Tag: Identity

Posted in Squad Pod

First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Everything she is about to tell them is a lie…

Evie Porter has everything a girl could want: a doting boyfriend, a house with a picket fence, a fun group of friends.

The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.

First comes the identity. Once she’s given a name and location by her employer, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it.

Then the mark: Ryan Sumner.

The last piece of the puzzle is the job. For Evie, this job feels different. Ryan has gotten under her skin and she’s started to picture another kind of life for herself – one where her boss doesn’t pull the strings. But Evie can’t make any mistakes. Because the one thing she’s worked her entire life to keep clean, the one identity she could always go back to – her real identity – just walked right into this town. A woman, who looks just like her, has stolen her name – and she wants more. As Evie’s past begins to catch up with her, can she stay one step ahead to save her future?

Evie has never seen herself as the sort of girl who could have everything. The things many young girls dream of -marriage, security, family – have never really factored in her life, especially since she started working for the man on the end of the telephone. They’ve never met in person, but he is able to control her whole life even the person she’s going to be. From petty theft and credit card fraud she has been noticed by the boss and honed into one of his best operatives, able to throw on a new identity and slip into the mark’s life within a matter of days. Strangely, despite her criminality, the writer managed to make me feel empathy for Evie and even root for her a little bit. Her relationship with Ryan is at a stage where the friends are asking questions and want to meet this new woman. It’s a small town where everyone knows everyone else, especially the moneyed circles that Ryan grew up in. The rules dictate that he can dabble where he likes when it comes to liaisons, but when it comes to settling down it should be within their hallowed circles. An outsider might be tolerated if they’re rich, but Evie isn’t and neither is she one of them. As she dresses for a lunch date with the women from his circle of friends I found myself willing her to succeed. She’s clever in how she dresses – a bit like them but with a boho edge, enough to be accepted but still seem as an individual. I was nervous for her because it felt like she was being dropped into a shark tank and I had to keep reminding myself that Evie is the shark. As the weeks go by she’s starting to think she can relax, when she’s thrown a curve ball. At a horse racing event Ryan introduces her to a couple she’s never met before, a man who he clearly knows well with a woman who is closer to home than either of them realise. This is an old friend, but he’s with a woman Ryan doesn’t know and when she introduces herself Evie realises that her boss is playing games. The woman introduces herself as Lucca, Evie’s real name. Could she be about to lose the only thing that belongs to her – her true identity?

The author cleverly uses shorter chapters in between the main timeline that take us back through Evie’s previous jobs. They are glimpses into her past, teasing the reader with tidbits of information until we finally meet the real Evie. Sometimes our questions are answered and other times we’re surprised by a revelation that takes us in a different direction. We see how she’s pulled into her boss’s orbit, then tested until she’s the best operative he has. There’s a sadism and an element of gaslighting in what he does, sometimes sending multiple people on the same job to see who gets there first – the first prize is staying on his payroll. Although, people don’t get to just walk away from his employment because they know too much. So far Evie has had a great track record, earning well and staying on his good side, but on the last job something went wrong, could this new game be her punishment? There are only two people who Evie trusts, one is her fellow operator Devon – a man she employs to keep her safe and one step ahead of the competition. They have become close over time and he is her family. The other person is George, a messenger man for the boss who brings her the paperwork for each new identity. Can she really trust both of them? Oddly, even though she knows there must be something dodgy about him, she’s starting to trust Ryan more too and that’s a dangerous place to be. She knows there must be something dodgy about his haulage operation, because why else would she be here? Yet, even though this started as a job she feels they’re growing closer. It’s a rare feeling that’s never happened to her before. Could her fake relationship be developing into something real? The author keeps us guessing to the final pages and it’s so tense as Evie has to question the loyalties of those closest to her and juggle her burgeoning feelings for Ryan. Could he be playing her too? Has the boss pitted them against each other to see who comes out on top?

I enjoyed the back story of how Evie had ended up in this life of criminality. It was interesting to see her pluckiness and street smarts pitted against the women in Ryan’s circle. They’re so awful that I was rooting for her. The author has created an original and pacy thriller, full of intrigue and adrenaline filled moments. I found my usual loyalties and moral code turned completely on their head and was left hoping the con artist would win.

“There’s an old saying: The first lie wins. It’s not referring to the little white kind that tumble out with little to no thought; it refers to the big one. The one that changes the game. The one that is deliberate. The lie that sets the stage for everything that comes after it. And once the lie is told, it’s what most people believe to be true.”

Published by Headline 2nd January 2024

Ashley Elston lives in North Louisiana with her husband and three sons. She was a wedding and portrait photographer for ten years so most of her Saturday nights included eating cake, realizing no shoe is comfortable after standing for more than six hours and inevitably watching some groomsman do the alligator across the dance floor. Now, Ashley helps her husband run their small business and she writes as often as possible.

Posted in Netgalley

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Posted on by thelotusreaders

White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American–in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang

June Hayward and Athena Liu were in the same year at Yale and both debuted in the same year in publishing. Yet that’s where the similarities end. Athena is picked up immediately in the world that’s always looking for the next big thing. Stories about basic white girls just aren’t cutting it any more, so Athena is a cross genre literary darling. Her death is a freak accident that allows June an opportunity, she acts impulsively and steals Athena’s work in progress. Her work is an interesting novel about Chinese labourers and their part in WW1 helping the British and the French. Could she perhaps edit the manuscript and submit it to her own agent? Would it be wrong to start a new pseudonym? Enter the ethnically ambiguous new novelist June Song.

This was a brilliant inside look at issues and timely arguments within the publishing industry. In the past couple of years I’ve seen the question of authentic voices rage back and forth, especially interesting to me when it comes to writers with disabilities and the way disabled characters are written. Is it more important that a marginalised story is told or is who tells it the vital issue? This can be especially urgent when it’s a previously untold story or a hidden part of history. June has so much success with the book, but struggles to protect her secrets. One wrong word could expose her, so how far will she go to protect her new identity?

I’m always fascinated with books where I don’t like any of the characters because it usually means I’m learning something. I think some readers are uncomfortable with this. Athena is the wronged party and should therefore be ‘likeable’. In fact racist or more accurately model minority thinking means that a Western audience might expect the Athena to be sweet, pretty, docile and diligent just because she’s Asian. The qualities are positive, but allow no room for difference unlike the endlessly unique white characters created every day by Western writers. Huang broaches the idea that the industry’s criteria for deciding which Asian writers to publish is based within this flawed expectation. There’s also an issue around the type of subject matter chosen by publishers. In the wake of George Floyd’s death a lot changed in the publishing industry and we all talked a lot about diversity, but when I think of the subject matter of books I’ve read from ethnically diverse writers, particularly African American or Black British writers, they have all contained sexual abuse, violence or intergenerational trauma. Can we say this is a true reflection of the experience of people from those communities? Or do publishers expect this type of story from black writers and favour publishing them over other narratives? Do we only accept marginalised voices when they’re saying things we expect, things that make us comfortable because they echo our ideas about that particular community?

