Fairy Rock - Stephen Watt BLOG TOUR

When an invitation to participate in a blog tour for a crime novel in verse popped up in my inbox it was a challenge I simply couldn’t resist. Something innovative and different. Using verse to tell a story isn’t a new idea of course. But it does seem to be the domain of the more classic poets, one thinks of Coleridge, Browning and Longfellow to name but a few. Modern poetry hasn’t seemed to embrace the style as much. So it was a joy to receive this deceptively slender volume.

Okay, I hear you say, a novel in verse? That’s a contradiction in terms, surely? It suggests length and narrative and prose. Maybe. Who cares! When it comes down to it let’s not get too picky over genres and descriptors,and devices and styles, let’s enjoy and celebrate creativity and innovation.

Before getting to the meat of the text and the story it was interesting to consider how the telling of a crime story might lend itself to poetry. Poetry immediately suggests a textured language which can, but not always, be found in prose. It also suggests the rhythm of language, poetic linguistics inviting interpretation,and devices such as simile and metaphor which, of course, can be found in prose but the medium of poetry encourages such richness of language. For example;-

‘Car headlights cruised past,

beaming their lecherous eyes

down her knee-high boots,

the bronzed, palm-size, caramel-silk of her thighs.’

Yet a crime story suggests tight plotting and accurate research which somehow doesn't conform to initial thoughts of poets and verse.

So how does one go about reviewing a work such as this?  With a prose novel you look at aspects of character and structure etc., but will that work with poetry? Only one way to approach it as far as I’m concerned! Like for like! First for my blog. A review in verse! Here goes!

ABOUT

Tartan terror taunts,

Tortures the innocent reader

Like a symphony in stone.

Four from Glasgow, disparate, 

surviving this city with no crowns of thorns,

Knowing not what they’re doing,

Balancing on the tightrope of legality,

Hunched, bunched, scrunched

Mafia, raffia deals the blows

with geological grenades.

Vampire vamp

Ramps up the body count. 

Police place in the grasslands of floristry

a snitch witch, but

which way does the wind blow? 

Costello and Atkinson

Comedy duo or firm of solicitors? 

DS DI know?

THOUGHTS

A tale told with words a plenty

And poetry pictures to colour your mind.

Evocative images painting a scene to

Pillage the prose of conventional crime.

Pick up this book

And give it a look

Don't let it faze you.

Let it amaze you.

True to its roots

The words in cahoots

With a savagery of imagery
this poet doth suit.

Poetic diction 

not found in fiction.

You could do worse 

than read this verse!

My thanks to Kelly at LoveBooksTours for this fantastic opportunity. 

Please check out what other bloggers have to say about Fairy Rock. 

Leonard and Hungry Paul - Rónán Hession

This is a book about ordinary people. To be read by ordinary people. But it may well have an extraordinary effect on you. I experienced a similar mood and emotion when I read Rachel Elliott’s Don’t Feed the Bear. Quirky without being outlandish. There’s a frank simplicity about this book that astounds because it dares to be simple. Expect no explosive action and deeply flawed characters. Fiction can take us out of ourselves to explore worlds and scenarios that we could never dream of inhabiting but it can also reassure us that images of ourselves can reside within the pages of a story to entertain and inform.

Leonard and Hungry Paul, (the precise nature of his hunger is never divulged but left to the reader to interpret), are two men in their thirties both living in their respective parental homes. Their lives are unexceptional. Their friendship is solid, cemented by the playing of board games and the exchange of ideas and opinions. They don’t seem to waste time disagreeing. They are gentle, honest people with an abundance of kindness. My feeling was that both existed somewhere on the spectrum and displayed aspects of those associated behaviours. 

It’s a story of family and how the members of a family interact, coexist, nurture and support each other and, most importantly are also open with each other. These characters are considerate people who go quietly about their lives without making a song and dance about everything they do. None of them are attention seekers. This book details aspects of everyday events that might not always appear in the chapters of a novel for fear they are deemed simply too ordinary. But that’s part of the charm of this story. That’s not to say that everything is commonplace, I mean, a National Mime Association doesn’t crop up in every town does it? Or have I led too sheltered a life? ;-) 

It’s a beautifully observed, yet understated story. Uplifting in a quiet, sustained way. Whilst it does examine aspects of loneliness its two main characters exist and behave with such enviable grace and integrity that you wish you could be them. There is a subtle wit and humour running throughout the book that highlights some of society’s anomalies without seeking to ridicule. It’s a story of observations and analogies. 

