+ abuse, child abuse, childhood, family, family drama, fiction, journal, literature, loss, memoir, relationships, review, sisters
The Lost Girls by Heather Young
In the summer of 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family’s vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys her mother, who spends the rest of her life at the lake house, hoping in vain that her favorite daughter will walk out of the woods. Emily’s two older sisters stay, too, each keeping her own private, decades-long vigil for the lost child.
Sixty years later Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before she dies, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person to whom it might matter: her grandniece, Justine.
#TheLostGirls @HYoungwriter @Verve_Books @annecater @RandomTTours #RandomThingsTours
For Justine, the lake house offers a chance to escape her manipulative boyfriend and give her daughters the stable home she never had. But it’s not the sanctuary she hoped for. The long Minnesota winter has begun. The house is cold and dilapidated, the frozen lake is silent and forbidding, and her only neighbour is a strange old man who seems to know more than he’s telling about the summer of 1935.
Soon Justine’s troubled oldest daughter becomes obsessed with Emily’s disappearance, her mother arrives with designs on her inheritance, and the man she left behind launches a dangerous plan to get her back. In a house steeped in the sorrows of the women who came before her, Justine must overcome their tragic legacy if she hopes to save herself and her children.
My Review
The Lost Girls is told in two timelines. First of all we hear from Lucy who is telling her story in the first person in her notebook. Lucy lives at the lake house with her older sister Lilith. They had another sister – Emily – who disappeared in 1935 when she was six. Forty-five years later their mother still lives with them. She has never stopped waiting for Emily to come home – her body was never found.
The second timeline is recounted in the third person and is the story of Lucy’s great-niece Justine. It is the winter of 1999 and Lucy has just died and left the lake house to Justine. Lilith’s daughter Maurie has not inherited anything other than $5000 and her mother’s jewellery.
Justine has two daughters Melanie and Angela. Their father walked out one day and never returned. Justine now lives with Patrick, a rather insecure and controlling man. When Justine learns of her inheritance, she packs a few things and leaves their home in San Diego to travel 2,000 miles to Lucy’s house. When they arrive they realise the house is run down, the weather is colder than anything they have ever encountered and they are miles from anywhere.
The lake house forms part of a summer community, so during the winter there is only one inhabited house nearby, that of Matthew and his brother Abe. They are a slightly strange pair, who have lived there since they were children, running The Lodge where visitors can stay or just come to eat and drink. While well-regarded, their family were never fully accepted in the community due to their Native American heritage. When Emily disappeared, Abe was the first suspect.
I grew very fond of Lucy while reading her journal, though the feeling started to wane towards the end. As the book progresses, we realise what a difficult childhood she and her sisters endured – their religious zealot and somewhat strange and sinister father, their cowardly mother and the way they are different from their friends, with their childish clothes and Mary Jane shoes. But I have to admit I never warmed to Justine or her mother Maurie. As a child, Justine was dragged from town to town and from one failed relationship to another. Attractive and entertaining on the outside, Maurie is inwardly selfish, bitter and shallow. I really tried to like Justine, but I struggled with her negativity. On the other hand, Matthew is kind, generous and honourable.
However, this is a wonderfully written novel and at times the descriptions are breath-taking in their beauty. The ending was totally unexpected. I don’t want to give anything away, but it was even sadder than I could possibly have imagined.
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours.
About the Author
Heather is the author of two novels. Her debut, The Lost Girls, won the Strand Award for Best First Novel and was nominated for an Edgar Award. The Distant Dead was published on June 9, 2020, and was named one of the Best Books of Summer by People Magazine, Parade, and CrimeReads. A former antitrust and intellectual property litigator, she traded the legal world for the literary one and earned her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2011. She lives in Mill Valley, California, where she writes, bikes, hikes, and reads books by other people that she wishes she’d written.
+ abuse, child abuse, childhood, coming-of-age, fiction, friendship, literature, Psychological fiction, revenge, secrets
Fragile by Sarah Hilary
Nell Ballard is a runaway. A former foster child with a dark secret she is desperate to keep, all Nell wants is to find a place she can belong. So when a job comes up at Starling Villas, home to the enigmatic Robin Wilder, she seizes the opportunity with both hands. But her new lodgings may not be the safe haven that she was hoping for…
#Fragile @sarah_hilary @panmacmillan @annecater @RandomTTours
Her employer lives by a set of rigid rules and she soon sees that he is hiding secrets of his own.
But is Nell’s arrival at the Villas really the coincidence it seems? After all, she knows more than most how fragile people can be – and how easy they can be to break . . .
A dark contemporary psychological thriller with a modern Gothic twist from an award winning and critically acclaimed writer who has been compared to Ruth Rendell, PD James and Val McDermid. Rebecca meets The Handmaid’s Tale in Sarah Hilary’s standalone breakout novel, Fragile.
My Review
One of the things I love most about this book is the way it is written, the metaphors, the clever turns of phrase that pepper the narrative time and time again. It is clever, sinister and menacing with some really unlikable characters such as foster carer Meagan Flack a “Poundland Bond villain without even a cat to warm her vicious lap”, Dr Robin Wilder who owns Starling Villas “his loneliness had a colour, pebble-grey”, his wife or is it ex-wife Carolyn who “didn’t need a weapon, with her eyes like knives” and I hate to say it – “soft boy” Joe Peach.