June truly believes that she’s becoming the minority in the writing world. That unless you’re a BIPOC writer you can’t get a look in from agents and publishers. The focus is on ‘own voice’ fiction and no one wants to hear from yet another white girl. I thought about the controversy around the book American Dirt when reading this. Writing is all about imagination and an author can imagine anything. An author can also research anything, but is research enough when you’re attempting to write from the perspective of someone with a disability, or someone LGBTQ+. I have to mention the proliferation of books from a neuro-divergent perspective by writers who have experience in this area, but who aren’t neuro-divergent themselves. I can understand the concern about it, but I’ve also really learned from some of these books and been led to other reading so I could educate myself. Where does ‘own voice’ writing end? Are we saying that a male writer can’t write in the voice of a female character? Writing is all about creativity so if we can only ever write from our own viewpoint wouldn’t it get a little boring? Should publishers accept a manuscript from a white writer who’s writing outside their own experience, if they are inundated with own voice manuscripts of equal merit?

“She’s using the pen name Juniper Song to pretend to be Chinese American. She’s taken new author photos to look more tan and ethnic, but she’s as white as they come. June Hayward you are a thief and a liar. You’ve stolen my legacy and now you spit on my grave’.

I loved that this book addressed those big issues, but it was also entertaining, delicious and disturbing in equal measure. I really enjoyed the ins and outs of the publishing world and the gossipy social media ‘blow-up’ feel of the book. Then there were moments that were more uncomfortable and challenging. It addressed what a lonely job it is to be a writer and how that isolation magnifies other aspects of being an author such as the negativity of social media and the perils of comparison. I wasn’t sure about June but that meant her character stayed with me. On one hand I felt she deserved to be exposed, but when I saw the reality of that I felt really bad for her. This was such a clever novel, so complex, full of amazing contemporary issues and always entertaining.

Meet the Author

Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times bestselling and Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award nominated author of Babel, the Poppy War trilogy, and the forthcoming Yellowface. She is a Marshall Scholar, translator, and has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.

Posted in Publisher Proof

Strong Female Character by Fern Brady

Posted on by thelotusreaders

When I received an email asking if I’d be interested in a finished copy of Fern Brady’s memoir I was typing ‘Yes please’ before I’d even finished reading the email. Something about Fern made me sit up and take notice when I was half-watching a late night showing of Live at the Apollo. She was such an interesting mix of intelligence, wit, forthrightness and that little bit of indefinable magic that captures an audience and takes them with you. By the time she appeared in Taskmaster I was a big fan. If you listen to my partner, this was because of her approach to tasks, which is very like my own. She dissected tasks in a very analytical way that was completely obvious to her, then when her team mates didn’t catch on (quite often in one case) she would speak to them as if they were insufferably stupid. Apparently the look in Fern’s eyes and her tone of voice reminded him of me watching a quiz show or reality series. Every Monday I become inexplicably wound up by Mastermind, especially when contestants pass questions instead of just throwing an answer out there. It’s obvious to me that if passes count against you in the tie-break situation, it would be better to simply shout ‘banana’ if you don’t know the answer. They might look stupid but they’d have no passes. So I guess I felt something of a kinship with her and the way our brains work, although in other respects we couldn’t be more different.

I had heard that Fern was recently diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum, a very hard won diagnosis for women and something I’ve had some experience of in my mental health work. Any mental health team has it’s share of people who are neuro-divergent, especially older people whose schools were simply unaware of the condition, whatever gender the individual might be. I’ve seen first hand the devastation that can be caused by undiagnosed autism. The inability to fit in at school, the crippling ‘shyness’ that leads to bullying, subsequent depression and anxiety, institutionalisation from long periods on psychiatric wards, coping strategies such as self-imposed isolation, drinking or drug taking. Then all the social issues that come along with these difficulties, like struggling to find or keep employment, poverty, neglect or even being preyed upon by those in society who look out for people to cuckoo or subject to modern slavery. This may sound extreme to some, but I’ve personally seen all of the above happen to people who were not diagnosed early. Not that diagnosis is the cure for all of these terrible life circumstances, but labelling does help because it enables the individual to access benefits, housing, support and some degree of protection in society. Fern was one of these people, born in an era when diagnosis was more common, but usually reserved for boys. The problem is that autism looks very different in women – women don’t fall into the Sheldon Cooper, no girlfriend, obsessive, Star Trek loving, nerd stereotype.

Fern was diagnosed exactly twenty years after she first told a doctor she had autism. Prior to that doctors told her she couldn’t possibly be autistic because she made eye contact and she’d had boyfriends (as if the ability to maintain a heterosexual relationship inoculated you from being neuro-divergent). One night after performing, Fern told her boyfriend that an audience member thought she might have Asperger’s and she should read a book called Aspergirls. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, but as her boyfriend started to read up on it he said to her ‘this is an exact description of you’. Often the signs of autism are simply missed in women because we have become too good at disguising or masking how we truly feel in a situation. Women are able, particularly in a work environment, to put on a mask. For example, all through school and university I was terrified of public speaking. I didn’t want everyone’s eyes on me, I would start to feel hot, sweaty and go completely purple in the face. Eventually I became so embarrassed about being purple in the face I became anxious about that too. These symptoms were exacerbated by a terrifying exercise at the beginning of teacher training where we had to pick a song that told a story and then sing it, unaccompanied in our seminar group. I felt like my mum’s pressure cooker, shuddering with heat and pressure until it gave a high pitched whistle and she would let the steam out. It felt like that but with nobody on hand to release the pressure. When things like this happened and even now when I’m involved in confrontation I’m right back there sweating, with a face like a giant blueberry. I didn’t last a term. However, if I am teaching a whole class of people, like one of my therapeutic writing workshops, I barely break a sweat. I have put on the mask of an expert, someone who knows what they’re talking about and how much it can help. So, as an expert, I can do the task.

