Harvest Home was one of the first books I sneaked off my mum’s bookshelf when I was a teenager. It was a TV series back in the 1970s when I was at primary school, but I remembered it as one of the scariest books I’d ever read. For some reason it has always stayed with me, possibly because of the set-up which is now so common in TV and film, there are shades of The Wicker Man, Midsommar and even the parody horror film Hot Fuzz. Theodore and his wife Beth have been watching their daughter struggle with severe asthma, not helped by New York’s air. This and the rising crime rates in Manhattan inspire the couple to the relocate upstate.
When searching New England the couple stumble across an idyllic village setting. Cornwall Coombe has the perfect nineteenth century farmhouse with attentive and friendly neighbours. Theo is sure that here they will lead a simpler life, closer to nature and closer to each other. However, what they find will be ultimately more terrifying than any alley in Manhattan! I remember loving the creeping sense of doom in the book and that wonderful contrast between the purity of nature around them and the cancer at the heart of the village. Our protagonist is the only one who sees the worrying signs at first, and I liked that friction between him and Beth. The women in the family seem to settle in quickly and never see anything out of the ordinary. There’s also the frisson of sex, as Tamar the village postmistress is openly flirty with Theo. She gives off definite sexy witch vibes as she smoulders at her male customers. However, Theo’s horrifying encounter with her young daughter could potentially scare him away. Will Tamar get to have what she wants?
The tension builds as the village’s harvest celebrations are planned. Theo suspects this is more than the average harvest festival and there is some dark secret to the ceremonies. Even worse his wife and daughter are now becoming involved. There is one other man in the village who Theo thinks might have unearthed the secret, but he is now blind and doesn’t get out very much. Is this the result of an illness, or has he been punished for what he has seen? The women definitely rule this village, running the festival and potentially some sort of coven, with the postmistress presiding over all. Theo has to ask himself whether he really wants to know the secrets of harvest home. The final reveal is deliciously dark, twisted and holds its biggest shock to the end. On rereading this still stands up well. Since the 1970s this genre is quite a well trodden path, it has the tension and menace of Straw Dogs and the surface charm of a wholesome village that does things for ‘the greater good’. This is a little known horror that has definitely stood the test of time.
I loved Alix E. Harrow’s Ten Thousand Doors of January so much that it was in my top ten books of last year, so I approached her new novel with excitement, but some trepidation too. Could it possibly live up to her last work? Yet with promises of suffragettes, spells, anarchy and sister witches how could it possibly fail? I soon realised that this was going to be a very different book, embedded in American history but from a magical and feminist angle. Our main protagonists are the Eastwood sisters – Agnes Amaranth (the mill girl), Beatrice Belladonna (the librarian and researcher) and finally James Jupiter, the youngest sister with a wild streak and fierce loyalty to her sisters. This is New Salem, 1893, and since the burnings there haven’t been witches in this part of the world. However, snippets of the words and ways of witchcraft remain, hiding in plain sight. In the lullaby a mother uses to soothe her child, in the rhyme from a children’s game and even in recipe books. These are women’s spaces, and this old wisdom, that sits within the fairytale women tell their children at bedtime is accessible to anyone, once you realise it is there. The power lies dormant at a time when women are fighting more than ever to have a share in power at the ballot box. When the three sisters join the suffragettes of New Salem, they start to realise some of the power that Bella has been researching at the library. They each possess a different type of power and with the right ways and words they could wield it against those shadowy figures who would rather not see a witch live, let alone vote.
Although I struggled a little at first with the girls names, especially where there were other characters to remember, it was Bella who seemed to stick with me most at this point in the story. I think it’s because she was a gatherer of stories, so I felt an affinity with her. She comes to understand witchcraft from re intellectual perspective, she is studying and making sense of it from books, but gradually through first hand research. I loved that her research takes her to every corner of the community: from the local mill women and children’s rhymes; to the more marginalised black and Native American communities. She finds that women have been hiding their wisdom in a wealth of ways. On her travels she also finds the alluring Miss Cleopatra Quinn, who trusts Bella enough to disclose a society of black women, possibly the most marginalised group in society, who have a lot of shared knowledge including a set of secret tunnels under New Salem that prove very useful as the story progresses. The relationship between these women is one of the high points of the book for me and shows that the usually bookish and almost spinsterish Bella has unexpected reserves of passion.
