Blurb

This warm-hearted tale explores marriage, love, and longing, set against the majestic backdrop of Morecambe Bay, the Lakeland Fells, and the faded splendour of the Midland Hotel.

Ted Marshall meets Rene in the dance halls of Morecambe and they marry during the frail optimism of the 1950s. They adopt the roles expected of man and wife at the time: he the breadwinner at the family ceramics firm, and she the loyal housewife. But as the years go by, they find themselves wishing for more…

After Ted survives a heart attack, both see it as a new beginning… but can a faded love like theirs ever be rekindled?

“A tender and moving study of a marriage” Alison Moore, author of the Booker short listed
The Lighthouse

Review

I have been really looking forward to reading this novella, having heard wonderful things about it. Thank you so much to Emma at Damp Pebbles, Louise Walters Books and to the author for having me on the blog tour and providing a digital copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t think I have actually read all that many novellas, and certainly not recently, so I was very excited to read this one. The first thing to say is that Cath Barton has chosen her form perfectly. The narrow, specific location works extremely well in a book of this length, and the sweep of years it covers are given more space to breathe than they would be in a short story. Time is extremely well-handled in this book – it feels neither rushed nor too slow, rather an expertly judged dipping in and out of the lives of the characters, which just so precisely matches the beautiful cover image – the very structure of the story really did conjure up a feeling of swooping gulls dipping their beaks into an ocean, skimming and tasting, giving us glimpses of lives that feel full and realistically drawn.

The framing device of the narrator worked really well for me, and I grew very fond of the characters very quickly. Ted and Rene’s story is resonant with simple, quiet dignity and sadness. This is an elegant story, evoking an old-fashioned and yet timeless quality. It reminded me of Clare Chambers’ book Small Pleasures, which I read earlier this year – a careful, detailed rendering of the small, important things in life. The links between the characters are satisfying and add to the sense of completeness and roundness.

Cath Barton’s writing is wonderful. Parts of the book, particularly the natural descriptions, are lyrical and poetic, creating a soothing rhythm that washes over you. The dialogue feels real, and the little details added to descriptions are finely judged, never overdone. There is a quiet confidence bubbling beneath the surface of this gentle book, and also a delicious sense of humour that peeks through the poignancy. It is a delight to read, and I reached the end with regret, but nevertheless pleasantly sated by the experience of reading this story.

All in all, this is a perfectly formed novella. It is gentle yet poignant, expertly crafted and delicately gilded with the aches of love and disappointment. It feels true and beautiful, and I was deeply moved by it. I highly recommend this book, and I look forward to reading more by Cath Barton in the future.

About the Author

Cath Barton lives in Abergavenny. She won the New Welsh Writing AmeriCymru Prize for the Novella in 2017 for The Plankton Collector, which was published in September 2018 by New Welsh Review under their Rarebyte imprint. She also writes short stories and flash fiction and, with her critical writing, is a regular contributor to Wales Arts Review. In the Sweep of the Bay is her second novella. 

Social Media

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CathBarton1

Website: https://cathbarton.com/

Louise Walters Books: https://www.louisewaltersbooks.co.uk/cath-barton

Purchase Links

Louise Walters Books: https://www.louisewaltersbooks.co.uk/shop-1

Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3ez3EwP

Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3k7aVF6

Foyles: https://bit.ly/2U0o3Bs

Book Depository: https://bit.ly/3ka6d9Hhttps://bit.ly/3ka6d9H

Kobo: https://bit.ly/2U5Nm5c

Blurb

Jessica Bradley has it all: the perfect boyfriend; influential healthy-eating blog; successful PR company and wonderful daughter, Anna. Or at least that is what her thousands of followers believe.

The truth is, her boyfriend just broke up with her in four words on a post-it; her zest for healthy-eating has all but disappeared; her PR success is all reliant on her now not-so-honest online-life and she just got caught eating her daughter’s Coco-Pops.

So as they say: fake it ’til you make it. A few little white lies and phoney smiling selfies and Jess can keep up appearances. But when her real-life starts to spiral out of control how can Jess tell the truth from the lies? And will she be able to seize real happiness when it is right in front of her?

Hilarious, heart-warming and oh-so relatable, Everything Is Fine is perfect for fans of Louise Pentland, Anna Bell and Lindsey Kelk.