Fern struggles to fit in wherever she goes in life, whether it’s school, college or work. She can’t fathom the unspoken social codes that govern our existence, especially in groups of women. Her obsessions are not the archetypal trains, sci-fi or comics. As a child she was obsessed with learning languages, culminating in a successful application to Edinburgh University to study Arabic and Persian. She had no desire to visit the countries where these languages were spoken, she just loved doing verb drills and was running out of languages. She played the piano incredibly well at a young age too, but because these were seen as ‘positive’ pastimes it never occurred to anyone to label them as autistic tendencies. She funded her studies at university by stripping, somewhere she felt that she fitted in. Although that was probably due to the fact that most stripper’s dressing rooms have their fair share of misfits. She didn’t have to be herself in the club, she put on a persona and got on with it. The early years of her comedy career were harder, mainly because there were more social codes to navigate, such as having to pretend she would like to have coffee and ‘get to know’ someone instead of just asking if she could be considered for a panel show slot. Sometimes it felt as if people wasted years playing games just to work with someone, when a simple ‘do you want to work together?’ Would have sufficed. She noticed that people didn’t like her to be so direct, particularly standing up in meetings and asking what the point was? This was something I used to do regularly in my last job as an advocate for people with disabilities. I had a huge case load on part-time hours so if someone called a meeting with no obvious point I would ask if they could quickly get to the point so I could assess if it was worth me sitting there. I remember saying that I’d like to get back to my desk and ‘do some real work’. I was there for the clients who needed me, not my colleagues. In hindsight I can see why our receptionist was terrified of me.

I loved the honesty of this book. Fern is brutally honest, even about those things that perhaps don’t show her in the best light. Her frankness about the autism, but also the mental health problems and addictions she experienced as a result of remaining undiagnosed, is admirable because it will help people who are in that destructive cycle. Her teenage years are particularly fraught and painful to read, mainly because she’s totally misunderstood by those who are supposed to love her. I found Fern’s retrospective take on those years and her post-diagnosis discussion with her mother was particularly moving. Fern is staunchly feminist and I loved that her inability to read social cues meant she didn’t internalise some of the bullshit that still exists in society about how women should behave. When in a shared flat at university, her flat mates basically slut-shamed her for having too many men at the flat. Hilariously, Fern replies that there seven days in a week and she’s shown restraint by only bringing a man back four times. There are other laugh out loud moments like this, where Fern is more than happy to create humour from her situation. There were some similarities in religious upbringing that resonated with me and made me smile.

This is not the typical redemptive narrative arc memoir where someone transcends their illness/situation in order to tie up any loose ends and become the ‘superhuman’ that we should all emulate. I have a disability and this is a narrative trope I can’t stand to see in disability memoirs. People don’t overcome a permanent disability, whether it’s visible or invisible; physical or mental. We learn to accommodate it and live alongside it if we’re lucky. Fern shows that beautifully by describing her difficulties working within her industry with her diagnosis. She describes the Taskmaster experience brilliantly and it’s refreshing to read a celebrity admitting to ongoing issues with their health. It’s more of that brutal honesty she’s famous for and it helps to know that what we see on TV doesn’t come without it’s difficulties, particularly the meltdowns which are a result of the stresses and strains of filming. As you can probably tell I identified strongly with this book and I have wondered if it might be worth mentioning to my GP that I have struggled with social codes; have been told that people are scared of my rather forthright opinions and ideas; have physical crashes after periods of stress; avoid parties; have repetitive mind games or movements that calm me and help me go to sleep; prefer to deal with people in writing; watch repetitive programs that are calming to me; prefer to see friends one to one rather than socialise in groups of women. These may just be personality quirks, but I have wondered and could see how a label might help me understand some of my behaviours. I really welcomed Fern’s story in terms of understanding myself better, whether diagnosed or not, but I also admired her ability to bare her soul and find the funny in her difficulties.

Meet the Author

Fern Marie Brady (born 26 May 1986) is a Scottish comedian, podcaster, and writer. Before becoming a stand-up comedian Brady worked as a journalist. She achieved fame as a stand-up comedian by entering stand-up competitions such as at the Edinburgh Film Theatre. As a result of her success as a stand-up she was invited on to comedy panel shows such as 8 Out Of Ten Cats. In 2020 she became a podcaster when she co-created a podcast entitled Wheel of Misfortune.

Brady was diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum in 2021, as an adult. She has been active within the field of autism education since learning of her diagnosis. She has written how she has been dealing with the diagnosis in her 2023 memoir Strong Female Character.

Posted in Throwback Thursday

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Posted on by thelotusreaders

‘Holding her robust infant, Beatrix murmured a prayer in her native Dutch. She prayed that her daughter would grow up to be healthy and sensible and intelligent, and would never form associations with overly powdered girls, or laugh at vulgar stories, or sit at gaming tables with careless men, or read French novels, or behave in a manner suited only to a savage Indian, or in any way whatsoever become the worst sort of discredit to a good family; namely, that she not grow up to be een onnozelaar, a simpleton. Thus concluded her blessing — or what constitutes a blessing, from so austere a woman as Beatrix Whittaker.’

Some people didn’t know Liz Gilbert until the film ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ came out, in fact I was surprised to learn how many people hadn’t known about or read the book. I’d really enjoyed the book and found the film ok, but thought it didn’t dwell enough on the psychological and spiritual aspects of her journey. It had a mixed reception at my book club where some really identified with her character, but others were screaming how lucky she was to have a publisher willing to fund her trip of a lifetime during her divorce as many have to continue getting the kids to school, going to work and only having the millisecond before sleep hit them to have anything resembling a spiritual or self-aware thought. I’d not expected the anger and jealousy that it evoked in some readers. So it was with trepidation that I approached her novel The Signature of all Things. If I’m honest I probably wouldn’t have sought it out, but I was in one of my favourite bookshops while on holiday in Wales and I saw it in the second hand section. It was such a beautiful book that I had to buy it and I flicked through it back at the holiday cottage, then was sucked in very quickly and all my planned reading went out of the window. I was stunned to be sailed around the globe from London to Amsterdam, Peru and Tahiti. Even more exciting was the heroine, Alma Whittaker, daughter of a famous explorer, plant hunter and botanist. I was drawn to her intelligence, her busy mind, her assertion that she is the equal of any man and the depths of her feelings.

The book begins be setting up Alma’s early life and family situation, so we meet her father and his beginnings in botany as a boy apprentice to a plant hunter- actually a punishment for some very sneaky thefts from Kew Gardens. His incredibly enterprising ideas mean that by the time Alma is born he is a very rich man, with a mansion in Philadelphia. His fortune has been made in the quinine trade, a medicine extracted from the Cinchona tree found in Peru then traded and grown around the world to produce a drug for malaria. At his home, White Acre, he and his wife have two daughters: Prudence their adopted daughter who follows an extraordinary path into abolitionism and Alma. Alma is a tall, large-boned girl who is described as ‘homely’, but is intelligent, determined and secretly contains well pools of sexual curiosity, all qualities that seem unusual for her gender in this time period. Her father’s belief that all people should be given the opportunities that enable them to manage others and excel in their own chosen field governs the household. ‘All’ really does mean all in William’s case and his daughters are given a thorough education at home, rivalling any man. Both he and his Dutch born wife are clearly progressives and Alma flourishes with the opportunities they give her to become a very accomplished botanist in her own right and perfectly able to develop her own projects and command the voyages necessary to hunt for the plant she has set her heart on. Unexpectedly, at an age when scholarly spinsterhood is expected to be her path, a painter visits White Acre and Alma falls deeply in love. This painter believes Joseph Boehme’s philosophy that all of nature contains a divine code, every flower and every creature – such as the Fibonacci sequence. Their two interests combine and while Ambrose is a utopian artist, often found to be painting orchids rather than studying them in a lab, they do have the same passion for nature. Where he saw life as divine and a guardian angel watching over him, Alma saw a life as a struggle where only the fittest survived, something she found out for herself when exploring:

