Tag: Random Things Through My Letterbox

Posted in Random Things Tours

You Can’t See Me by Eva Björg Ægisdottir

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Translation by Victoria Cribb.

Evil creatures here abound. We must speak in voices low. All night long I’ve heard the sound. Of breath upon the window.

Sixteenth-century verse by Þórður Magnússon á Strjúgi

The wealthy, powerful Snæberg clan has gathered for a family reunion at a futuristic hotel set amongst the dark lava flows of Iceland’s remote Snæfellsnes peninsula.

Petra Snæberg, a successful interior designer, is anxious about the event, and her troubled teenage daughter, Lea, whose social- media presence has attracted the wrong kind of followers. Ageing carpenter Tryggvi is an outsider, only tolerated because he’s the boyfriend of Petra’s aunt, but he’s struggling to avoid alcohol because he knows what happens when he drinks … Humble hotel employee, Irma, is excited to meet this rich and famous family and observe them at close quarters … perhaps too close…
As the weather deteriorates and the alcohol flows, one of the guests disappears, and it becomes clear that there is a prowler lurking in the dark.
But is the real danger inside … within the family itself?

I LOVED the first two books in the Forbidden Iceland series, featuring detective Elma, recently returned to her home town of Akranes after several years working in Reykjavik. This story is a prequel and we meet her eventual partner Sæver as he looks into some very strange events surrounding a family reunion. This is not your average family though and I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be at a party less! My sympathies were largely with hotel employee Irma who views the Snæberg family as if they are a totally different species. In a way they are, set apart by their successes and their wealth from the everyday hotel employee. So wealthy in fact that they’ve hired this entire luxury hotel for the weekend, with a full itinerary of activities and boozy dinners at night. It isn’t long before tensions and differences come to light: judgements and opinions on each other’s partners; family members who’ve lost touch and resent each other; teenagers who’d rather be elsewhere; parents who can’t connect with their children. All cooped up together for a whole weekend. As the author moved our point of view from one character to another we realise this family has so many secrets.

The setting is isolated and bleak. No amount of candlelight could ever convince me that concrete looks anything but brutally uncomfortable. However, thanks particularly to interior designer Petra Snæberg who can’t stop snapping for her Insta followers, the hotel’s phone is ringing and bookings are going through the roof. Set on a remote peninsula there is nowhere to go, except the equally bleak outdoors and with a set itinerary in place there’s no escape from each other. The atmosphere the author creates is incredible and had me veering from suspicious to unsettled to really creeped out. The uncovered windows leave guests feeling exposed, realising that if a light goes on they are lit up like a theatre stage. Not helped by the fact that an app controls heating and lighting, so easy to plunge another guest into darkness or into light by accident or just when they least expect it. We realise that certain people are watching others, but we’re not exactly sure why, whose stare is benign and whose stare means danger is lurking? Some narrators send icy cold shivers down the spine. Petra’s daughter Lea receives a message from an unknown number:

The video is dark, taken outside at night. Instinctively I bring the phone closer to my face, to see better. I turn up the volume. The sound crackles with the wind, then I hear a crunching of gravel. Footsteps. Someone is walking outside, along a gravel path. The video ends with the sound of a throat being cleared and a cough. I turn to the window, feeling the sweat break out all over my body. Isn’t there a gravel path leading to the hotel? Again I hear a rustling sound outside the door, then more knocking. Two taps, like before. Tap, tap.

Some of the scariest moments happen to Petra too. There’s a tension between her and her cousin Stefania who grew apart years ago when they were teenagers. An awkward drink with the two women and Stefania’s brother Viktor starts to open up old wounds. Petra is haunted by a misunderstanding that had tragic consequences, but does she even know the full story? Why does she find her hotel room door open when she’s been inside, showering and sleeping? Then there’s the creepy notes under the door. It’s enough to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

Then there’s Irma, who seems intrigued by this glamorous family who are so ‘together’. They’re Insta-perfect and seem so far outside her experience. She mocks Petra’s overuse of the word ‘sanctuary’ which is what your home is supposed to be, a place that reflects who you are. When Irma thinks of her flat it’s merely a box and her shelves are merely a place to keep stuff. It’s boring, functional and sparse – does that reflect who she is?

Mum always said I had an overactive imagination. As a child I lived in a world that no one else could see. One that was much brighter and better than the real one, like a fairy tale or story, because as I turned the pages of books I became the characters. […] But the older I got, the more difficult it became. I started comparing myself to other people. I realised that the flat Mum and I lived in probably wasn’t that tasteful, and the life we lived wasn’t actually that exciting. Perhaps it wasn’t so desirable after all to be constantly moving from place to place, constantly changing schools and spending most of my evenings alone at home.“

She imagines living like the family do, envious of the freedom to walk around the supermarket and pick up whatever they want, with no fear of their bank card being rejected. Irma’s not completely taken in by appearances though, while she scrolls she reminds herself of the gap between the selves we are on social media and the reality. She looks forward to people watching, spotting where the cracks are. Those tiny resentments. The things they keep from each other. After all, no family is perfect.

However it’s Lea who I’m most scared for because she’s just so vulnerable. Lea is a confused teenager and she is never without her phone. A lack of friends and support at home has left her so open to exploitation. She has a friend called Birger who might be staying nearby, maybe they might finally meet? Lea seems to get validation from his messages on her photos. In fact it’s that very validation and a need to be seen that convince her to do something dangerous. She realises how exposed she is too late and the signs that she’s struggling are being missed, until she walks out into the sea in all her clothes. All the ‘what ifs’ begin to race through her mind, but not once does she wonder whether Birger might not be who he claims to be. Then there’s Gulli, an older man who’s very appreciative of her posts and so easy to talk to, but the unease sets in when he too turns out to be nearby. There’s the old man she saw wandering the corridors, even though her family are the only guests. Is it her aunt Oddny’s unusual boyfriend Tryggvi, an outsider thanks to his job as a joiner and his unique dress sense? Could he be watching? Lea begins With her mum embroiled in secrets and lies of her own, will anybody notice that Lea is standing on a knife edge. Lea is being watched of course, but is that enemy looking in through the windows or are they closer? Inside the building?

The suspense builds beautifully and reaches fever pitch on the last night. Tryggvi falls drastically off the wagon on an important anniversary. Petra has made a bloodstained find in one of the bedrooms. Victor’s much younger, pregnant girlfriend has left the hotel in the night despite being unable to drive. Lea is also drinking heavily, scared about who is stalking her. While Petra has a long overdue conversation about the past, but can she trust her version of events? As a storm begins to roll in, cutting the hotel off from civilisation, horrifying truths bubble to the surface. Someone who has been waiting a long time for their moment makes their move in this complicated chess game. We don’t always see those who hide in plain sight and those we think we know could be monsters in disguise. I love this author’s ability to get inside the heads of her characters and pull the reader along with her. Here she builds a labyrinth of clues, red herrings and suspicious characters that I found absolutely impossible to resist. That’s why I was awake at 3am, with my attention split between the page in front of me and my ears attuned to even the slightest creak downstairs. After all you never know who might be watching.

Published by Orenda Books Thursday July 6th.

Meet the Author

Born in Akranes in 1988, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in globalisation in Norway before no one can be trusted, as the dark secrets
returning to Iceland to write her first novel. Combining writing with work as a stewardess and caring for her children, Eva finished her debut thriller The SCnreæakboenrgthfeaSmtaiilrys,awrheicuhnwcaosvpeurbelidsh…edaind the 2018. It became a bestseller in Iceland, going on to win the Blackbird Award. Published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, it became a digital number-one betseller in three countries, was shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories and won the CWA John Creasey Dagger in 2021. Girls Who Lie, the second book in the Forbidden Iceland series was shortlisted for the Petrona Award and the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, and Night Shadows followed suit. With over 200,000 copies sold in English alone, Eva has become one of Iceland’s – and crime- fiction’s – most highly regarded authors. She lives in Reyjavik with her husband and three children.

Thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours and Orenda Books for having me on the blog tour, to see more reviews and giveaways follow the rest of the tour.

Posted in Random Things Tours

The Girls of Summer by Katie Bishop

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Rachel has loved Alistair since she was seventeen.

Even though she hasn’t seen him for sixteen years and she’s now married to someone else.

Even though she was a teenager when they met.

Even though he is almost twenty years older than her.

Now in her thirties, Rachel has never been able to forget their golden summer together on a remote, sun-trapped Greek island. But as dark and deeply suppressed memories rise to the surface, Rachel begins to understand that Alistair – and the enigmatic, wealthy man he worked for – controlled much more than she ever realized.