This is a very character driven novel and comes alive when the sisters are together on the page. Agnes is the mill working girl, fired up by the rights of the women she works side by side with. Her need for witching comes from that lack of power, from knowing what it’s like to be hungry and not wanting that for her own children. I love that these girls don’t come from the big house on the hill with pots of money behind them; they come from a family blighted by poverty, the loss of their mother and a violent father. Jupiter particularly seems haunted by that past and there are secrets to be uncovered here. She is the more natural witch, the wild barefoot girl who has magic in her bones. She is furious when the other sisters get a familiar before she does. I also love that she walks with a cane and this cane is her strength throughout, not just something to lean on. Very cleverly the author weaves these marginalised people into the narrative and it’s refreshing to see these characters where their colour, sexuality or disability isn’t the story.
Harrow weaves together so much history here with folklore, myth and fairy tales. Our villain of the piece is an aspiring politician – which probably says more about our times than the story – but underneath he is something altogether different. He hates witches and possibly women too. He wants to use the ballot box for legitimacy, but his actions are those of a dictator. He amasses a group of enforcers for weeding out sedition, suffragettes and witchcraft. It is Jupiter who first sees what he truly is in a horrifying scene in the ‘Deeps’ – a basement prison that fills with water. Like the sisters he appears to have a ‘glamour’, a way of appearing to other people that masks the true face. It takes time for the sisters to realise they are in an age old battle, replayed across the centuries but they are determined that this time the witch will win. There are heart stopping scenes such as Agnes going into labour, or final confrontation that are visceral and heart rending. Harrow doesn’t hold back on the horror of how witches have been treated historically and their nemesis here is particularly cruel. The final confrontation isn’t just heart rending, it’s heart stopping. I couldn’t put the book down at that point because I was so emotionally invested in the sisters and their cause. Harrow does this to me. I always think that the fantasy elements will distance me from my heroes suffering, but then something will happen that floors me emotionally. I think there’s an incredible skill in creating this whole world of magic, but then connecting the reader to your characters so strongly that they feel their pain and their triumphs. I have loved spending time in this particular world and I’m so happy that for this reader, Harrow has done it again.
This month I took some time off from blog tours and other commitments to spend a couple of weeks reading my own choices. Not only did this give me a lot of freedom, it allowed me to read one of my all time favourite authors followed by one of my most recent loves; Alice Hoffman and Alix E. Harrow. Even more of a coincidence is that both have written books based within the folklore of witches, healers, and wise women. In Hoffman’s case this is her third novel in the Practical Magic series, which delves back further than ever before to the origins of the Owens family and the formation of communities whose religion will not suffer a witch to live. Harrow also creates a world of sisters, three separated sisters who come together at the very beginning of the 20th Century and the suffragette movement.
In Magic Lessons, Maria is found as a baby by wise woman Hannah Owens, who brings her up with the old ways. Maria learns how to grow a healing garden, to use herbs for ailments of body and mind, and help women with problems caused by love. However, Maria’s power isn’t just learned. She has the mark of a blood witch from her birth mother, and has been chosen by her familiar Cadin who is a crow. Maria feels she must be the result of a woman being fooled by love and vows not to be taken in by a man. Tragically, Hannah is burned as a witch and Maria knows she must run to save her life. She meets her mother and birth father, and realising there is no room in their love for a third person she takes a gift of red boots and sails to the island of Curacao where she has been sold into servitude for a period of five years. Here, her vow against love will be tested. Taking us through the dangerous years of the 17th Century, where Puritanical communities like Salem in Massachusetts were whipped to hysteria, and would not suffer a witch to live. Hoffman’s prequel to Practical Magic takes us back to the beginnings of the Owens family and the complicated relationship between their power and the very human need to be loved.