Review

I am extremely grateful to the author for providing me with a digital copy in exchange for an honest review. This is not my typical genre, but if you are one of my regular followers (hi both!) you’ll know that I firmly believe in mixing things up when it comes to my reading. Variety is the spice of life, and all. With the weather turning grey and the relentless slog of 2020 madness showing no signs of letting up, the best thing to do is, of course, LAUGH.

I laughed A LOT while reading this book. I loved the way Jessica’s problems always seemed to begin as something utterly relatable and then gradually started to spin out of control and tumble into the realm of ridiculousness. The situations she finds herself in rival Bridget Jones herself for sheer farcical comedy value, but since much of the delight is in the element of surprise, I shan’t elaborate further. No spoilers here.

While the comedy in this novel is big, and the scenarios burst joyously against the seams of credibility, there are kernels of truth and poignancy which point to the fact that this is also a book with a big heart, and a sharp eye for the idiosyncratic ironies of modern life. It feels especially relevant to me as someone newly fumbling around the world of social media (not that I would ever consider myself an ‘influencer’ – as I have said before, I am at most a ‘tentative suggester’), but it is certainly the case that questions of how much to share of your true self online, or how different each version of our ‘selves’ can be, is one that plays on my mind, as I suspect it does with many of us. (My sister likes to tease me about my bookstagram pics of neat stacks on pristine mantelpieces, knowing full well, as she does, that behind me is a scene of utter chaos and carnage). Everything is Fine takes this idea to the extreme, tethering Jessica to a version of herself from which she she feels she cannot escape, and though there is a lot of humour to be derived from the disparity between her social media self and her IRL self, I think the author has really tapped into something that affects a lot of us, probably more than we care to admit.

But hey, let’s not get too serious here, this is supposed to be fun, after all. And it really is – complicated, messy, 21st century fun, with a cast of characters that each add sparkle and intrigue to Jessica’s story. I loved the portrayal of her daughter, Anna, and found the cosy home-spun wisdom of Jessica’s client, Remembering Rainbows author Robert, endearing and sweet. I don’t mind admitting I tried a couple of his tips out to cheer myself up. They do actually work. As for Dave, he deserves a thump, but you’ll have to read the book to find out why.

This was a lovely, quick read which lifted my spirits and made me laugh. And in 2020, you can’t say fairer than that.

Everything Is Fine by Gillian Harvey is published by Orion and is available to purchase here.

Blurb

London. 1850. On a crowded street, the dollmaker Iris Whittle meets the artist Louis Frost. Louis is a painter who yearns to have his work displayed in the Royal Academy, and he is desperate for Iris to be his model. Iris agrees, on the condition that he teaches her to paint.

Dreaming of freedom, Iris throws herself into a new life of art and love, unaware that she has caught the eye of a second man. Silas Reed is a curiosity collector, enchanted by the strange and beautiful. After seeing Iris at the site of the Great Exhibition he finds he cannot forget her.

As Iris’s world expands, Silas’s obsession grows. And it is only a matter of time before they meet again . . .

Review

I’ve been meaning to read this book for ages, so when I got the chance to pick a book for a readalong with some of my fab @The_WriteReads crew on Twitter, I snuck this one in. It is, by the way, the perfect book for group discussion – the only problem we had is that there was possibly TOO much to say about it! I’m delighted that The Motherload Book Club on Facebook will also be discussing The Doll Factory this month, so I get another chance to chat about this wonderfully immersive, delightfully dark book!

The setting is fantastic. 1850s London comes alive in the novel’s pages, aided by the vivid present tense and the carefully crafted details which build up a world around the reader, so that you really feel as if you are there. The level of sensory detail lends a heady atmosphere of total immersion that serves the story incredibly well. The novel ranges widely, taking in all walks of life, from shopkeepers to artists to street urchins, transporting us from galleries to alleyways, and there is a wonderful sense of the author taking the reader by the hand and running at full pelt through a city caught in a moment in time, delightedly showing off both its glamour and its seedy underbelly. I loved the scenes at the Great Exhibition, and the contrast between that huge collaborative grand endeavour and Silas’ gloomy shop, with its dark cellar beneath it.