Rachel has never once considered herself a victim – until now.

I devote a lot of my time to reading, but there are times when a book makes me drop everything. I carry it in my bag to read while waiting for appointments. It takes precedence over Netflix and all the other streaming channels that lure us into watching the screen every evening. I spent my whole morning in pyjamas reading, because I needed to finish this novel in one greedy gulp. I was completely transfixed by this story of a young girl taking a holiday to Greece that completely changes her life. Rachel is a naïve seventeen years old when she sets out to the island for a holiday with her friend Caroline. She sells it to her worried parents as being no different to a gap year, just a year earlier than normal. Once on the island they meet a group of girls who work in a local bar, belonging to entrepreneur Harry Taylor. When Rachel meets his right hand man Alistair she feels an immediate attraction but does he feel the same way? Surely she isn’t going to capture the attention of a handsome and sophisticated older man. She does notice him looking at her and it sends a shiver through her. Rachel has never thought of herself as beautiful, especially next to the other girls here, but as Alistair singles her out for attention she feels special. They have a connection, so strong that she makes a huge decision. She isn’t going to return to England with Caroline at the end of the holiday. She is going to work in the bar alongside the girls she’s made friends with and share their rather chaotic house nearby. Why would she return to her parent’s suffocatingly ordinary semi and her A’Levels when she can be on this golden island with Alistair and frequent the glamorous parties held by his mysterious boss at his enormous villa in the hills?

The structure of the book is interesting, because usually in time slip novels we have a protagonist in the here and now trying to solve a mystery interspersed with glimpses into the past that make sense of the present. Here the author turns that on it’s head. Rachel, now in her thirties and married to Tom, knows what happened in the past. She holds her relationship with Alistair up on a pedestal, their love was special and those months with him on a beautiful Greek island have been her benchmark of how love should be. It’s a revisit to the island with Tom and bumping into Helena that starts to unravel the rather idealised past she’s been narrating to us. The present actually deconstructs her past. As each new revelation washes over Rachel in the present it takes us into a past that’s changed a little, becoming murkier and more sinister. Rachel is still friends with Jules, a friend she made on the island who was separate to the bar. In fact it’s Jules who gives seventeen year old Rachel a warning, the locals think there’s something ‘off’ about the bar and perhaps it would be best to stay away. In the present Jules and her husband have Rachel and Tom over for dinner. They’re chatting about having a family, but Rachel and Tom have been trying for around a year without success. Tom mentions that they’ve talked about seeing a doctor to have a few things checked out when Rachel responds angrily that he wants to see a doctor, she hasn’t agreed to anything. Her harsh responses change the night and seem out of character. She’s told us about how easy it was to fall in love with Tom and how they’d taken steps to move in together almost without realising it, when she’d stayed for a few days while some work was being done on her flat. Of course by now we know that Rachel has Alistair’s number and has made plans to see him again. Could that have made her less invested in her future with Tom? Later we see that she’s stashed her contraceptive pills in a box of sanitary towels under the bathroom sink, she’s still been taking one regularly every day.

IT’S TOO HOT to be outside for long. Sweat is starting to dampen my scalp, thickening in the roots of my hair and pooling in the crevices of my collar bone. My t-shirt sticks to my spine and my arms are tinged pink, an ungainly line of skin beginning to blister along the top of my thigh in the almost unseasonable blaze of sun. I curl my toes into the damp sand and feel the sharpness of a small shell against the sole of my foot.

Our setting so powerful, that beautiful sun soaked island with the sound of boats rocking rhythmically in the harbour and that incredible opening line that took me straight back to standing in the sea and feeling that sharp edge of a sea shell. She captures that push and pull between the tourists and the locals who, even thought they’re in exactly the same place, see it completely differently – rather like Rachel and the other girls. I could see the slightly scruffy house they all share and the chaos and fun of getting ready together, sharing clothes and cheap bottles of wine. Harry’s house in the hills is another contrast, sleek and modernist with contemporary art on the walls. Even the sea looks different from high in the hills, appearing flat and smooth like a lake on the surface, but with dangerous riptides underneath. The present sections mainly take place in London and the author shows us the city as visitors probably don’t see it. She describes a rather special Sunday evening feel to the tube when it’s almost empty and strangely quiet, as if having a rest before the Monday morning commuter rush. She describes sudden rain showers and people having to improvise and use their handbag to shield their hair from the downpour. Rachel loves living in the capital, compared to her parent’s suburban family home. There’s an energy and unpredictability to it’s rhythms, a sense that there are so many options, anything could happen. Whereas home has a particular tameness and routine that Rachel finds stifling. Could Rachel’s decision to stay on the island and even her attraction to Alistair have something to do with the way she views her mum and dad’s life? We see Rachel fighting something similar in her marriage, the ordinariness igniting that constant yearning for something more, something others can’t see:

She was ‘hoping this trip would reignite some of the heat that has been missing from my marriage. Instead, I look across at my husband and feel faintly repulsed. His underarms are damp and staining the shirt he put on especially for our last night here. He’s staring out at the sea, but I know he isn’t seeing it the way I do. To him it could be anything. Any view, anywhere. To me the swell of the tide speaks of secrets, the salty air smelling irrevocably of promise.’

It’s very easy to understand the teenage Rachel. I fell in love at seventeen and had my heart broken. For years I idealised that relationship, using it as a benchmark for subsequent relationships that in hindsight had much more potential. She is so naïve that she can’t see what’s happening and how much she is being controlled. It’s almost apt that the book should come out in the light of the Phillip Schofield scandal, because it struck me how the responses to what happened are very different to the responses we might have had when I was seventeen in the early 1990s. Our gradual understanding of coercive control, grooming and power imbalances in relationships have coloured the way we view all relationships completely. An affair with a much older man probably wouldn’t have raised much of an eyebrow then, it’s only with hindsight that it becomes worrying. It’s only once the affair is viewed through the prism of our later experiences, such as having our own daughters, that our perspective changes. The #MeToo movement has changed how we see things. When I watched the film Bombshell I talked with friends I’ve had since I was a teenager and as the author writes in her afterword, we’ve all had experiences: of being groped without consent while waitressing or working behind a bar; having a boss who was a bit ‘handsy’ or made inappropriate comments; being touched an a crowded dance floor at a club. One of the most disturbing stories I have ever heard was from a woman who had known ‘wrestling’ between boys and girls in the school playground turn into sexual assault. I love that my stepdaughters are so much better informed than I was and are very conscientious about keeping each other safe when out with friends, although it frustrates me that they have to be so vigilant just to go out on a Friday night.

The Girls of Summer was born out of this strange and sometimes conflicting intersection between nostalgia and trauma, memories and the truth, power and sexuality. It explores the grey areas of consent, deepening a debate that has shifted and broadened since the #MeToo hashtag first took social media by storm. It interrogates what it means when we are forced to reframe a narrative that is so central to who we are that we aren’t sure who to be when that narrative turns out to be false. Is it better to face up to this truth, and all of the pain that comes with it, or to keep it hidden in the dark?

The Girls of Summer, Afterword

Watching the teenage Rachel walk into danger is upsetting because this reader was ahead of the narrative and knew something was very wrong with the island set-up, particularly the extravagant parties. There was no explanation for all the male party guests and the mysterious Harry rarely appeared. On her way to a party, Rachel is excited and hopes Alistair loves her dress, she’s grateful that the girls have been invited never realising that they are the reason for the party. The gaslighting afterwards was painful to read – ‘you had fun didn’t you?’ Or ‘don’t feel bad about what happened, it’s okay, you enjoyed it.’ When they’re in the middle of that level of pressure, manipulation and controlling the narrative how would they be able to see through it and understand what’s truly going on? Even for an adult Rachel it’s hard. Her relationship with Alistair and it’s veracity is part of who she is, how she views men and relationships and determines her friendships with the very women who might understand her most. When the truth of everything is revealed, the horror of the Full Moon party and further painful revelations, it’s so hard for her to absorb and accept it. I found it deeply sad that even towards the end of the book, Rachel has still held a tiny shred of hope that her version of the relationship with Alistair will prove to be the love story she wanted.