One always wonders in these types of story how someone like Meagan Flack (her full name makes her sound more sinister) ever got to be a foster carer. Surely someone was suspicious. She doesn’t even like children. She is mean and spiteful and lazy – allowing foster child Nell Ballard to do all the work. Abandoned at eight years old when her mother met a new man and wanted to start a fresh family with a new baby, she becomes the mum to all the little ones. She cooks, cleans and even irons their clothes. She reads them bedtime stories and puts them to bed. Then Rosie Bond arrives, the pretty little ‘princess’ whose parents wanted a doll to show off and got a toddler with the terrible twos. Nell adores Rosie who calls her her new mother and follows her everywhere.
But when tragedy strikes, Nell and Joe run away to London, doing anything and everything to survive till they end up on the streets. Then Nell sees an opportunity to become the housekeeper at Starling Villas, but employer Dr Wilder has rules, pages of them, which would send most people running. But Nell doesn’t mind – she’s used to rules – and she doesn’t believe she is worthy of anything better. She breaks everything she touches because she knows how fragile people can be, including herself. All she really wants is love and security but she doesn’t believe she deserves it, not after what she and Joe did back at Lyles.
This is a very dark story, full of guilt, secrets and lies. As the reader you pray there will be hope and salvation, but can Nell find a way back and forgive herself?
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours and to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
About the Author
SARAH HILARY’s debut Someone Else’s Skin won the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year, was a Richard & Judy Book Club pick and The Observer’s Book of the Month. In the US, it was a Silver Falchion and Macavity Award finalist. No Other Darkness, the second in the series, was shortlisted for a Barry Award. The sixth in her DI Marnie Rome series Never Be Broken is out now. Her short stories have won the Cheshire Prize for Literature, the Fish Criminally Short Histories Prize, and the SENSE prize. Fragile is her first standalone novel. Sarah is one of the Killer Women, a crime writing collective supporting diversity, innovation and inclusion in their industry.
+ abuse, child abuse, childhood, family, fiction, friendship, motherhood, murder, review
The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker
“So that was all it took,” I thought. “That was all it took for me to feel like I had all the power in the world. One morning, one moment, one yellow-haired boy. It wasn’t so much after all.”
Meet Chrissie…
Chrissie is eight and she has a secret: she has just killed a boy. The feeling made her belly fizz like soda pop. Her playmates are tearful and their mothers are terrified, keeping them locked indoors. But Chrissie rules the roost — she’s the best at wall-walking, she knows how to get free candy, and now she has a feeling of power that she never gets at home, where food is scarce and attention scarcer.
Twenty years later, adult Chrissie is living in hiding under a changed name. A single mother, all she wants is for her daughter to have the childhood she herself was denied. That’s why the threatening phone calls are so terrifying. People are looking for them, the past is catching up, and Chrissie fears losing the only thing in this world she cares about, her child.
My Review
This is probably one of the darkest books I have ever read. An eight-year-old child killer tells her own story. How could we feel sorry for her – but we do.
Chrissie’s Mammy can’t cope. She tries to give her away more than once. There is never any food in the house. She is permanently starving – starved of both food and love. She steals sweets from the local shop and inveigles her way into her friends’ houses just so she can share their tea. Especially her best friend Linda, who for some reason is always on her side. Chrissie is rude and kicks and screams when she doesn’t get her own way. She wets the bed but no-one changes the sheets or gives her clean clothes. She is a nightmare, the ‘bad seed’ as someone called her, but how far would you go under the circumstances.
We know from the opening sentence that she has just strangled a toddler to death. But he’ll come back alive soon, won’t he. Like her Da who keeps dying and coming back. You’re too old to believe that anymore, he tells her one day.
But in all this, where are social services? Don’t the school or her teachers wonder why she is so thin and filthy with her tangled hair and dirty clothes?
‘Where’s your cereal box, Chrissie,’ asked Miss White.
‘Don’t got no cereal,’ I said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous Chrissie,’ she said. ‘Everyone has cereal’.
Except she really doesn’t. You wonder why no-one sees it. There is no-one to protect her. Particularly her Mammy and Da.
One of the saddest things I think is that she pretends to herself and to others that her Mam loves her. She defends this awful woman because she can’t bear to admit that she is unloved and unwanted. And her Da turns up now and again and doesn’t want to hear it. He prefers to block it out. It’s easier that way.
Chrissie is the narrator when she is eight. Twenty years later we hear from Julia, Chrissie’s new identity. She has her own child now, Molly, but is waiting for her to be taken away. She knows she’s not good enough to be a mum. Not good enough to deserve a second chance. Still the bad seed.
Are some children born to be killers or is it the hand they have been dealt? Can we ever feel sorry for Chrissie? It’s hard to imagine that you can, but by the end I was crying for the sadness of it all and the cruelty to her and by her. None of it should have happened, but it did and it still does.
Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the author and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read.
About the Author
Nancy Tucker was born and raised in West London. She spent most of her adolescence in and out of hospital suffering from anorexia nervosa. On leaving school, she wrote her first book, THE TIME IN BETWEEN (Icon, 2015) which explored her experience of eating disorders and recovery. Her second book, THAT WAS WHEN PEOPLE STARTED TO WORRY (Icon, 2018), looked more broadly at mental illness in young women.