“Then — in the seconds that remained before it would have been too late to reverse course at all — Alma suddenly knew something. She knew it with every scrap of her being, and it was not a negotiable bit of information: she knew that she, the daughter of Henry and Beatrix Whittaker, had not been put on this earth to drown in five feet of water. She also knew this: if she had to kill somebody in order to save her own life, she would do so unhesitatingly. Lastly, she knew one other thing, and this was the most important realization of all: she knew that the world was plainly divided into those who fought an unrelenting battle to live, and those who surrendered and died.“

Of course, this love is not the end of Alma’s story. Liz Gilbert isn’t going to let a man eclipse Alma or create a sappy rom-com ending to such a strong, feminist story. Alma and Ambrose represent two great schools of thought in the 19th Century, that of the spiritual and the scientific. These two schools of thought had equal status and often intermingled to this point, but as the century progressed a complete separation occurred where spirituality became a belief without reason and science became fact without a divine sense of wonder. Could the common ground that Ambrose and Alma thrive upon at first, survive the divide between their two disciplines? Make no mistake though, Alma is the protagonist here and she’s one of my favourite characters ever. I loved her drive (sadly lacking in this writer) and her preservation of it, no matter what. She can speak five languages at five years old! Oh and two dead ones. Her educational achievements aside, it was her confidence and self-belief that stood out to me. Yet here we are two centuries later in a crisis of confidence, with an epidemic of imposter syndrome and doubts about how to be women. Alma is wholly herself, even when at times that might seem steely, reserved and abrupt. She believes that everyone is the master of their own self, including women. It is sad that the introduction of Prudence to their family is the catalyst for Alma experiencing negative self- thoughts. She wishes to keep Prudence, who has been staying with the Whittakers since a family tragedy, but her presence is an opportunity for comparison – the ultimate thief of joy. Alma realises for the first time that she is not beautiful. She retreats into her work at moments of doubt or unhappiness, even extreme heartbreak and loss. It is her refuge and the one area of life that she can control and that she continues to be confident in. I truly admire her ability to continue. To live.

The research that Liz Gilbert must have undertaken for the verisimilitude of this novel is colossal. She writes with a 19th Century sensibility, keeping Alma completely grounded in her place and time. The first rule of creative writing – show, don’t tell – is so strongly in place that I felt like I was with Alma, only seeing or hearing things at the same moment she does. This brings such an immediacy to the novel that it gallops on at quite a right, especially considering this is the story of a 19th Century dowdy and academic spinster. It’s a book that a lot of people might not consider reading from the blurb, which is why it needs to be highlighted in this way. It ranges across biology, exploring, business, philosophy, science, the mystical and yes, the sexual. There are secrets kept all the way to the end that I really didn’t expect at all. I have to say that my favourite review of this book is a negative one. Mainly because it made me laugh out loud, but also because it unwittingly makes you want to read it.

“I was actually enjoying this and then at 49% a spinster has a spontaneous orgasm from holding hands with a dude in a closet.”

left by Goodreads Member, Sylvia, October 2nd 2015

I don’t know about you, but I’d want to read that book!

Meet the Author

Elizabeth Gilbert is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, as well as the short story collection, Pilgrims—a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and winner of the 1999 John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares. A Pushcart Prize winner and National Magazine Award-nominated journalist, she works as writer-at-large for GQ. Her journalism has been published in Harper’s Bazaar, Spin, and The New York Times Magazine, and her stories have appeared in Esquire, Story, and the Paris Review.

Posted in Publisher Proof

One Friday in Napa by Jennifer Hamm

Posted on by thelotusreaders

The word Vene would have used to describe her mother was ‘cold’ because they’ve always been at odds, even in childhood. So when news of her terminal illness comes, Vene wonders what to do. Is a reconciliation out of the question? She returns to Napa only to find that Olivia is as harsh as she always was. Yet, when Vene finds a cookbook belonging to her mother, it’s like a window on a different woman. Upstairs her dying mother is judgemental and snappy, but between the pages of the cookbook she’s a young woman full of romance and longing, but also duty and a terrible heartache. This is the mum she’s never met and she wants to go on an emotional journey, to connect with the ‘real’ Olivia before it’s too late.

Using a dual timeline, half a century apart Vene tries to unearth the secrets and sacrifice of two different women. I loved the use of food as a medium to communicate emotion and nostalgia. We all have these tastes that rocket us back to childhood in one mouthful. In fact one of my favourite memoirs is Nigel Slater’s Taste which conjures up so many memories of his mother. We don’t always see our parents as people in their own right, especially when there are secrets and we don’t know the truth of everything they’ve endured. Mothers don’t always fully see their daughters, often because they’re so busy trying to protect them from a similar harm to the one they suffered when they were a young woman. In trying not to repeat our youthful mistakes and create a pattern, we make new ones. I thought there was so much insight into women’s emotional history here. There was a running theme of service and sacrifice that reminded me of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Are women now able to make life choices completely for themselves or do they sacrifice this freedom to look after the needs of others? As an artist can we ever be fulfilled if we don’t write, paint or create? I thought the setting really emphasised the idea of food and nostalgia too, because just reading it I could imagine myself on holiday there. The place was beautifully described and the recipes with their accompanying wines between the chapters conjured up so many tastes and smells. Don’t read this when hungry! I love Italian food so it was wonderful to read those colours and tastes brought to life.

Emotionally and psychologically the author presents heartbreak in such a raw and honest way. Olivia’s past is full of loss and the pain of that has informed the way she brings up her daughter. The hurt of the past always affects our future relationships in some way, but is it possible to acknowledge that hurt and stop it shaping our future and that of our children? If not, a destructive pattern emerges and there is definitely trauma between these two generations. As our trips into Olivia’s past start to explain more about her present, I was hoping that Vene’s newly found knowledge of her mother’s motivations would open up a space for them to communicate honestly and truly know each other as women. I felt more involved in the past timeline, which often happens to me in dual timeline stories, and found the young Olivia a more engaging character. However, it was the dynamic between the two of them I loved and the sense that women have a lot to learn from each other when they communicate honestly. I wondered about how we value the older women in our families and whether we’ve lost that ability to prize them? Is there a collective wisdom we’re missing out on when we stop seeing our older relatives as people. Every so often it’s good to remind ourselves that these people who happen to be our parents, had lives long before they had us and I wondered whether there were incredible stories buried within the past generations of my own family.