When the truth is so deeply painful and damaging, isn’t it understandable that she would want to sugar coat things a little? To push away the truth and not have to confront what happened to you. To not feel like a victim. I could truly understand the women coming together to confront the past and I found myself thinking about how powerful men frame the narrative. They talk about a cabal or coven of women coming together to destroy them. Women who have been taking drink or drugs and having an encounter they bitterly regret in the morning. I can only imagine what effect it must have on the individual, to hear comments like Prince Andrew’s ‘I have absolutely no memory of ever meeting that woman’. For Rachel, who lost absolutely everything that summer, the denial of her experience actually brings the first chink of light into her situation. I felt hopeful that with the help of this group of women, friends like Jules and an acceptance of the truth she could start to rebuild. The fact that I’m talking about Rachel like this, as a real person, is testament to the brilliant writing of Katie Bishop. She has created a real, flesh and blood woman in Rachel and I found myself almost wishing I could see her as a client, I so wanted a recovery for her. This is a powerful story, that may trigger some people who’ve had similar experiences, but it’s important for stories like this to be told. I could really see this as a television series, with some reviewers seeing a similarity with The White Lotus – a beautiful setting, a luxury resort and the dark truths lurking underneath all that perfection. I loved the ending though, a return to that beautiful place but with the ability to see the reality instead of a fantasy. I wanted her visit to the island to be different to the one she had with Tom at the beginning of the book. To accept that she will never feel the excitement and promise she felt all those years ago, but that she will experience new feelings that are every bit as worthwhile.

I had thought I could recapture something of how I felt all those years ago by coming back here, but it has only served to remind me how slippery and impossible it is to summon the past. Perhaps this is simply the nature of growing up. Of growing older. Perhaps I will never feel the same again.

Meet The Author

Katie Bishop is a writer and journalist based in the UK. She grew up in the Midlands before moving to Oxford to work in publishing in her early twenties. Whilst working as an assistant editor she started writing articles in her spare time, going on to be published in the New York Times, Guardian, Independent and Vogue.

Katie started writing The Girls of Summer during the first UK COVID lockdown, after becoming increasingly interested in stories emerging from the #MeToo movement. The novel is inspired by her own experiences of backpacking, and by her interest in how our personal narratives can be reshaped and understood in light of cultural and social changes.

In 2020, Katie moved back to the Midlands, and now lives in Birmingham with her partner. She is a full-time writer.

Posted in Publisher Proof, Random Things Tours

Henry VIII The Heart and the Crown by Alison Weir

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I came to this book with quite a store of Henry knowledge – I promise not all of it comes from The Tudors, but this has been a great excuse to dig out the series again and enjoy Henry Cavill in leather trousers. In my previous home I had the alcoves each side of my fireplace turned into bookshelves and one side was all books on the Tudor period. A mix of novels and non-fiction it covered all the usual authors: David Starkey, Phillipa Gregory, Lucy Worsley, Alison Weir and many more. I have read each of Weir’s six wives series and her other novels on Elizabeth I and Lady Jane Grey. Her last novel was based on Elizabeth of York, Henry’s mother and daughter of Edward IV. All of them have been that brilliant mix of sound background research and an ability to get inside the characters and bring them to life. However, you don’t have to read any of her earlier work to enjoy this book, I’m just a Tudor Nerd! I wondered how Henry would fare, given that her previous books have shown great empathy for the position women found themselves in at the Tudor Court, especially where that ill treatment was at Henry’s hands. Interestingly, I read this alongside Prince Harry’s autobiography Spare, something that fascinated me given that Henry VIII’s story is largely influenced by that dynamic of ‘heir and spare.’ Henry is the man who was never intended to be king. Only the death of his brother Arthur, Prince of Wales, opened the way for a king who seemed almost meant to be. How could this well-built, ornately dressed and powerful man of the Holbein portrait not have been the King? It seems strange to think he was probably destined to be Duke of York and of much lesser importance than the huge presence he still is in our royal history. Did I see parallels between the man whose Twitter followers call Good King Harry and this similarly red-haired Tudor spare? Only a few!

I thought what Weir did really well was put Henry’s controversial and bloody reign into context. It’s easy to forget where Henry comes from and how violent and treacherous the route to the Crown was prior to his birth. As Weir explains, Henry’s maternal grandfather was Edward IV, a man who took the crown in the years of fighting between the York and Lancaster royal houses, known as the Wars of the Roses after the county emblems of the white and the red rose. However, it was also known as the Cousin’s Wars and to put that in a modern context it’s as if Princes Harry and William fought for the crown against Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. It took a concerted effort by Henry’s grandmothers Margaret Beaufort and her rival Elizabeth Woodville to bring both houses together with a royal marriage and the new emblem of the Tudor Rose. Margaret was Henry VII’s mother and fought hard for her son to claim his crown, which he eventually did on the battlefield against Richard III. Elizabeth was Edward IV wife and despite losing both her sons, the rightful heirs to the throne who are believed to have been murdered in the Tower of London, she encouraged her daughter Elizabeth of York to make a political marriage to Henry Tudor, the new King. The emblem of their arranged marriage was a red rose for Lancaster with a white centre for York. These became known as the Tudor Rose and can be seen in many Tudor palaces and churches like York Minster. The country had endured years of in-fighting, from huge battles to hidden murders such as Edward IV and Richard, then Duke of York, allegedly murdering their brother by drowning him in a barrel of malmsey. Henry’s parents brought some stability to the country, despite Henry VII’s constant paranoia about usurpers and the lost Princes from the tower reappearing. If we imagine all of this followed by the death of Henry’s elder brother Arthur who died without heirs, it’s possible to see some of pressure upon the young king’s shoulders. Considering the paranoia he witnessed in his own father and his grandmother Margaret who drilled it into Henry that the only way to keep the crown secure was to have heirs, we can see the seeds of Henry’s own obsessions, paranoia and hatred of betrayal.

Often we only see the later King Henry on television and in fiction, because those latter years of his reign from meeting Anne Boleyn onwards are so dramatic. It’s easy to forget that Henry ruled and lived happily with his first wife and Arthur’s widow Catherine of Aragon from 1509 until he met Anne Boleyn in 1525, although he remained married to Catherine until 1533. There are only fourteen years between his marriage to Anne until his own death in 1547, in which he married, divorced or beheaded four more wives. I loved how Weir captures the earlier and often ignored years of Henry’s reign because we see something of the great prince that all of Europe were talking about. A tall, handsome and robust young man in direct contrast to his brother Arthur, he was also a great horseman and a competitive jouster. He was often reprimanded for missing lessons in order to go hunting or practising in the tilt yard with his companions, usually Charles Brandon. Yet he wasn’t just an imposing physical presence, Henry was very intelligent in that he spoke French and understood Latin and was even taught by the philosopher Erasmus. He could compose music and was an elegant dancer, with a definite eye for the ladies of the court. Even his early happy years with Catherine were littered with affairs, the most famous being Anne’s sister Mary Boleyn and Bessie Blount, both of whom were rumoured to have the King’s illegitimate children. It was interesting to read about Henry’s role in welcoming Catherine as Arthur’s bride and how much he admired her from a very young age. After Arthur’s death he was adamant he wanted to marry Catherine, with a dispensation sought from the Pope for their union. Henry’s father seemed reluctant to solemnise the match, despite a betrothal ceremony taking place. I have read elsewhere that the King had considered Catherine for himself and it was only when the King died that their marriage took place, in fact it was one of the first things Henry did as King. He may not have been faithful physically but there was a constancy in Henry’s feelings for Catherine, he admired her greatly and felt she would be a fitting queen for him.

Weir also shows how different Henry’s court was from his father’s. Henry VII had faults, but he was contemplative, careful when making decisions and had financially secured their reign after finding a depleted treasury due to years of war. Henry wanted to be a generous King, known to keep a a celebratory and ostentatious court. He undertook building new palaces, promoting art and culture, keeping a generous table and was determined to use some of the money saved by his father to take Calais and become King of France once more. He wanted to excel in all things, but this extravagance was also a sign of things to come, developing from generous young King to a petulant and spoiled man with a body ruined by greed, excess and risk taking. The most damaging risk being his jousting accident, where he was knocked out cold for some time and sustained a leg wound that never healed, caused intense pain and smelled terrible due to infection. I have often wondered whether it was possible that he sustained a head injury in this accident, because it does seem to be a turning point in his life, after which he made several questionable decisions. He decreed that his courtiers should acknowledge and accept his relationship with Anne Boleyn as well as his plan to make her Queen. His insistence on this point led to a relationship breakdown with one of his most trusted advisors, Sir Thomas More. The day he executed More was also a point of no return, I believe it haunted him for the rest of his life that he’d killed a good man, a man of God.

