Alexandra, Lucy, Bridget, River and Natalie. Five friends who wish they’d never met. Because the one thing they have in common is the worst thing in their lives: they are all being stalked.
When one of their group is murdered, days after their stalker is released from prison, time stands still for them all. They know their lives could end just as brutally at any moment – all it takes is for the people they fear the most to catch up with them.
When the group receive a threat that one of them will die in ten days’ time, the terror that stalks their daily lives becomes all-consuming. But they know they don’t want to be victims anymore – it’s time to turn the tables and finally get their revenge.
Because the only way to stop a stalker is to become one yourself…
After starting the novel with a tense and terrifying narrative of a woman being stalked, the author jumps forward and shows us how the loss of Natalie has affected those around her so deeply. For a handful of mourners, her loss is a terrible reminder of how they met and increases the fear of their own fate. Natalie’s friends tell their stories through the WhatsApp group they share. Alex, Lucy, Bridget and River are all victims of stalking. They formed their group to support each other and as a way of looking out for each other, using it to check in when outside their homes and when they return. However, when a very clear threat is made against them, they have to protect themselves. What lengths will they go to? The structure takes us between characters giving us a little bit of their story each time. Each of their stories slowly weaves together to create a whole; the phrase ‘one more chapter’ is very apt for this book. Sometimes you get caught up in a particular story, reach a cliffhanger and realise you have to read through three more chapters to find out what happened. It’s a interesting mix of characters, choosing women of different ages and a man shows us that it’s not only young women who are victims of stalking. I could sense that there were secrets to unearth with all of them and I found myself unable to fully trust anyone. They were complex and I thought the author explored their character and the group dynamics really well. I found myself switching between who I mistrusted and why. This suspicion did ramp up the tension not to mention the thrilling action scenes.
The other aspect of this novel that is brilliantly executed is the description of the psychological impact that the stalking has on each character. We can see each character dealing with their situation differently, based on their personality, past experiences and who is stalking them. Some know exactly who their stalker is, while others are stalked by a complete stranger. The author manages to put across the constant vigilance, that feeling of always looking over your shoulder and the fear of what the stalker might do next. She shows how some stalkers escalate, keeping their victim behind closed doors, terrified to venture into the outside world alone. There’s also an element of victims taking their power back and carrying out acts of retaliation. The remaining four of the group do this by tagging their stalkers so they can monitor their whereabouts at all times. To do this without the stalker realising is incredibly dangerous. As each chapter counts down to the potential murder of one of the victims, the sense of fear really does set in and keeps those pages turning.
Reading this in the same week that Louise, Hannah and Julie Hunt’s killer was found guilty of their murder really hit home. Misogyny and violence against women seems to be on the rise at the moment. Often violence follows months or even years of abuse, coercive control and stalking. It also seems that women are losing trust in the system that’s designed to protect them, especially since Sarah Everard was killed by a serving police officer. Here the characters are avoiding telling the police and I was left wondering it was disillusionment with the police force or whether some characters had something to hide. For the person who once professed to love you, to exhibit such abusive behaviour, must be terrifying. In fact it is often walking away from the relationship and cutting off communication that leads to escalation, just when the victim is settled and starting to feel safe again. The author’s writing brings the truth of this issue to light, because it shows how important it is to have all the parts of a story. The problem is, stalking is often a case of one person’s word against the other. The book’s structure shows how one person’s account either illuminates or throw suspicion on someone else. Whether they’re guilty or not can depend upon their eloquence and ability to charm others. This is such a timely novel and it was interesting to read how the author’s research and personal experience informed her story. For me it was this personal insight that made her story feel so authentic.
Available now. Published by Avon Books
Meet the Author
C.L. Taylor is an award winning Sunday Times bestselling author of ten gripping psychological thrillers including EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE, a Richard and Judy Book Club pick for autumn 2024, THE GUILTY COUPLE, (Richard and Judy Book Club 2023) and SLEEP (Richard and Judy Book Club 2019).
C.L. Taylor’s books have sold over two million copies in the UK alone, hit number one on Amazon Kindle, Audible, Kobo, iBooks and Google Play, and have been translated into over 30 languages and optioned for TV.
Her books are not a series and can be read in any order:
I love reading debuts because you’re never sure what you’re going to find and this tale of two adult siblings who lose their parents suddenly has all the family dynamics and trauma that I love to untangle in a novel. Jamie and Caz are used to their parents being top of the social scale in their area, a small village close to a market town in Yorkshire. Their family home is a hall in the centre of the village, where Jamie still lives alongside his parents having not found his career path yet. Caz has left home, but has a chequered history of teen pregnancy and alcoholism. She married husband Steve after he came to work on the hall’s electrics when her first little girl was only a baby and she had been sober for several months. Now they live in a cottage a short drive away from her childhood home and recently she’s had another baby. The catalyst to their problems is the loss of their parents. One Sunday both siblings are there for lunch when Jamie and his father clash over what he sees as his son’s fecklessness when it comes to making a life for himself. Jamie has secured a job with the local estate agents but desperately needs to sell a house this month. The best thing in his life is his recent relationship with local vet Zoe. What Jamie loves is his piano, but he doesn’t think he has the skill of a concert pianist. This Sunday he decides not to take his father’s criticism and storms out in a huff. That night the hall goes up in flames, so fast that no one could escape and the hall is burned to the ground.
For both siblings the village now looks like a set of teeth with one missing. The huge gap left in the centre is soon boarded so no one can see the wreckage, but it doesn’t allay the shock. Caz is immediately emotional, dazed even and takes refuge with Ruth, their housekeeper who lived next to the hall. Jamie seems frozen. The only thing he wants to save is his piano but it is damaged, maybe beyond repair. Insurance will take care of it and will hopefully rebuild the hall, but do they want that? They have no idea about their parent’s wishes, for the meantime Jamie has to buy some clothes and moves in with Zoe. It’s very early in their relationship but Jamie thinks they’ll get along fine. As he moves through life like an automaton, Caz starts to slide downhill. Gin was her usual tipple, but avoiding that she thinks an occasional glass of wine won’t hurt. One glass soon becomes a bottle and as she starts to hide her stash from Steve we can see that this could be a serious relapse. So can Jamie, but he’s having his own problems. The turmoil in his life is too heavy for the early stages of a relationship. Zoe had no relationship with his parents and although she can listen, she still has her own routine of riding and looking after her horse, whereas at the moment Jamie is sleepwalking through work and every time they are intimate, visions of the hall burning down come into his mind and ruin the moment. He’s not sure if he’s dealing with his grief at all. When Zoe decides they need some space from each other, he moves out to Caz and Steve’s house. Now he’s noticing that his sister isn’t coping either and his nieces are suffering. How can the siblings best help each other to cope?
I loved how the author shows grief hitting people in different ways. In some ways Jamie has never had to grow up. Living under his parent’s roof has enabled to try jobs and leave them with minimum consequences, while away hours in the village pub and not think beyond tomorrow. Caz has also depended on her parents, dropping out of university pregnant and with an alcohol problem. She moved home and had her baby there, until Steve actually walked through the door for a contracting job and they fell in love. For both of them, there’s now no safety net and the place filled with all those memories has gone too. Jamie also fears the loss of his piano, which has been lifted from the wreckage and been sent to a specialist repairer by the insurers. Music was the way that Jamie processed his emotions and without it he seems strangely neutral all the time, occasionally tapping out melodies using his fingers on whatever surface he find. Caz is more erratic, grabbing convenience foods instead of her usual home cooked meals and forgetting the girls activities or even to wash their uniforms. When the drinking starts Steve stays away from it, leaving Jamie with a full time job and two small children to feed and get out of the door in the open. He knows teachers have noticed the girls are a bit unkempt, but he doesn’t want to drop his sister in it. He just keeps smiling and nodding that everything’s okay. There’s only one person that won’t have the wool pulled over their eyes and that’s their parent’s housekeeper Ruth. Caz fears not letting the emotions out. Jamie thinks if he gives in and feels his emotions he might fall apart completely.