I had been waiting for this prequel for a long time and I wasn’t disappointed. It only took me moments to be in Hoffman’s magical world thanks to the layers of description she uses to create an unusual atmosphere. In some senses she creates an instantly recognisable sense of place. Her descriptions of Massachusetts, and later, Brooklyn are full of local floral and fauna, the sense of wilderness and pioneering spirit within these early settlers of the Americas. It is dark, foggy, wet and often icily cold with dangerous animals and even more dangerous people. By contrast the time spent travelling to the West Indies and the beautiful island of Curacao are vivid. In the daytime full of colour, exotic flowers and birds and I could feel the sun on my face, the warm sand beneath my feet and the incredible animals such as the turtles and tiny hummingbirds. By night, when Maria and her friend explore the island, it is still warm, with a vast sky full of stars. On the other hand there are times when these places seem otherworldly as we see them through the eyes of a witch: the magical properties of plants, the incredible loyalty of an wild animal like Keeper the wolf, and the witches’ power to control these elements to their advantage. It’s our world but not quite. The difference is viewing it through the lens of history, but most unimportantly, by magic.
There were times I didn’t fully understand Maria, although she’s the more sympathetic character of the three generations. She protects herself against love after seeing what it did to her mother, but then later says she couldn’t protect herself against love. I think this is almost a push and pull between the human and more magical signs of her character. She tries to use her power to prevent love, but perhaps her heart truly longs for it. The tragedy is in protecting herself against the right man, while letting the wrong one in. I find her choice to go to Massachusetts with her daughter Faith inexplicable given that she has friends and support in Curacao. John Hathorne is a very dangerous man, to women in general and not just the witches he persecutes. He drags young girls into a battle he is constantly fighting between his appetites and his conscience. There is part of him that emerged in Curacao that wants to shed his responsibilities, to throw off inhibition and dive into the sea as well as give in to his passions for a woman he desires. In Massachusetts he is a pillar of the Puritan community, yet he marries his wife Ruth when she is just 14 and his ward. She describes crying as he takes her to the marital bed, but her fear and young age does not stop him. It’s worth mentioning that in a historical context this isn’t unusual, but to me it shows a lack of compassion and respect for women. He turns his back on his daughter, both when she’s a baby and when she returns as a young woman. Maria, his wife Ruth and his daughter Faith are all his victims. Samuel, or Gogo as Faith calls him, is a good man and I was desperate for him to win Maria over. He is not scared of Maria or her power. He loves her intelligence, her fortitude and her power. I could have cried for how much time is wasted as Maria fights him.
I enjoyed the way Hoffman weaves in the historical context for America in this period. These are early settlements, some first colonised by the Dutch then by the English. She doesn’t forget the indigenous tribes either, often completely massacred by these ‘Christian communities’ who hold themselves in such high regard. They hold women with healing knowledge in the same regard as these natives of USA, as if they are cleansing their area of magical and primitive beliefs. Hoffman doesn’t forget her Jewish heritage either, situating them as a persecuted race often moved on from areas they’ve settled and treated with suspicion. We see this in the characters of Samuel and his father, who have chosen a life on the sea instead, but still hold their heritage close to their hearts. There’s a sense in which Christianity is anti-magic whereas Judaism is closer to ancient magic and respectful of its power, especially in its capacity to do good. The only time Samuel stops Maria from practicing her magic is when it’s in a darker form, as she tries everything to keep his father alive. The Christian beliefs practised by the Dutch and English settlers has become corrupted and Hoffman presents their acts as the very evil they fear. When Maria is taken for the trial by drowning in Massachusetts, there is a frenzy and mob like mentality that is seen later in real life witch trials of Salem and the fictional arrest and trial endured by Faith. When Faith is taken by a Christian woman, confined and forced to live as her daughter we again see obsession and evil. Her captor never seems to doubt she is doing God’s work removing Faith from her mother, taking her far away and putting her in irons to remove her power. Yet this evil, begets more evil as Faith escapes and uses her freedom to practice blood magic steeped in anger and revenge. Yet she still has a conscience. Faith is haunted by the death of her captor, despite helping women to wreak revenge and enchantment by night.