Weir made me look at Henry’s early life with more empathy than I have before. She brings to life the childhood loss of his mother (another event in common with our Prince Harry) and the huge impact it had. He remembers her softness and her gentle voice, a memory he needs when his father is preoccupied with duty. Henry has to grow up early, but little reminders of his mum pop up everywhere, especially her smell. I felt he could have been a different man if she had lived. There are some warning signs of the tyrant he becomes, because he’s jealous of Arthur from a young age. Arthur keeps his own court in Wales and Henry would love to have his own court, his own income and a bit of Arthur’s power, not to mention wanting Arthur’s bride from when she first arrived in the country. When all of it becomes his I did wonder whether there was a bit of survivor’s guilt. His father’s paranoia about losing the crown and his over-protectiveness after the death of his first son, mean he keeps Henry from carousing in bars with his friends and preserves some of his reputation for marriage. Weir shows us the weight of that history and expectation on the young prince’s shoulders. It’s something Henry is constantly pushing against, so that when he does unexpectedly become King he is determined to make changes. He has a tendency to promote men who are self-made, above the usual courtiers or advisors of his father’s. He relies on Cardinal Wolsey and after that he promotes Thomas Cromwell, a commoner and son of a blacksmith. The men who advised his father are old now and have known Henry his whole life, they’re aware of a recklessness in the young King that needs reigning in. Newly made men show the deference Henry expects as a King, but being younger and perhaps more aware of the way the world is changing they also allow him to take risks. We also see Henry’s own paranoia emerging when he and Catherine start to lose children, most particularly his two month old son. I felt like I understood Henry better after reading this novel and it was interesting to see some thoughts I’d had about Henry’s personality and behaviour placed in context. I didn’t like him more, but I did feel sorry for him in parts especially in his difficult relationship with his father. Weir provides possible reasons for the cruel and changeable behaviour that made Henry the most famous King in our history. I felt completely immersed in his psyche but also the whole Tudor court because Weir breathes life into a story we all know something about, turning historical caricatures into real people. Their problems also seem less far-fetched given Royal headlines over the last few years, although this spare ended up with the crown.

Many thanks to Headline Review and Caitlin Raynor for my proof copy of this novel and to Anne at Random Things Tours for my place on the blog tour and your support.

Meet the Author

Alison Weird is a bestselling historical novelist of Tudor fiction, and the leading female historian in the UK. She has published more than thirty books, including many leading works of non-fiction and has sold over three million copies worldwide. Her novels include the Tudor Rose trilogy which spans three generations of history’s most iconic family – The Tudors, and the highly acclaimed Six Tudor Queens series about the wives of Henry VIII, all of which were Sunday Times bestsellers. Alison is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an honorary life patron of Historic Royal Palaces.

Posted in Orenda, Random Things Tours

Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen

Posted on by thelotusreaders

The first thing I loved about this book was that stunning cover. I hadn’t fully taken it in when I received the book, but once I’d found my reading glasses I couldn’t stop looking at it. That tiny lit up window, a little orange glow of creativity in the darkness really fired up my imagination. I’d love Orenda to create some book posters to accompany their author’s work. The blurb drew me in with it’s conflict between genre authors and their supposedly high brow literary fiction colleagues. Hannah writes literary fiction and is dismayed at a book festival to see the crowds attending a Q and A with Jørn Jenson, the darling of Scandi Noir, who churns out a formulaic book every year. Yet he’s filling a tent with fans and she’s in a lonely booth waiting for someone to drop by. I loved that she launched a book at his head! In the ensuing row, Jensen goads Hannah into saying she could write a crime novel in a month. Her agent uses the incident as a great marketing strategy and pours fuel on the fire, talking to the press about the wager and even putting Hannah on a plane to Iceland as a writing retreat. There she will live with a lady called Ella and hopefully, within thirty days, complete a commercial success. Yet within days of Hannah’s arrival there’s a real life crime, as Ella’s nephew Thor is found drowned in the waters of the harbour. Can Hannah use the case to write her crime masterpiece? As she starts to ask questions about this small town community will she find inspiration, or will she be in more danger than she ever imagined?

Hannah is an interesting heroine in that she isn’t all that likeable at first. She’s prickly, arrogant and a definite book snob.

“Hannah Krause-Bendix has never received a bad review. Not once has anyone had a negative thing to say in any of the reviews of her four novels. A literary superstar, twice nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. Didn’t win, but that doesn’t matter; anyway, she doesn’t believe the mark of good literature is how many awards it’s won. She’s actually refused the numerous other prizes she’s won over the years. No – Hannah sees herself as a forty-five year old living embodiment of integrity and will always maintain that it is beneath her to seek commercial success.”

I was starting to feel sorry for her editor and publisher. Her disgust for the current literary scene is obvious. She hates festivals and signings, prizes, social media and is dismissive of bloggers (how dare she – *swoon*). As she picks up Jensen’s latest book as if it is ‘a pair of homeless man’s lost pants’ she notes that most of the reviews are from obscure bloggers she’s never heard of. She’s no better as she arrives in Iceland, annoyed that her new landlady is late, that her jeep looks and sounds like it’s five miles off it’s new home at the scrap yard, plus she drives with her steamed up glasses so close to the windscreen that Hannah wonders whether she can drive, or even see. Then she makes the terrible faux pas of calling her friend and publisher Bastian to get her a flight back to Copenhagen, assuming Ella can’t understand her. Of course she can. I was cringing about her behaviour. Yet I didn’t dislike her. Despite these failings, plus the alcoholism, infidelity, snooping and complete conviction she’s in the right, there’s something rather freeing about her impulsiveness. We all have those thoughts, those imps of the perverse, that pop into our mind and encourage us to poke that person who’s bending over to reach a low shelf in the supermarket. We don’t do it of course, but Hannah does. In the course of the novel she randomly feels a homeless man’s head, buys the town teenagers alcohol, starts an affair with someone she’s barely met and as we know, tries to hit a man in the head with a book. She seems disconnected from others in the sense that we don’t know her family, she has few obligations and she thinks nothing of asking very personal questions in entirely inappropriate circumstances. I sort of loved that.

There is definitely a blackly comic element to this story and a satirical eye for both the book world and crime fiction in general. There’s a meta element to the story too, as Hannah makes observations and discoveries about crime fiction that then seem to bleed into the actual case. She observes that her investigations are suggesting the case is actually quite simple to solve, Jørn, who has followed her to Iceland, advises that in crime fiction the killer is never the most obvious suspect. Subsequently, her enquiries move from the her current suspect and start to take a darker turn, towards the last people she’s suspected. Jørn tells her:

“ a good crime novel has three crucial components. One: a spectacular and violent opening, preferably a murder. Two: false leads and false suspects. […] Point three is surprises.’

He also rather amusingly points out that the protagonist shouldn’t be likeable, because no one enjoys a likeable protagonist in crime. In fact during a violent clash with her first, rather boringly obvious suspect, she even doubts her own credentials as a protagonist. As she fights for her life, she berates herself for her stupid plan of luring him to a window, because she’s now in front of an open window with a possible murderer.

Of course, he isn’t the murderer after all. In the end the crime is complex and rather like the book of Icelandic sagas that Ella gives her to read. The roots of this murder lie way in the past with the last people Hannah suspected. In fact in the echo of the saga, someone takes something that is highly prized and didn’t belong to them, setting in motion years of secrets, lies and denial. Yes, there’s a lot of the clever stuff going on that us ‘weirdo’ readers like, as one teenager describes Hannah’s fan base, but there’s also a solid thriller as well. It’s a bleak and claustrophobic atmosphere as soon as Hannah reaches the island where she knows no one and feels alien. The remoteness of the town and it’s isolation when the bad weather comes just add to that sense of being completely alone. This is not a place to be injured or to be a victim of crime; there is only one police officer in town, with back up over an hour away on a good day. Jørn may preen and prance around like the archetypal action hero, but he is surprisingly very useful to have around in a sticky situation and despite his woeful writing, is possibly a good friend to have, especially where he’s the only familiar and friendly face. Alongside Hannah I suspected three or four different people and the author kept me guessing, just leaving tiny clues along the way. At first there was a little bit of scepticism -I remember watching Murder She Wrote with my parents when I was younger and my dad wondering why nobody told Jessica Fletcher to ‘bugger off and mind her own business’. However, once the action started to heat up I forgot that Hannah had no business interrogating suspects and just kept reading. She’s no Jessica and this is definitely not cozy crime. It’s dark, disorientating and scary as hell, but you’ll not be able to put it down. This is an incredible debut and I’d love to see where Hannah ends up next. Now back to that cover – I think it would make a lovely tote bag ……

Meet The Author

Jenny Lund Madsen is one of Denmark’s most acclaimed scriptwriters (including the international hits Rita and Follow the Money) and is known as an advocate for better representation for sexual and ethnic minorities in Danish TV and film. She recently made her debut as a playwright with the critically acclaimed Audition (Aarhus Teater) and her debut literary thriller, Thirty Days of Darkness, first in an addictive new series, won the Harald Mogensen Prize for Best Danish Crime Novel of the year and was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key Award. She lives in Denmark with her young family.

