And the Ass Saw the Angel, by Nick Cave

Euchrid Eucrow is the last word in crazy misfits. The second born but sole surviving twin, Euchrid is born in a rusted out car to a grotesquely drunken beast of a mother and a browbeaten, cruel, brute of a father. It's mostly down hill from there. He lives in a junk heap shack on the edge of a sugarcane town in an isolated valley in the middle of nowhere. Euchrid is not a good advertisement for isolation. Probably also not a poster boy for Incest but that’s less his fault.

As an adolescent, the abused and neglected Euchrid stays out of the way of his monstrous parents, preferring to spend long hours in the hills by himself. He collects skulls, hair, blood, teeth, scabs, toenail clippings…some his own, some of the creatures his father traps and tortures, some from murdered townspeople. Keeping it varied. He constructs a grotto of his treasures, half hideaway, half shrine… He spies on the townspeople, hiding from their fists and accusing eyes. He lurks on the fringes of the town, watching, narrating and applying his own brand of logic to the town’s goings on. He's a mute, but that does not seem to prevent him from narrating his own miserable story.

The rough, neglected, mostly confused, frequently filthy Euchrid eventually becomes convinced he is some sort of emissary from God. He has never known friendship or kindness, never been an equal of anyone, never been accepted and never addressed by name, save in his own sprawling inner monologue. He is not the only apparently Godly being in the town- the foundling Beth, a child of the town, is groomed by the Ukelites for sainthood. To begin with it’s quite easy to pity the unloved and unlovely Euchrid- beaten, ridiculed and scorned as he is. However, as the book goes on he does become quite a successful serial killer and animal torturer and mutilator, and so the reader’s sympathy kind of dries up. Though he is still fascinating, it’s no longer possible to feel any kind of empathy for him as he descends into a violent, gleeful madness.

And the Ass Saw the Angel is a searing, brutal slog of a novel that maps the gradual descent into insanity of its mute protagonist. The prose is vicious and overwrought; usually shocking, occasionally very funny. It jumps around between a first person phonetic Southern dialect of Euchrid, and an effusive, detail obsessed narratorial voice that fills in the gaps. I can see why many readers have bemoaned its lack of editing and view it as a self-indulgent, over inflated short story, but I found it weirdly compelling despite its bile, and enjoyed picking out the familiar lines that were either borrowed from the back catalogue made it into subsequent songs. Fans of Nick Cave’s music will be able to spot little crossovers between his 80s songs and his prose; the moths trying to “enter the bright eyes” of bulbs from Mercy Seat, the dead first born twin, drunk mother and rural, endless rain of Tupelo, themes and images that keep repeating- religion, morality, madness, responsibility, insanity…He’s such a brilliant little weirdo.

For a first time novelist, an Australian and a guy that was about 75% heroin in 1989, it’s a remarkable, striking addition to the Southern Gothic landscape. An intense, uncomfortable read that is drenched in heat, grime and sweat, excessive violence and rage- the landscape of the narrative is brilliantly composed and the characters that populate it are typical Cave creations- fire and brimstone preachers, garish prostitutes, gibbering hobos and inebriated, inbred hillfolk.

After the Fire, by Will Hill

Probably the best standalone YA novel I have read this year. After the Fire is compelling, empathetic and so perfectly paced. Narrator and protagonist Moonbeam is a remarkable character- despite never knowing life in the real world, she is humane, intelligent and ceaselessly strong. What an amazing young woman, I kind of love her.

The novel jumps right in to a chaotic siege, there is gunfire, panic, roaring flames. The frantic narrator recognises bloodied, dead and dying faces around her; she's running, apparently on neither one side nor the other. We don't know these dead people yet. The next time we see Moonbeam, she is waking up in a secure facility, alive and bandaged. She has survived the fire, but she does not know if she is safe. She is now in the hands of the Outsiders, the Government- people she has been raised to believe are torturers, murderers and devils. She is suspicious of them to begin with, as anyone would be waking up in what they have always been told is the lion's den.

The book is split into numerous sections, each one labelled Before and After (the fire). In the After, a shell-shocked, confused and doubt riddled Moonbeam is required to sit down in therapy sessions with a Dr Hernandez and eventually also Agent Carlyle, as they work to piece together the aspects of her life and experiences. Moonbeam grew up and lived most of her life on the "Base", the homestead of the Lord's Legion, a cultish branch of extremist Christianity led by the charismatic, tyrannical Father John; a fire and brimstone Prophet who claims to commune directly with The Lord.

As Moonbeam reveals more about Father John, his increasing powers and his means of control, life on the Base is laid bare. The manipulation. The fear. The brainwashing. The disappearances. The radicalisation of angry young men by means of isolation, ego stoking, entitlement and gun access. The reader follows Moonbeam's gradual realisation that her religion is deeply flawed, that how she and her peers are treated is wrong, that Father John is an absolute maniac and that nobody else is going to be able to help her get away- nobody except for Nate, a dreamy guy from the outside that manages to win the favour of Father John, chucks a spanner in his works and then promptly vanishes into the dust. It's really easy to relate to Moonbeam's feelings for Nate- being convinced that he just sees her as this annoying, doting kid with a crush.

Moonbeam takes her time to recount her story, gradually leading up to what she considers to be a sickening, gut churning secret, a festering guilt that will taint her in the eyes of the men she has come to trust, and the remaining Base kids that are still at the facility with her. The ones that look up to her. It's a hearbreaking story of abuse, a yearning for belonging and powerlessness that is both emotional and fascinating.

I love books that feature cults, and the people that come to their senses and escape. After the Fire is honestly one of the best novels I've read this year and would thoroughly recommend it to anyone- readers that loved Lisa Heathfield's Seed will go mad for it, as would any adult readers that enjoyed last year's runaway cult bestseller The Girls, by Emma Cline. After the Fire is pacy, intelligent, filled with compelling characters, both innocent and evil and a fascinating study of how charismatic, forceful individuals can create their own empires if they are deluded enough, they believe their own lies enough, and if the supply of lost, damaged and disillusioned individuals to convert is plentiful enough.

Stunning.

This is Going to Hurt, by Adam Kay

Wow. For 95% of this book, I was imagining how I’d write it up; praising its hilarity, its pace, its wit. I was going to do a big paragraph about how much I loved all the Harry Potter name swaps. I was going to gush about how Green Wing this whole book is in its absurdity and farcical “you couldn’t make it up” vibes… about how entitled some of the British public are. How stoic, how bonkers how utterly unfit for walking the Earth unsupervised and being allowed to operate heavy machinery. I was going to talk about how the author definitely knows how to regale his audience with almost Keaton-esque timing…It’s all in here. But the last entry, the last major incident that Dr Kay deals with in his career as an ObGyn senior registrar is chilling to the point where all of the funny, human warmth of the other 250 pages kind of feels distant and like it happened in a different book. I think the last 5 pages of this book is going to haunt me forever.

What starts off as a hilarious but illuminating peek behind the curtain into the operation of NHS hospitals becomes a very sobering biography of a beloved institution on the brink of collapse- a diary of a man with a scalpel and a wipe-clean hoover desperately trying to keep things running in a system that seems designed to make everything grind to a bloody, crunching halt. Not because of these greedy, workshy doctors that won’t turn up for a Saturday shift and are only in Medicine for the special parking space and the rivers of cash, but because there are simply not enough doctors to do all of the things that need to be done so that people don’t die. The ratio of work to sleep/home/sustenance sounds like something out of a PoW camp. The normal rules of workload, work/life balance and being awake enough to function simply do not apply and it is both horrifying and fascinating.

I’m worried now that writing this so soon after finishing the book (within 30 minutes) has made me err on the side of glumness, so I just want to reiterate what a (and I do not use this phrase lightly or without a trace of self hatred) laugh out loud book this is. I read half of it in one sitting, sat in a plastic chair in the King’s Mill Hospital A&E waiting room, watching the giant, rusty, beloved behemoth that is the NHS in motion. I marveled at the smiley, efficient nurses as I tried to stifle snorts about the likelihood of French holiday homes, or hold in a horrified WTF face at the “degloving” story. But I was always, always amazed at the commitment, the proficiency and the sheer iron will of Adam Kay and his colleagues, who soldiered on long after any normal person would have understandably collapsed in a snotty, tearful mess. These people are superheroes that don’t even realise they are extraordinary.

