, not over long, that is quite fascinating. Very skilfully translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls. My thanks to Steven Cooper at Pushkin Press for a gifted proof. 

Voices of the Dead -Ambrose Parry

 

I understand that this is the fourth in the series, featuring Will Raven and Sarah Fisher. I haven’t read the previous books and not having done so has not impacted upon my enjoyment of this book. Rather it’s whetted my appetite to read the previous three books and I believe there is a fifth already available as an e-book.I very much enjoyed this Victorian murder mystery set against a back drop of scientific and medical exploration together with that age’s fascination with spiritualism. 

‘EDINBURGH, 1853.

In a city of science, discovery can be deadly . . .

In a time of unprecedented scientific discovery, the public's appetite for wonder has seen a resurgence of interest in mesmerism, spiritualism and other unexplained phenomena.

Dr Will Raven is wary of the shadowlands that lie between progress and quackery, but Sarah Fisher can't afford to be so picky. Frustrated in her medical ambitions, she sees opportunity in a new therapeutic field not already closed off to women.

Raven has enough on his hands as it is. Body parts have been found at Surgeons' Hall, and they're not anatomy specimens. In a city still haunted by the crimes of Burke and Hare, he is tasked with heading off a scandal.

When further human remains are found, Raven is able to identify a prime suspect, and the hunt is on before he kills again. Unfortunately, the individual he seeks happens to be an accomplished actor, a man of a thousand faces and a renowned master of disguise.

With the lines between science and spectacle dangerously blurred, the stage is set for a grand and deadly illusion . . .’

It’s a complex plot that uses history and the trends of that age, very convincingly. The Victorians loved the art of illusion and it’s used to good effect here. It’s not just the historical research that is impeccable it’s the understanding of the tenor of that period and the atmosphere created is palpable. But as well as having a good story, the book also had something to say about the place of women in Victorian society, and how medicine and science so very much in their developing phases by comparison with today provoked a sense of good and a sense of bad. Not much different from today is it? Or am I a natural born cynic?

I enjoyed the characters of both Will and Sarah. I often wonder when you have two people writing a book whether they do actually write it together or if one writes one bit and the other writes another bit! I think it’s possible here that Chris Brookmyre wrote Will’s parts and Dr Marissa Haetzman wrote Sarah’s! I may have got that completely wrong. 🤣 But I love the dynamic between the two main characters. They came across as very real. Both very different from each other with their own back stories (that I am keen to explore at a later date.) But you sense it’s one of those couplings that occur in crime fiction and will endure. It just works so very, very well.

It’s well paced and I enjoyed how the tension racked up as the book reaches its conclusion. In fact, it was - MESMERISING!

My thanks to Canongate Books for a gifted copy.