Silas is a complex, sinister character whose growing obsession with Iris drives the novel. Iris herself is equally complicated, and her relationships with the other characters are well-drawn and realistically tangled. I enjoyed watching her escape the confines of her narrow existence in the hope of making a new life for herself, and I liked the way several narrative threads play out at once in the book. It gives the story a depth and a kind of roundness, which takes me back to that feeling of being totally immersed in the world of the novel.

This novel is exactly the sort of historical fiction I enjoy: vividly detailed, atmospheric, and full of unexpected events. I couldn’t finish my review without a shout-out to my two favourite characters, the heroes of our readalong chat: Albie and Guinevere. Read this book to meet them, and for many other reasons. I’m really looking forward to reading more work by this author in the future.

The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal is out now, published by Picador, and is available to purchase here.

Blurb

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE
WINNER OF THE 2020 VILCEK PRIZE IN LITERATURE

From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Brother, I’m Dying, a collection of vividly imagined stories about community, family, and love.

Rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity, set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, Everything Inside is at once wide in scope and intimate, as it explores the forces that pull us together, or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.

In these eight powerful, emotionally absorbing stories, a romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends; a marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences; a young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival; two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives; a baby’s christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new; a man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose.

This is the indelible work of a keen observer of the human heart–a master at her best.

Review

A few months ago, I reviewed Dancers on the Shore by William Melvin Kelley, a collection of short stories republished this year by riverrun. The stories blew me away, to the point where I couldn’t believe I hadn’t come across the writer before. With this book by Edwidge Danticat, out with the same publisher, that feeling came upon me again. A massive thank you to Katya Ellis for my copy, which I received in exchange for an honest review. I am so thrilled to discover a new-to-me author of such incredible talent and poise.

It takes an absolute master of the short story form to do what Danticat does in this stunning collection, which is to cut to the core of human experience. Like Kelley, or like Alice Munro, the stories in this book perform a kind of ‘deep mining’ of psychological and emotional experience, so much so that it reads not like fiction but, as I have previously said of Munro’s work, like documents of human truth. The eight stories in this collection, which together form a beautifully varied record of the Haitian immigrant experience, also reminded me some of the very best of films and literature, the ones which give me the sense that we’re coming in part-way through the story, that the lives of the characters existed before we started reading, and will continue after the final scene. (In case you’re at all interested, Pedro Almodovar’s films also give me this sensation, as well as the short story writers mentioned above.)

Having established that I am firmly of the opinion that this collection is utterly astounding, it is quite hard for me to pick out my favourite stories. Each offers something different; each stands apart from and in relation to the others. If I had to add one to my imaginary anthology of all time greatest short stories (which I really ought to do a write up of one day…) it would be In The Old Days, a delicately balanced, hugely poignant story of a daughter’s return that had me in tears. Other stories which will stay with me for a long time are The Gift, in which the spectre of tragedy hangs over a meeting of former lovers; Hot-Air Balloon, a story whose last line gave me the ‘short story pang’ of emotion; and the final story, Without Inspection, which brings the collection to a surging, impactful (sorry, I shouldn’t pun about such a beautiful book) conclusion.

I find it very hard to write coherent reviews of books which move me as much as Everything Inside did, so I will wrap up here. Suffice it to say that if you read to better understand what it is to be human, what it is to feel, then you will want to read this book. I am desperate to read more by Danticat, and feel lucky to have had the chance to read such a powerful and profound writer.

Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat is published by riverrun and is available now.

Blurb

It’s about time we made motherhood more diverse…

When Candice fell pregnant and stepped into the motherhood playing field, she found her experience bore little resemblance to the glossy magazine photos of women in horizontal stripe tops and the pinned discussions on mumsnet about what pushchair to buy. Leafing through the piles of prenatal paraphernalia, she found herself wondering: “Where are all the black mothers?”.

Candice started blogging about motherhood in 2016 after making the simple but powerful observation that the way motherhood is portrayed in the British media is wholly unrepresentative of our society at large.

The result is this thought-provoking, urgent and inspirational guide to life as a black mother. It explores the various stages in between pregnancy and waving your child off at the gates of primary school, while facing hurdles such as white privilege, racial micro-aggression and unconscious bias at every point. Candice does so with her trademark sense of humour and refreshing straight-talking, and the result is a call-to-arms that will allow mums like her to take control, scrapping the parenting rulebook to mother their own way.

