Glimmer - review

Glimmer by Nicola McDonagh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m pleased to find myself reviewing another short story collection. Not long ago, the short story was a dying breed and it is so good to see quality short fiction hitting the shelves. Glimmer is a short collection of just seven stories, each one a gem.

The first story is itself called Glimmer which is a shrewd title for a powerful narrative that presents the reader with an unreliable narrator, but no way to tell how unreliable, all we get are the glimmers of her life.

The Reclaimed Merman starts with an encounter on a beach. It’s a tale that unfolds in quite unexpected ways. As with all the stories in this collection, beautiful imagery is woven in, but it’s not there for the sake of it, it isn’t background painted for the reader, every word pulls its weight in moving the story on. It’s only when you emerge at the end that you realise you weren’t actually on the beach with the breeze in your hair, looking in on Dys and her creations. Very cleverly done.

Scarecrow is told from the viewpoint of a little girl, Katy, and retains the simplicity of the 10-year-old’s outlook on life, but as the story unfolds, layers of complexity show behind the apparently straightforward sequence of events.

On the Eighth Day is a real gem of a tale. From the start there is a compelling sense of secrets to uncover, something about to happen, but it’s never quite what you expect as the denouement approaches and the truth gradually dawns.

Daub, the story that follows, shares a physical artefact with the previous tale, though it’s a completely different topic and style. It is this that makes me wonder suddenly how this diverse set of stories holds together so well. It’s not by anything as explicit as a common theme, it is these small touches and far more subtle.

Earnest Thirk, the next in the sequence, starts with an image of a liquid sky then gives us Lola and a sense of imprisonment, once again painting an intriguing scene making it impossible not to read on.

The collection ends with Rousseau’s Suburban Jungle that begins in the apparently mundane setting of a charity shop and goes on to chart the life of a disabled woman who loves to paint.

One thing above all else sets these stories out as special; apparently commonplace settings and events become unique and compelling because of the way the author gets inside the heads of her characters and shows us their exclusive world view.

McDonagh is a true wordsmith with the ability to paint a vivid picture in just a few well-chosen words. As I was reading Glimmer, I felt a hint of that true master of the short story, Shirley Jackson. Highly recommended.



View all my reviews

Shadeward: Emanation - review

Emanation by Drew Wagar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ve seen Shadeward: Emanation compared to Anne McCaffrey as in ‘a must for McCaffrey fans’ and I don’t disagree, but in fact this book has more to it. This is science fiction with real depth in all its strands. There are several distinct stories and each has a compelling central character. Wagar has built a world based on credible science, but nothing of this is force-fed to the reader. The quirks of this place are revealed through the stories of each of the characters and their situations; from feral children clinging to the edges of a rigidly feudal society to pioneers rediscovering lost technologies to the feared band of Drayden witches.

Each story line is compelling in its own right and gives a glimpse of this planet’s different societies. There are hints of a history shaped by some cataclysmic event that has been lost from the collective consciousness, but the focus of this book and what makes it such a good read is the vivid picture created of the world and lives of the protagonists. Maybe the real history of this tidally locked planet and its star, Lacaille, will be revealed in later books, maybe it won’t. Actually, I’d bet that it will, but for the purposes of enjoying an edge-of-seat read, Emanation’s backdrop of greater agendas just out of sight gives real depth to the story.

It wasn’t until I looked back on it that I realised what a complex setting Wagar had created. He does it with such a deft touch that involvement with the central players picked me up at the start and flew me through the prose desperate to see how each story unfolded. Within that, the world was so vividly drawn that I came out of this book feeling as though I’d seen a film.

When I reached the end I knew that each of the characters I had followed had barely begun their journey and that the rigid rules and traditions of the societies on this planet were about to be given an almighty shake-up. That might sound like a downbeat ending, and it could have been, but it wasn’t. The book closes with a glimmer of understanding of impending disaster but at the same time with the feel of a good read satisfyingly concluded. That is a very difficult balance to achieve but Shadeward: Emanation does it well. It left me envying readers of the future who will finish this book and be able to go straight to the next knowing that the whole saga is before them waiting to be read.


View all my reviews

The Boy in Winter's Grasp - review

The Boy In Winter's Grasp by John D. Scotcher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is advertised as a YA novel, though I confess I hadn’t realised its YA label until after I’d finished it, so I read it from the point of view of an adult assuming they were reading an adult book. Did that make a difference? Not a jot. This would be a great book whatever genre box it was put in.

The book sets out its stall from the start with the flavour of something beyond normality and planting a layer of unease in the reader’s mind over the troubled Flyte family and 15 year old Christopher in particular. It is more than internal family troubles that Christopher will have to contend with. The reader is drawn into the atmosphere and mores of a 1914 boys’ school as Christopher is sent home in disgrace. Every backdrop and every context whether used fleetingly or as a major location is painted in wonderful detail. Christopher is a well-drawn central character. It is easy to emphasise. Indeed it’s impossible not to, and then the book won’t let you go.