Nancy recently graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Experimental Psychology. Since then she has worked in an inpatient psychiatric unit for children and adolescents and in adult mental health services. She now works as an assistant psychologist in an adult eating disorders service. The First Day of Spring is her first work of fiction.
Work in Progress: The untold story of the Crawley Writers’ Group, compiled by Peter, writer
In December 2016, Julia Greengage, aspiring writer and resting actor, puts up a poster in her local library inviting people to join a new writers’ group. The group will exchange constructive feedback and ‘generally share in the pains and pleasures of this excruciating yet exhilarating endeavour we call Literature’.
Seven people, each in their own way a bit of a work in progress, heed the call.
There’s Keith, a mercenary sci-fi geek who can write 5,000 words before breakfast and would sell his mother for a book deal. Tom, a suburban lothario with an embarrassing secret. Peter, a conceptual artist whose main goal in life is to make everyone else feel uncomfortable. Alice, who’s been working on her opening sentence for over nine months. Jon, a faded muso with a UFO complex. Blue, whose doom-laden poems include ‘Electrocuted Angel in the Headlights of My Dead Lover’s Eye Sockets’ and the notorious ‘Kitten on a Fatberg’. And Mavinder, who sadly couldn’t make the first meeting. Or the second. But promises to come to the next one…
Soon, under Julia’s watchful eye, the budding writers are meeting every month to read out their work and indulge each other’s dreams of getting published. But it’s not long before the group’s idiosyncrasies and insecurities begin to appear. Feuds, rivalries and even romance are on the cards – not to mention an exploding sheep’s head, a cosplay stalker, and an alien mothership invasion. They’re all on a journey, and God help the rest of us.
A novel-in-emails about seven eccentric writers, written by three quite odd ones, Work in Progress is a very British farce about loneliness, friendship and the ache of literary obscurity.
My Review
Hilarious. At a time when the world is in pandemic chaos following Brexit chaos, this book is a beacon of light in the darkness (I hope that is/is not too pretentious). In the spirit of the novel I am going to write in the style of the Crawley Writers Group. If I ever thought about joining a writer’s group I hope/dread that they would all be as mad as this lot.
Dear Peter
You are not misunderstood and unappreciated. You are simply a pretentious twat. And I’m not sure all that secret recording is actually legal.
Hey Jon
There are no aliens living in the sky or UFOs coming to rescue you. Get over it and keep taking the tablets or in your case probably stop taking the illegal substances. And as far as rebooting the rock band of the seventies, l should leave that elderly rockers thing to The Rolling Stones.
Hey Keith
I think maybe 4.5 million words, many of which are in a made-up language, is (are?) about 4.3 million too many. Can I have a Bink badge please at a hugely discounted price? Of course I can’t.
Dear Blue
Somewhere deep inside that Goth exterior is a really nice person desperately to trying to get out. I think I might be your friend.
Dear Alice
The Sentence has become a life sentence. Ditch it and realise that everything else you write is really rather good. Writers write. Everything else is procrastination. And keep blogging.
Hey Tomcat
A writer’s group is for writers to exchange ideas, not for perverts to pick up women. It can only end in disaster or the police coming round.
Hi Mavinder
Who are you? Where are you? Do you even exist?
And finally:
Dear Julia
I’m sure you are a beautiful person (both inside and out) with a beautiful house and beautiful clothes, the world’s biggest selection of canapes, more than one chimenea and a kidney-shaped infinity pool (how does that work?). Unfortunately, your ego is bigger than your talent, but no worries, talent is no requisite for success (you only have to watch reality TV) and I’m sure you will be the talk of the town.
This book is the most fun I have had reading in ages. It is so good and so funny. I wish there was more to come.
Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the authors and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read.
About the Authors
Dan Brotzel is the author of Hotel du Jack, a collection of short stories, and The Wolf in the Woods, a novel. both published by Sandstone Press. More info at www.danbrotzel.com
Martin Jenkins is a freelance writer, researcher and editor. His publications include the novel A Science of Navigation and a contribution to the Soul Bay Press short story anthology 13.
Alex Woolf is an award-winning author of over two hundred books for children and adults, published by the likes of OUP, Ladybird, Hachette and Fiction Express.
+ autism, childhood, coming-of-age, family, fiction, friendship, love, motherhood, review
This Is How We Are Human by Louise Beech
Sebastian James Murphy is twenty years, six months and two days old. He loves swimming, fried eggs and Billy Ocean. Sebastian is autistic. And lonely.
Veronica wants her son Sebastian to be happy, and she wants the world to accept him for who he is. She is also thinking about paying a professional to give him what he desperately wants.
Violetta is a high-class escort, who steps out into the night thinking only of money. Of her nursing degree. Paying for her dad’s care. Getting through the dark.
When these three lives collide, and intertwine in unexpected ways, everything changes. For everyone.
#ThisIsHowWeAreHuman @LouiseWriter @OrendaBooks @annecater @RandomTTours
Both heartbreaking and heartwarming, This Is How We Are Human is a powerful, moving and thoughtful drama about a mother’s love for her son, about getting it wrong when we think we know what’s best, about the lengths we go to care for family and to survive.