‘He saw society as a sort of chemistry set, full of potentially explosive ingredients which, if handled correctly could be fascinating and educational, but which was otherwise best kept out of reach of those who did not know what they were doing.’

’In fact, he discovered that he was less critical of people when he allowed them in. People, it turns out, weren’t so bad. At least that was true of some people. And maybe that was the trick: to find the right people; to be able to recognise them and to know how to appreciate them when you do find them.’

There are elements of poignancy in this novel but rarely is the reader encouraged to feel sorry for any of the characters. There is a sense of optimism in the book. Nobody is unpleasant to anyone else. There is maybe one lesser character who tries but his attempts are unsuccessful because no one responds to him. It’s wonderful to have a story that gives credence to the quiet, introverted ones. People behaving decently to each other. People behaving with respect for others. It celebrates those people who feel a little out of sync with the digital/techno/consumerist/materialist/self-aggrandising world offering them a story where they are effectively reading about themselves. They are the heroes. We are the heroes.

She - A Fragment

She could admit it now, as an adult, but she had been afraid of her mother at times when she was tiny. Those fierce framed spectacles that seemed to emphasise the latent discontent behind the eyes. Her mum was quick to anger and was unable to deflect the vent of it from those around her. Thus some third party could be the source of the fury but those close would be the ones to suffer. Mostly it was verbal invective and a tone of voice, there was little physical manifestation. But it hurt and it ran deep. There is so much a child cannot understand. Especially of the adults around them. The concept of Mother and Father as some distant species separate from any other creates a false understanding. It is only when the child becomes the adult, and maybe parent themselves, that the full import of the parent/child relationship becomes apparent.

Sometimes it was the fragment of a tune from long ago, a certain fragrance, a familiar flower that triggered what Hattie always called her ‘mummemory’. And invariably she cried. She didn’t want to. After ten years she felt there was something a little lacking in her that the tears arrived so readily. And she just knew her Mum would be furious with her.  But there it was. Grief. Like so many life hurdles it didn’t come with a book of instructions. She pondered it often. The nature of this powerful emotion that competed with love for dominance. The seeds of grief; guilt, anger, despair, regret, futility, failure and a longing that knew no end hid around every corner of her life and sprang into germinating action with sly cunning. It wasn’t that she was permanently sad or unhappy, no. It was the unexpectedness of the triggers that reinforced to her that she remained in grief grip.

From the little girl who was frightened of her mother it was sometimes hard to fathom the infinite depth of love she came to possess as an adult. It was a snowball love in one sense. As Hattie came to know her mother as a person and listen to her, not from the maternal mantle but rather that of a friend, the love grew until, at the end it was an explosion, a piñata, throwing out the rewards of loving someone unconditionally. 

What astounded her and was heartbreaking was the realisation that her mother’s sense of self, her awareness of her shortcomings had confounded her for most of her life. In one explosive outburst her mother averred that she had been ,’A bad daughter, a bad sister, a bad wife and a bad mother.” To be a prisoner of your own personality was a confinement without parole. Hattie tried to reassure but she knew her words hung empty. Her sister sometimes called these confessions and the analysis they provoked psychobabble but for Hattie they were all clues to the tormented psyche of an unfulfilled person consumed with regret for their own self and those around them. Hattie’s Mum didn’t understand why Hattie, and for that matter, her siblings, could bear to be near her. She didn’t understand how they could continue to love her.

Maybe if Hattie could have been more objective she might have asked herself the same question but she didn’t. She accepted the possibility that this love, this acceptance of  someone, warts and all, derived from an intrinsic bond that began potentially from the moment of conception? Tied up with it all too, was the recognition that she had so much in common with her mum and that facilitated her understanding. However Hattie was not in possession of the anger and she wondered if it was a direct response to her mother’s anger that any germ of such a trait was subdued because of the fear it had engendered within her a child. Was that even possible? 