Through Jamie the author shows how grief can change our outlook on life completely. He becomes sentimental about an old couple looking for a house. He has a beautiful Georgian house on the books and he’s shown it to a rude and superior client with an enormous dog who didn’t seem interested. Then he has an adorable old couple who want to downsize and be closer to amenities, but he needs a studio to work in and it is in town. When he shows it to them he knows it should be theirs and when they offer he is ecstatic and shakes hands. Then the first woman comes back and offers 10k over the asking price, but Jamie says it’s already sold and turns her offer down, much to the fury of his manager. Jamie feels different, where once he might have taken the high offer now he can’t. Does he see his own parents in the old couple? Or is it that loss has given him a conscience? I really identified with this because after being seriously ill I returned to my work as an advertising rep only to struggle with selling newspaper space. It felt so trivial in the scheme of things I simply didn’t have the killer instinct. This was when I was sacked but went on to train as a counsellor and worked with the Mental Health Team in my area. It felt like I’d helped someone every day I went to work and it felt more in tune with my changing values.
I really felt for Jamie and wanted him to get his piano back and be able to express himself more. I was also so happy at his care for his nieces and his loyalty to his sister. Underneath the immaturity Zoe was concerned about, he’s a kind, perceptive and caring man. I was hoping they would find a way back to each other. Similarly I wanted Steve to reconnect with his wife and family and realise that while keeping a roof over their head was important, so was spending time together as a family. The author’s setting is perfect and having lived in villages all my life, I knew they come with beautiful countryside around them, but also residents who want to know all of your business. As my parents get older I do wonder what it might be like when they’re gone and I’m now the oldest member of the family. They’re my anchor, but so is my brother and I know our relationship will probably be stronger. I think the author makes it clear how seismic a shock it is when someone close to us dies. I loved the play on musical terms because the storyline has a tempo and Jamie is our conductor, desperately trying to keep the orchestra together towards the crescendo and beyond. This is a thoughtful and real story that had a lot of heart in it.
Out now from Flying Dog Press
Meet the Author
Joanna Howat trained as a journalist and worked as a news producer for BBC Radio 5 Live. She now lives in her native North Yorkshire with her family and two spaniels, and is a keen classical pianist. Crescendo is her first published novel.
For the last four years I’ve been choosing my favourite books of the according to the year – Top 23 of 2023. I realised that would have to stop, otherwise I’d be doing my top 30 in a few years and that would be ridiculous. So I’ve limited myself to 20 and it’s been so hard. I’ve had to be ruthless. I enjoyed every one of these books, despite their different genres, because of the psychological elements: anxiety about the state of the world; relationship dynamics; becoming radicalised; events from the past marring the future; what makes someone kill; growing up with loss. Also, as you’d perhaps expect considering everything we have to worry about in today’s world, there are allusions to climate change, anti -vaxxers, pandemics, war, misogyny and violence against women, the wellbeing industry and psychological problems. There’s so much to wrap your reading brain around here so I’m going to whet your appetite…
This Squad Pod read from early 2024 kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. It was like a breath of fresh air. Cole is a great husband to wife Melanie, in fact he would definitely say he’s one of the good guys. So when his marriage ends he can’t understand what he’s done wrong. In the aftermath he moves to an isolated coastal area and meets artist Lennie who lives in the cottage on the cliff. Soon they’re tentatively embarking on a relationship, but when two activists go missing during their coastal walk to publicise violence against women it disrupts everything and the police are starting to ask questions. The twists in this book are brilliantly executed and totally unexpected. It’s daringly different and left me so much to think about.
Charity Norman always leaves us with a lot to think about, but this latest novel was particularly thought provoking. Scott and Livia have two children and are always on call to help Scott’s brother, who has Down’s Syndrome. It’s Scott’s inability to help his brother one Saturday morning followed by his sudden death that starts a downward spiral. One careless comment about his brother’s care sets Scott on a search for answers, branching into medical conspiracy theories and the dark web. So when son Noah falls ill, Scott has an online community ready to feed into his distrust and his grip on reality starts to slide, dragging his family with him. As their marriage begins to fall apart, Livia can’t support or even understand her husband’s perspective. In fact he’s become a danger to his children and she must protect them, whatever it takes. This is a brilliantly drawn study of how social media can lead to obsession and allow sinister, unscrupulous people to take advantage of those who are vulnerable. It’s also a painfully accurate depiction of marriage breakdown and a perfect book club choice.
This was another book where marriage breakdown is depicted in painstaking detail. It reads like a thriller where different perspectives and revelations constantly change our perceptions of a situation. It’s like a whodunnit, except the death we’re mourning is the death of a relationship. Bea and Niklas have been together for thirty years and live a comfortable life in Stockholm with their children. Yet one night, after what feels like a trivial argument Niklas walks out and doesn’t come home. Weeks pass where Niklas takes a break and Bea is constantly pushing for answers, but when he returns to their flat he stuns Bea by asking for a divorce. For Bea this has come completely out of the, but is it as unexpected as she claims? Bea narrates the first half of this novel and halfway through the narrative returns to the beginning and Niklas tells us his version of events, which is very illuminating and may change the readers mind about their marriage. This is a simple device that works to devastating effect. I felt genuinely sad for this couple, because neither of them are bad people. It explores boundaries and the unhealthy reasons people can end up together. It’s also a response to grief, beautifully played out over decades. Utterly brilliant.
This is the fifth instalment of Will Dean’s Tuva Moodysson series and it was an absolute cracker. Tuva is investigating further north from Gavrik to an even more isolated town on the edge of the arctic circle. Essleburg is a town where everyone knows everyone else and there’s only one way in or out. A huge tunnel under a mountain provides access to the town, but closes down at night. Once you’re in, you’re in for the night and so is everyone else. From her hotel room at the sun-bed store Tuva sets out to look for a missing teenage boy, drawn by the fact that he is also deaf. But when bodies are found Tuva must face facts, the boy could be one of the victim and if not, could he be the killer? With it’s usual quirky characters and alien landscape, Tuva’s world is as isolating as it is disorienting. As usual Will Dean knows when to ratchet up the tension and when Tuva is in danger it’s absolutely heart-racing stuff.
As all of you know I’m a massive Skelf fan and this addition to the series was brilliant. Every Skelf novel begins with a funeral and they rarely go off without a hitch. This one is no exception, with a drone buzzing the ceremony and it’s guests. Could it be to do with the deceased or has someone got it in for the Skelf women? Jenny’s case follows on from the last book and the cops they investigated for sexually abusing young girls in the travelling community. Both are inexplicably out on bail and Jenny likes to know where they are at all times. Daughter Hannah’s case concerns Brodie the new recruit to the undertaking business. Brodie finds strange scrabbled marks around his baby son’s grave and Hannah sets up a camera, but when told that Brodie hears voices she wonders if he might have gone to the grave and acted subconsciously. Dorothy’s case comes from her involvement with a community choir that includes some Ukrainian war widows. One of the women, Yanna, has gone missing. Her husband Fedir was killed over a year ago and now she’s left her two small children with her mother-in-law. Could she have returned to Ukraine to fight, or has something happened to her? Each of the Skelf women feel vulnerable this time and I felt like the author was playing on my emotions a little. I could sense we were on the verge of a huge change and it left me on tenterhooks throughout.