Posted in Random Things Tours

When We Fall by Aoife Clifford

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I’m slowly becoming a fan of ‘Outback Noir’ so I guess I picked up Aoife Clifford’s new novel with certain expectations. I was pleasantly surprised to find a few differences in this crime novel and a labyrinthine story that really pulls the reader into small town Australia with its complicated relationships. As one Merritt resident says:

“People here are a bit like trees, with roots deep in the earth, far more tangled than what’s visible on the surface.”

Criminal barrister Alex has returned to her home town to spend some time with her mother Denny and have one of those difficult conversations. Denny is struggling with dementia, but is stubborn and in denial. She had a distant relationship with her own parents and had Alex as a young Mum. Alex has bad memories of her grandparents so Merritt isn’t her favourite place, but Denny is getting worse, no matter how much she tries to cover it up and Alex must talk to her about sheltered accommodation. It’s on a beach walk trying to broach the subject that they find a dismembered leg with a distinctive black feather tattoo. It turns out that the leg belongs to art gallery owner Maxine MacFarlane and local police chief Kingsley ‘King’ Kelly dismisses it as a boating accident when the rest of her body is found further up the coast. But Alex’s barrister’s instincts tell her there might be more to this than meets the eye and she starts to snoop. King Kelly warns her off very early on and comes across as the archetypal small town cop – lazy, prejudiced and jaded, not to mention a misogynist. He holds court in his local cafe and seems well connected in the town, especially with people who matter. Alex wants to question a possible link between Maxine’s death and the disappearance of artist and activist Bella Gregg two years before. Not only did Bella exhibit at Maxine’s gallery, but as an activist she often protested wearing black feather wings that went missing at the same time she did. There’s also a strange symmetry about their autopsy results – Maxine was washed up on the sea shore but didn’t have saltwater in her lungs whereas Bella did have saltwater in her lungs but was found inland. There was also an upcoming exhibition at Maxine’s gallery, linked to Bella’s death. Could this have laid the blame for Bella’s death at a local’s door?

The plot is intriguing, full of different avenues that are never obvious. Some keep you reading ferociously but turn out to be red herrings, while truths lurk underneath like a riptide. One minute I suspected someone, then someone completely different, although that’s not surprising in a town where male suspects are plentiful. My eye was on King Kelly throughout because he’s a thoroughly unpleasant character, but there are strangers in town; a new doctor who’s just arrived, as well as a visiting investor in a potential eco-friendly extension of the town. Locally there’s the rep for the town extension who seems keen to do anything for a better future than the local fishermen he went to school with. Bella’s own stepfather is known to be dealing drugs and there’s even a link to Alex’s family, with one thread involving a GP who was the partner of her grandfather. The past definitely has a role here, both in the crime and in the questions Alex has about her childhood. I was nervous for her in a town where outspoken women seem to get silenced. Alex is just as stubborn as her mother once she has an idea in her head and she’s been without cases to distract her of late.

Aside from the crime, Alex has a lot to contend with: her husband Tom is pushing for their divorce to move a bit quicker; her career seems to have taken a nosedive since their separation; then there’s her formidable mother to contend with. I loved the snappish and often humorous dialogue between Alex and Denny. There was a lot of truth in their exchanges, but that humorous edge offered a bit of light in the shade of a terrible crime. Alex’s instincts are strong, she’s perceptive and intelligent but seems to have a blind spot when it comes to danger. She places herself in potentially life threatening situations without seeing the danger looming over her. I didn’t always understand why, but felt it might have had something to do with her childhood in Merritt. Clifford surprised me with Alex’s home town, because I didn’t get the dry outback setting I expected. Despite wanting to develop as a holiday destination, it didn’t feel very welcoming and it seems to be raining constantly. Everyone is in raincoats. This is a small seaside town and has a claustrophobic feel without the outback heat. She shows it through the people, like the local cop with a finger in every pie and suspicious residents who are reluctant to talk. She gave me an Australia I hadn’t seen before and it gave this read a unique feel. This was such a well-written book, sinister and complicated with an ending that felt just right. I’m now looking for a gap to read her earlier novels, because I’ve already ordered them.

Meet the Author

Aoife Clifford is the author of All These Perfect Strangers, which was long-listed for both
the Australian Industry General Fiction Book of the Year and the Voss Literary Prize, and Second Sight, a Publishers Weekly (starred review) and PW Pick for Book of the Week. Aoife’s short stories have been published in Australia, United Kingdom and the United States, winning premier prizes such as the Scarlet Stiletto and the S.D. Harvey Ned Kelly Award.

Posted in Random Things Tours

The Forgotten Garden by Sharon Gosling

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Thanks to enjoying the blog tour for Sharon Gosling’s first novel, The House Beneath the Cliffs, she became an author I kept an eye on. I was on the look out for her next and The Lighthouse Bookshop confirmed for me that if I’m looking for an escapist read, she is one of my go-to authors. She seems to effortlessly blend a mix of sadness and heartache, secrets, warmth and potential romance into an engrossing read that’s so enjoyable. Our main character, Luisa McGregor, has allowed herself to become stuck. A life that once felt safe, secure and predictable is now starting to stifle Luisa and she needs more, a new challenge perhaps. Then into her lap falls great opportunity. Her friend Oliver presents a daunting, but tantalising proposition. Instead of carrying on as a gardening assistant to a woman she feels increasingly out of step with, she should check out an opportunity to build a whole new garden at a site near the Cumbrian coast. There’s a pot of money available to build a community garden on wasteland next to a gym and youth club. Luisa agrees to visit the site and is daunted by the amount of work needed, but also inspired by what could be achieved there. As we meet the people of this disadvantaged area of Collaton, we can see what a community garden could mean to these people. There’s teacher Cas, who is pouring all of his energy and spare time into the young people of the area. Harper is a teenager with a lot on her plate, but determined to find a way out of Collaton towards a different future. Can Luisa design a garden that brings both healing, inspiration and a stronger sense of community for the residents?

I did connect with Luisa and the position she has become stuck in. She has had to recover from the terrible trauma of losing her husband in an accident. She has dragged herself up from the darkest and most difficult days following her husband’s death, to a point where she feels she has rebuilt her life. She’s working in garden design, even if she doesn’t like her boss, she has a nice home and great support in her sister. Really though, she’s just treading water and terrified of stretching herself or reaching for something that she could lose. I loved the way the author shows Luisa coming alive again as she works on the new garden. She literally blooms alongside her plants and seems to gain something from working with others and passing on her skills. Without trying too hard, the garden draws in those who need it including a woman who’s been her husband’s carer since an accident paralysed him. He’s initially sceptical and annoyed that his wife’s attention has been captured by Luisa’s plans, but just a few hours a week gaining respite from her caring role has transformed her. It’s not long before he’s creating bespoke benches for the garden, adapting the way he uses his joinery skills to his disability. Harper is a character who really stands out, she’s a young girl brimming with potential, but struggling to escape the difficult circumstances of her life. She is the main caregiver for her younger brother, now that their mum has died and their father has escaped into the bottle. Harper has a skill for mechanics, engineering and invention. She spends her spare time either at the club with Cas or helping at the local garage where she’s doing up a battered old Mini that Cas has gifted to her. Harper’s story shows us how hard it can be for someone to escape where they live and their family circumstances. Her cousin Darren is out of prison and is back dealing drugs in the area again, Harper is devastated when he preys upon her younger brother, Max. Max is easily influenced, especially when it comes to friendships. He struggles to make friends and has been subjected to bullying, so when someone older and seemingly cool pays him attention it’s an easy conquest. Darren wants him as a drug runner or lookout, but Harper puts her foot down and offers herself up instead. I was on tenterhooks, knowing that this decision would have consequences in the future.