Review

Becoming a mother is utterly terrifying. It is like entering a new universe, one which you know nothing about, where everything is strange and difficult and the highs are so high and the lows are so low. Nothing can really prepare you for it. When I became a mum, I remember feeling completely lost and bewildered. But as I tentatively navigated this brave new world, I took comfort from the support systems: my lovely NCT group, endless hours scrolling on Mumsnet (I never asked anything, I just searched frantically for someone else with the same problem), various online parenting magazines and Facebook groups. Looking back, I took these things for granted. I saw myself and my struggles reflected back at me in the warm, friendly faces and the helpful advice from people who were in a similar position to me. After reading Candice’s book, I have to say, it really hit home just how lucky – and yes, I am going to say it – privileged I was.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to try and negotiate the tricky, sometimes downright traumatic, terrain of pregnancy, birth and motherhood when no one is holding a space for your experiences, when you don’t see yourself reflected back, when issues which are faced by so many mothers are swept under the carpet because they don’t affect white mothers in the same way. I’ve seen the statistic that black women in the UK are five times more likely to die in childbirth several times now, and it never gets any less shocking.

What Candice Brathwaite does so brilliantly in this book is to carve out the space for Black British mothers, to demand it, to show why it is not just necessary but vital. Her personality comes through wonderfully: she is funny, brave and honest, and the trust she places in the reader is an honour not to be underestimated. Her experience at the birth of her first child makes for upsetting reading, as do other incidents where she faces microaggressions and more direct racism in almost every sphere of her life as a working mother.

But this is a hopeful book. It is a powerful, fresh, insightful look at the ways in which spaces CAN be reclaimed, progress CAN be made. Candice states that her primary aim for this book is to help Black British mothers “feel validated and encouraged to take up space.” I can’t speak for that, but to her hope that for all others reading, she can “accurately describe the many hurdles black British mothers are up against,” I can definitely say that this book opened my eyes. I highly recommend this book, and I am very excited to read her next book, out next year.

I Am Not Your Baby Mother by Candice Brathwaite is out now published by Quercus Books.

Blurb

For the first time, behavioural and data scientist, activist and writer Dr Pragya Agarwal unravels the way our implicit or ‘unintentional’ biases affect the way we communicate and perceive the world, how they affect our decision-making, and how they reinforce and perpetuate systemic and structural inequalities.

Sway is a thoroughly researched and comprehensive look at unconscious bias and how it impacts day-to-day life, from job interviews to romantic relationships to saving for retirement. It covers a huge number of sensitive topics – sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, colourism – with tact, and combines statistics with stories to paint a fuller picture and enhance understanding. Throughout, Pragya clearly delineates theories with a solid grounding in science, answering questions such as: do our roots for prejudice lie in our evolutionary past? What happens in our brains when we are biased? How has bias affected technology? If we don’t know about it, are we really responsible for it?

At a time when partisan political ideologies are taking centre stage, and we struggle to make sense of who we are and who we want to be, it is crucial that we understand why we act the way we do. This book will enables us to open our eyes to our own biases in a scientific and non-judgmental way.

Review

As part of my resolve to read more non-fiction last month, I finally read this book, which has been on my shelf for a while. I am so glad I read it, as it is a fascinating, deeply important study that gave me a lot to think about. I took my time with it and made plenty of notes, but I will still be going back to it again and again. I also have her new book, Wish We Knew What To Say, and am very much looking forward to reading it.

The style of the book is comfortingly factual. Dr Pragya Agarwal’s rigorous, meticulously researched exploration of unconscious bias is rooted in scientific evidence and backed up by descriptions of experiments and studies. She does include some personal anecdotes, and I found these touches of personal experience helpful in linking the theories to how they might be manifested in everyday life.

So much in this book is fascinating and eye-opening. I feel I learned a lot about how the brain works, the way it processes information, and how biases often stem from evolutionary responses: survival tactics based on a kind of short-hand of threat assessment. The author is quick to point out that such instincts are not an excuse to allow unconscious bias to go unchecked: one of the main drives of the book is the hope that by understanding these processes more fully, we can address and change them.