I absolutely loved this book. From the very first line – ‘there is someone in the house’ – this book grabs you and never lets go. Our narrator is at her secluded home with her two small children in a blizzard. The sound she hears is a familiar one, a tread on the stairs to her room, but it’s unusually heavy and slow. She has a split second to make the decision – does she hide, try to run or stay and fight. Will all three of them get out alive and if they do will anyone believe her? The first thing that hit me about this book was the unique the narrator’s unique voice. We see everything through her eyes and experience everything her body goes through – the heart-stopping tension of that first night with it’s immediate threat renders everything else unimportant. I should trust what she is experiencing. It’s just so incredibly odd. This tall intruder seems to have two voices: one is harsh and angry the other is soft, wheedling – a voice you might use for children as he asks them to ‘come out little pigs, little pigs are more delicious’. Her little girl identifies him as ‘Corner Man’ from her nightmares. Often sitting in the corner of her bedroom at night whispering to her. My heart was in my throat at this point! Was he real or something supernatural? Could he possibly be real if this is true? Yet I wondered if this overwrought mother is imagining this person, but that opens up a more frightening prospect – is she hallucinating and terrorising her own children with her delusions. The author plays with the reader beautifully from start to finish.
Surprisingly this was my first Peter May novel and is a sequel to his crime novels set in the Hebrides. Once a detective and now retired, Fin is drawn back to Lewis by family, when Caitlin Black’s body is discovered on a remote beach. Only eighteen years old, Caitlin was a student at the Nicholson Institute. When it emerges that she was having an illicit affair with Fionnlagh McLeod, her teacher and a married man twenty years her senior he becomes the prime suspect and is arrested on suspicion of her rape and murder. He is also Finn’s son. He must return to Lewis to support his daughter-in-law and granddaughter. He must also, despite the evidence against him, that he must try to clear his son’s name. As Fin travels around the island, he is drawn into past memories and soon realises this crime has echoes back into his own teenage past on the island. A terrible accident at a salmon farm caused two deaths, just as they started to expand on the island and become a multi-million pound industry. This is Finn’s journey, of family ties, secret relationships and the bleak and unforgiving landscape, where violence, revenge and old loyalties converge.
Frances McGrath is your typical All American teenage girl, living with her family on Coronado Beach, California. She has memories of growing up on that beach, swimming and surfing with her brother Finley. She is from a good family and expectations are that she will have the ‘right’ marriage and become a mother. However, things change when Finley makes a huge decision; he decides to enlist for Vietnam. It’s no surprise that he might go into military service at some point. Frankie’s dad has a wall in his office called the ‘Hero’s Wall’ where every family member’s military service is celebrated with cuttings, photos and medals. All the men, anyway. Yet not many of their friends and family members have sons who’ve voluntarily enlisted for Vietnam. There are ways of avoiding the draft, depending on who you know. Yet Finley enlists of his own accord, possibly believing the American government’s assertions that they must fight communism in Vietnam, lest it become even more widespread. Within weeks there’s a knock at the door; Finley has been killed in action. In a whirlwind of grief Frankie starts looking into her options. She wants to honour her brother and become a hero worthy of her father’s wall. Both the Air Force and Navy need a nurse to complete a long period of training before they’re posted to work in the field. However, if she enlists in the US Army, they’ll post her out to Vietnam after basic nursing training. Much to her parent’s shock Frankie is soon on her way to Vietnam. This is an incredible story about the horrors of war, falling in love and giving voice to the women forgotten in military history.
There have been some incredible historical novels this year, but I really was blown away by this story set just after WW1 and progressing to the mid-twentieth century. Two German sisters, Leni and Annette, live in Berlin and when we first meet them they’re in dire straits, living in a makeshift shelter in an abandoned garden. Thanks to war and the influenza epidemic they’ve lost their family. Leni gets a chance to earn some money at a notorious and rather seedy cabaret club called Babylon Circus. The naive and rather shy Leni becomes a cigarette girl in a second hand and pinned costume that just covers her modesty, but she is at first shocked by what she sees. With shades of the musical Cabaret the author creates a club that is a mirage of clever lighting, fairground mirrors and risqué musical numbers. It’s enchanting by dark and unwelcoming by day, but it doesn’t matter because this is the type of fun that can only be had at night. Everything is overseen by owner Dieter, a man with his own disguise having left half his face on a battlefield. When pianist Paul arrives, he and Leni start to gravitate towards each other. But Paul has a plan to leave Berlin and he would like to take Leni with him. We then move forward to the Cold War and a divided Berlin, where Annette has travelled from America to visit her sister and niece. The tensions and secrets of the Babylon Circus years still hang over the sisters, can they come to terms with the choices they made back then? Can Leni find a second chance of happiness? The author depicts her characters and the time period perfectly, with so much atmosphere. It’s an absolute must read.
Another amazing story set in Berlin is Josie Ferguson’s The Silence In Between. Imagine waking up and a wall has divided your city in two. Imagine that on the other side is your child…
Lisette is in hospital with her baby boy. The doctors tell her to go home and get some rest, that he’ll be fine. When she awakes, everything has changed. Because overnight, on 13 August 1961, the border between East and West Berlin has closed, slicing the city – and her world – in two. Lisette is trapped in the east, while her newborn baby is unreachable in the west. With the streets in chaos and armed guards ordered to shoot anyone who tries to cross, her situation is desperate. Lisette’s teenage daughter, Elly, has always struggled to understand the distance between herself and her mother, but perhaps she can do something to bridge the gap between them. What begins as the flicker of an idea turns into a daring plan to escape East Berlin, find her baby brother, and bring him home. The author takes us effortlessly back and forth in time to understand this family and my heart kept breaking for them over and over for. While I struggled to read it at first, I’m so happy that I went back to it because it was breathtaking. It was as if someone had bottled both moments in time and simply poured them onto the page, raw and confronting. This is an absolute must read for historical fiction fans and a book I will definitely go back to in the future.
Thanks for reading part one. Part 2 is coming tomorrow.
One wild night in the middle of December, local GP Enya is driving home from a house call in a dreadful storm and visibility is poor. She comes across a taxi parked in the middle of the road and a boy lying motionless on the wet ground. Oscar, the taxi driver, tells her he has just found the boy like this and he doesn’t know if he’s breathing. As the rain pours down Enya kneels in the road and performs CPR, desperately hoping she can save his life. After she’s questioned by the police and returns home she sits in the car for moment, soaked to the skin and thinks about her mother. Brigid, a rather eccentric and free-spirited woman, died at the age of 47 while swimming in the sea. For a while, as Enya battled to save the teenage boy’s life she felt the water running down her face and wondered if this was how her mother felt? Enya struggles in the aftermath of the incident and can’t seem to put it out of her mind. Is it because the boy was so like her son, of a similar age and wearing the same clothes? The storm propels her into huge life changes as she walks away from her loveless marriage and takes a job in the small town of Abbeydooley. There she lives in a remote spot, but with a rag tree in the garden that brings people from far and wide to tie their ribbons and fabric to it’s branches. Even though her days are filled with patients and she starts to make friends, that night in the rain just won’t leave her. As she looks out of the window at the sacred tree she is faced with the stories of all the people who’ve tied a memento there. Could it be time to face the truth of her own story as well as the memory of her mother?
We meet Enya in the middle of a crisis and the night of the storm is really the breaking point of that crisis. Enya is 46 and the day after her 47th birthday she will be older than her mother ever was. She has always had the sense that her mother was still going before her but from that day it’s only her. Alone. The grief hits her like a tsunami wave. There’s also the matter of her marriage and living situation. Xander made me feel cold. He comes across as clinical and controlling. The house they live in doesn’t feel like a home to Enya. Their home was the new build that she poured all her effort into, it’s where she had Ross and where she learned him to ride a bike in the garden. Now it’s their GP surgery and they’ve lived in Xander’s inherited family home ever since his parent’s death. There is nothing of Enya in the house and every ornament and painting is exactly where it was when Xander was a boy. If she moves the coat rack slightly or repositions an ornament it is soon quietly placed back where it should be. He even controls her relationship with Ross, having chosen his boarding school and at home telling her not to disturb him when all she wants is to spend time with her son. There’s an invisible barrier there and I could feel her sense of powerlessness. Enya has been struggling for some time: feeling overwhelmed at work; making small mistakes with forms and requests; desperately trying to find an escape, somewhere she can breathe. She has also struggled to let the injured boy go and has visited the hospital and made contact with the boy’s mum. When the offer comes to relocate to Abbeydooley she jumps at the chance.