There are a few powerful scenes that really stand out. Max has a secret that he’s been working on in Harper’s absence, inspired by the garden and when it was unveiled I almost held my breath. I loved the idea for his garden and the description was so lush and vivid I could almost smell the vegetation and feel the warmth. I could imagine sitting there, early on a sunny morning and enjoying a coffee. I also kept thinking what an incredible wedding venue it would be. It’s clear as soon as Cas and Luisa meet that there is potential for romance, but I wondered if both of them were too hurt by their pasts to take the chance. I was sure it needed a catalyst and the author certainly gives us one. The scene where Darren’s thugs get into the garden was heartbreaking and heart-stopping. I could actually feel the fear of the volunteers and residents as Darren shows his true colours and the bad boy reputation he’s trying to create for himself in the community. However, the gang don’t expect to be challenged, with devastating results. I was rooting for Cas and Luisa, with their endeavours in the community and their potential romance too. I read to the end quickly, determined to see the garden succeed and whether Luisa would overcome her fear of love and inevitable loss. I took the book on holiday with me and it was an enjoyable and emotional read, with an ending that was truly satisfying. This is an author who understands that life has seasons and that women have an amazing capacity to accept life’s changes, as well as the resilience to reinvent themselves and start over again.

Published by Simon and Schuster UK 27th April 2023

Meet the Author

I’ve been writing since I was a teenager, which is now a distressingly long time ago! I started out as an entertainment journalist – actually, my earliest published work was as a reviewer of science fiction and fantasy books. I went on to become a staff writer and then an editor for print magazines, before beginning to write non-fiction making-of books tied in to film and television, such as The Art and Making of Penny Dreadful and Wonder Woman: The Art and Making of the Film. 

I now write both children’s and adult fiction – my first novel was called The Diamond Thief, a Victorian-set steampunk adventure book for the middle grade age group. That won the Redbridge Children’s prize in 2014, and I went on to write two more books in the series before moving on to other adventure books including The Golden Butterfly, which was nominated for the Carnegie Award in 2017, The House of Hidden Wonders, and a YA horror called FIR, which was shortlisted for the Lancashire Book of the Year Award in 2018. 

My debut adult novel was published by Simon & Schuster in August 2021. It was called The House Beneath the Cliffs and it was set in a very small coastal village in Scotland. The idea for it had lodged in my head years before. I have a love for unusual dwelling places and I came across a tiny house that completely captured my imagination. My adult fiction tends to centre on small communities – feel-good tales about how we find where we belong in life and what it means when we do. Although I have also published full-on adult horror stories, which are less about community and more about terror and mayhem…

I was born in Kent but now live in a very small house in an equally small village in northern Cumbria with my husband, who owns a bookshop in the nearby market town of Penrith.

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The Walled Garden by Sarah Hardy

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I found this historical fiction debut absolutely captivating from the beginning. It begins with Lord and Lady Rayne who live in the big house, Oakburne Hall, with just enough room to avoid each other as much as possible. In fact since he returned from the war, Stephen has slept in a small room in the servant’s quarters while Alice lays alone in their marital bed. She finds refuge in their garden, hoping that even in these dark post-war years some seeds of hope will grow.

‘Some secrets are too terrible to tell. And in 1946 Britain is a country where most keep silent. What you witnessed during the war, what you sanctioned, what you are still afraid of, is left unsaid. For those bitter years of conflict and separation you buoyed yourselves up on sentiment, crooning ‘We’ll Meet Again’. And we did meet again, thinks Alice Rayne, only to discover we have nothing to say to one another.‘

No one survives war unscathed and though bodies are healing, their psychological wounds run deep. Those who were left behind are just as scarred as those who left to fight. Stephen Rayne was once sweet and gentle and his wife Alice truly loved him. Yet he has returned a man that she doesn’t recognised. He is bitter and angry, destroyed emotionally by what he has seen and done, holding on to secrets Alice can only guess at. She is lonely and although she hates to admit it, she is increasingly afraid of the man her husband has become, Alice is struggling to put together the pieces of her marriage and save Oakbourne Hall from total collapse. After two lots of death duties, money is incredibly tight so she begins with the walled garden and, as it starts to bear fruit, she finds the seeds of a new and forbidden love being sown.

I had so much empathy for Alice and all women who longed for the man they loved to return, only to find their relief and joy cut short when a stranger came home in their place. I’ve read a lot of novels set post-WW1, but not many set after WW2, but the same social changes come up in 1946. People are struggling financially, at the big house two world wars have taken two heirs in quick succession and the family can’t afford to repair or develop the hall. The villagers are coping with grief, poverty and rationing, and still waiting for men who’ve not yet returned. Women have once again stepped into the breech and taken on men’s jobs, giving them even more freedom and an unwillingness to be pushed back into their traditional roles. In this village, it’s not only Stephen and Alice who are suffering and as they come up against other people’s trauma the results are profoundly moving. The social change is well explored through the character of the village GP, another changed man whose longing for social justice leads to arguments with his wife and children, not to mention Stephen. Clergyman George holds so much guilt, because his ill health meant he didn’t go to fight. How can he minister to these men who’ve been through so much, things he can’t even imagine? As Stephen isolates himself more from his wife, Alice finds solace restoring the walled garden and in talking to George with whom she strikes up a friendship. He is learning about gardens and she is learning about his love of classical music.

As the friendship between George and Alice deepens, she has to think about what she wants. She has loved Stephen for so long, but his angry and violent outbursts are scaring her. Can she love this new person? George listens and appreciates her opinions, in a way she hasn’t had for a long time. When she takes a break from Oakbourne and visits her sister in London, she meets with George in a pub where his beautiful singing voice is in demand at the piano. This interlude is like a time outside of reality, where all worries and cares are set aside. With the late hour and room for George to stay at her sister’s flat will emotion boil over? In all this time, George is struggling with his ministry and his feelings for Alice. When Stephen also confides in him he has a terrible choice to make, does he guide Stephen towards speaking to his wife and saving his marriage? On the other hand, he could advise him in a way that would benefit his feelings for Alice. It’s a terrible choice to have to make, even worse he knows that his lungs are deteriorating and if he doesn’t take up the GP’s offer of treatment abroad he has only months to live. Will he follow his heart or will he sacrifice his own feelings to minister to this couple as their spiritual guide?

This is such an emotional crescendo, especially since we’re also sent back into the war and Stephen’s time infiltrating the french resistance and helping them to fight against the Germans. There, he has to make a horrible choice in order to save someone from a worse fate. His choice haunts him, although in reality he is forced to act by his knowledge of the barbarity of the German soldiers. The Maquis hail him a hero and now want to give him an honour, setting off terrible flashbacks, insomnia and guilt. Even if he tells Alice everything, can their marriage recover? I was so involved with these characters, they were so incredibly real and full of complex emotions. I loved the walled garden as a symbol of hope for the future and Alice’s work there is an act of faith, planting her hope in a symbolic gesture to her marriage and the country as a whole. I think the most moving thing about the whole novel is that this is a war that my grandparents lived through. We are so used to seeing this generation as an example, even recently our actions through Covid and the current cost of living crisis are meant to resemble their grit and determination. I believe the famous David Cameron quote is ‘we’re all in it together’ evoking the stiff upper lip of this very generation. I think because of this nostalgic view on WW2 we forget that this generation had the same emotions and complicated relationships that we do now. This book stopped me from thinking of that generation as a whole and instead to think about individuals and what they went through, how it affected them and their families and the emotional turmoil wrought by couples being apart for years. It was the wartime sections of Andrea Levy’s Small Island that first made me think about these issues and this novel woke those thoughts up again, just in a more rural setting. No generation is better than any other when it comes to trauma, we are all human. This is a stunning debut from Sarah Hardy and I’d love to read her work again.

Meet the Author

Sarah Hardy has lived for the last 10 years on the Suffolk coast which is where her novel is set. Before that she lived in London, Dublin and the Hebrides. She has worked on national magazines and newspapers.

Posted in Random Things Tours

The Space Between Us by Doug Johnstone.

Posted on by thelotusreaders

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Normally, I’d say this is the most unusual book I’ve read in quite a while, but in fact it’s been a brilliant month for Orenda Books as both their March releases have been quirky, original and quietly brilliant. It’s no secret that I love Doug Johnstone’s Skelf series and it’s mix of philosophy, astronomy, family and crime. This stand alone novel has some of the same attributes and a whole lot more besides. One night a strange occurrence in the Scottish night sky brings together strangers Ava, Lennox and Heather. Several people see the strange light and sparks in the air and all have severe cerebral haemorrhagic strokes. These are the most rare type of strokes and usually they’re fatal. Ava, Lennox and Heather are the only people to wake up the next day completely unscathed. Each one has their problems: Heather had been wading into the water with stones in her pockets after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis but is saved by something in the water. Lennox is a lonely teenager, bouncing round children’s homes and is being set upon by bullies when he sees the lights in the sky and the stroke hits. Ava is pregnant and desperate to get away from husband Mike, a vile abuser obsessed with power and control. Meanwhile, on the beach lies a strange octopus or giant squid, sprawled on the sand and guarded by police. This cephalopod appeared as these unusual strokes happened and no one knows what to do with it. It’s not the usual octopus as it only has five tentacles and it has strange rippling colours under it’s surface. Police officer Nina is on the case and reporter Ewan is determined to find out the link between the creature and the three disparate people who band together to rescue the creature and have now gone on the run.