I could go on and on about specific chapters and themes in this book that struck me as deeply important, but I will just highlight a few of the key points that really caught my attention. The distinction between in-groups and out-groups is fascinating, and when the author moves on to discuss the echo chambers that we exist in when we ‘hang out’ on social media with like-minded people, it is increasingly clear just how massive the effect of this has become in our society. The myth of a ‘post-racial’ age is exploded, with Agarwal firmly in agreement that silence is complicity, and that it is not enough to be ‘not racist’ – we must be actively anti-racist if we are to make progress on this front.

Finally, the section on technology opened my eyes to the way in which unconscious bias can have pervasive influence beyond anything I might have imagined. That facial recognition software should carry within it an implicit bias towards whiteness perhaps should not have come as a shock to me, but it did, and the whole notion of AI bias blew my mind wide open.

This book is a comprehensive, fascinating, hugely important study of a topic that we need to address, constantly and consistently, even if it makes us uncomfortable. The situation is not hopeless; as Dr Agarwal states, we must try to find strategies to “mitigate and counter our unconscious biases.” Understanding those biases is the first step. I urge you to read this book: it will change the way you think about the way you think.

Sway by Pragya Agarwal is out now, published by Bloomsbury Sigma, and is available to purchase here.

Blurb:

In this collection of short stories, offbeat characters are caught up in extraordinary situations that test the boundaries of reality.

A love-hungry goddess of the sea arrives on an island inhabited by eunuchs.

A girl from Martinique moonlights as a Grace Jones impersonator.

Dimension-hopping monks sworn to silence must face a bloody reckoning.

And a homeless man goes right back, to the very beginning, through a gap in time.

Nudibranch is a dark and seductive foray into the surreal.

Review:

These powerful, strange stories are the first fiction works by Irenosen Okojie that I have read. Right from the start, the stories spoke to me: reading them was a hugely affective experience that I am probably going to struggle to put into words. Suffice to say I will be reading everything else she has written and will write.

The style is unique, heady, bold and confident. Okojie stretches sentences and images like elastic, twanging reality into strange shapes. She pivots on a knife-edge, always leading the reader somewhere totally unexpected. Words become jewels, weapons, made new in her fierce, fearless prose. It would be fruitless to try and compare such originality with other writers, but I experienced a surge of joy when Amos Tutola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard was explictly referenced – a book I haven’t read for many years, but which I remember giving me a similar feeling of dazzling new possibilities. In fact, if I had to find echoes of Okojie’s force-of-nature style in other works, I suspect it would be in previous Caine Prize anthologies (which, by the way, are a fantastic resource for anyone wanting to explore African literature) – it is no surprise that Irenosen Okojie’s story Grace Jones is this year’s winner. It is a perfect short story.

Some of the stories are incredibly dark, drenched in horror: the monks in Filamo and the awful unfolding of events in Point and Trill gave me seasonally appropriate nightmares. My favourite stories, apart from Grace Jones, are the title story, Nudibranch, Mangata, Komza Bright Morning and Dune Dunehelm (even the list of titles sounds like an incantation). I really don’t want to go into detail as the discovery of the surreal, surprising, extraordinarily varied worlds she creates in these stories was a large part of the joy for me. Instead, I’ll just give you a taster – from the opening of Grace Jones:

“Once the stray parts of a singed scene had found their way into the bedroom, onyx edges gleaming and the figures without memories had lost their molten heads to the coming morning, after she’d pressed her face against the space under the doorway crying, reaching for some untouched handful of earth as sustenance, the agency called, Hassan more specifically.”

As you can tell, these stories really had an effect on me. I recently listened to Irenosen’s keynote speech for the National Creative Writing Industry Conference, run by Comma Press and Manchester Met University, which was also amazing and incredibly inspiring. From a very personal point of view, Irenosen Okojie’s words have reignited my own passion for writing, something I have been struggling to find during this difficult year. Okojie’s mind-bending, reality-stretching style of writing won’t be for everyone (and actually it isn’t how I write at all, although that is beside the point!) but for me, reading these astounding stories has been a moving, powerful, wonderful experience, and I owe her a debt of gratitude.

Nudibranch by Irenosen Okojie is published by Dialogue Books, and will be out in paperback on 12th November.