Her introduction to Abbeydooley life isn’t a smooth one. The tree is baffling to her. It has filthy and torn rags all over it and completely obstructs her view from the window, taking all her light. She sees it as an eyesore and asks the maintenance person to come out and remove it. Margaret is a brilliant character and the women don’t get off to the best start. Margaret has assumed the tree is damaged and turns up the next morning with a chainsaw, but when she sees the tree is intact she refuses to touch it. Doesn’t Enya realise this is a rag tree, a sacred tree that’s watered by a spring from the site of the original abbey? People believe it’s a sacred site, that their prayers will be answered if they leave something to represent the person or problem they’re facing. It seems ridiculous to Enya, especially when a tour mini-bus arrives with a group of pensioners excited to see this symbol of pagan traditions. Alongside this observance of pagan religion, Enya also has to contend with the church. A visit from the parish priest makes her realise that traditionally the GP and priest have worked quite closely together, sharing information and forming a team to help parishioners and patients. Enya is reluctant, but is starting to learn that in these remote rural areas being a GP is a very different thing to the app led computerised system she and Xander used. Maybe she will have to adapt to a new way of working and living.
The whole book is a combination of a woman trying to find her way in the world and navigate emotional challenges, with a darker mystery woven in. The backdrop of Abbeydooley is almost like the light relief in the story, with it’s old-fashioned ways and humorous characters like Handyman Willy. I wondered whether it would be a redemption arc, where the town’s quirky ways would win Enya over and change her life. However it’s more complex than that. Abbeydooley becomes a space for Enya to breathe and think, but her demons have definitely followed her. We’re not sure whether she’s a narrator we can rely on. It’s not Xander’s opinion or the little slips at work that concerned me, it’s more about her rising paranoia and the small reveals that prove she isn’t telling us everything. When an agitated man turns up at the surgery to confront Enya we have no idea who he is or what bearing he might have the story. She sees another man through her window late at night, are they the same man or is someone making a late night visit to the tree? All this time Xander keeps her from her son so she’s reduced to leaving voice notes for him in the hope he’ll listen to them alone. Xander claims he’s protecting their son, but from what? I really enjoyed Margaret because she sees Enya at her worst and remains her friend. Margaret knows what it’s like to make a mistake and blow your own life apart. So she’s the best person for Enya to spend time with. What I found sad is that Enya has had support there all along. Although Xander has slowly controlled her, she has allowed her life to restrict her to the point where she felt her only choice was total escape. Yet she has her sister and brother-in-law, they are warm and welcomed her into their home when she first left. She could have made changes, been closer to her son and faced up to everything. Enya seems like a person who runs away: from grief, from her marriage, from the truth. I didn’t always understand her as a character, but her journey was fascinating. With my counsellor head on I wanted her to find a way to break free from all the restrictions she placed on herself. She would certainly make a fascinating client.
Meet the Author
Cecelia Ahern is an Irish novelist who wrote her debut novel PS, I LOVE YOU at the age of 21 years old, which was published in 2004. It became one of the biggest selling novels in recent years and was made into a hit film starring Hilary Swank, as was her second novel LOVE, ROSIE starring Lily Collins. She is published around the world in 40 countries, in over 30 languages and has sold over 25 million copies of her novels. She has published 19 novels, including a Young Adult series FLAWED and PERFECT, and the highly acclaimed collection of short stories ROAR. Her 20th novel INTO THE STORM will be published in October 2024.
She is the co-creator of TV comedy series SAMANTHA WHO? starring Christina Applegate and ROAR, the TV series, is streaming now on Apple TV+ starring Nicole Kidman.
I’m convinced that I’m fated to never meet Will Dean. Despite booking to meet him twice this year both COVID and MS relapses have had ridiculously accurate timing and I didn’t manage either event. It’s so frustrating because I really am such a Tuva fangirl. I really enjoyed this trip back into her world, even if at times it was tense, threatening and claustrophobic. Will’s intrepid reporter is enticed to a town further north than Gavrik because her instinct is telling her there’s a story. Dubbed ‘Ice Town’ it’s a minor ski resort with only one upscale and very empty hotel. Stuck in its mid-century heyday it is now losing out to the bigger resorts and the hotel must be on its knees. Tuva can only access the town via a tunnel through a mountain. Traffic queues at the tunnel mouth as drivers are alternately let through. It then closes at night leaving residents cut off from the outside world. Tuva has been drawn by a missing person’s report, a teenager called Peter has disappeared. Nothing unusual in that, but Peter is deaf and Tuva is imagining how isolated he must feel. She worries that his hearing aid batteries have run out of battery life. She imagines him stuck somewhere in the dark, in freezing temperatures and not even able to hear the search teams shouting his name. Tuva packs up her Hilux and heads north hoping to find out more about Peter and maybe help the search. She’s heading for the only B & B in town, but when she gets there it’s clear they should have dropped the second B – something Tuva points out with her usual tact! It’s actuality two bedrooms in the back of the a sunbed shop with very thin walls, but Tuva does not need luxury and expenses are scrutinised carefully by her boss Lena. As she starts to acclimatise she starts to realise that, if possible, this is a quirkier town than Gavrik. She’s also without the long-standing relationship she usually has with the police. Can she find Peter without their help? Without her usual support system to call on, might she find herself in danger?
She rounds out that Peter lived with his grandmother and seems quite isolated in then community. Kids at school thought he was weird and girls mention that he made them uneasy, always staring at their mouths. Tuva is quick to point out that this isn’t sexual, he’s just trying to lip read. The church seems to be the gathering point for the community, with the Deacon organising the search parties. Instead of the police, once the tunnel is closed at night, the residents are protected by the Wolverines, a local biker gang. Tuva meets one of them at the only watering hole in town and finds out he’s actually a poet, an unexpected hobby for a huge mountain of a man dressed in leather. Tuva has managed to shack up next to the only other outside journalist, a girl called Astrid who has the other room beyond the sun beds. Tuva feels an urge to find Peter quickly and when a body is found near the tunnel she fears the worst. When news comes through that the body isn’t Peter, the search is based on two possibilities: either Peter and another resident have gone missing at around the same time and died from exposure, or Peter is in hiding, because he is the killer. This change from victim to possible perpetrator worries Tuva, she knows how disorientating it is to have no hearing out in the wilderness. She also worries that if the police do catch sight of him he won’t be able to hear their commands and they’ll shoot him. She asks the police chief to remind her officers that Peter can’t hear them.
It’s not long before Tuva is plunged into disorientating situations herself, in one scene when she’s staying at the resort hotel her isolated lobby falls into darkness and she can’t find the right bedroom door. For a moment she’s terrified and knocks a picture off the wall in her panic. It made me very jumpy because it seemed targeted because she’d been placed in such a remote part of the building. When waking up one night after a dream she feels around the bedside table and can’t find her hearing aids or her phone. As she feels her way around the unfamiliar room, I had the uncanny sense that she might be being watched. Anyone could be lurking in the dark. Who has moved her stuff and is someone in the dark watching her panic? That definitely had my heart racing. Then she finds them on the desk, remembering she’d had one too many at the pub and must have left them in the wrong place. Another scene that kept me glued to the book was when she took the ski lift down to the town and for some reason the power goes out. She hears what she thinks is a shot and the overhead light goes out. Now she’s just swinging silently in the dark and in the cold. She knows it doesn’t take long for frostbite to set in and she tries to protect her face. She is so vulnerable at this moment and I was scared for her. I felt like someone was playing with her, like a cat does with a mouse. I had to finish this scene before I could get up and do anything else.