Her mother’s self awareness touched Hattie deep inside. Things her mother said stayed with her and continued to affect her. After the death of her father, Hattie’s Mum had said, I wish I’d been kinder to him. I wish I hadn’t been so unkind,’ . That had Hattie in bits on so many levels. Then followed further revelations of how in marrying she realised soon after that she had made a dreadful mistake. She alluded to her poor temper assigning its cause to the fact that she was so unhappy. And Hattie overflowed with sadness that her mother had been so unhappy for so many years and she didn’t know it. But even knowing there was nothing she could have done. She loved her father too and the desperate sorrow she felt for him and the semi life he must have lived was another vein of sadness inside her. The twin beds and then separate rooms had begun to make sense when she was younger but the full import struck her forcibly as an adult. 

And all the time she spent as a child; baby, toddler, a minor, a teenager, a student, she was ignorant, or blind to the turmoils and dramas that were her parents and their lives. Over forty years they remained married. Lived together, did things together. But was there love? Was there even friendship? She never got to speak to her Dad fully about such matters so she was only in receipt of her mothers side. But when she was clearing the house after her mother’s death she came upon a packet of letters tied together with a red ribbon. They were an exchange between her parents when her Dad had been sent to work overseas for several months. It was after three or four years of marriage. They were

on thin, blue air mail paper and the writing was hard to decipher where the years had worked on them. The ink had bled into the paper like tattoos on the skin. But on face value they were love letters, candid, uncensored, full of extravagant emotion, mostly on her father’s part.  Hattie’s sister questioned whether they should be reading such an intimate, private correspondence. But the question they posed for Hattie would remain unanswered. Did they love each other? 

All the Wrong Places - Joy Fielding

Having thoroughly enjoyed She’s Not There by Joy Fielding I was delighted to receive her latest novel from Readers First. If a missing child was at the heart of She’s Not There then missing girls are at the heart of this taut and quite chilling pyschological thriller. 

As sub text the remit of including older female characters and rendering them both crucial to the storyline and characters of some substance is satisfied. Paige’s mum, Joan, leaps off the page at you. And if you are of mature years there is much to relate to. What I particularly enjoyed was the dynamic between her and Paige, (our sort of heroine), that ably demonstrated the balance required  between being a mum and being your own person too. 

However that is not the main thrust of the book. The story looks at the perils of internet dating sites and the risks you take when meeting up with strangers. It also looks at relationships and fidelity. I hope that isn’t one spoiler too many. Apologies if it is. 

The cast of characters fall very much into two camps, the goodies and the baddies. The baddies are odious which is necessary because of what happens ultimately in the story and that I won’t give away except to say that I found the implications of what happens to one character really nasty. But I did see it coming. It didn’t dilute my feelings though and the conclusion is open ended which leaves the reader with that ‘looking over your shoulder’ feeling. 

I guess it’s almost a fusion of chick lit meets psycho thriller but it never teeters over into one camp more than another. In fact I’ll qualify that by saying that the psycho thriller part does dominate.   

The story is set in Boston which I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a few times even though I’m a Brit so many of the locations were familiar to me - Newbury Street and the Paul Revere House for example. As a reader I do enjoy that. It gives a story a subtle, subconscious almost, elevation.

Joy Fielding is an experienced writer who seems to know how to entertain readers even if that means making them uneasy! The narrative flows and rarely loses momentum so you want to keep reading and reading to find out if, and how, and why and when and a myriad of other questions.

But it isn’t a feel good book, even though the main characters emerge with various redemptions and there are some attempts at lighter moments I think you are left feeling vaguely disturbed. But, my dear reader, that is the diversity of fiction for you! And we wouldn’t have it any other way!