October was a fantastic month for reading. I managed to read ten books, and although I deviated slightly from my planned ‘mostly non-fiction’ month (I didn’t realise Non-Fiction November was a thing, so I am either out of the loop or ahead of the game, whichever you prefer) I have no regrets. As well as six brilliant non-fiction works, I read an astounding short story collection and three fascinating, very different novels. A two-week half term for the kidlets means that I am desperately behind with writing up my reviews, but I’m hoping to catch up soon! In the meantime, here’s a summary of my October Reading. Let me know if you see anything that catches your interest!

The Same Ledge by Daniel James (2020)

I kicked off the month with this powerful, brave novel, which I was lucky enough to read for a blog tour run by the wonderful Damp Pebbles. My review is stuffed full of trigger warnings, but if you are looking for an uncompromising insight into the shocking inequalities of our society, I highly recommend this book.

PMSL by Luce Brett (2020)

The first of my non-fiction reads in October was a book I won on Twitter and, in all honesty, might not have read otherwise. BUT I am SO glad I did – Luce Brett’s book, in which she smashes the stigma of incontinence and opens the door for further conversations on this and other taboo topics, had a profound effect on me. You can read my full review here. Even if you don’t think you need this book, trust me, you will get so much out of it. We need writers like Luce, who can inform, educate, entertain and push the boundaries. People like her make things better. (I am pretty passionate about this one, in case you can’t tell!)

Bringing Up Race by Uju Asika (2020)

Another brilliant non-fiction read, and one that every parent, regardless of race, should read. Uju Asika’s book is an informative, useful, incredibly relevant resource which has the added benefit of being written in a friendly, engaging style. It is both practical and necessary, and I highly recommend it. My full review is here, do check it out.

Running the Orient by Gavin Boyter (2020)

A bit of a change of pace (excuse the pun) for my third non-fiction read of the month – I thoroughly enjoyed Gavin’s account of his incredible ultra-run through Europe. My review details the reasons why I loved this inspiring story, even despite my lack of running experience/ability/enthusiasm!

The Night of the Flood by Zoe Somerville (2020)

I couldn’t resist deviating from my non-fiction plan to dive straight into this novel, and I felt utterly vindicated upon discovering how brilliant it is. A confident, surprising, stunningly written debut, this is one of my top reads of 2020. I do more waxing lyrical in my review – do have a look. It is going on my forever shelf, and I am definitely going to reread it.

Nudibranch by Irenosen Okojie (2019)

Right, this is the point at which my reviews remain To Be Written, as the kids started their two week break! I am really excited to share my thoughts about this strange, surreal, gorgeous collection of stories, as it hit me hard and reignited my desire to write (just in time for NaNoWriMo!). These stories really push the boundaries of narrative, and I absolutely adored them. More to come!

Sway by Dr Pragya Agarwal (2020)

Again, I will be posting a full review soon, but this study of unconscious bias is absolutely fascinating. I learnt so much, and it really showed me why it is important for me to keep reading non-fiction alongside my beloved stories. This book delves into its subject in an intelligent, thought-provoking, evidence-based way, and I want to sit down with my notes and process what I have learnt from it. Gaining a greater understanding of my own unconscious biases feels like a deeply important experience, and I definitely recommend this book. I’ve got a copy of her latest book, Wish We Knew What To Say, which has just come out, and I am looking forward to it even more now.

The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal (2019)

Another detour back into fiction: I read this novel as part of a readalong with some fab book blogger friends. This was only my second experience of a buddy read (after taking part in the Love Orange event organised by Quercus last month) and honestly, I am a total convert. It is so much fun to have a group of people to chat about the book with, and I love the artificial ‘stop points’ that give you a chance to speculate wildly before reading on! This book split opinions and gave us masses to talk about – it is an idea reading group novel! I’ll try and get some more detailed thoughts up soon! Spoiler alert: I was a fan!

I Am Not Your Baby Mother by Candice Brathwaite (2020)

Back to non-fiction, and another great read. This book dovetailed nicely with both Bringing Up Race and Sway, and I loved the way Candice’s personality shines through as she recounts her experiences. Again, I will try and get a proper review up soon! Lots of catching up to do!

Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again by Katherine Angel (2021)

My final read of the month was an ARC of a book which will be published by Verso in March next year. Absolutely worth getting a preorder in for this deceptively slim volume, which is packed with insight and incredibly nuanced discussions of female desire and consent culture. I need to sit with my thoughts on this one for a bit, but I WILL get a review up… oh you know the drill! Really fascinating, important stuff.