Meet the Author

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Jennifer Hamm graduated with a BA in English at UCLA and began her writing career developing screenplays for movies and television. As a travel writer, she has covered the globe on assignment for various magazines and brands. She also writes It’s Only for A Year, a long-running blog chronicling her adventures raising her four boys in two countries. Hamm currently splits her time between London and Los Angeles. One Friday in Napa is her first novel.

Posted in Netgalley

The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon

Posted on by thelotusreaders

He took you and you have been his for five years. But you have been careful. Waiting for him to mess up. It has to be now.

Reading this novel was quite an experience! I didn’t want to put it down, I was reading so fast to get to the next bit that I sometimes had to go back and re-read a paragraph. I had to tell myself to read slower and take it in, because the urge to devour this story is so strong. The writer has chosen an interesting viewpoint, that of the women in a killer’s life. I loved that contrast to other serial killer novels where a male serial killer and a male detective often narrate the story. Where the only women are the dead ones. Women are not expendable here. Even the murdered ones.

This is still the story of Aiden, a serial killer, but told from the perspective of the women in his life: his daughter, the woman he has abducted and imprisoned in a shed, and the bartender who is infatuated with him. There are also small sections from the women he imprisoned before, now dead. Each woman’s narrative gives the reader a different side to this hidden monster. It’s an intimate reading experience, because I felt like I knew everything about this woman: how she thinks, how she feels and even the details of her dreams. It feels like you’re with her in that tiny space, sharing her experience. It’s a very tense existence, knowing that you’re here at the whim of a man who’s already killed so many times you mean nothing to him. As someone who gets claustrophobic it felt almost too close and I felt her fear that it might just take one wrong move for him to kill again.


Aiden’s wife has just died, so he and his daughter Cecelia need to move house and his captive moves with them. She goes from her place in the garden shed to being chained to a radiator in the house. If she puts a foot wrong he will kill her and somehow he does know everything she’s doing even while he’s out of the house. How is he watching her? Incredibly, he has a daughter in the main part of the house as well as a souvenir stash in the basement. This only adds to the tension. What is hard to understand is how he rationalises his killing of women when he’s father to a daughter.– to a place with no shed. After years of isolation, Rachel is allowed inside a house again, and meets her captor’s child. I had so many questions though. Why is she still alive? It’s been five years now and he’s always killed his victims. He also seems to be out stalking a new victim, Emily, a local restaurant owner. Is this good news for the captive, or is he looking for a replacement?

Since the book Rebecca I’ve always been intrigued by characters that we don’t see, but even more so, by characters without the right name or a name at all. We know this woman as Rachel, but the choice not to use her own name makes you think. It seems common sense that he wouldn’t use it, he’s trying to distance himself. To make her an object rather than a human being. Yet she doesn’t mention her name either. Maybe even she can’t remember it or maybe every one of his captives is ‘Rachel’. This is part of the mystery that I wondered about when I was going about my day. It has allowed the author to place emotion and the victims at the centre of this thriller, making it stand out. As others have noted there’s a hint of Emma Donoghue’s Room here, where the four walls you’re in become your whole world and you become whatever you’re called. Rachel is a complicated character, and it’s clear that she’s suffered at the hands of Aiden. There are moments where I was rooting for her escape. She has time and opportunity, but can’t take it out of fear. From reading cases of abductions and long captivity, this isn’t unrealistic. Yes, she’s a strong woman, but she’s been manipulated and terrorised by this man so has to be sure before she takes a chance.

In the local area Aiden is seen as a good husband and father, in fact there’s probably an element of hero worship. So, local restaurateur Emily is aware of him already and might even be a little into him. She’s also young and alone, so it doesn’t take long for till she’s under his spell completely. Through these three narratives, Aiden’s captive, his daughter and the new love interest, Aiden’s dark truths are unravelled. This is not about considering his motivation or perspective, all of this story is about his victims and the mess the man like this leaves in his wake. I loved how the style of the author’s writing, which is mesmerising and poetic contrasts strongly with the dark subject matter. I doesn’t rush like thrillers often do. The contrast shows us that life can be beautiful, but what Aiden does is twisted and sadistic. I was desperately hoping that Rachel would survive and we might know who she really is.

Meet the Author

Clémence Michallon was born and raised near Paris. She studied journalism at City University of London, received a master’s in Journalism from Columbia University, and has written for The Independent since 2018. Her essays and features have covered true-crime, celebrity culture, and literature. She moved to New York City in 2014 and recently became a US citizen. She now divides her time between New York City and Rhinebeck, NY.

Posted in Netgalley

Harlem After Midnight by Louise Hare

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Ever since the final page of Miss Aldridge Regrets I’d wondered what would happen next to Lena, who had managed to escape the clutches of a murderer, find her birth mother and become the lover of band leader Will all on board ship. She was sailing to New York to audition for a new musical on Broadway, but became embroiled in the life of a rich NYC family after being placed with them for dinner. Now in New York, what would become of her relationships – both with her mother and with Will? Would she be able to find work after finding out the Broadway job was a ruse to get her on the voyage? I was shocked when the novel began with a woman, sprawled on the sidewalk after failing from a high rise window. As the police arrived and start to look at the body they notice she’s clutching something in her hand. It’s a passport in the name of Lena Aldridge. The author then takes us back to Lena’s arrival in NYC nine days earlier, when Will had taken her to stay with friends of his until the return voyage. What could possibly have gone so wrong?

Lena has found herself dragged into Will’s world, perhaps a little sooner than would be expected in a conventional relationship. As Will takes leave she wonders if this will give them time to test their relationship out and whether they could have a future. His friends Claudette and Louis are a lovely couple who live in a good neighbourhood in Harlem. Claudette is a librarian and she settles Lena into their spare bedroom, telling her about how long they have known Will and that they’re looking forward to getting to know her. Will’s only family is his sister Belle and niece Joey, who he stays with when the ship’s on a fortnight turnaround. The five are pretty close knit, apart from the obvious tension between Will and his sister, despite which he absolutely adores his niece. Even though she’s wary, Lena and Belle get along enough to go out shopping and have cocktails in a fancy bar. I started to feel this creeping sensation that Lena was on the outside of something. The three friends have secrets and so does Belle, is it because Lena is new to the group and maybe not quite trusted yet? Is there something about her being British that makes them think she won’t get it? She is surprised to find out That despite their animosity, Will does go to any lengths to protect his sister. Lena is patient though, she has concerns about her own situation and doesn’t want to delve too far into their secrets, without knowing what’s going to happen between her and Will. It’s too early to say love or talk about permanence. She doesn’t even know if she could find herself living in Harlem. Lena’s also looking for people who knew her father to learn about his early life and if there’s family that Lena’s never met. There are also financial and emotional issues in her relationship with her mother that must be resolved. It’s a huge crossroads to negotiate and the tension builds as we start rooting for her future and worrying she’s plummeted to her death.