Book Blogging, Social Media and Me

I’m old enough to remember what I was doing when John F. Kennedy got shot. I remember pre decimal coinage - threepenny bits and sixpences. I  remember Green Shield Stamps. I remember Dixon of Dock Green and I definitely remember that time when we had no internet or mobile phones. And I know that I rub shoulders with a generation who were born into this broadband, wifi, digital age and know no different. But I’m no technophobe.I was using a Sinclair ZX 81 back in the day!  I have my reservations about the integrity of some platforms and practices and I think cyber crime is a huge threat. And I think social media is a mixed blessing. In the earlier days of the Internet there was no social media. Unless you count ICQ? Anyone remember that, back in the nineties? The first social media site I remember in 2000 was Friendster. It predated Facebook. I never had a good feeling about Facebook. I never had a good instinct about Mark Zuckerberg. I mean the first use of Facebook to compare pictures of women and decide the most attractive is an abomination. I wouldn’t want to be associated in any way with such a platform. But it puts me in a definite minority. And has it harmed my status as a blogger and ‘influencer’ (not sure I like that term)?

 I do not have a huge reach on social media. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is because I am not good at self promotion. It doesn’t come easily to me and to be honest i find it embarrassing. Not enough self belief maybe. So my follower count is pretty low on both Twitter and Instagram. I don’t do Facebook - as you know ;-). And, sadly, your reach seems to determine how good a blogger you are perceived to be regardless of your reviewing ability. But I also think that levels of interaction also play a part and that is something that mystifies me. Am I good reviewer but a bad blogger? Or I am simply not good enough on social media to be considered a good blogger let alone a decent reviewer? 

I am constantly amazed by the output of so many people on social media. People who have full time jobs, and families and yet they seem to post extensively and articulately on an almost daily basis. The quality of some Instagram photos is stunning. The effort that goes into them is almost mind boggling. And they comment and interact copiously too. I don’t know how they do it.  My efforts at photographs are of low quality. And I haven't the faintest idea how you do a story on Instagram. I tried once and something happened which I didn't want to happen and it's put me off forever! I try, I really do but I scroll through maybe a dozen photos on Instagram, I’m trying to read everything and even trying to comment but then I start to lose interest. The damned adverts drive me to distraction.  I look at the time and realise there are too many other things needing to be done. Same on Twitter. So much stuff to read and I’m not following that many people! How do folk following thousands of people keep up with them all?   

And the interaction. Again I try to interact when it seems relevant. But there seems to be

cluster cliques of bloggers who all solidly support one another. I confess I feel quite envious sometimes. They seem to know each other and meet up too. I’ve never been able to break into any of these cliques. Is that because I’m not a good enough blogger or influencer and do not garner respect from my blogging colleagues or is it because I am no good on social media? Social media seems all about having a potent and visible presence. I have sporadic and quite heartwarming interaction with some people but I always feel I’m on the periphery of it all. If one of my tweets gets a half dozen likes then that’s tantamount to it going viral for me!

But does it matter? As far reach goes it is a disadvantage for a book blogger because there are publishers who won’t consider adding you to their blogger lists unless you have a minimum 1K followers! That leaves me out for the foreseeable future! I’ve not even hit 300 followers on Twitter yet!!  I’m reminding myself of an earlier post this year where I was stressing about my decline as a blogger. I came to terms with that and found a kind of peace because I am happy with what I’m doing. It all comes from my heart. I suppose I’m just mystified at how it all works. Sometimes social media reminds me of a school playground. Kids coming out to play in their groups. Some won’t play at all. Others wander round the outside making an occasional foray in, to be half welcomed but not wholly accepted.  Others are repelled no matter what they do until they go complaining to the teacher. Other just try and spoil the games and make some of the kids fearful of playtime. Trolls they’re called. Like in the fairy story. 

Will the internet and social media end up being part of a fairy story? Once upon a time? Nothing is forever. Will it all implode one day without warning? How will we cope? Me? I’ll just carry on reading and scribbling as the screens go black one by one.

Ring the Hill - Tom Cox

This is the third of Tom Cox’s books that I’ve pledged towards. Normally I’ve started to read them almost before I’ve taken the packaging off. But not this time. I decided I would restrain myself and savour the event. Make it last. For without a doubt a new Tom Cox book is an absolute joy.