I would have liked to see a more time between John Hathorne’s wife Ruth and Maria, because they were both exploited by the same man. I also think that there was perhaps too much complex detail in the women’s appearances such as Faith’s changing hair colour or the different colours of thread used for different purposes. I found myself becoming confused at times, but it’s a small issue in a magical story. I think this was a thoughtful and atmospheric origins story of a family many fans have come to love. I think the strength of this series is in that combination of the mystical and the very human elements of the story. Despite their powers Maria, her mother Rebecca and her daughter Faith experience the highs and lows of every woman’s life – the changes of adolescence, falling in love with the wrong man and the right one, motherhood, illness and ageing. I felt emotional as Maria saw her ‘mother figure’ Hannah murdered by men who feared her, as she realised the man she loved didn’t really exist, and as she lost Cadin her loyal companion. These women’s fight to be accepted and even acknowledged for their skills is a fight that continues today as we fight for women’s rights to equal pay, to save reproductive rights and to be seen as more than sexual objects. Their fight to stay alive is still echoed in our fight to stop child brides, exploitation of young girls and domestic abuse. It was a series coming full circle, as we see the formation of that mistrust of love that shapes Jet’s journey or that sees Gillian constantly pick the wrong man. I truly loved my time back with the Owens women again.
Meet The Author
Alice Hoffman is the author of thirty works of fiction, including Practical Magic, The Red Garden, The Dovekeepers and, most recently,The Museum of Extraordinary Things. She lives in Boston. This book is the prequel to Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic.
Today on the blog I’m taking part in the publication day push for the final instalment in Laura Briggs’ ‘A Little Hotel in Cornwall’ series. For the past seven books we have been following the fortunes of aspiring writer and hotel worker, Maisie. Now finally we reach the conclusion of a series of books that have been like a little ray of sunshine in a difficult year. We left Maisie in a relationship with the lovely Sidney and on the verge of celebrating her first published book.
However, past secrets return to complicate Maisie’s future with the charming in the final installment of the Cornish romance series.
Picking up where book seven left off, Maisie’s plans to celebrate her book’s thrilling news remain on hold after Sidney has vanished from Port Hewer overnight, following a brush with his secret past. His departure leaves Maisie with a head full of questions and a heart torn in two, made even worse by the rumors flying about him through the town. Where and why has he gone? Will he ever come back again? And—foremost in Maisie’s mind—was the heartache from his younger days somehow to blame for his sudden and mysterious flight?
But when Dean convinces her that Sidney may be facing a choice that could ruin his life, Maisie must set out to find him, once again leaving behind the Cornish seaside haven of Port Hewer she’s come to think of as home, and leaving behind the answer to a secret she’s been longing to know since the beginning. Not knowing when or if she’ll return, she’s taking the biggest risk with her heart so far…and the truth she discovers waiting for her at the end of her journey will make her wonder if things can ever possibly be the same as they were before.
Questions are answered, secrets are spilled, and the biggest reveal of the series is finally unveiled as A LITTLE HOTEL IN CORNWALL reaches its exciting conclusion.
Laura Briggs is the author of several feel-good romance reads, including the Top 100 Amazon UK seller ‘A Wedding in Cornwall’. She has a fondness for vintage style dresses (especially ones with polka dots), and reads everything from Jane Austen to modern day mysteries. When she’s not writing, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, caring for her pets, gardening, and seeing the occasional movie or play.
Synopsis | 17-year-old Billy has just left school with no A levels and he’s desperate to escape middle England. As a grave-digger, he’s working the ultimate dead-end job. Billy’s home life isn’t any better. In the evenings, he observes his dysfunctional family: his Grandad’s engaged to a woman half his age, his xenophobic Dad’s become obsessed with boxing, and he suspects his deeply religious Mum is having an affair.
All the while, celebrities are dropping like flies and Britain is waiting for the EU referendum. Everything is changing, and Billy hates it.
Meeting Eva, though, changes everything. She’s Swiss, passionate about Russian literature, Gary Numan, windfarms and chai tea, and Billy gambles everything for a chance to be with her.
When things start to go wrong, Billy’s journey across Europe involves hitch-hiking with truckers, walking with refugees, and an encounter with suicidal cows. But the further he goes, the harder it is to be sure what he’s chasing – and what he’s running from.