My Review
When I read the blurb – at least the part about Sebastian’s mum offering to pay an escort to have sex with her autistic son – I felt just a tiny bit uncomfortable. I know you would do anything for your children, but this is a bit extreme – isn’t it? But in reality she sees the person she loves most in the world growing up in pain because his physical needs are not being met. Paying for sex would be like paying for his swimming lessons or buying his food wouldn’t it?
The problem with Veronica’s solution is that she is not being honest and she’s lying to protect him. She’s buying sex and pretending to Sebastian that it’s love. That the girl she finds for him wants a relationship with him. In an attempt to quash other people’s prejudices, she is perpetuating her own. Is it the only way he gets to have sex, by buying it for him? Does she not trust that eventually he will find his own way.
I worked with someone whose son was autistic and she worried about his inappropriate behaviour – walking into his sisters’ rooms naked for instance – what would happen when he was in his teens and he did the same thing with strangers? Sebastian is obsessed with sex – if he finds a girlfriend will he do something inappropriate? Much safer then to buy him a ‘girlfriend’ so he can relieve his urges.
After a few paragraphs, I no longer felt uncomfortable (maybe a little on occasion) and I fell in love with the characters. Maybe not so much Veronica (though I may well have done the same thing under the circumstances) but with Sebastian and Isabelle. Sebastian is obsessed with routine and order. It’s what grounds him.
Isabelle’s father has had an accident and is in an induced coma. His last words to her before they put him under were to keep him at home. But how can she pay for his treatment and round-the-clock nursing while she completes her nursing degree? His business is failing and there is no money. Too shy to be a lap dancer (and she can’t dance anyway), Isabelle becomes a high class escort calling herself Violetta after the heroine of the Opera La Traviata, and offering her services online through an agency. But it soon turns ugly and at times dangerous, so when Veronica approaches her and offers her a fortune to have sex with her beautiful boy Sebastian, it’s an offer too good to refuse. Or is it?
This Is How We Are Human is written with so much love and compassion. It challenges everything we think we know about autism and even the prejudices we don’t realise we are carrying. I read it in two days. I woke up at 6am and read for an hour before work. I read it in my lunch break. I took it upstairs and finished it after tea.
By the end of the book, I was crying so much I couldn’t see the page. To say I was crying for Sebastian would make me just another person feeling sorry for him. In many ways it would be patronising and judgemental. Like Veronica I wouldn’t be letting him find his own way in his own time. But I cried freely for Isabelle, who was trying so hard to help everyone and eventually heal her shame. But this is not a sad story. It’s a celebration of life and it’s full of joy. I defy you not to fall a little bit in love with Sebastian. This is a book that everyone should read.
Incidentally, a couple of months ago we built a pond in the garden. We bought six fish. Only two survived. I have called them Flip and Scorpion in honour of Sebastian.
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours.
About the Author
Louise Beech is an exceptional literary talent, whose debut novel How To Be Brave was a Guardian Readers’ Choice for 2015. The follow-up, The Mountain in My Shoe was shortlisted for Not the Booker Prize. Both of her previous books Maria in the Moon and The Lion Tamer Who Lost were widely reviewed, critically acclaimed and number-one bestsellers on Kindle. The Lion Tamer Who Lost was shortlisted for the RNA Most Popular Romantic Novel Award in 2019. Her 2019 novel Call Me Star Girl won Best magazine Book of the Year, and was followed by I Am Dust.
Her short fiction has won the Glass Woman Prize, the Eric Hoffer Award for Prose, and the Aesthetica Creative Works competition, as well as shortlisting for the Bridport Prize twice. Louise lives with her husband on the outskirts of Hull, and loves her job as a Front of House Usher at Hull Truck Theatre, where her first play was performed in 2012.
“Though This is How We Are Human is fiction, the premise was inspired by my friends, 20-year-old Sean, who is autistic, and his mum Fiona. Fiona had spoken to me about how much Sean longed to meet a girl and have sex. No one talks about this, she said – the difficulties navigating romance often faced by those on the spectrum. It ’s an issue that I wanted to explore. Fiona and Sean encouraged me and guided me through the book; Sean regularly consulted on dialogue, rightly insisting that his voice was heard, was strong, and was accurate. I cannot thank my extraordinary friends enough for their help and support.” Louise Beech
When you are really busy it’s time for the actors to improvise. And they really do. Absolutely hilarious The Last Minute Play has some of my favourite lines.
“Is that a new car…”
“….lime green….really brings out your eyes Pitrum.”
“Shame I’ve only got the one really.”
“Beautiful eye though.”
“It’s always easier to recover from grief when it makes you filthy, stinking rich.”
And of course The Last Minute Play is set in a country house so there has to be a murder. Detective Polar Bear is onto it. Everyone was somewhere else polishing the candlesticks or whatever or ‘someone was clearly lying’ and what’s the motive?
“I have given everything for this family…the least they could do is give me a good retirement fund.”
Well there you go.
“When do we get paid?” Brilliant!