The unfolding of the story and introduction of the key characters isn’t rushed, with each new character becoming a new and fascinating focus. As a reader I was drawn along into Christopher’s world, then Bailey’s, then Sama’s. The opening tells a deceptively simple story, but it’s gripping and as it expands it becomes a fantasy adventure to rival anything on the market.

It is frightening, heart-warming, gripping, exciting and all but impossible to put down. Very different from Harry Potter yet somehow cast from the same magic and every bit as good.

An ambitious mix of World War 1, Arthurian Britain, myth and fantasy, it could so easily have missed the mark, but Scotcher proves himself a wordsmith of real talent and gets it spot on. I can’t wait for the next.


View all my reviews

A must for Betty Macdonald fans

Much Laughter, a Few Tears: Memoirs of a Woman's Friendship With Betty Macdonald and Her Family by Blanche Caffiere
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Against expectation, I loved this book. I didn’t think I would before I started it. Indeed I was a couple of chapters in before I realised quite how good it was going to be. Like many Betty Macdonald fans, I imagine, what I wanted from this book was some insight into Betty Macdonald’s life. Having just read one of Mary Bard’s books with the same motivation and been disappointed, and having read a review of Blanche Caffiere’s book which dismissed it as self-indulgent irrelevance, my expectations were low. They shouldn’t have been. That review was rubbish.

Blanche Caffiere writes well, tells the story of how her life interwove with the Bards in general and Sydney, Betty and Mary in particular. I know that Betty Macdonald spun her story partly at the behest of her publishers (Bob for example in the final version of The Egg and I was painted essentially as a good guy; the wives routinely used as punchbags by drunken husbands were people she knew and not her); her leaving her husband was a brief but dramatic sequence at the start of Anybody Can Do Anything – Blanche tells what sounds like a more likely scenario: Mary Bard drove out to the farm at a time she knew Bob would not be there and helped Betty to pack before driving her and her two daughters back to the family home in the city.

In fact one of the things that Blanche Caffiere’s account does is to paint Mary Bard as the truly amazing person she clearly was. It does likewise for their mother Sydney including the story of how she came to be called Sydney. Their unique qualities come across in Betty Macdonald’s accounts, although not in Mary’s own writings, but Sydney was her mother, Mary was her sister; there’s an element of ‘she would say that, wouldn’t she’ when it’s Betty. From Blanche it comes across differently.

Blanche Caffiere tells her own story as well as that of her interactions with the Bards, but partly because her own story was largely influenced by Mary and Betty, and partly because she tells it well, it drew me in. I became interested in what happened to her as well as what happened to Mary Bard (in a way I hadn’t when reading Mary’s writing) and of course, Betty.

An absolute must for genuine Betty Macdonald fans.


View all my reviews

The triple review - sometimes that's how it happens

This is a triple book review. The three books are linked by the fact that I read them all together over this last week. There could be other links, but that's the one that counts in this case.

Firstly, why am I reading three books at a time? All avid readers will have had this happen - that multiple books on the go scenario. I'd wanted an easy reread for bedtime and picked a crime novel that was the nearest as opposed to a favourite. Because it wasn't a favourite, it didn't automatically get promoted to Main Book which meant I was subconsciously on the look out for something else.

I fell over book 2 on a charity book stall. It was a modern sequel to an old classic. I usually steer clear. These things rarely cut the mustard, but I dipped in, liked it and bought it.

Book 3 I fell over online. An out of print hardback written by the older sister of one of my favourite authors from adolescent days. I'd always wondered about big sister's take on little sister's stories, so I snapped it up.

That left me with a crime, a romance and an autobiography on the go simultaneously. There was a moment at the weekend where I was out in the garden with cup of tea, sun hat, sun screen, our hens, next-door's dog, 40,000 insects and my three books. I dipped into each, fished flying things out of my tea and fended off the dog who wanted to play.

The books! Get to the books.

The crime was a Dorothy L Sayers, Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, called Whose Body? I've read it before. Wasn't much taken with it then, wasn't much taken with it this time. I'm not a great fan of Peter Wimsey who I always think will irritate the hell out of me far more than he actually does. But the fact is that Sayers can spin a yarn and as ever, she keeps me reading. I'll never class it a favourite but I won't give it away. In another few years I expect I'll read it again.