So in summary: a brilliant month for reading, and plenty of reviewing to catch up on! How did you get on in October? Let me know your top reads – my teetering TBR could always stand to get a little bigger!

Happy reading!

Ellie x

Blurb:

Behind the postcard imagery of London, the darkest parts of the city house some of the saddest stories.

When Michael met Cameron, they were two boys who shared a bond and a ledge, an escape from their turbulent and violent home lives. But when Michael leaves, their lives drift apart into dramatically different directions until the events of the past bring them back together. They are no longer boys, but the ledge remains. Can they save themselves? Can they save one another?

This raw debut from Daniel James is a literary fiction that delves into fragile friendships, social inequality and mental health.

Review:

Readers of a sensitive disposition, look away now. The list of topics covered by this book makes for brutal reading: domestic violence, drug abuse, alcoholism, suicide, misogyny, racism, poverty, depression…I could go on. However, regular readers of my blog (hi both) will know I am not one to shy away from a challenging read, and as long as everyone is happy that I have provided sufficient trigger warnings, I’m going to tell you why I am so glad I did not swerve from this one.

This is much more than a ‘sliding doors’ story of two boys starting from the same point and heading off on different trajectories. While it is true that Michael “gets out,” escaping the cycle of poverty and getting a job in the City, leaving Cameron behind, the scars of their upbringings are impossible for either to escape. This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking exploration of what it means to come from a “broken home,” a cliché that is all too often tossed around without considering the full and tragic implications.

The author sticks closely to the two protagonists’ points of view, so closely that, especially in the case of Cameron, it is often deeply uncomfortable to be inside his head. And yet, this discomfort serves a purpose beyond shock value: his violent tendencies, his misogyny, his growing racist views, stoked by the people he meets and the circumstances he feels trapped in, are not presented as a damning indictment of his nature. Rather, he is a product of everything he has lived and suffered, and, as difficult as it is to read about domestic abuse from the point of view of both the victim and the perpetrator, the message of how the cycle will turn relentlessly until the underlying issues of poverty and privation are addressed is a profound, and profoundly relevant, one.

Even Michael, while he manages to distance himself physically from his past, carries the hurt and the trauma within him. The scene where he sees Cameron, now homeless, is incredibly powerful on its own, and in the light of what follows it is almost unbearably so. The parallels between the boys, set up in the title and echoing throughout the book, are not so much designed to evoke the “there but for the grace of…” cliché, but something even more powerful: Michael is Cameron, both boys are a product of the warped society they live in: the damage it has done them is unforgiveable.

The style of the narrative is striking: James writes with eloquence and an attention to detail which illuminates the corners of the city many of us would rather not examine too closely. The South London accents are mimicked convincingly in the dialogue, and I really enjoyed the contrast between the articulate thoughts of the men and their brief, staccato utterances – so much left unsaid, so many swirling thoughts that cannot find release. It is a very clever depiction of the mental anguish suffered by both men, but it works particularly well for Cameron.

This is far from an easy read, but it is an important one. I was forced into contemplating a lot of uncomfortable truths about the liberal views I hold so dear: my horror and distaste for Cameron’s misogyny and racism gradually giving way to a deep, deep sadness that the experiences of his life have shown him no other way to be or to think. The Same Ledge is a brave experiment in pushing the boundaries of empathy to their limits, taking us inside the truth of what it means to live on the edges. This is a book that interrogates our society in an absolutely uncompromising way, and explores some of the reasons for the deep divisions we see all around us. It is a bold, challenging, distressing look at a reality we ignore at our peril.

About the Author:

Daniel James is a London born writer residing in Toronto at the release of his debut novel. Daniel draws upon his own life experiences as a Londoner to create a descriptive account of life in the city, exploring issues of inequality and the pressures on the human spirit blended naturally into one story.

Daniel uses modern day themes and explores complex issues that revolve around mental health, relationships and societal class, issues that have impacted his life in one way or another. The need to captivate and highlight these themes are the inspiration behind his writing. He hopes you connect and enjoy the story in your own way.