Written and Directed by Emmeline Braefield
Starring:
Chloe Wade as Charlie as Detective Polar Bear
Jackson Pentland as Robert as Marsha Mollymaddock and Jeffrey Butler
Rob Keeves as Paul as Pitrum Mollymaddock
Pippa Meekings as Patricia as Eleanor Duke
Emmeline Braefield as Sarah as Laura
Produced by Cat on a Piano Productions
Music:
King Porter Stomp by Joel Cummins
Retrograde by Spence
Never You Mind by Dan Lebowitz
London Fog by Quincas Moreira
The Theatrephonic Theme tune was composed by Jackson Pentland
Performed by
Jackson Pentland
Mollie Fyfe Taylor
Emmeline Braefield
Cat on a Piano Productions produce and edit feature films, sketches and radio plays.
Their latest project is called @Theatrephonic, a podcast of standalone radio plays and short stories performed by professional actors. You can catch Theatrephonic on Spotify and other platforms.
For more information about the Theatrephonic Podcast, go to catonapiano.uk/theatrephonic, Tweet or Instagram us @theatrephonic, or visit our Facebook page.
And if you really enjoyed The Last Minute Play listen to Theatrephonic’s other plays and short stories and consider becoming a patron by clicking here…
+ childhood, coming-of-age, family, fiction, folklore, friendship, loss, love, magic, Magical realism, motherhood, mythology, review, supernatural, superstition
She Never Told Me About The Ocean by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta
Told by four women whose stories nest together, She Never Told Me About the Ocean is an epic about a rite of passage that all humans undergo and none remember: birth.
Eighteen-year-old Sage has been mothering her mother for as long as she can remember, and as she arrives on the shores of adulthood, she learns a secret: before she was born, she had an older brother who drowned.
#SheNeverToldMe @ESMcKetta @annecater @RandomTTours
In her search to discover who he was and why nobody told her, Sage moves to tiny Dragon Island where her mother grew up. There she embarks on a quest to learn the superstitions of the island, especially its myths involving her mother. Gathering stories from Ilya, a legendary midwife who hires Sage as her apprentice; Marella, Sage’s grieving mother who was named for the ocean yet has always been afraid of it; and Charon, the Underworld ferrywoman who delivers souls to the land of the dead, Sage learns to stop rescuing her mother and simply let go. But when her skill as Ilya’s apprentice enables her to rescue her mother one final time, in a way that means life or death, Sage must shed her
inherited fears and become her own woman.
My Review
Firstly let me say that I loved this book. Every word, every phrase, every brilliant moment. It has gone to the top of my favourite books of the year.
It is also a book very close to my heart. Like Sage I mothered my own mother from a teenager until her death which was three days before my fortieth birthday. Like Marella, my mother lost a child at a year and a half (though due to tuberculosis). She was soon pregnant with my brother and then me. Her anxiety surrounding our welfare amongst other things became all consuming, leaving her living in fear, and leaving me, like Sage, with her inherited fears.
She Never Told Me About the Ocean is a work of magical realism – I didn’t realise to what extent when I started it. There were touches of the mystical beauty I have only ever found in the books of Alice Hoffman (not so much Practical Magic which is the best known as it was made into a Hollywood film) but in others such as The World That We Knew, Faithful, Blackbird House and she is my favourite writer ever. This is the biggest compliment I could pay any author.
When Sage’s beloved Nana is dying she decides to go to the strange Dragon Island to say goodbye, virtually dragging Marella with her. Sage is overwhelmingly distraught. Together with her father George, they stay at Nana’s huge, rambling house where they sort out her things and prepare for the funeral. Though Nana always stayed to look after Sage when George was away at sea (my grandmother had to look after me and my brother when my mother became unable to do so), none of them have been to Dragon Island since Sage was born.
The days turn to weeks, George is once more away at sea, the two women are still living at the house and Sage meets Ilya the midwife, who takes her on as her apprentice. We also hear from Charon the ferry-woman, who takes souls across the river to the Underworld. But in this story, the Underworld is accessible to living humans, who can make a bargain to bring back a departed loved one in exchange for years of work when their time comes.
But what happens in this book is almost secondary to the thoughts and philosophy behind it. This is a book about mothers and motherhood, about unbreakable bonds and the love we have for our children and our parents regardless of time, distance or conflict. I cannot praise it enough. It made me revisit my life and my childhood and the meaning of everything I believe in. I know that sounds pretentiously profound, but if you read She Never Told Me About the Ocean – please do – you will hopefully understand what I mean.
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours.
About the Author
Elisabeth Sharp McKetta grew up in Austin, Texas. She holds literature degrees from Harvard, Georgetown, and the University of Texas at Austin and teaches writing for the Harvard Extension School and the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education. She is the author of eight books: We Live in Boise, Energy: The Life of John J. McKetta Jr., Fear of the Deep, Fear of the Beast, Poetry for Strangers Vols. I and II, The Creative Year: 52 Workshops for Writers, and The Fairy Tales Mammals Tell. She Never Told Me About the Ocean is her first novel.
Website
Mary had a little chicken.
Mary is eight years old and she doesn’t eat meat or so she claims. And anyway she has a pet chicken who is not a little lamb. Chicken soup isn’t meat is it and it’s her favourite.
The Pot Chicken likes people soup. It’s his favourite. And The Pot Chicken is quite big and not like other chickens.