Will writes the quirkiest characters and here there are a few. There’s Ingvar who comes across like a college professor and lives halfway down the slope with his dogs. Could he have tampered with the ski lift, after all he might seem respectable now but he has served a sentence for murder. The poet bouncer is another surprise, especially when Tuva unexpectedly wakes up in his house. There’s a pod-caster who is becoming quite well known, but his listeners don’t know that he keeps the slopes smooth by day and keeps large numbers rabbits in his basement for food. Once it becomes clear that they have a spree killer on their hands, the odds are a lot more serious. Could Tuva end up being a target due to her snooping around the town and asking too many questions? Maybe Peter’s position as an outsider has created resentment and a desire for revenge? For some reason Tuva doesn’t think he’s the killer, although he still hasn’t been found and bodies are starting to pile up. The claustrophobic feeling of the town isn’t helped when the killer’s methods become known. They disarm people with bear spray, several times more powerful than ordinary pepper spray which is banned in Sweden. Other items they use are military grade so could this be someone who served in the army? The victims are asphyxiated with a tourniquet used on the battle field that has a clever gadget attached. It can be turned to create the necessary pressure, even if you can only use one hand? It’s an unusual piece of kit and Tuva wonders whether the killer is a medic or has used one on the battlefield. Or is it the ability to adjust the pressure that’s key? To allow a few breaths then cut the victim off again, playing God.
I enjoyed the realisations Tuva has about her own life. She recognises that Lena and Tammy have kept her on track since her partner Noora died. To the extent of making sure she’s eating and getting some sleep. Despite losing her mum she certainly has some substitutes. I loved how Will lets thoughts of Noora just wander across her mind from time to time, sometimes happy memories and sometimes deeply sad ones. I’m glad that she gets to hear Nora’s heart beat from time to time. There is a strange coincidence that may have a huge impact on her personal life going forward. The tense few chapters that bring us to the finale are so confusing! My suspicion was running back and forth constantly and the clues come thick and fast here. I really didn’t know who to believe. We’re on tenterhooks and I remember thinking why does Tuva put herself and us through this? The ending coming in time for the Santa Lucia festival was beautifully done and those of us who’ve been reading since the beginning and love the weirder members of the Gavrik community will love a little cameo towards the end. When will someone pick this up for TV or a film series? It’s a fabulous franchise and it just gets stronger all the time.
Out on 7th November from Point Blank.
Meet the Author
Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands, living in nine different villages before the age of eighteen. After studying law at the LSE, and working many varied jobs in London, he settled in rural Sweden with his wife. He built a wooden house in a boggy forest clearing and it’s from this base that he compulsively reads and writes.
This extraordinary novel weaves a mystical and hypnotic spell around the reader, using the flora and fauna of our heroine’s home in Venezuela and slowly unravelling the truth about her childhood. Dominique is an artist who receives a vision of her father in her dream, so powerful she is able to recreate it on canvas. She hasn’t seen him since her early childhood, so it’s a surprise when he gets in touch and asks her to come to Paris. He is dying and wishes to reconcile with his daughter. Longing for paternal love Dominique travels to Paris, on a physical and spiritual journey to recover that part of her early childhood she spent in Paris with both her parents. There she uncovers repressed memories that reveal the truth of her parent’s marriage and her own birth. She also visits the Venezuelan Amazon where she meets Juan, a mystic and shaman who guides her journey. A gentle and tender love story emerges between them as Dominique tries to heal from what she has uncovered.
I would have known this writer was a poet and an artist from the very beginning because she writes lyrically and creates such striking visual imagery. At first it’s an assault on the senses, a maelstrom of imagery from the Amazonian jungle filled with colour and fantastical animals. A beautiful example of magic realism, the author’s vivid imagery tells of jaguars, birds of paradise and in one case a very disturbing anteater I expected to see in my nightmares. It’s almost hypnotic and I was so overwhelmed and beguiled by the beauty of her words that I didn’t realise the pain and devastation underneath. It’s through her artwork, which is almost shamanistic at times, that she processes her trauma. Her childhood was tainted by her father leaving, seemingly without explanation when she was six years old. She then experienced abuse and resentment from her mother. The process of recovery from trauma is a major theme in the book and we can see how Dominique’s reintroduction to her father triggers the emotions that she hasn’t resolved. In fact his presence triggers nightmares and the re-emergence of events she’s kept locked away in her subconscious. She wants answers to the mystery of her father’s disappearance, but I feared she would be re-traumatised by the truth.These are dark, harrowing memories in parts but it’s clear that the beauty of nature really does have a healing effect on her.
Her descriptions of Venezuela and the incredible Angel Falls made me want to see it for myself! Here things become more mystical as we see Dominique’s beautiful connection to this place and a man she meets from the Pemon community, indigenous to Venezuela. Juan helps her to go deeper inside herself and face whatever unresolved feelings lurk there. He is a shaman to the community and can ward off malevolent spirits, including the type of dark and disturbing emotions that can haunt people who’ve experienced abuse. This is an incredibly personal journey and her time in Venezuela, the rediscovery of her childhood home in Paris as well as reading her father’s correspondence all contribute to her recovery. I found her story deeply moving and challenging to read at times. However, I recognised the catharsis in Dominique’s artistic expression and the importance of documenting traumatic experiences. She needs others to bear witness to the truth of her childhood, because only then can she achieve acceptance and healing. This is a beautifully written novel, that’s lyrical and treads a line between poetry, visual art and prose. I was touched by it and by the deep connection Dominique has with the natural world. There she can be her true self, an imperfect human woven back together by animals who always accept us as we are.
Meet the Author
Pascale Petit’s eighth poetry collection, Tiger Girl (Bloodaxe, 2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize and for Wales Book of the Year. A poem from the book, ‘Indian Paradise Flycatcher’, won the 2020 Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize. Her seventh collection, Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe, 2017) won the inaugural Laurel Prize in 2020, the 2018 Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje prize, was shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize and was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Her sixth collection, Fauverie, was her fourth to be shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and a portfolio of poems from it won the 2013 Manchester Poetry Prize. T. S. Eliot shortlisted What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo (Seren, 2010), was also shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year. Salt published her debut novel, ‘My Hummingbird Father’, in 2024 and her ninth poetry collection, Beast, is forthcoming from Bloodaxe in 2025, and is awarded the Arthur Welton Prize.
I really have been blown away by this story set just after WW1 and progressing to the mid-twentieth century. Our characters are two German sisters Leni and Annette who live in Berlin and are the last living members of their family. When we first meet them they’re in dire straits, living in a makeshift shelter in an abandoned garden. Thanks to war and the influenza epidemic they’ve lost their family, so are totally reliant on each other. Leni, the older sister, gets a chance to earn some money at a notorious and rather seedy cabaret club called Babylon Circus. There the naive and rather shy Leni becomes a cigarette girl in a second hand and pinned costume that just covers her modesty, but she is at first shocked by what she sees. With shades of the musical Cabaret the author creates a club that is a mirage of clever lighting, fairground mirrors and risqué musical numbers. It’s enchanting by dark and unwelcoming by day, but it doesn’t matter because this is the type of fun that can only be had at night. The girls are shameless on stage and nudity is everyday in the dressing room, but Leni sees something attractive in their boldness, bawdy gossip and loud raucous laughter. They have a freedom she’s never seen before in women, they’re not afraid of taking up space. The illusion extends to the girl’s costumes, covered at first glance but offering a cheeky glimpse here and there. This is what the crowd turn up for, but one girl manages to shock the audience by crouching on the table of a misbehaving customer and pissing in his face. Everything is overseen by owner Dieter, a man with his own disguise. He rarely enters the cabaret room, but sits in his office with it’s resident cat. Having left half his face on a battlefield he wears a tin mask which chafes at his wounds and leaves his expressions slightly lopsided. This gives a certain sense to the fairground mirrors, if everyone is distorted then no one stands out.