I urge everyone with eyes to read this. Partly because it’s painfully funny, partly because it’s pretty much the whole of human experience wrapped up in scrubs and then bled on. Mostly though, because nobody could read this, this dispatch from the frontline of an NHS hospital and fail to recognise what an asset it is, what a good thing we have here and how ESSENTIAL it is that we protect it. Nobody could read about these men and women repeatedly jeopardising their own home lives and happiness for the wellbeing of total strangers and not feel compelled to defend and protect the NHS and all who sail in her with their last, gurgling breath. READ IT!!

Frozen Charlotte, by Alex Bell

Motivated by a sudden and unexpected tragedy born of messing around with a Ouija Board app, Sophie heads off to the moody, weather-beaten Isle of Skye to stay with the kind-of-cousins she met once and only once when she was a small child. 16 year old Cameron is a broody musical prodigy with a hand injury that prevents him from achieving greatness. 15 year old Piper is perfect- the sweetly smiling hostess who seems too good to be true. 7 year old Lilias is strange and once tried to cut her own skeleton out. Rebecca is dead and has been for 7 years. Their father, Sophie’s kind of Uncle James, is either the most gormlessly absent parent in the world, the most wilfully ignorant, or he genuinely doesn’t care what’s going on in the lives of his weird offspring.

Rebecca is the one that started it all- the spirit that Sophie tried to summon, the probable reason for the tragedy, the reason Sophie is on Skye. All Sophie knows is that her kind-of cousin died in an accident at her family’s home. So it turns out that the Skye house has a tragic and accident-prone history and that strange things have happened there for a long time. Rebecca was acting oddly before she died, and the family seem very reluctant to talk about her, or any of the similarly odd behaviour exhibited by Lilias. Intrigued, and a bit afraid, Sophie is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Rebecca’s death, as she is convinced it connects with a death in her own life.

The novel lays its cards on the table pretty early- there is a ghost, level of malice unknown, let’s see what she wants, and there are creepy dolls that whisper to the children. Lilias claims they tell her to do bad things, even when she doesn’t want to. Each chapter begins with 4 lines from the Frozen Charlotte ballad, a poem that inspired the production of the dolls and a tune that threads the most chilling parts of the story together. The book was vaguely atmospheric, aided mostly by the wind and Dark Tom, the shrieking parrot. Personally I found the writing basic to the point that it felt robotic- I guess I wanted more emotion, more menace, more sensation. I felt like Sophie was just running a bit of commentary on what was happening, not feeling much of any of it.

I did like the psychological warfare that Cameron and Piper were engaged in- each one is determined to paint the other as the villain of the piece by dropping carefully chosen facts and suggestions out of context. Not sure of the full stories, at the mercy of the information drip fed to her, Sophie becomes less and less sure who’s telling the truth, who she can trust and which of the three cousins is the most dangerous.

Also, if you live in a house that was a school over 100 years ago, why on Earth would you keep the school’s stage in your living room? Why would the blackboards still be up? If you’ve got one kid that wandered off into the frosty night and died, why would you not keep a better eye on your remaining 3? Maybe check once in a while that they’ve not deteriorated into some sort of psychotic fog? Why don’t people trust their own eyes?

Frozen Charlotte was an easy enough read with the occasional spooky moment, but for me it lacked atmosphere and suspense. I found Sophie to be a bit of a limp protagonist and after how much I had enjoyed Fir, also in the Red Eye series, I think I had very high expectations for Frozen Charlotte that just weren’t met. Kids are always asking me for horror books, and the China Doll trope is very well known, so I don't think it will lack readers, this one just didn't do anything for me.

See What I Have Done, by Sarah Schmidt

Loved loved loved this. Is there anything more maddeningly delicious than a real life murder mystery that was never satisfyingly solved?

The book begins with “Someone’s killed Father”. Yes. Yes they have. Killed him so hard that apparently his eyeball was cleaved in two. Andrew and Abby Borden were hacked to death with an axe in their home in Fall River, MA on August 4, 1892 at some time between 9:00 and 11:00 AM. It is believed that Abby was killed first and then Andrew, though Andrew was the first to be found. Their bodies were discovered separately- Abby was upstairs and Andrew was on a sofa in his office. Andrew's youngest daughter Lizzie was arrested for the murders and spent 10 months in jail. After an 90 minutes' deliberation, the jury acquitted her of Murder. Nobody else was ever formally tried as a suspect.

Personally, I had never heard this rhyme, but apparently it is quite prevalent:

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

Sarah Schmidt spins an oppressive, heat soaked narrative of the Borden Murders, creating a disturbing and dysfunctional picture of family life; an unhappy collection of people forced under one roof, plagued by rivalry, resentment, paranoia and generally very unhealthy relationships. Andrew Borden, though wealthy, is incredibly frugal, a self made man but despised in the business world. Abby, step-mother to the girls is hated by them both, despite getting along well when they were young. They are stiff, formal, apparently insular. They do not seem to connect.

Firstly, the writing is absolutely beautiful. It's eerie and oppressive and visceral in that music-box-music-playing-too-slowly kind of way. It gets under your skin and possesses you and is utterly, utterly compelling.

The story is told using the multiple narrators format and this is an absolute textbook example of 1) how this should be done and 2) what kind of effect can be created when used properly. The perspective shifts between the childish, coddled Lizzie, her neglected, put upon sister Emma, maid of all work Bridget who just wants to GTF out of there and ne'er do ruffian Benjamin, an associate of Lizzie and Emma's uncle. We see Lizzie through the eyes of strangers, the people closest to her, and from her own perspective. It's a fascinating examination of a very unusual woman. The narrative moves through time seamlessly, examining the day of the murder in forensic detail, sliding to the day before, then jumping forward 10 years to the trial and acquittal of Lizzie Borden. Each narrator has a distinctive, tangible personality and voice, each one is a living, breathing person, detailed and with depth, earnestly committing their memories to the page. Their voices are distinct, and unique, their stories are there to be believed or discredited.

The characters then. Lizzie and Emma are just so fascinatingly messed up. Lizzie is the most unreasonable, manipulative person, she completely controls Emma's life and influences her parents' opinions of her. Despite their ages, both sisters still live at home, simmering in their co-dependency and bitterness, never allowing the other to break away. Emma wants to escape, had the chance to get married, but Lizzie would never allow her to go. The Lizzie of this novel comes across as greatly infantilised, spoiled, spiteful and tempestuous, while Emma is bitter, forgotten, longing to escape the family home. She feels responsible for Lizzie, enables her behavior and tries to keep her happy for ease's sake. I was especially fond of Bridget - she seemed to be the narrator with the best assessment of the situation. Trusting nobody, keeping her head down, she seemed to slip unnoticed through the Bordens' house, keeping her accumulating impressions quiet and biding her time. I think she best represents the reader, the outsider, the person with the best objective view. She knows from the beginning that the Bordens are odd, and we see how manipulative they can be from her several attempts to leave, their constant retention of her.

As the narrative progresses, there are surprises, the introduction of unlikely characters, witnesses and developments. Lizze's account of her movements changes, the murder weapon is lots, a sinister Uncle lurks around the house. There is lots of vomit. We are thrown a possibility, sent off in certain directions. However, the book has decided its killer, and its fascinating to see that net close around the characters, to see how they change as suspicion turns to confession. I love historical fiction when it uses real history as its skeleton- easier to mess up, sure, but when someone gets it right, it is *the best* fiction. It put me in mind of The Haunting of Hill house, two co-dependent, sisters, one socially stunted and possibly a killer, the other trying desperately to carry on as normal, shielding her sister yet quietly terrified...also of Alias Grace, as there's that idea that truth, innocence, guilt and identity are very slippery, subjective things and that the same events viewed through different eyes will reveal different things. I loved the inclusion of the timeline and the will excerpts at the end- it just underline the factual elements of the book. So this might be a fictionalised account, but these murders happened, these people were real, the lived lives and had motives and they alone know why they behaved in the way they did.