Written by Tilly Lunken
Directed by Emmeline Braefield
Starring
Fran Burgoyne as Mary
and
Pippa Meekings as Chicken and The Pot Chicken
Produced by Cat on a Piano Productions
Music: Mary Had A Little Lamb (instrumental) by The Green Orbs
The Theatrephonic Theme tune was composed by Jackson Pentland
Performed by
Jackson Pentland
Mollie Fyfe Taylor
Emmeline Braefield
Cat on a Piano Productions produce and edit feature films, sketches and radio plays.
Their latest project is called @Theatrephonic, a podcast of standalone radio plays and short stories performed by professional actors. You can catch Theatrephonic on Spotify and other platforms.
For more information about the Theatrephonic Podcast, go to catonapiano.uk/theatrephonic, Tweet or Instagram us @theatrephonic, or visit our Facebook page.
And if you really enjoyed A Little Chicken listen to Theatrephonic’s other plays and short stories and consider becoming a patron by clicking here…
+ adventure, art, coming-of-age, female friendship, feminism, fiction, friendship, Italy, literature, love, relationships, review, World War Two
Still Life by Sarah Winman
By the bestselling, prize-winning author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life is a beautiful, big-hearted, richly tapestried story of people brought together by love, war, art, flood… and the ghost of E.M. Forster.
We just need to know what the heart’s capable of, Evelyn.
And do you know what it’s capable of?
I do. Grace and fury.
It’s 1944 and in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as the Allied troops advance and bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening together.
Ulysses Temper is a young British solider and one-time globe-maker, Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and relive her memories of the time she encountered EM Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular Florentine room with a view.
These two unlikely people find kindred spirits in each other and Evelyn’s talk of truth and beauty plants a seed in Ulysses mind that will shape the trajectory of his life – and of those who love him – for the next four decades.
Moving from the Tuscan Hills, to the smog of the East End and the piazzas of Florence, Still Life is a sweeping, mischievous, richly-peopled novel about beauty, love, family and fate.
My Review
Just when you think you’ve found your favourite books of the year so far, another one comes along. That book is Still Life. What a band of lovable, eccentric characters in this marvellous story that sweeps across more than forty years from the second world war to the late 1970s. It looks at love, friendship, class, sexuality, art and culture in a manner that is both hilarious and sad in equal measures. It takes place in London and Florence, Italy and we also have a glimpse into the life of Evelyn much earlier in the twentieth century. She may have been a spy, but now she lectures in Art History.
When God Was a Rabbit is one of my favourite all-time books so it goes without saying that I was going to love Still Life. The book opens with sexagenarian Evelyn Skinner (who looks ten years younger), sitting with Margaret somebody in Florence during the second world war. Evelyn decides to take a walk outside and stands by the side of the road where she is picked up by Private Ulysses Temper and his superior office Captain Darnley. They end up in a wine cellar full of paintings, drinking wine until they have to vacate when bombs start falling around them. Neither Evelyn nor ‘Temps’ will ever forget that night.
The war is over and Ulysses returns to his wife Peg in London, only to discover that while he was away (to be fair it was years) she has had a child Alys with an American soldier name Eddie. And it is here that the story takes an unusual and unexpected turn. Peg struggles to care for Alys, so when Ulysses inherits a house in Florence, he takes the kid as they call her, with him. They are accompanied by the philosophical, sixty-something Cressy, who talks to a tree back home, and a blue Amazonian parrot named Claude, who quotes Shakespeare and seems to understand almost everything. They travel overland in a vehicle called Betsy.
In London, they leave the heavy-drinking, foul-mouthed landlord Col who runs the Stoat and Parrot (now just the Stoat) where piano Pete plays for the punters, while Peg sings. Col’s wife ran off to Scotland, but daughter Ginny still lives with him, mostly.
We follow these main characters from London to Florence, where they meet even more eccentric people like the adorable Massimo and the elderly contessa, but will Ulysses ever be reunited with Evelyn?
Still Life is a sweeping novel of epic proportions but it cannot be described as an epic or even historical fiction. It’s a tale that evolves slowly, totally character driven and I say that because Florence is one of the characters, as much so as Ulysses, Evelyn, Cressy and Peg and of course the wonderful Claude.
Many thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
About the Author
Sarah Winman (born 1964) is a British actress and author. In 2011 her debut novel When God Was a Rabbit became an international bestseller and won Winman several awards including New Writer of the Year in the Galaxy National Book Awards.
There once was a boat.
Hilarious short audio drama as Mils and Shan are out at sea in a boat that they ‘commandeered’ in order to make a TikTok film. But will they survive the ordeal with no snacks and only themed beverages and nowhere to pee? The GPS is being weird, it’s a bit foggy and they don’t know where they are. And even worse – they don’t have the internet. And it’s kind of lonely without it.
So they sing a sea shanty. I love this. It’s brilliantly performed by our intrepid ‘TikTok wa*&k*&s who nicked a boat and got lost’. Shame they didn’t record the shanty #tryharder.
Written by Tilly Lunken
Directed by Jackson Pentland and Emmeline Braefield
With
Emmeline Braefield as Mils
and
Jackson Pentland as Shan
Music:
The Wellerman – lyrics by Anonymous, arranged by Jackson Pentland. Performed by Jackson Pentland and Emmeline Braefield
Produced by Cat on a Piano Productions
The Theatrephonic Theme tune was composed by Jackson Pentland
Performed by
Jackson Pentland
Mollie Fyfe Taylor
Emmeline Braefield
Cat on a Piano Productions produce and edit feature films, sketches and radio plays.