It’s Paul the pianist’s good looks that capture Leni; his talent, his smile and the lock of hair that escapes onto his forehead. When he starts to walk her home she’s evasive, how can she tell him he doesn’t have one? She invents a family, but then has to keep Annette out of her business. Paul’s also in trouble, as his brother has run up debts he can’t repay and the lenders are leaning on him to pay instead. After a warning in the form of a beating he knows he must leave, but what will he do about Leni? Leni and Annette now have rooms, with a landlady who doesn’t mind watching Annette in the evenings while Leni works. I had so many questions. Would Paul ask Leni to go with him? Does he even feel that strongly about her? Where would Annette fit into this? Even after all these questions are answered, jealousy and fate intervene changing everything.
In our second timeline we’re in the midst of the Cold War and a middle-aged Leni is living in Berlin with her teenage daughter, following the death of her husband. She’s surprised by a sudden visit from her sister Annette who now lives in the USA. She seems agitated and anxious, spending all her time in flat brooding and smoking. Leni’s daughter is in the throes of first love, using the guise of drama rehearsals to meet her boyfriend. With nowhere to go they find solace in a strange old cabaret club where there’s a fairground mirror amongst the ruins. This is the perfect place for secret assignations. Leni is concerned that with her sister here the past seems closer than it’s been for years. So many secrets are being kept between these women and when Leni sees a face from the past, it could all come tumbling down like a pack of cards.
Julie writes mid-century women like no one else. I feel like I know them. This is my grandmother’s generation and my grandad actually went to Germany after WWII to help rebuild the country. I remember being shocked by the utter devastation of German cities when they were depicted in the film The Aftermath. I was haunted by a woman getting her daughter ready for school, brushing her hair in their normal routine, but with the outer wall blown away. It was like looking into a doll’s house. The author made me feel the contrast of that wild decadence in the 1920’s with the Cold War period where everything feels grey and routine with nothing to look forward to. The bleakness of Leni’s flat really comes across as it seems to echo the desolation of Annette. Even the once rowdy and colourful club is now derelict and abandoned. I love the way the author plays with place and identity in this way, as well as how the characters see themselves. Their internalised sense of how they look forming part of their identity, but is often at odds with how we see them. Dieter and the girls at the club are almost gaudy grotesques, using appearance and performance to mask true feelings. As for Dieter, I kept thinking about his inability to express emotion in his face and how that affected his ability to connect with others. If we can’t express what we feel what effect does that have on our identity? Dieter can’t look at his new face because it doesn’t reflect the image he has of himself in his mind. It’s only once everyone else becomes distorted that he fits in, only the cat accepts him utterly as he is.
The secrets between the sisters are beautifully constructed. Annette’s adult behaviour is a faint echo of her childhood feelings. Her jealousy and fury when she discovers Leni with Paul is the fear of a child who has almost lost everything and everyone she knows. She only has Leni and what if she leaves her too? As an adult, pulling secrets or feelings from her is almost impossible. She has been holding the past inside herself so tightly and for so many years I was unsure if she would bring it’s truths to the surface without breaking. Towards the end, as another terrible event outside their control looms over Berlin, my heart was in my mouth! Not knowing whether the ending would be what I wanted had my heart racing. I couldn’t bear either sister to suffer any more heartache and this is the beauty of Julie’s writing. She makes you believe in this world and these characters so much, that you’re able to shed real tears for them. This novel is easily one of the best I’ve read this year and I’m in no doubt it will feature in my end of year list too. I’ve loved Julie’s first two novels, but this is certainly Julie’s best novel so far.
Published by Penguin on 12th September. Thanks to Julie and the Squad POD Collective for including me in this month’s book club.
Meet the Author
Her debut novel That Green Eyed Girl was a Waterstones’ Welsh Book of the Month and the official runner up for the prestigious Paul Torday Memorial Prize. It was also shortlisted for Best Debut at the Fingerprint Awards and featured at the Hay Festival as one of its TEN AT TEN debuts.
73 Dove Street was recently named as a Waterstones’ Book of the Year and Daily Mail Historical Fiction Book of the Year with the paperback still to come in April 2024.
As a filmmaker Julie won the Celtic Media Award for her graduation film “BabyCakes” before going on to win Best Short Film at the Swansea Film Festival.
Her writing and short stories have appeared in a variety of publications including Sunday Express, The Independent, New Welsh Review and Good Housekeeping.
She has a Masters in Filmmaking and an additional qualification in Creative Writing & English Literature. Julie is an alumna of the Faber Academy. Circus of Mirrors is the third novel.
Living is a problem, because everything dies. Biffy Clyro
Every Skelf novel begins with a funeral, but they rarely go off without a hitch. This one is no exception, with a drone buzzing the ceremony. Could it be to do with the deceased or has someone got it in for the Skelfs? Jenny’s following the case from the last book, keeping an eye on the cops they investigating for sexually abusing young girls in the travelling community. Both are inexplicably out on bail and Jenny likes to know where they are, talking to Webster’s wife and setting up surveillance cameras. Hannah’s case also links back to the last book, concerning Brodie the new recruit to the undertaking business. Brodie had been living on the streets since the loss of his baby son broke his world apart. He has found strange scrabbled marks around his son’s grave that don’t look like they’ve been done by an animal. Hannah agrees to set up a camera, but being told that Brodie hears voices she wonders if he might have gone to the grave and acted subconsciously. Dorothy’s case comes from her involvement with a community choir that includes some Ukrainian war widows. One of the women, Yanna, has gone missing. Her husband Fedir was killed over a year ago and now she’s left her two small children with her mother-in-law. Could she have returned to Ukraine to fight, or has something happened to her? Each of the Skelf women feel vulnerable this time and I felt like the author was playing on my emotions a little. I could sense we were on the verge of a huge change and it left me on tenterhooks throughout.
Hannah’s vulnerability comes from finishing her PhD and feeling a bit lost. While there’s always work in the family businesses she doesn’t know if it’s what she wants to do forever. She’s happily married to Indy but worries about her fascination with powerful older women, such as the astronaut Helen in the last novel and now a professor, Rachel Tanaka who researches into people who hear voices. Is it simply that she’s attracted to their power and position in academia or is it a sexual attraction? I wondered whether it was their competence and their certainty in their career and outlook that she craved. Having Jenny for a mum can’t always have been easy, especially when she was drinking. Then there was her relationship with Hannah’s dad Craig, which was full of fighting and volatility. It could have been scary for her. Maybe these older women feel more stable and dependable and she’s craving what she missed as a child? Jenny felt vulnerable throughout the novel. Part of this was entering into a new relationship, a time when your feelings are on the line and you’re not sure whether it will work out or not. This relationship comes with the extra pressure of knowing him for a long time. She is aware that if it does go wrong, more than her own feelings are at stake. Also Webster and Low, the police officers Jenny is a witness against, are piling on the pressure. They’re facing accusations of sexual assault and the beating of Dorothy and Thomas, but are on bail. Jenny feels unsafe, especially when Webster pulls a knife on her in the street. She petitions the officer in charge to have them dealt with for intimidating a witness. Until they’re remanded everyone is vulnerable. Thomas is not coping and Jenny has started having the odd drink or two. Where will it end?
Dorothy feels the most vulnerable to me. She’s still working on funerals and investigating, and it’s clear how much her drumming and being part of a band is a solace for her. Usually, Dorothy and Thomas have been a united front. It’s always been a strong relationship, based on friendship, but now she can feel a shift in him. The beating they took from Webster has left them both at a low ebb, but instead of coming together to recover, she feels that their experience has separated them. Thomas seems distant and inward looking, he’s also started the process of Swedish Death Cleaning – sorting through his belongings and giving away what he no longer needs. Even though he explains that it is not just for those who are dying, Dorothy is uneasy that he appears to be putting his affairs in order. She has suggested PTSD and counselling, but he wants to deal with things in his own way. His way started to scare me. What happens when an experience changes your partner beyond recognition? I sensed impending doom and I was on high alert as Dorothy tried to find out what his plans were. I was genuinely scared for her and every time she seemed close to danger my heart skipped a beat. I realised just how fond I was of this badass grandmother. As we moved towards a potentially terrible conclusion I could barely breathe. Could I cope with losing the amazing matriarch of this family? Within her thoughts was a counsellor’s lament:
‘Sometimes she got it wrong, but she always attempted to have empathy. She tried to see things from the point of view of Yana, Oliver, Veronika and Camilla. She tried to understand Thomas, as well as Griffiths and Webster and Low, their victims Billie and Ruby’.