I would absolutely recommend this to crime readers, to Real Crime fans, to anybody and everybody that loves an unsolved, much speculated about historical mystery. Lizzie is a compelling and fascinating character, her dysfunctional family home the perfect incubator for her obsessions and questionable sanity. I loved the sultry prose, all sweaty backs and heat haze, over-ripe pears and stifling rooms. It really is a stunning debut, executed perfectly, if you'll pardon the pun.

Beautiful Broken Things, by Sara Barnard

Such a brilliant, thought provoking book about the strength of female friendships and how intense they can sometimes be- how in giving so much to a friend, you can lose sight of yourself. The narrative also explores the importance of boundaries, severe trauma and mental health problems, and the tragic truth that sometimes, trying to help, trying to 'be there' for someone is damaging, no matter how good your intentions are. You can be the best, most thoughtful and accepting friend in the world, but some people need rescuing from themselves.

Caddy and Rosie have been best friends their whole lives, despite their separate schools. Caddy's set up is a woefully boy-free affair, filled with too-high expectations and extra curricular activities. At the start of year 11, Rosie meets new-girl Suzanne, and Caddy is determined to hate this super gorgeous, witty, self deprecating interloper that Rosie has brought into her life. But Suzanne- enigmatic, secretive, hurt, has just escaped an unsafe home life and is struggling with her behaviour, her destructive tendencies and her self esteem. Caddy does not come off well to begin with. She's jealous, kind of spiteful and spends a lot of time being self obsessed, lamenting that nothing interesting ever happens to her, unlike Rosie who has a baby sister die and her sister Tarrin who is bipolar. Yep, she really is wrapped up in herself to the extent that she is jealous because her life lacks the drama of death and mental illness. As with many 'shy/boring/too-nice' narrators, she's determined to shed her shyness, become more Rosie, become more interesting. Get a makeover and a boyfriend, in true teen priority style.

Thankfully, Caddy does grow as a character. The duo becomes a trio and for once, it's really refreshing to read a story about three girls where one is not ostracised. As the girls get closer, the reasons for Suzanne's increasingly erratic behaviour becomes clearer. Is friendship enough to save Suzanne? Will listening help? So Rosie seems more aware of Suzanne's state of mind, seems to view her struggle more objectively- Caddie is just desperate to be there, to be a good friend to Suzanne. She kind of gets off on being Suzanne's go to- not just the friend of a friend. She still parades around like a fool as Rosie begins to become concerned about Caddy and Suzanne's developing friendship and the intense closeness that they suddenly have. Caddy thinks she's jealous. Caddy's family think Suzanne is an awful influence and is jeopardising their daughter's future. Suzanne is a brilliantly crafted character, heartrendingly vulnerable and deeply sympathetic- she's frustrating and reckless and in many ways quite unlikable. But she is hypnotic. Rosie and Caddy’s deep, lifelong friendship is such a beautiful one- I absolutely believed in their bond and knew that they were both in it for the long haul.

Teen rebellion is explored brilliantly, and the rites of passage, the bust ups, the friction and the solid foundations of teen friendships are beautifully explored. Anybody that has ever been a teen will relate pretty hard to this. Sara Barnard captures that teen intensity, that NEED to be accepted, to be liked by your peers, perfectly in a complex and engaging character study. The prose is gorgeous- sensitive, resonant, and enthralling. These girls are so real: their changing relationships, the lessons they have to learn and the challenges each faces are so authentic and absorbing.

It leaves the reader with a weird mixed feeling cocktail of melancholy, happiness, hope and that sort of tragic acceptance of inevitability- it's the very definition of bittersweet. In her notes at the back of the book the author herself afterwards calls it "A love story without a romance", which it so absolutely is; it's really refreshing to find a contemporary that willfully neglects boy meets girl romance so steadfastly and instead spins a tale of the deepest and most life changing friendships. The support, the craving and finding of acceptance, how heady that can be. How occasionally, intentionally or not, such intensity often leads to destructiveness.The fallout from such a friendship makes bad decisions seem like good decisions, fosters an impulsiveness that overrides sense. The book is so realistic in its depiction of that process, and in the aftermath and the consequences of such an intense, impulsive friendship.

Goldfish Boy, by Lisa Thompson

Matthew Corbin is obsessed with cleanliness; desperately trying to avoid germs and disease, his behaviour has become so extreme that he is missing big chunks of school. His hands are sore and painful from all the washing, his antibacterial spray and latex gloves safely concealed under his bed. Martin avoids all human contact, eats only pre-packaged foods and rarely leaves the house. Instead, he spends his days observing his neighbours from the safety of his bedroom window, noting down what they're up to on his quiet cul-de-sac street.

Unusually, Mr Charles next door is looking after two young children that Martin has never seen before-  a toddler and an older girl. They see him watching them, bestowing him with the nickname Goldfish boy. When the boy goes missing, Matthew is suddenly at the centre of a mystery; one where all his neighbours are suspects. Matthew thinks he might have information that can help, but going outside into the world is quite scary and he's not sure that he's ready for that yet.

Goldfish Boy is a slow-burner of a story, if the reader is expecting a mystery. The missing toddler, Teddy, provides the momentum of the plot, but it is really about Matthew's personal journey. It's about how he deals with losses in his life, loneliness and the early beginnings of friendship. It's quite frustrating at first, because Matthew's parents don't really seem to see how ill he is. Either because he is good at hiding it, or because they don't want to believe that their only son has debilitating mental health issues. As the story unfolds, we start to see that the Corbins as a family are coping in whatever ways they can.

The compulsive cleaning and 'Magical Thinking', while being the OCD bread and butter, are sensitively handled and compassionately explored throughout the book, which feels compassionate and well researched. I felt like Matthew's frustration and fear were incredibly real, and his reactions to these emotions equally believable. I liked that he *knew* his fears were irrational, but his brain was not allowing him to listen to its own reason.

The book is also about suspicion and judgement, and the fact that nobody can ever really know what a person is like, nor how they fell and what they've been through merely by looking at them. I loved Matthew's interaction with Old Nina- how much he learned from her. Matthew's recovery is only really beginning by the time the book ends, but the reader is left with the sense that with his therapy, his newfound friendship with the super-persistent Melody and the 'I'm only mean to you because I'm insecure' Jake and finally being able to be honest about his feelings, it feels like Matthew will be ok.

Very much recommended not so much as a Middle Grade Mystery, but as a novel that really places the reader in the position of a child really struggling with his mental health. Themes of guilt and compulsion and feeling like you're letting people down are explored in really relatable ways, and Matthew is a likable little chap that manages to find his strength.

His Bloody Project, by Graeme Macrae Burnet

So apparently this sold the most copies in the wake of its nomination for the Booker Prize shortlist, but did not win in the end. But winning isn't everything, right?

His Bloody Project begins with a preface by the author, Graeme Macrae Burnet, recounting how he found the manuscript that you are about to read, intact and inexpertly bound, in the archives of an Inverness repository. The story re-imagines the supposedly real-life story of 17-year-old Crofter's son Roderick Macrae, perpetrator of a triple murder in 1869, the bloody project from which the book gets its name. The narrative is constructed of testimonials from Roderick's neighbours, teachers and other crofters in the township. Opinions of him vary wildly, from gifted (if slightly contemptuous) scholar, to quiet loner, to murderous, dead-eyed miscreant. After the short testimonials, Roddy tells his own story, in an unlikely, flowing prose from his prison cell, recounting the series of events that began with his mother's death, and led up to a triple homicide.

It's interesting in that it is not a whodunnit, because Roddy is never in any denial about his guilt. The interest arises in why. Why did this boy, an apparently clever, thoughtful lad feel driven to murder his neighbours? A boy that, on his first day of employment working for the landowner on a shooting party, scared a stag off to save such a magnificent animal from being slain. What drives a person like that to kill someone? Not just kill them, but full blown smush them to a pulp?