I love this combination of historical crime mystery, especially those set in such a stylish city and time period. I think in a lot of ways this was a more successful novel than the first and I definitely felt the time period in the social life of Harlem and the contrasting Sunday church going. The glamour of New York was set beautifully against those less fortunate and I was interested in the way colour had some bearing on this; Lena and Belle can ‘pass’ as white enough to get into a fancy bar, but the much darker skinned Will would have struggled. I enjoyed these deeper looks into racial divisions, class and privilege, as well as how they differed in the earlier timeline. Lena being bi-racial didn’t seem to have the same complexity in London as it did in New York, but she is reminded a few times that it would be worse in the south. There are references to lynchings, the prejudice around mixed race relationships (both for Alfie and his daughter) and the exploitation of black women by wealthy white men. In this earlier timeline I enjoyed this exploration of young black women’s lives as well as the contrast with the relative freedom Lena and Belle are enjoying. Have things changed or is it their lighter skin?

I thought the historical element really came to life and I enjoyed these sections that went back even further to 1908, when her father Alfie suddenly fled New York for London. As both of these storylines started to reveal their secrets, the novel became intense and gripping. I had suspicions around both Claudette and her husband, because although they were there for Lena in a practical sense they didn’t give much of themselves emotionally. There were also certain morals to their way of life, such as Will not staying with Lena at their flat. I wasn’t sure that they actually liked her, but wanted to do a favour for Will. The central mystery really held my attention and remained tense even with the flashbacks in-between. The more building blocks we had to construct Lena’s, the more I felt I knew her and the hope she’d have a happy ending grew for me. I would suggest reading the first novel before this one as there are links and recurring characters throughout. There was an open ended feel to the final chapter so who knows we may be able to spend time with Lena again. I’d be more than happy to join her.

Meet The Author

Louise Hare is a London-based writer and has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. Originally from Warrington, the capital is the inspiration for much of her work, including This Lovely City, which began life after a trip into the deep level shelter below Clapham Common. This Lovely City was featured on the inaugural BBC TWO TV book club show, Between the Covers, and has received multiple accolades, securing Louise’s place as an author to watch.

Posted in Personal Purchase

Killer in the Family by Gytha Lodge

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Aisling would do anything for her family – but can she protect a killer?

I had about three false starts with this book. Having read all her other books in the series when I won them in a competition on Twitter, I was intrigued to see what was next. I would read a bit, then a blog tour would come along or an urgent bit of bookpost would fall through the door and I would have to set it aside. I was so glad to finally get going with it again on holiday and it didn’t take me long to race through to the finish. The story gained both momentum and tension from about chapter four onwards. We’re back with Detective Chief Inspector Jonah Sheen’s team as the uncertainty of his private life is overshadowed by a terrible case and a man nicknamed the Bonfire Killer. He has killed two women already and the police have very little to go on. Then single mum and game developer Aisling, puts her DNA on an ancestry site. She’s thrilled to find a match, but that piece of her she felt was missing might come with some serious baggage – starting with an interview with CID. Aisling’s DNA is a match to the crime scene and possibly the Bonfire Killer himself, so the police have their eye on her two sons, Ethan and Finn, as well as her long lost father. There are secrets in this family, not limited to her missing parent. Will she be willing to unearth a painful past to prevent someone else suffering a painful future?

Aisling is an interesting and unexpected central character, with a life that isn’t everything it seems. She has gone to great lengths to avoid her past and she isn’t the only one in the family. Her father, Dara Cooley, went missing years before. As the team try to crack the case, they break into smaller working groups to find Dara Cooley, chase up the DNA and interview suspects that arise, and investigate a stud farm where a horse has been taken and killed, then burned on a pyre. Could it be linked to the case? The detectives spend time with the farmer and his two sons, trying to establish who would want to hurt their mare, Merivel. There are so many blind alleys and red herrings, but they have to be followed just in case one of them leads to a breakthrough. I loved the complications around an Irishwoman named Anneka Foley and her potential relationship to the case. One of Aisling’s sons is in a band, that one of the killer’s victims had a fascination with and that’s before we get to the exploration of Aisling’s own teenage years. I was suspicious, but loved Aisling’s loyalty to her sons. Her ‘first love’ story was so relatable and digging into the past can stir up a lot of feelings, especially when an unexpected visitor turns up. She’s unusual, a gamer who likes to play at home with her sons, but is also quietly very successful as a developer in her own right. She’s been tough and dedicated to her boys. Can she come to terms with her past and open herself up to a different future?

The team are on form, but I particularly loved the subplot around Juliette who is receiving unwanted attention from an old boyfriend. At a couple of crime scenes there have been markers that he might be around again: her favourite hot coffee and a waterproof jacket left on the bonnet of her car on a cold wet night. We see the strain she’s under, but she still does her job. It’s a subplot that seemed to have petered out but now returns with deadly consequences. This was a story I’ll love to see concluded in the next book. Then there’ Jonah’s private life, where trying to do the right thing seems to have backfired spectacularly. How does he extricate himself from this without causing further harm? Will the right path still be open to him when he does? With a fascinating background of Ireland’s poverty and the ways in which people struggled with a restrictive religious society, this is a fascinating thriller with so many different aspects to it. Gytha Lodge brings all these seemingly disparate strands together and successfully resolves most of them, only leaving us with one cliffhanger. But it is a humdinger of a cliffhanger! All of this as well as a atmosphere and tension you could cut with a knife, this is another brilliant read from a consummate crime writer.

Meet the Author

Gytha Lodge is a multi-award-winning playwright, novelist and writer for video games and screen. She is also a single parent who blogs about the ridiculousness of bringing up a mega-nerd small boy.

She has a profound addiction to tea, crosswords and awful puns. She studied English at Cambridge, where she became known quite quickly for her brand of twisty, dark yet entertaining drama. She later took the Creative Writing MA at UEA. 

Her debut crime novel, She Lies in Wait, has been published by Penguin Random House in the US and UK, and has also been translated into 12 other languages. It became an international bestseller in 2019, and was a Richard and Judy book club pick, as well as a Sunday Times and New York Times crime pick.