Their latest project is called @Theatrephonic, a podcast of standalone radio plays and short stories performed by professional actors. You can catch Theatrephonic on Spotify and other platforms.
And if you really enjoyed Put to Sea listen to Theatrephonic’s other plays and short stories and consider becoming a patron by clicking here…
In the dying days of the old asylums, three paths intersect.
Henry was only a boy when he waved goodbye to his glamorous grown-up sister; approaching sixty, his life is still on hold as he awaits her return.
As a high-society hostess renowned for her recitals, Matty’s burden weighs heavily upon her, but she bears it with fortitude and grace.
Janice, a young social worker, wants to set the world to rights, but she needs to tackle challenges closer to home.
#MatildaWindsorisComingHome @Annecdotist @InspiredQuill #RandomThingsTours @annecater @RandomTTours
A brother and sister separated by decades of deceit. Will truth prevail over bigotry, or will the buried secret keep family apart?
In this, her third novel, Anne Goodwin has drawn on the language and landscapes of her native Cumbria and on the culture of long-stay psychiatric hospitals where she began her clinical psychology career.
My Review
My own experience of mental illness is what attracted me to reading Matilda Windsor is Coming Home. In 1938 my Jewish mother and grandmother escaped from the Nazis in Vienna. Unable to return to their hometown of Bucharest, they made their way to England and settled here in Cheltenham, where I still live. Over her adult life, my mother spent three spells in psychiatric hospitals – the first in the 1950s following the death of my older sister at 17 months and then the birth of my brother and myself. This resulted in a lobotomy. The second in 1973 after her mother died and the third in 1989/90, the same time as when we meet Matty.
I mention this because I can relate to Matty’s treatment. For my mother, I was told that her ‘quality of life’ could be improved by her learning to make a cup of tea and a ham sandwich, thus allowing her to live more successfully in her own flat. This is similar to Matty’s rehabilitation from being institutionalised. What I couldn’t explain, as they would think us both frightful snobs, was that she had had servants in Romania and had no intention of making her own sandwiches. In fact she didn’t even know how to boil the kettle or wished to. When Matty talks about the butler, maids and her mother marrying a prince I can almost hear my mother’s voice (though not the prince part).
None of this has anything to do with my review, I just wanted to explain why this book means so much to me. We love Matty because she is such a lovable character. As the story unfolds we discover more and more about her childhood, the death of her father, her mother’s death in childbirth and her relationship with her stepfather, George. The more we learn, the more shocking it becomes.
But let’s look at the story in 1990. Janice with her pink hair and harlequin trousers who Matty dubs ‘circus girl’ has split from her boyfriend and takes her first proper job as a social worker in Cumbria. The residents of the ‘asylum’ are being assessed as to who can be released back into society and given their own flat in a new development on the site of the old baby clinic. Janice is drawn to Matty, who has been locked up for 50 years. Her ‘crime’ it appears, was getting pregnant while unwed at the age of 20. Following a diagnosis of schizophrenia, she is put away for the rest of her life. Janice wants to make a difference by showing everyone that Matty should finally be released, but will she cope?
Henry, who works for the council but has been downgraded because he refuses to learn how to use a computer (try this in 2021 Henry), lives next door to the proposed flats where the released patients will reside. Henry has spent his life waiting for his sister Tilly to return. Following the death of his mother in childbirth, Tilly, aged thirteen, single-handedly raised him from a baby, until she mysteriously went away. Henry’s married ‘lover’ Irene is fed up of waiting for Henry to give up his obsession with his sister.
In the meantime, the Residents Association is opposing the psychiatric patients being moved into sheltered housing in the community. They don’t want ‘lunatics’ living next door. Henry is on the committee. I love this conversation.
‘How about Sheepwash Residents against Psychiatric Invasion?’ Susanna offered.
Zoe nodded. ‘SRAPI for short.’
Oh, yes,’ said Ursula, ‘what’s it called when the initials form a word? Like NATO?’
‘An anachronism,’ said Susanna.
‘An acronym,’ said Henry, but nobody heard.
Oh Henry! What an anachronism you are! Oh the irony!
The story unfolds slowly and at times is so frustrating as the reader is always one step ahead. I loved reading about Matty, Janice and Henry and I can’t wait for the sequel.
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours.
About the Author
Anne Goodwin grew up in the non-touristy part of Cumbria, where this novel is set. When she went to university ninety miles away, no-one could understand her accent. After nine years of studying, her first post on qualifying as a clinical psychologist was in a long-stay psychiatric hospital in the process of closing.
Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, about a woman who has kept her past identity a secret for thirty years, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize. Her second novel, Underneath, about a man who keeps a woman captive in his cellar, was published in 2017. Her short story collection, Becoming Someone, on the theme of identity, was published in November 2018. Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of prize-winning short stories.