None of the three fugitives can understand why the extraterrestrial life form has chosen them. At first their link with Lennox seems most powerful. Despite his background of being let down by others, Lennox is very open to the creature and is the one to name them Sandy. He has even allowed them to form a telepathic connection by leaving a sort of organic hearing aid in his ear, turning them into ‘Lennox-Sandy-Partial’. It’s hard for Lennox to explain Sandy, he immediately uses ‘they’ as Sandy’s pronoun, not because of a dual gender but because they’re a dual person. Lennox thinks Sandy may be part of a larger whole or has a hive mind, one that can link with humans should they wish. For Lennox, being part of a larger whole must sound wonderful and grounding in a way he’s never experienced before.

‘It was weird, having spent his life in the care system, he didn’t have a fucking clue who he really was. The policy preventing you finding out about your birth parents out about your birth parents until you were eighteen was strict, and even then, the chaotic system of records meant you might never find out. Shit just got lost. So he’d drifted rudderless through his early life, with no sense of community or belonging anywhere.’

Ava is the next to connect with Sandy, mainly because she trusts him to tell her whether her unborn baby is okay. Ava is also alone in the sense that she alone knows the truth about her life with husband Michael. Ava was already running when she encountered Sandy, running from Michael and his attempts to destroy her. Michael is the archetypal abuser, who started out by separating her from friends and family then used techniques like gaslighting so she would question herself, even her own sanity. Then the physical and the sexual violence began. Even Ava’s mother has abandoned her, thinking Michael is a lovely man who simply has his wife’s best interests at heart. Ava wants to leave before her baby is born and her decision to flee with Sandy up to the north of Scotland is partly because she hopes Michael won’t find her there. These are the first people to meet Ava and accept her for who she is and they immediately believe her account about her marriage.

The last to connect with Sandy is Heather and that’s because she’s deliberately closed herself off to others. Heather has a terminal brain tumour, something she’s been keeping from everyone including her new friends. She has immediately taken on the role of Mum, looking after all of them and even preparing to deliver Ava’s baby. When they approach Heather’s ex-husband for help, the others are surprised, but Heather assures them he is one of life’s good guys. She is clearly genuinely pleased to see him. However, seeing him with a new wife and starting a family is particularly painful. A terrible tragedy forced this couple apart and seeing him brings it flooding back. Can Sandy approach her now, when she’s at her most vulnerable and what help can he offer? All three are fascinating characters and as a group they seem unbeatable. It’s their very connection that gives them strength. However, they are being pursued; by the police, the journalist called Ewan and a shadowy group of men in black who seem capable of anything if it gets them closer to Sandy.

As always Doug Johnstone is capable of taking several unusual, even improbable scenarios but writing about them in such a clever way you don’t question it. I never once stopped to think it seemed incredible. Similarly, our three main characters never pause or worry they’re doing the wrong thing. There’s one incidence where Lennox stops to question what’s happening:

‘There weren’t many Google hits for ‘telepathic octopus’. Shocker. Lennox looked up from his phone and stared at Sandy. He felt like a different person to the one who walked through the park two days ago. Now he was wanted for murder and kidnapping, sitting in a cheesy brown van with an old woman and a pregnant teacher, and getting psychic messages from a telepathic octopus.’

Usually a story like this would be set in a fantasy or dystopian future, but we’re definitely in the here and now. The settings are so ordinary. I could imagine pulling into a viewing point near Loch Ness and meeting Ava, Lennox and Heather when they’ve broken down and are waiting for a lift. Yet, within moments Lennox has been absorbed by Sandy and is diving through the water like a seal, breathing easily and feeling completely at home. These sequences are fantastical, stunningly beautiful and transcendent. He makes us want to be there experiencing it all. I think the key is that despite the strangeness of a tentacled cephalopod shivering with excitement at the thought of swimming in a loch we’re learning from Sandy. He’s showing us how to love life more, to find the wonder of things, to connect more, grow together and to experience everything:

“Suddenly his host shot upward towards one of the bigger cracks in the ice. A jet stream flowed from a volcano on the seabed, like a fountain through the sea to the opening in the ice. They joined it and shot through the ice shelf into space, surrounded by millions of particles of water and ice. He turned and looked at Saturn, huge and orange in the sky. He realised they were in one of the rings, they were the ring […] floating in space, swaying and drifting.”

As always with Doug’s writing there are literary and philosophical references throughout and I was delighted to find one of my favourite thoughts from Susan Sontag who wrote about illness and disability and their surrounding metaphors. Within the medical model of illness, particularly with cancer and other auto-immune illnesses, the metaphors of battle are commonly used as Heather points out:

“She hated the military terminology that people used around cancer: ‘She lost her brave battle with cancer.’ The cancer was part of you, you created it from nothing, so that language meant you were fighting yourself. Turning everything into a battlefield was a masculine, wrong-headed way of looking at things.”

She hates the assumption that if the cancer has spread or become terminal it’s because she is weak and hasn’t battled hard enough. Sometimes the words we choose are very important.

There are allusions to Alice Through the Looking Glass, to Virginia Woolf in Heather’s method of suicide – wading into water with stones in her pockets. There’s also a hint of Howard’s End in Sandy’s ability to connect with his fellow cephalopods and other species. It should make us rethink how we connect with one another. Howard’s End presents people of different classes who normally wouldn’t associate with each other, but people are really all the same. We should connect with all sorts of people in different age groups, abilities, religions and races. Here Lennox truly understands this:

‘It didn’t make sense to think of himself as Lennox anymore, he was a compound of a million things – bacteria in his gut, microscopic bugs in his hair, Xander’s body passing through his own, Sandy inside his neurons. It finally made physical sense, the idea that Sandy was plural. We all are. And the human idea of being singular, apart, alone, was a ridiculous and lonely way of looking at life.”

In fact what our different characters show us is how strong we can be, if we work together, especially characters with very different skills and personalities. Being part of a whole makes us stronger. Despite the danger and tension of their quest to reach Ullapool where everyone converges on the harbour, I found the ending so positive. Sandy asks us to rethink our lives, let others in and perhaps look at the world in a different way. Why do we think of our planet as ‘Earth’ when the largest proportion of our globe is ocean? We look at everything through the filter of our own class, education, experience and privilege. So, we should take time to view things through someone else’s filter. This was a fascinating, funny and uplifting literary journey that challenges us to move closer and reduce the space between us. In other words ‘only connect’.

Published 2nd March 2023 by Orenda Books

Doug Johnstone is the author of twelve novels, most recently The Great Silence, the third in the Skelfs series, which has been optioned for TV. In 2021,The Big Chill, the second in the series, was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. In 2020, A Dark Matter, the first in the series, was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year and the Capital Crime Amazon Publishing Independent Voice Book of the Year award. Black Hearts (Book four), will be published in 2022. Several of his books have been best sellers and award winners, and his work has been praised by the likes of Val McDermid, Irvine Welsh and Ian Rankin. He’s taught creative writing and been writer in residence at various institutions, and has been an arts journalist for twenty years. Doug is a songwriter and musician with five albums and three EPs released, and he plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, a band of crime writers. He’s also player-manager of the Scotland Writers Football Club. He lives in Edinburgh.

Posted in Random Things Tours

The Venice Secret by Anita Chapman.

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I’m sure amongst those who travel a lot, saying that Venice is your favourite travel destination is a bit of a cliché. I’d first wanted to go aged around ten years old, when I first read the children’s book What Katy Did Next. This third book in the Katy series followed the eponymous heroine as she travelled Europe as companion to a woman and her little girl and is lucky enough to be in Venice for Carnival. I first travelled there with my mum as a fortieth birthday celebration and we both fell completely in love. A couple of years later I visited again, this time with my best friend and enjoyed exploring more of the city, beyond the usual tourist sites. Mainly I enjoyed wandering the labyrinthine streets, taking photographs and soaking up the atmosphere. It has a magic that’s part romance and part mystical, with an edgy gothic darkness that can easily unnerve you – especially when the fog comes down, you’ve lost your way and keep finding lonely dead ends. There’s a little maze behind Teatro La Fenice where you can spend untold hours, wondering if you’re stuck in a time loop. It is one of those places where I wouldn’t have been surprised to turn a corner and find myself back in the 18th Century. So it seemed fitting to me that Venice is a backdrop to Anita Chapman’s debut, a dual timeline story with two narrators; firstly in 2019 with Rachel, then back to the late 18th Century with Phillipa. Both women are going through a period of upheaval and change, another uncanny similarity to fit a city that seems to be a ‘thin place’: a city without the normal barriers of space and time.