It's an intriguing little book- sort of a literary found footage. It's unexpectedly humorous in parts, with an oddly compelling narrator in the softly spoken, literary Roderick. It reminded me in parts of Hannah Kent's Burial Rites, in that it is a memoir written with the noose around the neck. The difference was, that narrator was innocent. It reminded me most of Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood; the idea that multiple versions of a person exist to different people perceiving them. The idea that guilt and innocence are slippery ideas, that if a person is devious enough, clever enough, if they believe their story enough they can dupe almost anyone. The innocent party becomes a character to be played, even to  themselves.

In His Bloody Project, the reader is left to make up their own mind about the accused, but they are heavily influenced by his own, lengthy account. We end up sharing Macrae's own perception of himself, whether that is what his peers see or not. We see his background, his treatment at home. We see how his beloved sister is gradually dimmed by toil, abused and then extinguished. We see his aspirations, his unlucky sequence of events. His acceptance of them. His arrival at the only conclusion; a win-win- he is freeing his father from both the burden of his torment, and the burden of his useless son.

It's an enjoyable book that paints a picture of the bleak inevitability of life in the Scottish islands- a simple, ancient life made unbearable by the arrival of power and tyranny. It's unusual in its format, and some readers might be put off by the verbose prose of Macrae's account of his life. I've just realized the author shares a name with his protagonist. *so dense*. I'd definitely recommend this to people who enjoyed Alias Grace, and to readers of crime generally. It's certainly a new and compelling twist on a very, very familiar genre. It must be hard to write a really original crime novel, but GMB has managed well. Memorable.

Gerald's Game, by Stephen King

This was recommended to me by a colleague and I was very honoured to get a lend of her 1992 original paperback that was very much falling apart (it's 4 years younger than me). I love the feel of well read books, they're so pliant.

Stephen King raises the odd eyebrow every now and again for his portrayal of women. Yes, sometimes they're not very good characters. Sometimes they are a bit crazy and monstrous. Sometimes they exist purely to be alluring. Jessie Burlingame is one of his most nuanced and complex creations, holding down a whole book single handed.

The book begins with Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald in the bedroom of their summer cabin in lakeside Maine (where else? I ask you). They have decamped to the lake for an impromptu weekend in the interests of romance. Gerald, a successful lawyer but otherwise ordinary man has been able to reinvigorate the couple's sex life by handcuffing Jessie to the bed. Initially Jessie enjoyed the game, grateful of Gerald's renewed interest in her and the rejuvenation of their love life. On this occasion however, the cuffed Jessie changes her mind. She sees understanding and realisation in Gerald's eyes, and with horror, sees him shake them away, pretending that he thinks her protests are part of the game. Blinded by the panic that her dull, ordinary lawyer husband is preparing to rape her, she kicks him in the stomach and groin with all her strength. Gerald keels over, turns red, has a heart attack and dies, cracking his head on the floor for good measure. Jessie is alone, chained to the headboard with two sets of police issue handcuffs, on a deserted lake in the off season.

Gerald's Game reminded me of those sitcom 'capsule' episodes where the characters never actually leave the set and the whole episode takes place in one location. I'm thinking the classic The One Where No One's Ready ("I'm Chandler, could I be wearing any more clothes?"). Jessie, obviously, cannot move and her entrapment forces some very creative writing devices and some incredibly intricate plotting. Over the course of the next 3-4 days, Jessie wages a one-woman war of survival on her own mind and body.  She battles thirst, muscle spasms and desperation. She hears voices in her head; offering advice, bickering, encouraging or discouraging. Each one seems to be based on a her or person in her life, "The Goodwife AKA Goody Burlingame" (a kind of puritan Stepford Wife version of herself), Ruth Neary (a wild college roommate that she ghosted) and Nora Callighan (her  former psychiatrist). The voices all clamour for attention and appear to represent different parts of Jessie's fractured mind. She hasn't spoken to Ruth or Nora in years, but what they do have in common is that they both came dangerously close to uncovering a buried, traumatic childhood memory that Jessie has suppressed for years.

The only other characters that occur in the novel are the Former Prince, a hungry and skittish abandoned dog that risks entering the cabin to feed, to Jessie's horror, on Gerald. The other is a horrific deformed apparition; leering, hideously elongated and reeking of death, it's not clear initially if this is a physical reality or a figment of Jessie's dehydrated mind- but the terror it inspires is real. Interspersed with visits by these two beings, the plot is made up of tiny victories on Jessie's part; lengthy, gradual tasks like obtaining a drink of water, easing her muscles, lifting the headboard, interspersed with flashbacks to college, to a particularly harrowing solar eclipse in the 1960s and to her subsequent periods of trauma. 

It's a really thought provoking book that examines the contrasting expectations that society has of women and the emotional weight that such expectations accrue over a lifetime. Jessie is a silenced, dutiful, manipulated daughter. A trophy wife.  Forced out of a job she loved by a too-successful husband, she begins to take stock of her life, realising for the first time how unhappy she has been in her marriage. She's a plaything, a decorative commodity to first her father then her husband. Her ordeal at the lake forces her for the first time to confront and then reject the roles she has been expected to play. She is forced to save herself from the cycle of abuse at the hands of the men in her life. It's only when she resorts to digging up and accepting the hidden memory that she can start the process of freeing herself from it.

I have to add also that I was utterly heartbroken for Prince, the dog left to languish, starving, afraid and covered in burrs by some Massachusetts asshole in a Mercedes that couldn't be bothered to pay for his licence. The parts where the narrative switches to a Prince-eye-view are so sad to read. Poor prince.

Though I struggled with this book initially, it gripped me shortly after Jessie's first flashback. It's a brilliant character study and an impressive exercise in fiction writing. King can create unbearable suspense in a novel where the protagonist doesn't move, there are no conversations, a single location and a solo character. It's an interesting examination of the strength of survivors, the damage that repressed abuse can wreak on a person's life and the lengths that an individual will go to to survive. It's a lone, desperate woman refusing to give up and to claim her life back from the men that have hurt her.

Let Me Tell You About A Man I Knew, by Susan Fletcher

Set in the baking heat of the Provence summer of May 1889 Let Me Tell You About A Man I Knew is a beautiful story of age and loneliness and the steady beat of the rhythm of life. Love features prominently as a theme- the love of mothers for children, husbands and wives, how love and happiness are not always the same. The book examines how feelings evolve over time, how marriages develop and age.

The novel takes place around the hospital of Saint-Paul-de Mausole. Once a monastery, it's now a home for the mentally ill. Presided over by the Warden Trabuc, a kindly ex military man, the hospital's future is uncertain. Trabuc has his loyal nuns and an assistant, Peron, both men (ageing as they are) work too hard and too many hours to sustain- and they have not received a new patient in years.

Trabuc's lonely wife Jeanne spends her days in their white cottage at the edge of the hospital's grounds. Her hours are filled with washing, cleaning, picking the fruits of her vegetable garden, avoiding the gossip of the other wives in the market town and cooking for her husband. She wonders what her three grown boys are doing in their far flung corners of the world. Jeanne has an adventurer's spirit- she knew her boys would travel and wishes that she could've seen more of the world herself. Her husband's horizons are and have always been small, limited to his hospital and the olive groves around it. The wheat fields, herbs and groves, framed against the Les Alpilles have been her only views in the 30 years since her marriage. Beautiful no doubt, but unchanging. She might be one of the loneliest, most isolated characters I have read in any recent novel, and it's impossible not to grieve for the young Jeanne's hopes and ambitions as she slogs her quiet middle age away as a dutiful wife.

In May 1889, the hospital receives a new admission- a Dutchman, a painter. Rumours and tales of his fiery personality, his mania and savagery and his self mutilation find their way to Jeanne before she lays eyes on him. Burning with curiosity and desperate for companionship, she sets about befriending the red-haired painter, disobeying most of her husband's rules in the process.