My Thoughts | I cant imagine that when he wrote his debut novel, Phillip Bowne imagined it being published during a global pandemic. There was already a sense of foreboding in the book, considering it’s set in the heated atmosphere leading up to the Brexit referendum where celebrities seem to dying at an alarming rate. Yet the reader knows that things are only going to get worse. So, for me, this book felt like a lifeline in very trying times. I was ready for some light relief, to really laugh with a character, and I certainly did that with Billy. At turns hilarious, then poignant, then darkly humorous, this is just the book I needed to lift me right now.
Billy is a fascinating character with a brilliant story arc; he does some serious growing up throughout the novel. At first he seems a little lost. He leaves school with no plans and his mum gets him a job as a gravedigger – the very embodiment of a dead end job. His family are dysfunctional at best. Dad has a bit of a temper and Grandad (GG) is adding to family strife by planning to marry a woman nobody likes. Bowne creates comedy out of the way this family rub along together, but they’re not one note characters. Bowne knows when to floor the reader with some seriously black humour and when to let us inside these characters and situations with real depth and poignancy. GG has some interesting ways of making money. Billy manages to get an unfortunate nickname at work. However, when we’re party to Billy’s inner world, there’s bewilderment and even sadness at times. The contrast between these feelings, and the hilarious situations Billy can get himself into, are what kept me engaged with his story.
The same can be said about the world Billy finds himself in. Once he finds himself another job, Billy’s world starts to open up. Beyond the realms of his family and village Billy starts to understand that people have very different life experiences than his, often tragic and difficult. He meets Swiss student Eva and experiences the shifts in society due to the referendum from her perspective. She’s unsettled and scared. They form a friendship, one which could turn into something more. This relationship feels very real, it develops slowly and although there are obstacles, I did find myself rooting for them both. When Eva leaves, Billy decides to follow in an attempt to be reunited with her. This incredible trip through Europe adds to Billy’s growth. He encounters Syrian refugees whose terrible misfortune are beyond anything he has experienced. Whether he reunited with Eva or not, this incredible trip will change him forever. I truly enjoyed his journey and found myself laughing out loud at some points, whilst feeling terribly awkward at others – the fish and chip supper made me squirm a bit. This debut shows a deft writing style from Bowne and was uplifting and touching in equal measure.
About the Author
Philip Bowne lives in London and works as a writer for The Wombles, a children’s entertainment brand.
Like his protagonist, Billy, Phil attended a failing and severely under-resourced school in Bicester, Oxfordshire.However, unlike Billy, Phil ended up studying English Literature and Creative Writing at university.
While studying, Phil published short stories in literary magazines and anthologies in the UK, US, Canada and Germany. After graduating, Phil spent time in Europe and the US, working and volunteering in various roles and settings: repairing boats at Lake Como, housekeeping at a mountain lodge in California and working with charity Care4Calais in the former Calais ‘jungle’ refugee camp.
Cows Can’t Jump is Phil’s debut novel, which he worked on while managing a bar in London. As well as a writer for The Wombles, Phil also works on a number of independent writing projects, including a musical set in 1970’s Soho and a sitcom set in a failing leisure centre.
When Stephen King recommends a book, we all have to listen! ‘It’s a true nerve shredder that keeps its mind-blowing secrets to the very end’.
‘Books like this don’t come around too often. I would say I inhaled this in one, but I think I was too busy holding my breath throughout. Bravo’ – JOANNE HARRIS
‘A chilling and beautiful masterpiece of suspense. I was completely enthralled’ – JOE HILL
This is the story of a serial killer. A stolen child. Revenge. Death. And an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street.
All these things are true. And yet they are all lies…
You think you know what’s inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you’ve read this story before. That’s where you’re wrong.
In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, lies something buried. But it’s not what you think…
This book was already on my radar, but now I’m dying to read it! Early reviews describe it as ‘deeply disturbing’ and an ‘atmospheric gothic thriller’. All of the elements seem familiar, I feel like I’ve read books like this before but I’m promised something completely different, raw, visceral and terrifying. There simply isn’t a bad review about this book. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything less from the Shirley Jackson and August Derleth award at the 2019 British Fantasy Awards. This made her the only woman to have won the prize twice. Reviewers praise the structure, the multiple narrative voices, and the satisfying, unexpected ending.