Sometimes we have so much empathy for others that we forget about ourselves. Our own anger and sadness gets pushed to the bottom of the pile as we try and try to understand why people do what they do. Each of the Skelf’s cases has a surprising ending and a particularly devastating one for all the women.
As usual the author included his mix of science, philosophy and spirituality. The phone box in the garden is still doing it’s bit, helping the bereaved speak to their loved ones. The funeral business is changing towards being even more sustainable, signified by the new wording on their business information. The Skelfs are now ‘natural undertakers’ rather than funeral directors. It changes the focus and places the dead person and their family at the centre of planning the funeral they want, rather than a stranger dictating what happens. Their resomation rather than cremation system is going well, they’ve stopped embalming altogether and they have mushroom suits that speed up the process of decomposition and improve the soil. They also have their own funeral site for burials and the move towards wicker and cardboard coffins is becoming accepted practice. They are still working with the council on the Communal Funeral Project, providing funerals for people who are homeless or destitute. Hannah is interested in the concept of panpsychism, the idea that everything in the universe has consciousness. Therefore every element is conscious, earth, air, water and fire. Even a rock has an essential spirit. I was also fascinated with the Hearing Voices movement, something I’ve been aware of from working in mental health, but the statistic that one in ten people hear voices or have auditory hallucinations was surprising. I have a medication that causes auditory hallucinations and I only take it at night, so as I’m going to sleep I can hear a constant murmur as if someone is having a conversation downstairs or the radio has been left on. Luckily I know what it is, but for people with direct and often damaging voices it must be so hard to ignore. I loved that there are other cultures where hearing voices is more accepted, normal even. Maybe people who hear voices are simply more in tune with the essential spirit in all things?
Sometimes, the only thing that keeps the Skelfs (and us) going is hope. There’s usually a wellspring of hope in these novels. A hope for recovery from addiction. Interesting and unusual ways of coping with grief, such as the wind phone. The people these women lift up, like Archie and now Brodie, leaves the reader with a sense that they are on the right side, a glimpse of a more compassionate and inclusive future – something that feels all too distant these days. No other workplace would have employed Archie who has Cotard’s Syndrome, the delusion that he’s dead. Brodie is a risk, he’s been homeless and is in deep grief for his little boy Jack. When his ex, Phoebe, tells Hannah that he hears voices she has to think about this carefully. Could Brodie be mentally unwell? Is this that one time when their trust and nurturing instinct is wrong? I felt there was a little less hope here. Along with the vulnerability comes doubt and there seemed to be a lot of it. Although that’s no surprise when the very people we expect to serve and protect, like Webster and Low, are capable of using that trust and abusing it. Or when the person we share our most intimate moments with can change beyond recognition. Sometimes we have to grieve for those still living. One of the most hopeful things mentioned in the novel was The Future Library Project, which is commissioning new books by writers every year for the next one hundred years. They won’t be read until 2114. This seemed like such an act of hope. The assumption that in a hundred years people will still be hungry for stories, for novels that help them make sense of the world and the people in it. Yet, I kept thinking back to the title of the novel, a quote taken from a Biffy Clyro song that is tattooed on a homeless man whose funeral they’re planning. The full quote is ‘living is a problem, because everything dies’. It felt like an acceptance that life is a series of seasons, or chapters in a book and the story must have ups and downs in order to feel complete. There are beginnings and endings, but some ending arrive before we’re ready. I’m always hoping for one more book in this incredible series and I know whenever the end comes it will be too soon and I’ll miss these incredible women so much.
Published by Orenda Books on 12th September 2024
Meet the Author
Doug Johnstone is the author of seventeen novels, many of which have been bestsellers. The Space Between Us was chosen for BBC Two’s Between the Covers, while Black Hearts was shortlisted for and The Big Chill was longlisted for Theakston Crime Novel of the Year. Three of his books – A Dark Matter, Breakers and The Jump – have been shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize. Doug has taught creative writing or been writer in residence at universities, schools, writing retreats, festivals, prisons and a funeral home. He’s also been an arts journalist for 25 years. He is a songwriter and musician with six albums and three EPs released, and he plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, a band of crime writers. He’s also co-founder of the Scotland Writers Football Club and lives in Edinburgh with his family.
‘This is my family story. From all I’ve sown together, through all I couldn’t ask. I want to be the bud who makes it.’
In Bloom tells of strength, survival, forgiveness, resilience and determination, and the fierce love and unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters.
Ever since Sol’s untimely death left her pregnant and alone at twenty-two, Delph’s kept herself small as a form of self-protection. Now, over a decade later, she lives with their daughter Roche and her new partner Itsy, a kind and protective cabbie, on the fourteenth floor of Esplanade Point on the Essex coast.
But Delph’s protective bubble bursts when Roche moves in with her estranged nan, Moon. Feeling on the outside of the bond between her fierce-yet-flaky tarot-reading mother and volatile martial-arts-champion daughter, Delph begins questioning her own freedom. And when Roche’s snooping into her grandmother’s past unearths a familial line of downtrodden women; a worrying pattern emerges. Has keeping small and safe truly been Delph’s choice all these years…?
I’m hosting the paperback blog tour for this wonderful book today and it’s lost none of its charm and power since I read it last year. I don’t believe in trigger warnings, despite their intended purpose to flag up material that may ‘trigger’ difficult emotions in the reader, I feel that they might stop someone experiencing a connection with a text. It might well be a trigger, but that doesn’t always have to mean it’s a negative one. It might be a trigger that starts a healing process. If anyone should have avoided this book it was me, because I was Delphine. I lost the love of my life in my early thirties and then sleepwalked into a coercive and damaging relationship. Yes, it was a hard read at times, but it wasn’t a remotely negative experience. Moon, Delphine and Roche are three generations of a family. Each woman has her own issues, but they all stem from one place. Right back at the beginning.
As the book opens Roche can no longer live with her mother and Itsy, the man she’s been living with for most of Roche’s life. So she decamps to her grandmother Moon’s house. Roche can’t stand Itsy, he dislikes her and wishes she wasn’t there. In fact what he wants is Delphine all to himself, it’s easier to control someone who’s isolated. Delphine has had a glazed over look ever since he arrived in her life and she doesn’t seem like her mum anymore. Delphine has done everything she can to keep Itsy happy. She’s changed how she dressed, made herself less beautiful, stayed at home and stopped going out with friends. Every day she makes herself smaller to make more space for him and Roche can’t watch it anymore. However, things are changing slowly. Delphine has a job she enjoys at B & Q, new connections with her colleagues and today she has made a choice. Delphine is pregnant and she knows deep down in her soul that ‘the thought of more years, more life, tied to him’ is more than she can bear. She goes quietly on her own for an abortion, the quietest but most powerful act of rebellion she can make. Then comes her opportunity, Itsy receives a phone call from Jamaica to tell him his mother is dying. He must jump straight on a flight, so Delphine lets him go alone, knowing that now she has several weeks to herself. She doesn’t stop Roche from moving out and accepts this as her time to heal, time to be the parent that so often Roche has to be for her. However, this isn’t the only recovery needed in the three generations of this family thanks to the actions of men.
I felt at first that I was slowly piecing together the story of a client. Being a person- centred therapist means letting the client choose what they want to talk about. I would use my counselling skills to tease out that story and ask questions where it needs to be clarified or where I might only be getting one perspective. Here the story has it’s own pace and each woman narrates her own section. We flit back and forth, also delving into the past here and there and it’s like doing a jigsaw puzzle but only being handed one piece at a time, then another from a different angle. It takes some time to perceive the whole and that was definitely the case here. Only we the reader can see where they all are in relation to one another. The reality of being a woman in today’s world is explored fully, there is no doubt that these women’s lives would have been immeasurably better had they not encountered men. It takes Roche to articulate this properly with the words and wisdom of her generation.