The romance - this was Pemberley by Emma Tennant, a sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice which has always been a favourite of mine. If I could have got at the bookcase (that's another story) I'd probably have picked Pride & Prejudice as my easy reread and had no hankering for any other books. Constructing a sequel to a classic is never easy, in some cases impossible, though Pride & Prejudice lends itself to a sequel far better than something like Gone With the Wind. I'm afraid I hated PD James' Death at Pemberley. The genre swap simply didn't work in my view.

Emma Tennant takes a light tone, leaning very much towards the relationship tangles to find her drama, and she mirrors the original rather cleverly. Does it compare? No, but it doesn't set out to. It's more of a light romp. She catches the tone and relies heavily on dialogue which I thought she did well. I enjoyed it.

And finally the autobiographical one. It was The Doctor Wears Three Faces by Mary Bard who was Betty MacDonald's sister. I read it to the end but it was a big disappointment. There were interesting insights into the times but barely a mention of Betty. I wonder if that was at the direction of the publisher. Betty MacDonald was sued twice for portrayals in The Egg and I, with one out of court settlement and one court battle which she won. Maybe the cautious publishers of the time warned Mary off anything but the most cursory mention of her sister. I'm fairly sure the rest of her books (of which I've read reviews but not the things themselves) will be the same. 

The pictures were interesting of the somewhat brutal male dominated field of medicine and things like the doctor sitting up in his hospital bed post appendectomy demanding his cigarettes, but what I wanted to know about was the other side of Betty's illnesses; how did they cope when Betty was whisked into a sanatorium? How did Mary cope with her role as breadwinner and job finder for such a large family in the depression - we have Betty's side in Anybody Can Do Anything. What did she and the family make of Betty's first marriage. Did they know about the violence before Betty left Bob? Was that the real reason for Mary's absolute insistence that Betty drop everything, pack only what she could carry along with her two small children and trek across miles of wilderness to get to the nearest bus stop to bring her back to civilisation*? If only her publishers had told her to mirror Betty's own books and give the other side, her book could have been riveting for all that the writing doesn't have Betty's light touch. Alas, I fear they told her to steer clear of what they must have seen as controversial ground.

* The version in Anybody Can Do Anything. The version given by Betty's long-time friend Blanche Caffiere is that Mary drove out to the farm at a time she knew Betty's husband wasn't there and helped Betty pack up what she could, then drove her and her daughters away from the abusive marriage.

Philae, Shelley and politics from the dark ages

(originally a Facebook post but I thought it was worthy of being a blog)

What’s with all this 'discovering' of long forgotten anniversaries and the bizarre pronouncements that go with each? Magna Carta for instance and the BBC’s statement that it marked the beginning of the 'Rule of Law' (whatever that means).

And how about the Battle of Waterloo (1815)? I’ll bet the 100th anniversary wasn’t half as much celebrated as the 200th. After all, in 1815 it was England and Germany versus France, whereas in 1915 it was England and France versus Germany. A real puzzle to work out whose side God was on.

But apparently Waterloo marked the victory of Liberal Democracy over the rule of the mob. Er … did it? 

Wasn’t it in fact English, German, Austrian etc reaction trying to set back the advances made in the French Revolution?

Compare with a snippet recently come to light about British PM Edward Heath's homosexuality which was apparently a fiction invented by the security services to discredit Heath in the eyes of the right-wing of the Tory party. Irrespective of whether or not one is a fan of either Heath or the right wing of the Tory party, where does that fit in with Liberal Democracy and the Rule of Law?

Moving beyond the planet, apparently the space-lander Philae is coming awake on comet 67P about 190 million miles from the earth. The science involved is just incredible.

Contrast that with today’s politics where we may as well be in the dark ages.

I met Murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh
Very smooth he looked, yet grim
Seven bloodhounds followed him.

And I’ll leave the last word to Shelley (from The Mask of Anarchy)

Buried not so Deep

Buried Deep (crime: set in York and Hull) was the subject of a scary last-minute plot disaster. It was close to finished when a terrible thing happened. A major plot line dived into an irretrievable dead end. There could be no way out. What was the protagonist to do? How would this book ever end?


Then just before I'd torn out all my hair, it dawned. I'd fallen for one of my own red-herrings. It wasn't a dead end because of what thingy had said to so-and-so way back when ... and that time where the villain of the piece had said ... and the thing with the doo-dah ... and so on. Whew! Relief.


When I plotted the new novel I was determined to keep it nice and simple - an everyday tale of mayhem and murder with a nice twist or two but nothing to scare the pants off the author on the last lap.

That was the plan.

The plotting process was simple enough, but the devil - as they say - is in the detail. Has it worked out? Who knows? It's at that edited first draft stage where I can recite it by heart without it making any sense at all.


The stage - in fact - where it is ready to go out to its beta readers, a valiant group acknowledged in Buried Deep to whom I am eternally grateful for their insights and honesty. Take a deep breath, guys! Tiger Blood is heading your way.