Author links
Website: annegoodwin.weebly.com
Twitter @Annecdotist
Link tree https://linktr.ee/annecdotist
YouTube: Anne Goodwin’s YouTube channel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Annecdotist
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anne-Goodwin/e/B0156O8PMO/
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Anne-Goodwin/e/B0156O8PMO/
Inspired Quill: https://www.inspired-quill.com/blog/anne-goodwin/
Newsletter signup https://bit.ly/daughtershorts
Book links
Matilda Windsor webpage https://annegoodwin.weebly.com/matilda-windsor.html
Matilda Windsor link tree https://linktr.ee/matildawindsor
Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57764021-matilda-windsor-is-coming-home
Matilda Windsor’s Twitter @MWiscominghome
Matilda Windsor at Inspired Quill: https://www.inspired-quill.com/product/matilda-windsor-is-coming-home/
Amazon UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1913117057/
Amazon US https://www.amazon.com/dp/1913117057/
+ child abduction, child abuse, community, crime fiction, cult, female friendship, fiction, hostage, kidnapping, murder, rape, revenge, review, serial killer, sisters, thriller
Binding Lies (Finley Series#3) by Mariëtte Whitcomb
There is nothing a mother wouldn’t do to protect her children.
They think they’ve won. Good. While I try my best not to kill Gabriel, Aidan is hunting down the person responsible for destroying our lives; the one we call the Puppet Master. Separate but, united, Aidan and I continue to fight our enemies, desperate to reclaim what they stole from us.
#BindingLiesTheNovel #FinleySeries #MarietteWhitcomb @damppebbles #damppebblesblogtours
By chance Eli and I stumble on a small, off the grid town – Pepper Gorge. It soon becomes clear this is not a place where people choose to live. Their lives controlled by a centuries-old evil, passed down through generations. If not for a woman running into the restaurant screaming about a body that has been found in the woods, we might never have realised what this place is. A cult.
Unable to turn my back on the innocent people of Pepper Gorge, Eli and I start investigating, despite it putting pregnant me in danger. No more dangerous than living in the same house as Gabriel.
With each passing day, more questions arise, and not enough answers. Not only questions about Pepper Gorge, but also the link between my father’s best friend and the Puppet Master. The most important question – what really happened the night my parents died?
Their car crash wasn’t an accident…
My Review
Who will survive and who will incur the wrath of Finley to the point where they must die? Who is friend and who is foe? As with Deception, there will be some surprises, some shocks and some disappointments (or maybe that’s just me).
I still can’t help loving Ari/Gabriel as he was in Orca, I am still hoping for his redemption – what will it take for me to change my mind and finally be convinced? I think I may be this time. He’s an assassin – probably not someone I would choose as a lover or even a friend, but then so are Finlay and Aidan, though their motives are quite different.
In Binding Lies we have a new group of villains and a new plot. Uncle Tom – godfather turned traitor, the aforementioned Ari/Gabriel, the so-called Puppet Master, who runs the whole shebang and how does it involve the possible murder of Finley’s parents. As usual there is another thread, but this time it’s not a serial killer on the loose, it’s the story of Pepper Gorge, a strange place where no-one is old and time appears to have stood still. Finley and co come across it by accident, stopping at what looks like a cafe for breakfast, to be told that they only serve boiled eggs and sausages today. I was waiting for the sound of duelling banjos (those of us old enough to remember the film Deliverance).
Finley overhears the ‘waitress’ Nicol talking about who she would be married to at sixteen and how she wants to be his only wife. Our heroes send in secret drones and do their research on the dark web, when the name Sevens Hunter appears on a blog, telling tales of strange goings on in a place that is totally off the radar, where there are hunters who hunt young women and it is all run by a group of five men who call themselves The Originals. He is, of course, talking about Pepper Gorge.
It can only mean one thing – it’s a cult. I love a good cult story – ever since the Moonies in the seventies, Waco and The Children of God to name but a few, I’ve been fascinated by cults. I can never understand how sensible, intelligent people can get wrapped up in this nonsense, even handing over large sums of money, often to sustain the lavish lifestyle of the leaders.
But Pepper Gorge is far more sinister (though probably not more so than the Children of God who advocated sex with children). We will gradually discover what’s going on and the link to the main plot. It’s disturbing stuff – even more disturbing than the thoughts that take place in Finely’s head.
Book Four Fortius will be published later this year.
Many thanks to @damppebbles for inviting me to be part of #damppebblesblogtours
About the Author
Mariëtte Whitcomb studied Criminology and Psychology at the University of Pretoria. An avid reader of psychological thrillers and romantic suspense novels, writing allows her to pursue her childhood dream to hunt criminals, albeit fictional and born in the darkest corners of her imagination. When Mariëtte isn’t writing, she reads or spends time with her family and friends.
Social Media:
Website – https://mariettewhitcomb.com/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/mariettewhitcombauthor
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mariettewhitcomb/
Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20847620.Mari_tte_Whitcomb
Bookbub – https://www.bookbub.com/authors/mariette-whitcomb
Purchase Links:
Deception
Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/32T9LqO
Amazon US (ebook): https://amzn.to/3gEFvYz
Amazon US: (paperback): https://amzn.to/32XV7OJ
Binding Lies
Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/2NmbLTZAmazon UK: https://amzn.to/2NmbLTZ
Amazon US (ebook): https://amzn.to/2S5Mwrk
Amazon US (paperback): https://amzn.to/3dRSqET
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