Social Media:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanJamesWriting

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Daniel-James-Writing-112573600438719

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daniel_james_writing/

Purchase Links:

Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/2S2RaDd

Amazon US: https://amzn.to/2EDDknx

Published in digital and paperback formats by Lulu.com on 29^th May 2020

Blurb:

An atmospheric literary thriller set in north Norfolk in the shadow of the Cold War, in which a love triangle turns murderous.

Her heart beat hard. There was a crazed beauty to the storm. It was almost miraculous, the way it took away the mess of life, sweeping all in its path…

No-one could have foreseen the changes the summer of 1952 would bring. Cramming for her final exams on her family’s farm on the Norfolk coast, Verity Frost feels trapped between past and present: the devotion of her childhood friend Arthur, just returned from National Service, and her strange new desire to escape.

When Verity meets Jack, a charismatic American pilot, he seems to offer the glamour and adventure she so craves, and Arthur becomes determined to uncover the dirt beneath his rival’s glossy sheen.

As summer turns to winter, a devastating storm hits the coast, flooding the land and altering everything in its path. In this new, watery landscape, Verity’s tangled web of secrets, lies and passion will bring about a crime that will change all their lives forever.

Review:

The Night of the Flood is another book that caught my eye amid the many novels published last month. I am so grateful to the author for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

There is a feeling that comes over me when I start a book and I know from the opening pages that it is going to be brilliant. It is a sort of tingling, gleeful anticipation. I love that feeling of beautiful possibility and rewards to come, and my spidey senses were definitely activated by the start of this novel. The Night of the Flood fully delivered on that promise.

The word “atmospheric” is tossed around with casual abandon to describe books, but here it is singularly appropriate, with all the shades of nuance of weather, pressure, tension, and total immersion that it contains. The double jeopardy of the approaching flood, which is counted down at the start of chapters, and the menace of the Cold War in all its mysterious, suspicious secrecy, creates a fog-like blanket of tension overlying the more personal dramas that play out.

The prose is confident, muscular, and full of texture. It is so evocative of the Norfolk landscape in all its salty, marshy viscosity. My special kind of literary synaesthesia, in which I imagine that prose has a taste, was out in force: this is definitely an umami book, savoury and meaty and without any hint of sugary sweetness. (Sorry if I’ve lost you with “umami prose”!)

The characters are deeply complex, and the level of psychological and emotional richness in this story is astounding. The five young people whose lives are intertwined are each crucial to the intersecting themes of the story, and each one brings yet another layer to the narrative. The crackle of attraction that sparks between different characters at different times is such a realistic depiction of sexual energy at that age (I vaguely seem to remember!) and it is a bold, insightful move away from the simplicity of a mutual attraction between two characters or a clichéd “love triangle.”

Verity, Peter and Arthur are afforded a close third person point of view, sometimes shifting between them within chapters, and this perspective allows for some startling insights into their thoughts. I found my sympathies ebbing and flowing between them, sometimes shocked by their thoughts, sometimes aching for their separate predicaments. Jack, the American pilot, stands outside this close perspective, though he is no less developed as a character. The author’s refusal to let us into his head aligns us cleverly with the three other character, much of whose energy is spent trying to figure Jack out.

The final character of the five is Muriel. I am probably going to wax lyrical here, because for me, Muriel is perhaps the most startlingly brilliant aspect of this novel. The only one among the young people whose (deliberately brief) chapters contain a sense of joy, of contentment, of existing in harmony with her surroundings, Muriel, the fisherman’s daughter, is both an anchor and a catalyst, a kind of nexus around which the others orbit without realising it. Her connection to the landscape, and to the sea in particular, seems elemental and powerful; even the flood is something she can understand and accept, and also subtly profit from. I flippantly referred to her in my head as the Thetis of Norfolk – there really is something goddess-like about her, for all her down-to-earth pragmatism. I actually went back and read her sections again upon finishing the novel, revelling in their lyrical beauty and strange power.

There is so much more I could say about this book. It is constructed of brilliantly complex, subversive layers, culminating in an almost unbearably dramatic climax on the night of the flood itself. Like Muriel, I will be picking over the rich leftovers of this story for a long time to come. The Night of the Flood is a staggering achievement, and I hope many of you are tempted to read it for yourselves. I’m certainly going to be reading it again.

The Night of the Flood by Zoe Somerville is published by Head of Zeus, and is available to purchase here.