Biography
CATRIONA WARD was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. She read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. Her gothic thriller, The Last House on Needless Street, will be published March 2021 by Viper (Serpents Tail).
She was a Guardian best book of 2018 and her debut Rawblood (W&N, 2015) won Best Horror Novel at the 2016 British Fantasy Awards, was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award and a WHSmith Fresh Talent title. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies. She lives in London and Devon.
Today on the blog it’s my pleasure to share the trailer for one of my most anticipated reads of 2021.
Light a fire they can’t put out..
Caldonbrae Hall has sat on top of the Scottish cliffs for 150 years, as a beacon of excellence in the ancestral castle of Lord William Hope. This boarding school for girls promises pupils they will emerge ‘resilient and ready to serve society’. Rose Christie, a 26-year-old Classics teacher, is the first new hire for the school in over a decade. Rose feels overwhelmed in the face of this elite establishment at first, but soon after her arrival she begins to realise that there may be more to fear than her own ineptitude. Rose stumbles across the secret circumstances surrounding the abrupt departure of her predecessor – a woman whose ghost lingers over everything and who no one will discuss – she learns that there is far more to the school than she has been led to believe. Rose begins to uncover the darkness at the heart of Caldonbrae; a battle that will threaten her sanity as well as her safety…
A brooding, mesmeric novel with a feminist kick…
This has certainly whet my appetite for next February, and the book can be pre-ordered at all the usual outlets.
Emily Proudman’s life is imploding. She’s lost her acting agent, job and home all in one day. Scott Denny also has a problem, one he doesn’t think he can fix. He is a wealthy and successful CEO but neither of these things can help him. Then he meets Emily and she is perfect. He takes her on for a summer job, as housekeeper for his rambling estate in the South of France. Emily thinks she has fallen on her feet and charmed by his wife Nina, and their unusual daughter Aurelia, she throws herself into her summer role. Yet all is not what it seems. The family have dark secrets and
if Emily doesn’t play her part, the summer and even her life could be in danger.
Nina is keen to have Emily there, so greets her enthusiastically when she arrives. The mansion is eerie but then so is Nina, who seems to be a quiet and obedient wife. Aurelia is more of a shock. She’s shy to the point of introversion, but that could be down to living in such a remote location. Communication with others seems to be frowned upon as there’s no phone line or internet connection. What if something goes wrong out here? Emily tries to use her time well in looking after Aurelia and even turning her hand to a bit of renovation, but she feels herself becoming little more than a companion to Nina, sometimes losing whole days drinking wine by the pool. Aurelia is difficult to get to know, she flinches if touched possibly down to the rare skin disease she has, but it felt more like she simply wasn’t used to physical affection. Her silence could be shyness, but Emily starts to feel that there is something odd about this girl and the problems she has.
This is a modern Gothic novel, with definite shades of Jane Eyre – the remote mansion, the stepdaughter, a slightly odd wife and a new, young housekeeper/governess. However, instead of the usual first person narration we get multiple narratives but how many of them are reliable? The cover jumped out at me, making me long for sunnier climates and a chance to explore – something that’s even more of a fantasy at the moment! I think the reader is lulled into this holiday feeling, alongside Emily. We know something is wrong here, so does Emily, but working it out, when instead you could lie by the pool with a cold cocktail and a good book, seems unnecessary. When the secrets are finally exposed, Emily might find it’s too late. The characters have more depth than appears at first. Although Nina might seem like the perfect rich man’s wife, there is something else going on underneath. There’s a brittle edge to her character that allows us to glimpse her fragile mental health. Even Emily, turns out to be more intelligent and resourceful than I gave her credit for at first.
When the secrets of Scott Denny and his estate are revealed weren’t too much of a shock. This isn’t one of those twists that makes you rethink the whole book, but nor did it disappoint. Scott reminded me of the estate owner in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw – working away a lot, only briefly at the estate and even then doesn’t really engage with his wife or stepdaughter. Furthermore, when it’s mentioned that Emily has briefly worked for Scott before I wondered whether their meeting was a coincidence or whether it was calculated. Perhaps Emily is the perfect person for this role? I think this was a great beach read and shows great promise for a debut author. I will be looking out for her future work.