I liked how Vincent became a catalyst for Jeanne's second happiness. Though Vincent excites and interests her, her feelings for him are totally maternal. He simply enters her life, enriches it through friendship and through offering a new perspective. He makes her feel valued. I really liked Jeanne's transformation throughout the book, and how being seen was so crucial to how she perceived herself. Even the familiar scenery around her became more beautiful when she felt visible. She didn't haunt the groves any more, she occupied them. When she was seen, she could see the things around her too. There is no romance between them, no illicit love- but through Vincent's attentions and conversation she is able to find a greater happiness with her husband- one of communication and openness rather than stifled formality and stiff reserve. The novel is definitely a love story, but its an unconventional one.

One of the things that impressed me most about this book is the beautiful influence of Van Gogh's art- the brilliant colours, the thick swirls of paint. The waywardness of his style, his refusal to be tamed by convention is subtly threaded through the story not in Vincent's character, but in his art. We learn more about him through what he creates than by how he behaves or what he says. Which is appropriate really, as we can so rarely piece together a proper picture of the lives of our most beloved artists.

Let Me Tell You About A Man I Knew is a wonderfully evocative, uplifting read about two loyal but disconnected characters and the mysterious, unlikely force that brings them together. The baked, ochre earth of Provincial France, the dusty heat are conjured brilliantly, and the soul destroying drudgery of routine (however accidental) is very relatable. It's a scary thought, to see a character put her broom down and wonder where the last 20 years went. I think that's something a lot of readers will respond to.

Books about art and artists is one of my absolute favourite not-quite-genres, so to celebrate the release of Let Me Tell You About a Man I Knew, and to point all the readers that loved it (or will love it if they liked these) towards more beautiful books that explore similar themes, here are some more novels that I've also loved that have an artist/the creative process/a painting/inspiration as its core. I particularly like the recurring conundrum of creativity and mania. Is creativity born of mania? Or is the creative soul more prone to it? Is inspiration inherent, or must it be sought? Does the art come from the void or is the void caused by the art? I will never get bored of reading about that struggle.
So, in order of publication, newest to oldest. There are probably many more, but some of my favourites;


The Improbability of Love, by Hannah Rothschild

A re-discovered Watteau masterpiece tells the story of its creation to its discovery in a London junk shop by a destitute chef. I loved the idea of giving the painting its own voice- she tells her own story, her life experiences of hanging on the walls of Madame de Pompadour, Hitler, Louis XIV and Queen Victoria. The book also talks about the subjective value of art- the monetary/cultural/personal/aesthetic/historical value of a piece of canvas covered with oil.

The Ecliptic, by Ben Wood

Set in an artist's retreat, this beautifully written novel centres around the artist and their inspiration and the curse of the creative; to be torn between a need to produce, and a need to produce with integrity and vision. It's almost like creativity is an elusive but powerful animal, capable of great violence and beauty.

How To Be Both, by Ali Smith

An interesting exploration of the connection between a painting and a viewer. Again, the 400 year old painting gets to speak (or the painter himself, as represented through a painting). Smith asks but never really answers a lot of questions about art and its importance. How art affects people differently, the strength of connection that can (rarely, but still) occur between a person and an image from centuries ago and how alien this connection can seem to others. It explores the legacy of the creative, the duty of some to tell stories to pass on, and the duty of others to understand them later.

The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
The titular painting by Carel Fabritius is rescued from a gallery explosion by 13 year old Theo Decker. Dazed and disoriented, he stumbles out of the ruined gallery to discover that his mother has been killed in the explosion, and the artworks all assumed to be destroyed. For the next 14 years, Theo is the unofficial custodian of a masterpiece- it is both the millstone around his neck and his most precious possession. The Goldfinch is essentially a complicated coming of age story about dealing with loss, betrayal and about the weird adventure that friendship can be. It also has beautiful themes of the importance of cultural history and the preservation of beautiful, important things.

The Grl With a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier

A similar situation to the #ManIKnew that uses Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring to explore the relationship of the portrait's subject to the artist. The book was apparently inspired by the intensity of the sitter's gaze upon the viewer/artist and the untold story that Chevalier read in her face.

Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood

An accidental feminist icon artist returns to her home town of Toronto for a retrospective of her work. Interesting themes about childhood trauma, being haunted by past tormentors and difficulties forming relationships and how that comes out in the creative process.

Let Me Tell You About A Man I Knew, by Susan Fletcher is released in Hardback and ebook on June 2nd, from Virago books. Thanks to Susan de Soissons for the review copy, it was brilliant.

Ruby, by Cynthia Bond

This is certainly not an easy novel to read- the ritual animal sacrifices, lynching, suffering, sex trafficking, child abuse, incest and misery. The novel’s two main characters, Ephram Jennings and Ruby Bell meet once, right at the beginning, when they are about seven and six. It’s a memorable but traumatic meeting- Ephram is beaten to a pulp, Ruby is subjected to a sort of rustic exorcism behind the closed door of a witch-like forest dwelling voodoo woman, Ma Tante. Bruised and bloodied by the boyish Margaret, Ruby’s cousin and sole protector, Eprham will never forget Ruby’s beauty or her braids, and will carry this image of her for the rest of his life. Ephram catches one or two glimpses of Ruby over the next decade in church and in the town, but their paths do not cross again until Ruby returns from New York after 13 years away.

Raised by his sister after his mother went crazy and his preacher father was lynched by white men, Ephram begins as a pious, routine abiding character. Bagging groceries at the market, handing all his wages over to his domineering, coddling and manipulative sister, Celia his ‘mama’ since he was 14. Her only aspiration in life is to become the Church Mother, something that was almost a given until Ephram took the notion to spoil everything.

Ruby escapes Liberty to New York in an attempt to re-invent herself and for a chance to find the light-skinned mother who abandoned her as a baby. It’s unclear initially just what horrors Ruby is truly escaping; her childhood will be revealed to Ephram via flashbacks as the novel progresses. New York seems exciting, glamorous, seedy. It’s the closest thing to equality available to “coloured” folks in 1950s America. It’s not much different for Ruby though- she resorts to the same skillset as she’s always used to survive, detaching her mind from her body whilst it does not belong to her.

Upon her return, accent slightly lost, her first lost spirit in tow, judgemental stares from the townspeople redoubled, Ruby spends another 11 years slowly going crazy. Avoided and derided by the community, she talks to spirits, lives alone on her family’s land, filthy and detached, just wandering the woods and wailing. We later learn that the spirits she obsesses over, hundreds of them, are the lost souls of the murdered children that wander the Piney Woods. One of the worst part of Ruby’s story is that she is by no means the only person to have been used in such a way. She soothes their pain and gives them shelter in her battered body.

The people of Liberty Township, the devout, church-going community, seem to view Ruby’s troubled mind as inevitable recompense for what they see as waywardness, her sinfulness, her unusually pretty face. She’s brought it on herself. What the township chooses to turn its blind eyes away from is incredible. The injustice of it is so frustrating- the men and boys that have abused her and taken advantage for decades condemn her for her wickedness. The book’s most powerful point is the things that happen under our noses that we choose to ignore.

If the reader’s heart breaks for Ruby from the beginning; they are thoroughly ruined by the end. As Ruby becomes more lucid, as Ephram diligently coaxes her back from her spirits and her torment, she fills in the gaps of her life with horrific details. We learn that the ‘boarding school’ that Ruby was sent to work at is nothing more than a brothel, that she has been passed from pillar to post ever since that first meeting in the woods. Various lynchings, escapes and desertions within her family left her without an adequate carer and she fell into the evil, horrific hands of the very people that would be expected to save her. The author makes a powerful point about evil being something that can occur anywhere- literally anywhere without exception. Evil is a powerful and uncontrollable thing, which is made all the more surprising by the ease with which it can be hidden.