Posted in Netgalley

The Stargazers by Harriet Evans

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The Stargazers does something I’ve been trying to put across in my own WIP. It shows us that our own story, as we have experienced it and tell it to others, is only one strand of an infinite tapestry. Sarah Fox and her husband Daniel are moving in to their new house on The Row. It’s a ‘proper house’, meaning that as you walk through it you can imagine your child taking their first steps in the hallway or using the tree swing in the garden. It reminded me of when we were looking at houses and we viewed an incredible place that felt to me like a grown up house. It had all the children’s heights written on the wall next to the kitchen door and also a little family of llamas, painstakingly cut out and coloured in, then clear varnished onto a beam in the living room. It was a proper family home and I think this is a little bit of what Sarah feels as they cross the threshold of No 7. Does this make them grown-ups? Perhaps amplified by the fact that Sarah has never known a real family home until now. Sarah and her sister Victoria (Vic) spend their early childhood in the family home of Fane Hall, one of the most splendid stately homes in the south of England. When their grandfather, the heir, dies. They are awaiting the return of Great Uncle Clive. He will become the Earl because Sarah’s mother, Iris, cannot inherit the house being a woman. Iris has doubts, but hopes that since the death of both her father and her husband, Uncle Clive will be benevolent and allow them to remain living in the west wing of Fane. Yet the man who returns from war with a new wife, Aunt Dotty, does not see things the same way. Fane is his, and instead he grants them a small flat in Kensington.

Years later, after Iris has repeated endlessly to her daughters that Fane is her house regardless of inheritance law, they fall on hard times. So she tells the girls to pack and brazenly moves into Fane, occupying a different wing to Clive. Time has been hard on Fane and it seems like her Uncle has allowed it to fall down around him. Every room feels ransacked and amazing collections like the taxidermy animals have been thrown on the floor, their glass cases broken and the smell emerging into the house. There’s also a far worse smell. Many of the toilets are blocked, the bathrooms unusable and their smell permeating throughout. This is the legacy of WW2 and Fane being used by the British forces, not very carefully it would seem. Uncle Clive is dirty, shambling and penniless. A game seems to resume between her Uncle and her mother Iris, with the girls caught in-between, often forgotten and at times completely neglected. Then Iris sends the girls to boarding school and settles in at Fane waiting for him to die. This means that for long periods Sarah has to leave her only friend in the world. The only one who understands her home situation and gets to know her one to one. They are the stargazers. Sarah climbs out of her window in the middle of the night to meet him at a large tree, big enough to sit in and watch the night sky. There they don’t have to talk about their home lives, it’s simply understood. This young boy lives with the lady who runs the post office, but she’s a foster mum. He tells her they need to look forward to their futures not their pasts, to their dreams of being a musician and a film maker.

As we work our way through these different layers of family history, it works like a set of Chinese boxes, one story tucked inside another and we learn a little more from each. Sometimes, an event in Sarah’s childhood helps us understand the present. Then we read a snippet from Iris’s past that informs us about why she treats her own children badly. The adult Sarah we meet in her house in London is very different, as her life shrinks a little. She has two small children and spends all day taking care of them. She doesn’t have time for daily music practice and her hands become stiff so she can’t stretch to pluck the cello strings. Where once she played cello professionally, it now sits in the corner of a room upstairs untouched. Husband Daniel is a bit clueless about how Sarah feels. He’s a fellow artiste, but he’s an actor and television producer and he still gets to leave the house each day. He also starts a long Sunday lunch tradition for the neighbours which seems to a euphemism for come into the house, drink all day and neglect to clear up after themselves. Sarah struggles a bit in this chaos, especially when something outside of their daily routine happens – like her sister turning up to stay when Sarah had completely forgotten them. Instead of embracing the chaos and simply saying ‘I’ve forgotten completely, come on into the madhouse’ she tries to cover the fact that she’s not remembered, putting untold pressure on herself.

There’s a saying in counselling that no two children have the same parent, that applies strongly to Vic and Sarah. They are very different people, possibly due to the way they responded to emotional abuse as children: one was compliant and the other, despite being scared, was defiant. Not only was Iris psychologically damaging, she was neglectful. She is constantly forgetting to feed them, doesn’t buy them the right clothes for school and ensures they are seen as different both by the children of the village and even their school friends. At school Vic becomes a huge hit with the popular group and seems worshipped by the younger girls. When asked to show her loyalty to the group she doesn’t hesitate, even when that loyalty means shunning her little sister. There is bullying that’s uncomfortable to read and gave me the shivers. In choosing the popular girls, Vic has ensured her safety but has also signed up for a lifetime of putting on a front. Sarah may be shunned but at least she can be herself. I felt sorry for Vic, after all she is also the product of abuse, but in turning into an abuser herself she started to lose my sympathy. Especially when it comes to their treatment of Sarah’s music teacher and an act that has lifelong repercussions.

I thought this book was fascinating from a psychoanalytic perspective showing how we find ways of surviving abuse childhood that become part of our personality. In a twist I didn’t expect, a Sunday dinner at Sarah and Daniel’s goes south fast when their little girl disappears. The reasons why surprised me, because I was never quite sure where the stories were going to join up or who might be lurking from the past. Sarah’s eventual return to Fane in adulthood doesn’t work out in the way she might have hoped, but it helps her finally face up to what happened there. The final paragraphs show us the irony of Iris clinging to Fane and to life. She is still muttering to herself that Fane is hers and what would have happened had she been a boy? Did she get what she wanted in the end? Is the estate viable or have terrible compromises been made? As we find the answers to these questions we also see Iris’s decline as compared with the little girl she must have been when she first visited the house. This final flashback is brilliantly thought out and placed. That first visit can’t fully vindicate Iris, there is never an excuse for her actions towards her own children, but it could shed some light on what happened to set these wheels in motion. It might even explain her unshakable belief that Fane is hers. This is a great book about family, intergenerational trauma and the adults we grow up to be, because of the children we once were.

Published by Headline Review 14th September 2023

Harriet is the author of thirteen novels, two of them are Richard and Judy book club selections, several have been Top Ten Bestsellers, one won the Good Housekeeping Book of the year prize, but the accolade she’s most proud of is the lady on Twitter who wrote last month that she thought my books were real ‘knicker grippers’. As Harriet says on her Amazon author page ‘I suppose that’s all you can hope for isn’t it?’

Her first novel, Going Home, came out in 2005 and her last was The Beloved Girls, published in paperback in April 2022. She wishes she’d tried another job sometime but she can’t imagine not writing. She has written since she was a child, first on books I stapled together with paper then notebooks, then a laptop that crashed and lost all of the novel she was writing in secret back in 2002. (So now she backs her work up properly) Her first novels were more about relationships and people in London and had more chicklit themes and the later ones are darker and more about families and secrets and houses and the past. Those themes have always been in her books, but as she’s grown older she’s enjoyed exploring them more. She has so many stories in her head all the time and adores knowing that her job means that she can carry on telling them.