Ring the Hill offers a return to Tom’s non fiction writing after his fiction foray with Help The Witch. ( I do hope he will explore fiction again.)  It seems such an effortless narrative, I’m sure it isn’t, but sometimes it’s like you’re having a chat with a mate who is sharing, with loquacious enthusiasm, something he’s found out and is overflowing to tell you. It’s very uplifting. It’s warm and it’s witty and it’s honest. The love and reverence for the natural world is the life blood of this book and Tom’s devotion is infectious. I wanted to go out and see some hares, I wanted to swim, I wanted to climb Glastonbury Tor. I wanted to sit in the sun with Roscoe and Ralph. I felt the chill and snow depression of the Derbyshire winter.I wanted to make sure Clinton was safe.  I wanted to live in The Magic House. And I wept all over again for the loss of The Bear and Shipley. 

And if all of the above pertain to a somewhat emotional response to the book rest assured that there is plenty of folklore and information to excite and satisfy the more cerebral of readers out there. Illustrated with Tom’s own photos and some beautiful contributions from his talented mum this is a nature book to entertain the curious. And would you just look at that cover?

And as always, and how I would be complaining were it not so, TOM’S DAD OFFERS US HIS IRREPRESSIBLE TAKE ON LIFE. With just a simple change of case Tom’s word portrait of his Dad is so vibrant you feel like you’d know Mr. Cox senior if you met him. 

Tom’s books are unique I think because in many ways they are genre defiant. They are never ‘just’ nature books,  or books about cats, neither are they ‘simply’ a memoir or autobiography. They are portals into one man’s original and positive take on life and the world we live in. We would do well to take Tom on as a role model and try to emulate. In this book Tom Cox shows us that life does not have to be complicated. Take a walk in the landscape around you and look at the beauty of all things natural. Chat with people you encounter on the way. They all have their stories to tell. Everyone can do this and be better for it. (Maybe not move house so many times though! ;) )

My thanks to Tom Cox for the writing of this book. Reader, I loved it and I'm a better person for reading it. 

17 Church Row - James Carol

If Mary Shelley subtitled her book ‘A Modern Prometheus’ then I guess this could be subtitled ‘A Modern Frankenstein’! Since the blurb gives little away I will not go down the spoiler path intentionally but it’s going to be tough trying to avoid some fundamental themes within the book without letting something slip.

I read this within a 24 hour period. It was tempting not to try for sleep but I did. ’Unputdownable’, ‘page turner’ are all epithets we offer freely and glibly sometimes when we’re talking about books. But sometimes it is so true you have the red eyes to prove it. This is one of those books where it IS true! Your heart will feel like it’s on a trampoline it ends up in your mouth so many times. And if you have an Alexa you might not by the end of the book. 

If you’re a devotee of psychological thrillers you might be reminded of J P Delaney’s The Girl Before but that’s possibly a thematic comparison rather than a plot comparison. The emotional dynamic of 17 Church Row is broader and more explosive.

It’s an ambitiously plotted novel that sends the reader up many a garden path as you, along with the hapless Rhodes, trust and believe, at face value, what you see before you. But delve a little deeper and the seeds of unease start to take their grip until they won’t let you go. 

Nikki and Ethan Rhodes have suffered the ultimate loss, their child, Grace. But Grace was twin to Bella, who hasn’t spoken since her sister’s death.  Needing to try and move forward the Rhodes relocate from a house full of memories to the titular Church Row house designed by a whizz kid architect, Catriona Fisher, that has an advanced home security system that reduces Alexa to a charity shop bargain. 

I will not divulge any more. It’s a clever book and doesn’t deserve to have that shattered by a clumsy reviewer revealing the salient points although, my goodness, I sympathise because I would like to shout out and show you all the clever bits! 

Interestingly I thought, for a male writer, the female characters were very well drawn and the fewer male characters seemed weaker. But the majority of your empathy is reserved for Nikki and Bella as you will both of them to cope with their respective traumas. 

The narrative hurtles along at a compulsive pace with a chronological narrative for the most part interspersed with some italicised chapters that deal with a past, and some clues if we did but know it!!

The conclusion is open ended and quite chilling. It’s not a book that leaves you with that snugly warm, satisfied feeling of all ends being tied up. You’ll be looking over your shoulder and viewing life with suspicion for a while after reading, I reckon!

You can enjoy this story for what it is, a darn good thriller, or you can seek to delve beneath and extract a deeper meaning perhaps that has something to say about our contemporary, digital, techno world and its potential future. Or you can do both ! Like me!

My thanks to Reader’s First for a copy.