Ruby is a beautifully written book, full of a kind of old, trickster magic, evil spirits and the horrific weight of history. But it’s also about patience and kindness, and about tackling injustice, no matter how insurmountable it seems, or how ill-equipped one is to do it. I loved the quiet diligence of Ephram, as he acts on the feelings he has harboured for decades. He cleans Ruby’s house, washes her clothes. Painstakingly and lovingly washes her hair. He listens to things that she has lived, things that she has bottled up all her life. He treats her like a person again, and Ruby doesn't know how to act. Her behaviour is so divorced from her feelings, she has literally no idea how to be act when shown kindness. I liked that there are still good people, who will still do selfless things, even if it is years overdue.

I know I haven’t really done justice to this book- I could never get across the depth of its effect on me. It’s a haunting book that tells the story of a life of such unimaginable cruelty and dehumanisation. It’s shocking and raw and brutal, told in a style of prose that is disarmingly beautiful. I can see this willing the Bailey’s Prize this year (and it would be a well deserved victory)

for its honesty, its lyrical prose and its brilliantly crafted mysticism. It would be easy, with a plot so laden with misery and trauma to become melodrama, but the characters are so balanced and so well realised that this never happens. An incredible novel.

The Butcher's Hook, by Janet Ellis

The Butcher's Hook tells the story of 19 year old Anne Jaccobs, the eldest and until recently only daughter in a wealthy Georgian family. Having recently lost a beloved infant brother to fever, Anne is an odd, solitary young woman, morbid and content with her own company. Her ailing mother is confined with a new, sickly baby (a sister that Anne finds it so desperately hard to care about) and her callous, pompous father is at the stage where he is so wearied and inconvenienced by Anne's existence, he's willing to marry her off to creepy old men in a pretty mercenary fashion. Anne shares with the reader certain secrets that explain her aversion to older men...could these secrets also explain Anne's later-in-the-novel actions?Unwilling to be sold off quietly, Anne strikes up an acquaintance which quickly becomes a passionate affair with Fub, the butcher's dark eyed apprentice.

Consumed with desire for Fub, Anne will go to surprising lengths to satisfy her addiction to her boy. He becomes her world, her whole reason for existing. To begin with he seems quite sweet, a rough but delicious type that dotes on Anne and their snatched hours together...she seems naïve and quite reckless, but for once she is happy. Her world experiences something of a seismic shift. She loses all sense of reality and prospective, losing herself in her passionate fantasies of Fub and their breathless, clandestine meetings. The first half of the story is a fairly recognisable tale of a young woman being steered into a horrendous marriage to a genuinely creepy character, one that seems to openly gloat in his ensnaring of her against her will. Love or social position: so far, so familiar. What sets The Butcher's Hook apart from more regular domestic tales of marriage and misery in the 18th century is the unexpected trajectory of Anne's character.

Throughout the second half of the story both central characters undergo some surprising and very skilfully managed transformations that leave the reader's head spinning. I really couldn't tell where the narrative was heading. The evolution of the characters was one of the elements of the novel that I was most impressed with- how the reader's perceptions of Anne and Fub change. I couldn't be sure if Fub's character actually become more duplicitous, whether his more unsavoury character traits overtook his charm, or whether Anne's changing feelings towards him affects our view of him too; either way, it was subtly and expertly achieved. I loved how infatuation and obsession is depicted as something that be one minute thoroughly enthralling, then can disappear without warning like a candle being pinched.

I really felt like I saw the world through Anne's nihilistic eyes; she's a dark, damaged and unforgettable young woman. Ellis does a remarkable job of building our sympathy for the character; unguided, alone, apparently unloved. She's invisible within her family and objectified, abused and confused by those she trusts. We see her fight against her familial and social obligations for a chance to make her own decisions. Ellis carries the reader along on Anne's errands, her lover's escapades and schemes and on her later deeds. Anne's narration is precise and unflinching, what she is doing seems to make so much sense, seems so obviously simple to her, that it almost rubs off on the reader. I kept catching myself almost agreeing with her logic, which was quite disturbing. I was completely absorbed into Anne's mindset.

I was incredibly impressed with Ellis' prose- beautiful in places and shocking in others, she displays a real grasp of  language and knows the shocking power of a well-placed, incongruous simile or a wicked thought. A couple of times I had to re-read a line just to check I'd seen the right thing...her intricate and complicated characters are spellbinding and she has the readers eating out of her hand-the way that the our opinions and perceptions are played with and bent into and out of shape is brilliant. I loved how the novel was able to surprise me and kept me guessing not only about the plot but about the characters. Though I'd describe the novel as sensational and slightly unlikely, it was an enjoyable, twisted journey nonetheless, a gripping whirlwind of passion, debauchery and moral vacancy which I'd thoroughly recommend.

All of the Above, by James Dawson

New girl Toria Grand has been dragged away from her home and her friends to a festering seaside dump thanks to her dad's new job. Starting a new school on the first day of sixth form, she just want to get in, get on and get out, preferably to uni and away from Brompton on Sea. Resigned to stares and whispers, attempting to be innocuous, not saying anything weird and not coming across as Needy McDesperate, Toria soon finds herself adopted into a misfit bunch of the strange and the odd- Brompton's most colourful characters that dare to have some personality.

The narrative follows Toria through an incredibly eventful year of her life; through her first real boyfriend, her first sexual experiences, some really intense, unbreakable friendships, a tragedy that will full blown slay the reader and some impossibly tough decisions, much soul searching and a total identity meltdown. Some reviews have criticized this book for dealing with so many issues (anorexia, self harm, homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality, it flirts briefly with racism and alcoholism) in a way that seems unrealistic. I disagree completely. Some people's lives are straightforward, some people's more riddled with issues and hiccups and questions that aren't easily answered. I don't believe for a moment that James Dawson set out to write this book with a tick-list of issues to get through.

I really identified with Toria, even though I am supposed to be a proper grown up now. Everything from wondering why an established group of friends are hanging around with you...and are you actually friends or do they just tolerate you and are you actually accepted as part of the group obsessing and second guessing. Everything from being murdered from the feet up by a new pair of Docs to an annual re-read of Harry Potter- I get this girl. This is 17 year old me. Only without the green hair and weird pink pompom jacket. Actually scrap that, it's 27 year old me.

All of the Above is funny (so SO funny) relatable and incredibly endearing. I haven't encountered such a lovable and eclectic cast of characters for years. I loved them all; The Luna Lovegood-esque Daisy with her bushbaby eyes and funny cartoons; the fib-filled Beasley who will one day be handsome but right now has to deal with liking boys; pretentious his-and-hers hipsters Alice and Alex (admittedly the thinnest on the ground character wise); filthy mouthed fuscia haired Polly and her magnetic personality and beautiful boy-band dream boat Nico. Almost every single character felt real enough to have been part of my own school-days weirdo crew. AOTA reminded me of that moment when, as a teen you realise that all the grief you get from the popular kids and the hard gobby kids isn't because you're inherently weird, it's because you don't conform to their standards of ordinary and that's threatening to people that want to blend in and move with the herd. It's a while before you realise that you wouldn't have it any other way. It's so liberating and this book captures that so, so perfectly.

I absolutely loved this book. It will ruin you emotionally in all the best and worst ways and the whole entire spectrum of feels are in there. I loved how Toria's story is full of conflict and confusion but so fluid and natural at the same time. I love the idea that anybody, anywhere can fall in love with somebody of the same gender, much to their own surprise, as easily as the opposite that they've always gone for. It's very Willow Rosenberg (she says something about not liking women, just a woman in particular") I love that one of the characters points out that it's not about boys or girls or biology or who's got what, it's just hot people that are hot for different reasons. It's much better than the social norm, in many ways.

I have no doubt at all that the voice in JD's head is and has always been a teenage girl, because there is literally no other explanation for his uncanny ability to get inside the heads of teenage girls. I love the dialogue in his books- for one it's hilarious, but it's so incredibly authentic and natural, which is next to impossible to pull off. See also: Non Pratt for exceptional teen dialogue. He writes the conflict and the angst, and the being annoyed at yourself for being such a conflicted angsty cliché . The feeling of knowing that 6th form is coming to an end and you're staring over the edge of the unknown precipice into adulthood and it's probably the scariest, most unknowable mystery what's down there.