If asked how she’d describe her books she’d say she wants them to be gripping, involving, heartwarming stories about families and mysteries in the past with a Gothic tinge. This one definitely fits that description.

Posted in Publisher Proof

Fayne by Ann-Marie MacDonald

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Fayne by Ann-Marie Macdonald

‘I do not wish to be a woman.’

‘My dear. I’m afraid we none of us has the choice.’

I do not wish to be a lady, then.’

‘I cannot blame you.’

The vast estate of Fayne lies to the southern border of Scotland, ruled by the Lord Henry Bell, Seventeenth Baron of the DC de Fayne, Peer of Her Majesty’s Realm of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The mysterious Lord Bell keeps to his rooms by day, appearing briefly at night to dote over his beloved and peculiarly gifted child. But even with all her gifts – intelligence, wit and strength of character – can Charlotte overcome the violently strict boundaries of contemporary society and establish her own place in the world? Fayne is the page-turning queer story of longing and belonging you’ve been waiting for.

I must admit to being slightly daunted when this novel came to the door. I say ‘to the door’ because it wouldn’t fit through the letterbox or into our postbox. It’s an absolutely brick of a novel, so much so that I had trouble holding it. Feeling a little overwhelmed I spoke to a fellow blogger who suggested that I mark it off into readable sections of about 150 pages. It was great advice and I’m glad I persevered with the novel, because it really was intriguing and original. Set in the late 19th Century and written in a similar style to a Victorian novel, Fayne is the story of Charlotte Bell. Charlotte is a precociously intelligent young woman with an insatiable curiosity that is starting to overcome the bounds of what her father and the estate’s library can teach her. This could be a dream existence, but there are shadows in her childhood. Charlotte’s mother died giving birth to her and her brother, the heir to Fayne House died at the age of two. Her father makes a break with tradition on her twelfth birthday, when a young woman would usually have a governess, he hires her a tutor instead. Lord Bell gives him one command for the education of his daughter, to teach her ‘as you would my son, had I one’. Charlotte’s only restriction up till now has been staying within the bounds of the estate. This is because she has a mysterious condition that may make her prone to catching illnesses from others. However, when she takes her tutor out to the bog, they find an unexpected artefact and take it home. Lord Bell suddenly announces he has arranged for her to be cured of this condition, turning Charlotte’s world completely upside down.

There is a feyness to her character, with her love of the boggy moorland and it’s mysterious mists that envelop walkers. She has learned both the ways of the bog and local folklore from Bryn, an elderly servant who seems to come with the estate. Yet the artefact she finds seems to be a mystery. The other mystery that confused me from the outset was the nature of Charlotte’s condition. Also, despite her curiosity about everything else, Charlotte seem strangely unaware of what it is and how it manifests. Her old nurse tells her there are all manner of miasmas and droughts that might carry off her ‘darling pet’. I kept waiting for her to ‘feel’ ill but that never seemed to happen. Another curiosity was her mode of dress, at a time when women were terribly restricted by their clothing which would have included a corset, possibly a bustle, and long cumbersome skirts and petticoats. Yet Charlotte is leaping around the moor, seemingly wearing a form of trousers, that she describes as a scarlet tunic and leggings. I was totally intrigued, imagining a type of female Robin Hood. In fact Charlotte herself says that if she did miss her footing in the bog and was discovered years later, she might be mistaken for a Roman centurion complete with a cape! She’s such an interesting and completely different Victorian female character I was fascinated with her. While still wondering what the mystery around her was, I became beguiled by her wit, intelligence and her endless wonder. As the answers started to come I was rooting for her to escape the rigid gender boundaries of her time and fulfil her potential. The author’s assertion that Charlotte is normal, it’s the world that’s trying to impose it’s order upon her, chimed very strongly with my disability theory background. The social model of disability asserts that all bodies are normal, but the way society is organised creates the disability. For example, if all exits and entrances to a building were ramped everyone can use it. It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting or standing.

It’s clear that the landscape at Fayne and Charlotte are inextricably linked. Despite eventually travelling away from it’s borders, it stands out as the one place she was allowed to be her true self with no restrictions or arbitrary boundaries. She didn’t have to choose who she was at Fayne, she could just be Charlotte. Fayne is a liminal space, existing somewhere between mythology and reality, between England and Scotland. I loved the way the author positions Fayne and the estate’s old folklore as authentic, as natural as Charlotte is before she moves to Edinburgh, which is a sharp contrast to the wilds of her childhood. I was desperate for Charlotte to retain this authenticity, but everything about a city imposes order – the signs, the roads, the hard surfaces. Then there’s ‘society’ and it’s arbitrary rules about gender. There are so many rigid ideas about how a woman should look and behave. The imprisonment of a Victorian woman’s clothing is so stifling that when we think of Charlotte’s tunic and leggings, it feels like being restrained. Yet there are other ways of being, even here, you just have to know where to look. It was great to be on that journey with Charlotte, as she finds that other people also defy expectations. There is so much more to the novel, different viewpoints and characters as well as some plot twists and turns. However, I was always happy to come back to the ever curious and irrepressible Charlotte. It will take all of Charlotte’s ingenuity and intelligence to unearth her family’s secrets and discover her own identity. In some ways I was reminded of another novel with an intersex character delving into her family history, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I enjoyed both character’s journeys to find themselves, but also each book is so rich and full of history. I have read Middlesex more than once and Fayne will also benefit from a re-read, hopefully at a slower pace, as I’m sure there’s so much I missed or didn’t fully appreciate on first reading. Ann-Marie MacDonald is an extraordinary storyteller and I’m now interested to explore her other novels.

I knew from a very young age that I was wrong in the world. And the idea of looking through the eyes of somebody who’s born with an intersex trait has been quite compelling to me for a very long time. It’s not an exotic quality. That’s why I’ve decided not to treat it as a “spoiler.” That’s just who Charlotte is, that’s her body. That’s normal. It’s the world that has a problem and is going to make it a problem for her’.

Ann-Marie MacDonald Press Release from Tramp Press.

Meet the Author

Ann-Marie MacDonald is a novelist, playwright, actor and broadcast host. She was born in the former West Germany. After graduating from the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal, she moved to Toronto where she distinguished herself as an actor and playwright. In 1996 her first novel Fall On Your Knees became an international bestseller, was translated into nineteen languages and sold three million copies. It won a Commonwealth Prize, the People’s Choice Award and the Libris Award. In 2002 it was an Oprah’s Book Club choice. In 2023, The Way the Crow Flies appeared and in 2014 Adult Onset, both of which had international success. In 2019 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canadafor her contribution to the arts and her LGBTQ25+ activism. She is married to theatre director Alisa Palmer with whom she has two children.