In the present we meet Rachel who is helping to sort through her grandmother’s belongings while temporarily living in her cottage. She will soon have to make a decision, to share a home with her mother and her horrible new partner, or become homeless. Rachel is feeling a bit lost and displaced, so needs a project to get her teeth into. She certainly gets more than she bargained for! She discovers what appears to be a Canaletto painting in her grandmother’s loft along with a note addressed to Philippa in 1782. With help from Jake at the local art gallery, Rachel endeavours to find out if the painting is an original and uncovers a secret from the past. The painting depicts a view of St Mark’s Square towards the Basilica from one of the south corners of the piazza. It seems to have some provenance and Rachel sets out to discover who painted it and whether it’s really as old as it’s style suggests. It purports to be a Canaletto, but can it really be genuine and if so, what is it doing in her grandmother’s attic? If it is the real deal, it could be the link between Rachel and our 18th Century narrator, Philippa. Phillipa has gone through a huge change in circumstances, following the death of her father who was a preacher. He has left behind a family struggling to make ends meet and Phillipa feels weighed down by responsibility for them. So she takes the decision to become a governess, leaving her family behind in order to earn enough money to keep them. She manages to get a position at the prestigious Chipford Hall, the family seat of the Duke of Oxon, who has two little girls. Yet, it isn’t long before Phillipa is forced on the move again but this time she’s asked to accompany a family friend, Lady Cordelia, on a trip to Venice, researching her latest novel. It was Phillipa’s part of the story that really engaged me as I felt a real kinship with her. She is quite a level-headed and sensible young woman, prepared to take on her father’s responsibilities. There was common sense, but also a deep kindness in her – she’s willing to give up any dreams of her own to keep the family going.

While I enjoyed aspects of Rachel’s story, I didn’t feel she was as strong and her character didn’t quite grab me in the same way Phillipa did. Rachel’s difficulties often seemed to come from her own choices, but I did feel sorry for her. Nevertheless, her sections do hold the story together well and the history of the painting she finds is fascinating and very well researched too. The author has the skill of bringing the historical aspects of the story to life, full of vivid details and characters. For someone who loves Venice, those sections of the story were particularly enjoyable, taking me back to those tiny streets and romantic canals, triggering some incredible memories along the way. I was also interested in the way the author used the figure of the governess, which ever since Jane Eyre has provided rich material for the writer of historical fiction. Governesses are in a position within the house as neither servant nor master, she is rather unique and potentially dangerous. She has access to the centre of the home, working upstairs with the children and often living with the family, rather than in the servant’s quarters. This position allowed the author to really open up the 18th Century for us, particularly in terms of society and it’s hierarchies. The pace is slower at first, but soon speeds up as the clues start to be revealed and we each time we get a bit closer to the truth and the link with Phillipa. We also come closer to the resolution of each woman’s inner journey. Would Phillipa’s be able to construct better boundaries and gain some wisdom in discerning someone’s character before trusting them? Would Rachel learn to stand on her own feet more, despite the difficulties in her background? I loved how we could see the changes in women’s lives since the 18th Century and how we were less at the mercy of the men in our lives, some of whom seemed perfectly happy to sacrifice a woman if it brought them closer to the power they sought. Each part of the story was woven together beautifully towards a satisfying conclusion, ensuring that I’ll be be looking forward to whatever Anita Chapman writes next.

Meet The Author

Anita Chapman enjoyed writing stories from a young age, and won a local writing competition when she was nine years old. Encouraged by this, she typed up a series of stories about a mouse on her mum’s typewriter and sent them to Ladybird. She received a polite rejection letter, her first.

Many of Anita’s summers growing up were spent with her family driving to Italy, and she went on to study French and Italian at university. As part of her degree, Anita lived in Siena for several months where she studied and au paired, and she spent a lot of time travelling around Italy in her twenties.

Anita likes to read journals and diaries from the past, and one of her favourite pastimes is visiting art galleries and country houses. Her first published novel, The Venice Secret is inspired by her mother taking her to see the Canalettos at The National Gallery in London as a child.

Since 2015, Anita has worked as a social media manager, training authors on social media, and helping to promote their books. She’s run several courses in London and York, and has worked as a tutor at Richmond and Hillcroft Adult Community College.

Posted in Random Things Tours

Expectant by Vanda Symon

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Expectant is the fifth novel in Vanda Symon’s Detective Sam Shephard series and I finished this late last night so I can reveal it’s brilliant and full of tension as the countdown to catch a murderer coincides with the last weeks of Sam’s pregnancy. This great series, set in Dunedin New Zealand, never lets me down. Sam is a fantastic character, who I’d happily go for a drink with. She’s professional and has one of those faces that people trust immediately, meaning she can elicit new leads and confessions from the unlikeliest criminal. She’s stubborn and outspoken, very ballsy and, although she tries her best not to use it, has an incredible swearing vocabulary. She and partner Paul are expecting their first child and she’s working up to two weeks before her due date. They haven’t found time to organise their endless piles of baby kit into a nursery when a case comes in that Sam can’t help but be drawn into. A group of kids who are hoping to tag the wall down a quiet side street find a woman covered in blood and only one of them has the conscience to stay and ring an ambulance. He’s willing to face the music for the graffiti if he can save her. At first it’s thought to be a stabbing, but it soon becomes clear this is something more sinister. A pregnant woman has been subjected to a rudimentary Caesarian and left for dead, even worse there’s no sign of the baby. This must be someone with a certain amount of medical skill. For Sam, who’s at her most vulnerable, it’s scary to think this might have been someone the victim trusted and it makes her more determined to catch her killer.

I found the pace slightly slower than previous novels, but I found that fitting considering that Sam is slowing down too. The days are winding down towards her maternity leave and her due date. In fact the days are dragging as her boss is reluctant to have her start something as important as a murder case before her leave starts. He feels it would be disruptive to the family and her colleagues, so she’s on desk duty, trawling through evidence. That’s before we factor in her physical condition, she’s so big that she gets stuck in some automatic barriers; a brilliant comic moment in this dark subject matter. Luckily it’s partner Paul on hand to lift her clear. Also, with unusual sensitivity, the boss thinks that placing a pregnant woman with the family would be distressing for them. Especially until they find the baby. This isn’t just a murder case, the baby is missing and the reasons why someone would steal a newborn baby are running through the heads of every team member. However, this is where Sam’s pregnancy could be a super power, being an expectant mum means her thoughts are different to the others. Could they provide a breakthrough?

The theme of mothers and their children, particularly daughters, is front and centre in this story. Whether it is Sam’s relationship with her own mother who has concerns about her working this close to her due date. There’s also Sam’s best friend, currently still living with her but due to move away imminently. She has a unique position in Sam’s life and is always there as a shoulder to cry on, but here she provides some important psychological insight. Sam’s need to be involved with this case could be linked to the spare room full of decorating supplies and boxed nursery furniture. There are so many changes coming, might Sam be paralysed from moving forward? Of course it is Sam who makes some major breakthroughs in the case in the final moments before she clears her desk. One of which seems to be a coincidence at first. As the final chapters started to race and fill with tension my heart was pounding. Just as Sam has let her guard down and accepted what’s next in her life, everything she’s looking forward to could be ripped away from her. In fact, if you are pregnant, maybe keep this one for after the birth. I was genuinely scared for her and even though she’s the one who most understood the killer’s motivations, will she still be shocked by their identity? You’ll be holding your breath to the very end with this one. Sam’s vulnerability is terrifying and I was praying that she would be okay while reading. As if she’s a living and breathing human being. That’s the power of Vanda Symon’s writing and how much of that magic she’s poured into this brilliant character.

Published 16th Feb 2023 by Orenda.

Meet the Author

Vanda Symon lives in Dunedin, New Zealand. As well as being a crime writer, she has a PhD in science communication and is a researcher at the Centre for Pacific Health at the University of Otago. Overkill was shortlisted for the 2019 CWA John Creasey Debut Dagger Award and she is a three-time finalist for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel for her critically acclaimed Sam Shephard series. Vanda produces and hosts ‘Write On’, a monthly radio show focusing on the world of books at Otago Access Radio. When she isn’t working or writing, Vanda can be found in the garden, or on the business end of a fencing foil.