I like that it's so much more than a girl meets boy story. It's more than a new girl in school story. It's more than a coming of age story, or a "my friend died young" story or a story about finding out who you really are. I love that there's no ending, because when is there? Things change, they don't necessarily end. Most of all I loved Toria and how well she handled everything that adolescence threw at her. She followed her heart (how naff does that sound) and ended up happier and a better, more secure person for it. She was willing to shut her eyes and go for it and I admire that in a person.

TL:DR it's an amazing, funny, tragic story about teens and the things they have to deal with and my love and admiration for James Dawson knows no bounds.

Joe All Alone, by Joanna Nadin

When his mistreated Mum and her bullying, layabout boyfriend Dean go to Spain for the week, 13 year old Joe Holt is left home alone in their dilapidated old flat in Peckham. With £10 for the electric meter and plenty of pasta and beans in the cupboard, Joe has big plans for his week- chocolate for breakfast, as much telly as he wants and unlimited XBox. The anxiety in his stomach, the treading on eggshells tension, the waiting to do something wrong and waiting for the shouting and smashing vanishes, and for the first time in months Joe starts to relax.

Don't answer the phone or speak to anyone. Don't go out or people will report you. These are the only rules he's been left. But on day 2 he accidentally befriends a girl on the landing- the runaway sort-of granddaughter of the Jamaican bus driver across the hall, Otis. So that's one rule broken- but who's going to know? Joe waits for his mum to return, enjoying his freedom and his new friendship with the feisty, celebrity-gossip reading cat-eyed Asha. Asha makes Joe feel good- like she knows him properly and can see past the scruffy flat and his counting tics, and the fact that he loves buses. Their unlikely friendship grows, as the two spend the school holiday on the buses, in the parks and looking at the parakeets- two top-floor fugitives in a dodgy block of flats

Until the day of his mum's return comes. And then goes. With no sign of her or of Dean.

With the money running out, electricity off, cupboards empty, bullies pummelling his face in and some serious-looking gangsters hammering at the door until 2 in the morning, Joe knows his luck in running out. He's going to have to find a more long-term solution for his problem. With his stained and stinking uniform, his greasy hair and unwashed face, it's not going to be long before one of the teachers gets involved- Joe's been told about the ones that pretend to be on your side and then get you landed in care.

There are some excellent characters in this book; kind-hearted Otis, a real gentleman and good Samaritan who was unceasingly lovely, despite Dean's low (and totally unreasonable) opinion of him, the rebellious and fast-talking Asha, and Joe, who I was really rooting for. I hated how grim his life was- the name calling at home and school, the teasing for this anxiety counting and specific interests. I hated that he believed people when they told him he was good for nothing.

The book manages to combine realism and hope really effectively. It feels gritty enough for a MG book, Joe describes his life, Dean's family, his depressing flat with the no pictures on the walls and the stained, dirty furniture. There's the suggestion of domestic abuse, drugs and alcoholism, but it's not over-worked. Joe knows it happens, but he's pretty vague about the details. Same with his Mother's obvious psychological abuse at he hands of Dean- Joe just tries to stay out of it- resigned to the idea that his mum has chosen Dean and this is just how his life is now...the same can be said for Joe's OCD and obsessive traits. They rear their head from time to time, but it doesn't become 'his thing'. Generally, it's pretty clear that Joe is an ordinary kid that comes from a very impoverished, unstable background and has no real outlet for his fears or feelings. I'm glad he found Asha.

Joe All Alone is a really quick, uplifting read that deals with neglect and poverty in a gritty but realistic way. The ending is far from fairytale, and much more mundane real-life than the adventure that it starts off as. It's filled with some memorable and relatable characters, and no magic solutions for all of life's problems. It reminds us that families are complicated, people do stupid things, that thuggish, small time crooks will always take advantage of the weak and that it's important to forgive, but sometimes the thing that you want isn't necessarily the best solution. 

Very much recommended.

The Ecliptic, by Benjamin Wood

The Ecliptic begins at Portmantle, a sort of  island reserve off the coast of Istanbul. A refuge from the ritual of real life, it's a mysteriously secluded retreat for artists of all kinds; they go to Portmantle for space, solitude and absence from the world, to find the time and the inspiration to work on their projects. Some stay for weeks, some for years, some longer. The narrator, Knell (aka the artist Elspeth Conroy, aka Ellie) and an assortment of her friends and fellow long-timers, are awaiting the arrival of Fullerton- a mysterious new resident that at the age of 17, is the youngest ever visitor to the complex.

Aloof but needy, mysterious and damaged, Knell tries to reach out to Fullerton. Her curiosity about the boy leads to clashes with the slick and ever so slightly creepy Provost, the custodian of Portmantle. The author takes us back trough Knells former life as Elspeth Conroy to throw some light on the links that draw her to Fullerton and the complicated relationship she has with her own memory and her hazy past.

The book then switches to the narrative of Elspeth Conroy as a rising artist- her apprenticeship to artist Jim Culvers, her successful gallery shows and a disastrous transatlantic crossing. She becomes successful. Too successful. More successful than her work merits, by Elspeth's own conviction. We find out, piece by piece, who Knell was before she began her long residence at Portmantle, her obsessions, her integrity and her attempts to harness the inspiration when it comes along, despairing when it deserts her. She leads a life so lacking in clarity; that is what she is truly looking for.

I loved the dual narrative of the book, and how each of the settings was so well crafted that the reader never favours one over the other. The story begins at the artists' retreat, which is fascinating in its purpose, its isolation and its residents. When it switches to uncovering Ellie's past, that narrative is equally absorbing. I never found myself impatient to return to the present, or restless, once at the retreat, to find answers in the back story. The two narratives wove together brilliantly, in ways that were both compelling and fascinating, culminating in a spectacular twist. The ending sends the reader reeling, wondering where memory becomes imagination and what role mental health plays in the creative process. In both the Turkish and New York/Scotland/London settings, the book doesn't assume creativity as an obvious and direct result of mental health issues, or vice versa, but it sort of wonders if the two things might possibly be linked somewhere, however tangibly, along the line.

The Ecliptic is such a masterful book, with some of the most beautiful prose I've read this year. I loved the questions it asks about art and inspiration, and the curse of the creative- to be torn between a need to produce, and a need to produce with integrity and vision. It's almost like creativity is an elusive but powerful animal, capable of great violence and beauty. Ellie, in her life away from the reserve goes through fevered fits of painting, but retains this desperate need to do justice to an artistic vision seen only with the mind's eye- that difficulty of translating the imaginary into images is depicted staggeringly well. I kept re-reading some lines, because the images they conjured were just so striking. Ellie's furious workshop scenes and obsessive perfectionism reminded me of Alasdair Grey's Lanark, where (also Scottish) Duncan Thaw spends years refining and delicately re-working a religious mural. I think that book will stay lodged in my head forever. Reading The Ecliptic, I was struck by the notion that artists are slaves to their creativity with a clarity that I've not experienced before.

The author asks what is creativity? Where does this drive to create come from? Is the artist a channel for a divine, spontaneous inspiration? Or is creativity fostered and honed? Does a creator search for inspiration or does it strike them? For me, everything about this novel was impressive- the detailed personalities of the supporting characters, the oddly old-fashioned voice of the narrator, the gripping but periodically baffling plot, the ambitious themes and beautiful, beautiful prose. I loved it. Singularly impressive and thoroughly enriching. I was captivated.

I honestly, honestly cannot recommend this enough.

Concentr8®, by William Sutcliffe

Set in a future London, Concentr8 is a prescription drug intended to help kids with ADD and ADHD. Once teachers recommend which troublesome, unfocused or overly-active kids should be put forward for the programme, 95% of those suggested are on the drug. Soon the ADHD epidemic becomes quite manageable with these behaviour altering medicines. It prevents downward spirals into crime, suppresses excessive energy, makes them more manageable and less prone to violent or aggressive behaviour. The attached disability living allowance directed to parents makes things easier too. Better for teachers, better for parents and better for society as a whole, right?