“Roche knows, remembers, how her life changed at around the time she started secondary, and her bubble of invisibility popped. How, despite the school uniform screaming otherwise, she very suddenly became the inhabitant of a woman’s body, complete with a depressing self-awareness that this was now Roche’s life until one day men deemed her invisible again. In fairness, it’s not her contemporaries who usually do the perving – no, it’s men, grown–ass men who have always done the bulk of the wolf–whistling, the innuendoes and basic compliments that they expect her to ‘smile, love’ and be grateful for.”
As a middle aged woman I now know the power of that invisibility and how, in many ways, it’s a blessing.
I love how carefully the author drew the threads between generations, those behaviours that create a pattern of intergenerational trauma. There are moments in her journey where Delph needs her daughter by her side, but she recognises that it’s a selfish need. Delphi’s lived experience stops her; “is not for a child to fix the parent. Nor is Roche the ointment to Delph’s current troubles”. Then we go back into her mother Moon’s early years, when her grandmother is in hospital, suffering from mental ill health. Her name was still Joy back then and her job is to dispense sunshine to a women who can’t even remember her name. ‘Come on,’ Ma says, in a giddy-up way. ‘You know how happy your little face always makes her.’ This a learned behaviour, people pleasing and exactly what Delph is trying to avoid for her own daughter, three generations later. By sitting with her own pain, Delph is avoiding instilling that behaviour in her own daughter, she’s actively breaking the cycle. Yes, there are traumatic moments in these women’s lives, Moon’s story being particularly harrowing, but we can also see the women’s determination to change. It’s that change and what it means for Roche that brings such an uplifting feeling to the book. For me it’s Delph’s struggle that touched me deeply. The loss of Sol, who’d been there her entire life, is devastating. So moving out of Itsy’s orbit and the mental paralysis she’s been living with means opening up her emotions. That’s all of the emotions including her grief, but it’s a process that needs to happen so that Roche can talk about her father openly and in a joyful way. I found myself more engrossed in the later stages of the book as I had to see whether these women could heal together. This is beautifully written and manages to be funny, moving and hopeful.
This book was an absolute joy to read, which may sound strange considering the subject matter but somehow it awakened my senses, stirred my emotions and kept me reading. In fact I read it so quickly I was finished in an evening that turned into morning before I knew it. Funke lives in Nigeria with her mother, known as Misses Lissie to most people, her father and brother Femi. Mum is a teacher and Dad works at the university. Their entire world is shattered one morning as they make their normal run to school when their mother’s car fails to stop and ploughs directly under a lorry. The drivers side of the car is destroyed but Funke’s side is left completely unscathed. She loses her mother and brother in a moment. In his grief, her father Babatunde is inconsolable and he takes it out on Funke. How did she get out without a scratch? Encouraged by his superstitious mother, he calls Funke a witch and insists she must be protected by some magical being. Seeing how Funke will be treated by her grandmother, her aunties put their heads together and decide she should be sent for a while to her mother’s family in England. Her white family. Funke is ripped away from everything she knows and sent to The Ring, the mansion where her mother and Aunty Margot grew up. There, although she isn’t being hit or accused of evil spells, she feels the resentment of Aunt Margot and her cousin Dominic. They call her Kate, after all it’s easier than pronouncing Funke isn’t it? There’s no colour, bland food and where she was accused of being white in Nigeria, here she is seen as black – with all the racist connotations that come alongside it. Especially in white, upperclass Britain. England’s only saving grace is her cousin Liv. Liv scoops her up and feeds her comfort food. The problem is it’s not the food or the comfort she’s used to.
This is a book about being in between. Funke’s mother was ostracised by her family for marrying a Nigerian man. Aunt Margot sees Lizzie’s relationship with Babatunde as the reason for her own engagement being called off just before the wedding. In her eyes Lizzie was selfish, pursuing her own feelings at the expense of her family. She feels Lizzie had the looks, the charisma and the man she loved, while Margot was left heartbroken and with parents who seemed to miss Lizzie more than they enjoyed Margot’s presence. She sees Funke as her mother’s daughter and a threat to her own children. Her parents seem to love Kate, as they’ve christened her, and Margot doesn’t want her to take all the attention, the love and their eventual inheritance. She’s a bitter woman who is very hard to like. Sadly for Funke, history repeats itself and on the night of their prom a series of events mean they must drive home early. Liv is drunk and high. Yet even Funke, who is teetotal, feels unwell. Dominic throws caution to the wind and decides to drive them home, despite his own drinking, and a terrible accident occurs. Everyone survives but Liv suffers a bad break to her leg. In the aftermath Dominic asks Funke to admit to driving, which she agrees to, not knowing that covering for her cousins will lead to her life being uprooted for the second time.
Funke feels like she belongs nowhere. In Nigeria when her mother was alive they had a wonderful life, even if children would follow her singing a song about her pale skin. That’s nothing to the blatant racism she faces in England, but she faces it down and it fuels her will to succeed. Then she’s back in Nigeria and is again the odd one out. This time she’s in her dad’s new family and their lifestyle in the village is very different to the childhood she remembers on the university compound. His new wife and their children eat and live in ways her dad would have dismissed as ‘bush’ when Funke was a child. Her small brother and sister are black and fascinated with her pale, mixed race skin. Things are familiar, such as the spicy red stew and the heat, but it’s a changed land without her mother in it. At least in England she didn’t expect her mother to be there. Now she faced with the shock of her absence all over again. Will she ever find home? Meanwhile, back in Britain, when Liv finally comes round from the accident she asks for Kate. What will her mother tell her?
I thought the author brilliantly showed how different people cope with mental pain. Funke takes a bottle top from her mother’s hoard (for craft projects) and holds it in her hand so hard that it cuts into her palm. Liv is horrified that she’s hurt herself like this, but for Funke it’s the only thing that distracts her from the grief of losing her and her brother. Liv also deals with motherly absence, but externalises her feelings in a different way. She has a mother who is present, just not for her. Liv starts to drink excessively, uses marijuana and acid tabs to blank out the feelings that she isn’t loved and therefore isn’t worth anything. When we’re children and we’re rejected by a parent, we never assume it’s the parent’s fault and we don’t stop loving them. Instead we internalise their criticism and think we are the problem. Liv has a lot of casual sex because she thinks it sex is all she really has to offer. Meanwhile Funke struggles to give love and truly trust someone. She is in a relationship with a young man who is keeping his true sexuality under wraps, because it’s not accepted in his family or community. The younger people are aware he’s gay and call Funke his ‘beard’, but how far can she take this relationship? What if he suggests a more permanent arrangement and is Funke willing to give her life away so easily? The the same root cause, a loss of the mother figure they so needed, affects both girls, it just manifests in different ways. With them both on opposite continents, how will they ever find each other again? The spaces between can be painful and isolating places to be and the author depicts that with such tenderness and understanding. However, liminal spaces are also freeing. Being in-between gives us the space to choose, to take bits and pieces from each place, each family and make our own identity. I found the end chapter so uplifting and it gave me hope that we can each forge our own identity, once we’ve explored who we truly are. This is a fascinating, touching story about growing up and how we become who we are. It’s vibrant, atmospheric and an absolute must read.
Meet the Author
Born in Bristol, raised in Lagos, I’m proud to be Anglo-Nigerian. I ran a successful ad agency before turning to writing and now live in Dorset with my husband, two standard schnauzers, and way too many books.
My debut novel WAHALA was inspired by a long (and loud) lunch with friends. It was published around the world in January 2022 and is being adapted into a major BBC TV drama. This Motherless Land is my second novel.
The Lotus Readers 