My Thoughts | I haven’t read any new poetry for a long time so I jumped at the chance to read this new collection. For me, poetry is very emotional. It’s about whether a poem connects with my feelings in some way; is the poet describing something I recognise, something I’ve felt or seen? There tend to be certain images that make me stop and think and Marc Rahe’s new collection Gravity Well did all of these things and resurrected my interest in poetry.
Some images made me smile because of how clever they were or because of the beautiful combination of words. In Writer Friend the narrator describes an unsettled afternoon as a ‘forecast-come-true afternoon of cloudy and scattered’. I also loved the Schroedinger reference in Our Shared Life of ‘The bee trapped with you inside/ your helmet in traffic, will or will not’. It made me think of that moment before something happens. In that moment, playing simultaneously in the biker’s mind, are the bee that stings and the bee he successfully releases back into the world unharmed. We get another sense of the in-between reading his poem Stellar, as if moments in time are simply Russian dolls with each possibility stacked within each other – touching but separate:
‘This tree was my favorite the day it rained during my walk. Uncanny when it’s raining and it’s sunny at the same time. As if being in someone’s presence and feeling the presence of their ghost’.
Another line I loved was ‘the air was as wet as dog’s breath’ because it made me feel the humidity of a wet day in August, that moisture hangs like warm misted breath in the air.
There were also themes running through the work that interest me greatly, because of my own writing work which is focused on how the body, particularly a faulty or malfunctioning body, interacts with the world. Rahe has a way of describing age and the changes of the body that are surprising and moving. In his poem Appetite I loved the following section:
‘I’ve been reopened along the same incision
and though metal plates and wires, metal screws,
can only be said to ache, I say
it is the metal in this leg that tells me
the sky is so full of mountains and trenches
as the ocean, metal that warns me
of my own weight held past a certain angle from the center.’
I love how he describes the constant ache of the structure that holds the speaker’s leg together, but it isn’t a negative statement, it’s just something that’s there. Also it’s a way of gauging the world, like I know if my joints ache it’s going to be wet or if my muscles seize it’s going to be cold. The unnatural pins and wires he needs for his limb to work naturally, actually link him to the natural world too – to the heights and lows of the lands, and even how the force of gravity can be sensed as he finds the balance of walking with these metal supports.
In Fable of the Cephalopod he uses humour to describe a sense of coughing up a foreign body, something that feels like ‘an octopus that was trying to wear a sweater’ giving the reader a sense of how stuck it feels, trying to force eight woollen legs from the ‘wrong bronchial tree’. Later he describes the moment of having a blood test, very routine for me and others who are ill, but tense all the same. He perfectly describes that moment when you almost hate yourself for trying to make the medics life easier. When you feel guilty for being difficult, as if you could control the way your veins and body work:
‘at a blood draw my vein resisted the needle. The needle
slipped aside inside my arm, despite repeated attempts. I made,
for the phlebotomist, a joke I hoped would defuse her growing anxiety.’
I felt a connection with parts of the work, and as always with poetry, I know that re-reading will bring further meaning and interpretation, depending on my mood. Poetry’s meaning lies with the readers once it has left the author’s pen. It may well have had an original meaning, but really the beauty of poetry comes out when the reader brings their ‘stuff’ to the poem. I’m sure there are other bloggers who have had totally different experiences with the images and themes but that’s the beauty of it, it can touch a multitude of people very differently. I thought this was an imaginative and thoughtful collection from a poet I’d never read before. It sparked my interest in poetry again and I am looking forward to reading more for the blog and for my own enjoyment.
Other Reviews | Marc Rahe’s luminous poems find grace in acts of intentional remembrance, in turning back to sing ‘what can be seen / looking behind.’ The speaker’s world resembles our own fraught moment–fallen, divided–but never numb. These poems hum with moments of transcendence, between body and weather, air and breath, between today’s pain and the deep wounds of the past. In precise, lucid lyrics, this voice insists that our capacity to feel is what binds us, ecstatically, to our planet and to one another.–Kiki Petrosino
Ever since his first book, THE SMALLER HALF, was published, I’ve kept my eyes open for new work by Marc Rahe, and whenever new work has come, I’ve celebrated, actually celebrated. No poet writing in English today is better at making poems stuffed full of being and of things seen, things heard, things touched, things tasted, and things thought hard about nonetheless quiet. And yet, though they approach silence, these poems resonate, and, like Rahe’s previous work, they will resonate for years.–Shane McCrae
Biography | Marc Rahe is the author of THE SMALLER HALF (Rescue Press, 2010), ON HOURS (Rescue Press, 2015), and GRAVITY WELL (Rescue Press, 2020). His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, jubilat, MAKE Literary Magazine, PEN Poetry Series, Sixth Finch, and other literary journals. He lives in Iowa City.