Overnight, funding for Concentr8 is slashed and the drug is withdrawn. Rioting, looting and disorder ensues, as a nation of violent criminals revert to their feral state, tearing the capital apart. This violence is not really the focus of the book, but the smokescreen which allows the plot to unfold. Amidst the chaos of the summer riots Troy, Femi, Lee, Karen and Blaze, kids who have been on Concentr8 for longer than they can remember, kidnap a nameless, faceless office worker from the mayor's office and abduct him, chaining him to a radiator in an abandoned warehouse. What starts off as a spur of the moment laugh, something they do because they can, turns into a media frenzy that there's no walking away from. A tense five days follow, as the teens struggle to realise what they have done- no demands, no motivation and no idea what's going to happen to them now.

The narrative jumps around as each of the teen characters takes their turn as narrator. We come to understand why they're angry (even if they don't see it themselves) and they gradually reveal their thoughts and anxieties. Each of the kidnappers had a unique voice and outlook- they worried about the same things in very different ways. The narrative style of the teens is very colloquial, which won't be to all readers' tastes, but here I thought it was used very effectively. It gets across that these kids are at the bottom of the social pile. No ambition, no hope, no role models, little education and no future. I found the alternating perspectives to be really insightful, and I really liked how the narrator would switch between the teen voices, then change to one of the adults; the floppy haired, power thirsty Mayor, a journalist investigating the policy surrounding the drug's introduction and withdrawal, occasionally the hostage and infrequently but hilariously the police hostage negotiator, who is simply an idiot. As the reader pieces together the fragments uncovered by the journalists, and through the snippets of books, journal articles, tweets and testimonies that begin every chapter, we start to see what the sinister motivation and rationale is for the widespread prescription of Concentr8. It really gives a heist narrative a political thriller edge. 

I liked that this book tackled a different mental health problem- depression and OCD are increasingly prevalent in YA fiction, so I found this topic to be of immense interest. I don't believe the novel was too hung up on presenting accurate portrayals of ADHD, but instead focused on the difficulty of diagnosing and treating such invisible, complicated and varying mental conditions. It asks is medication always the answer? Especially when you consider how difficult it is, naturally, to diagnose mental illness? This was at the heart of the story really, how easy it is to write off bad behaviour and social problems as mental disorders. Over-diagnosis and misdiagnosis misrepresents mental illness but to explain away deep-lying social problems as mental insufficiencies is an arrogance and an injustice that it's all too easy to imagine Westminster stooping to. The book also opens up the always fascinating debate about nature versus nurture. What is the underlying cause of mental health problems? Is it part of out genetic make-up? Are we born predisposed to metal illness? Is the clock ticking down the moment we're born? Or is it a result of environmental and social factors?  The politicians of Concentr8 don't really care, they just slap on the same label and medicate the social problems away.

I found this to be a compelling and thought provoking book that looks at the shadowy relationship between politicians & policy makers and the corporations or individuals that benefit financially from the effects of the policies they make and enforce. It asks interesting questions about the way that society is manipulated and managed, how we label people, particularly  children, and how between the media and the government, we really have no idea what's going on, what the real problems are or who to blame.

If you liked this book, look out for  these:

The Hit by Melvin Burgess- another smart, tense YA read. Explores social collapse, youth drug use and the search for the ultimate high at the ultimate price.

Nobody Saw No One, by Steve Tasane- if the colloquial dialogue added to your understanding of the characters, try this. An updated Oliver Twist, but set in the 21st century wake of Operation Yew Tree. The book looks at how the rich and powerful can satisfy their perversions and buy silence and anonymity.

If you're feeling brave and don't care who knows it, go for Brave New World, by Aldus Huxley the original drug-based utopia, where society is so afraid of its own feelings and emotions that everyone collectively blocks them out using Soma, a drug designed to induce utopia.

Thanks to @LizzSkelly for the copy :)

Broadway Book Club discussion of We Are Not Ourselves, by Matthew Thomas

There was a variety of reactions to Matthew Thomas’ We Are Not Ourselves. Some people liked it, some mostly liked it but acknowledged its flaws, and we had two cases of intense dislike (though to be honest, both disliking members found parts that intrigued them or at least looked promising). We definitely had a lot to discuss!

One member said that even though she didn't like the book, she kept reading because she wanted Eileen, the main character to become a better person. Most people felt a mixture of sympathy, anger and confusion at Eileen, a character that seemed incapable of showing any emotion. We could understand her desire for social elevation, considering that she is a second generation immigrant and would have had notions of “bettering herself” raised into her from an early age. She craved bigger, more impressive houses, nicer cars, better furniture and more expensive clothes. We wondered Is this how people cope with isolation in the modern world? With unhappiness? Do we buy things to fill the gaps in our lives? We could see that even before her husband's illness, Eileen struggled to make connections to people and was quite lonely, despite spending hours on the phone talking to girlfriends that featured very little in person. None of us could understand though how, having felt so detached from her cold and unaffectionate mother, she could

end up with a similarly cold and affectionless relationship with her own son. Eileen’s stoicism and focus was admired, and the methodical way she went about making preparations for Ed’s future- putting financial plans into action and organising ahead. We could see that despite her coldness, she was devoted to her husband, the one person that she had connected with properly.

One member said that she liked the beginning and the end, but there was 500 pages in the middle that she just wasn't feeling. “Liking the bread but not the filling” as another member phrased it, which is a delicious way of looking at it. She also commented that when the narrative begins jumping from Eileen to Connell towards the end, this becomes jarring and doesn't work particularly well, which there was agreement on. After all, the whole book had been told in the third person from Eileen’s perspective, and then to suddenly have to cope with Eileen becoming “Connell’s mother” in the narrative, rather than her own character was quite alienating.

We thought that there some very emotional episodes in the book, particularly during the later stages of Ed’s illness, before he goes into the care home. We all agreed that the dementia was sensitively portrayed and obviously very well researched, and that rather than being the main element of the plot, it was the catalyst for it, which is in contrast to many other books with characters suffering from such debilitating illnesses. We agreed too that it was incredibly sad that everything Eileen had ever worked and saved for, the life and possessions that she had craved for so long was all for nothing and that with hindsight, she would have done everything differently. To write off a whole life like that is sobering.

We discussed the book’s attitudes to race quite extensively and talked at length about the pretty clumsy racial stereotyping that made some readers quite uncomfortable- the “Hispanic” youths that Eileen encounters in the street, the 'moment of redemption' Indian meal that she shares with her old house’s new owners, Angelo’s family upstairs and Bethany the cult member, who we keep being reminded over and over again is a black woman, complete with bangles and braids. One member commented that she could see that Eileen had some issues with racism despite being an émigré herself, but much of the problematic descriptions came from the third person narrator, and that’s when it becomes difficult to work out if these prejudices belong to the character (which is work-around-able) or whether they belong to the book. Which is a bit more problematic.

The book's notes say that it took the author around 10 years to complete the book and we felt that that showed in the patchy quality of the narrative and the ways that the narrative styles change. Then there was all the baseball stats that nobody could make any sense of. Overall, we thought the book was *okay*, that it portrayed Altimeter's sensitively and accurately and caused emotional reactions from the reader.  However there were parts that were very shaky, both structurally, character wise and in terms of the narrator/character point of view. It was commented that "I'm glad I read it, but I don't think I'd recommend it" which a lot of members agreed with. We all said it hadn't occupied our thoughts much since putting the book down.

And the books upcoming in the next few months...

We have chosen the next three books that we'll be reading. Seeing as the Man Booker longlist 2015 came out yesterday, we thought that for August, we'd read last year's winner, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Richard Flanagan. According to wikipedia is the story of an Australian doctor (now considered a war hero in contrast to his own feeling of guilt) who is haunted by a wartime love affair with his uncle's wife. Post war,

To honour Margaret Atwood's visit to Nottingham on September 26th, we've gone for one of her novels for that month's book, which is Cat's Eye, a booker nominee in 1989. This also breaks up two war novels...as October's pick is Half Blood Blues, which was incidentally on the Booker 2011 shortlist. It wasn't meant to be this booker-y, but that's the way it's gone!