Literary sleuth Helen Oddfellow has started her new job as a lecturer in an English Literature department of the university and is hoping for a quiet life. What she gets is anything but. When she is asked to cover a module for Professor Petrarch Greenwood she expected the students to be a little underwhelmed. He is something of a literary celebrity, having followed his lifelong love of William Blake into TV opportunities and book deals. Yet his students behaviour seems strange to Helen. They are subdued and one is genuinely emotional about him, which rings alarm bells to Helen. Petrarch is flamboyant, holds swish parties at his London flat and has very little time for new feminist theories regarding his hero. On the dark web, a strange literary obsession is being used to stir unrest in its largely male following, and an underground police officer is trying to break into the online community by sharing a love of Blake. Their focus is a an artist who produces a graphic novel based on a Blake character, with a disrespectful and violent attitude towards women. How many of his followers even know or understand Blake? As this unrest grows will Helen be able to come between the innocent and a disturbed gunman bent on making his point with bloodshed?
This is one of those times when I really didn’t need to have read the first novel to enjoy this second instalment in the Helen Oddfellow series. The start was slow but I was intrigued with the larger than life and potentially dangerous Petrarch Greenwood. He’s clearly living a rather decadent lifestyle of bedding young students, and stretching his professional ethics. Officially Helen is covering his classes as he has a book deadline to meet, but we get the sense that really he’s being removed to cover up a scandal. The university can’t afford to lose him as he’s their celebrity professor but they also can’t be seen to do nothing. I sensed a really unpleasant character underneath the charm and wondered if he or his assistant was behind the Blake website.
Running through the book is the treatment of women, from the misogyny on the dark web to gender politics within the university. Helen recounts her own reading on Blake and his wife. The question of how involved his wife was in his work is one that’s been at the forefront of feminist theory, something Professor Greenwood is very dismissive about. He’s dismissive about women in general, in fact one is being physically dismissed from his office when we meet him. The behaviour of the female students in his class is worrying too, some are very subdued and don’t want to meet Helen’s eyes. There’s an unpleasant atmosphere, and an undercurrent that I feared didn’t bode well for some of these women. The story started to focus around the events of Professor Greenwood’s party and this is where the book gripped me.
I’m clearly very dark, because when the truth of the party was revealed I was pleased the author had pushed the story to such a disturbing place. It was a great contrast to the tamer beginning of the book and I think it needed it. I didn’t manage to guess all that had happened so I was able to enjoy all the twists and turns to the end. I enjoyed guessing who had the talent and knowledge to be behind the artwork, but the mind to plan such a terrible act of mass murder. However, this wasn’t the only person with secrets and it seemed only Helen was who she professed to be. She is like the calm centre to the novel, but everything around her felt chaotic and changeable. I worried early on that this would be a novel where women were victims, but actually the ending was quite empowering. The women took control, which was a great way to end. I would have liked to know more about some of the characters so maybe some differing perspectives on events would have been interesting. However, I think it was deliciously dark and turned a light on the type of misogyny that seems to be a constant undercurrent on the internet these days. This was intelligent, surprising and as a literary mystery, quite unique.
Meet The Author
Anna Sayburn Lane is a novelist, short story writer and storyteller, inspired by the history and contemporary life of London. Her first two novels introduce the literary sleuth Helen Oddfellow. Anna shares Helen’s love of literature – mysteries surrounding the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe and the Romantic poet William Blake feature in the books. She’s pleased her History and English Literature degree finally came in handy! Anna has published award-winning short stories in magazines including Mslexia, Scribble and One Eye Grey.
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