Category Archives: Reviews

Poetry review – Dart by Alice Oswald

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Dart coverFollowing the journey of the river Dart from its source to the sea, Alice Oswald has woven a work of meandering voices that conjures up every person the water encounters on its way.

Using three-years worth of recorded conversations as her starting point, Alice has summoned up the river’s many aspects and visitors, from an elderly hiker carrying “tent, torch, chocolate, not much else” to a naturalist “hiding in red-brown grass all different lengths”, to a forester “knocking the long shadows down”, to a young, drowned canoeist, and the result is a quiet yet powerful deluge you can dip in and out of at your leisure or allow to carry you along at a rate of knots.

I began to read it shortly after Christmas, during a train journey that cut through Somerset’s flooded countryside, where fields had been transformed into shimmering swamplands. It felt curiously apt. Continue reading →

Book review – Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo

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Blonde Roots coverIn this ambitious reimagining of the history of slavery, Bernardine Evaristo has meticulously turned every detail of the world as we know it inside out.

In transforming white people into wiggers enslaved by the blaks she has done far more than show us the impact slavery had on an entire race of people – she has made us feel what they felt, see their surroundings through their eyes, feel their sense of inferiority foisted upon them by generations of being told that they were weaker, less intelligent, less capable of emotion, simply less than mankind.

Blonde Roots‘ narrator is Doris, a “yellow-headed stalk of a girl” stolen from her life in England at the age of ten while playing hide and seek with her sisters. Through flashbacks interwoven with scenes of her life as sugar baron Bwana’s top slave, Bernardine illustrates a rich, glorious world where the blaks are in charge, where plump flesh is desirable and slimness considered ugly, where topless fashions are the norm, where every mouthful of food is spiced and Brussel sprouts and cabbages are considered exotic. Continue reading →

Book review – Recovering Apollo 8 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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Recovering Apollo 8 book coverMost fiction writers shy away from using real people in their work, but not Katrine Kathryn Rusch (hereafter to be called KKR in this review).

The title story of Recovering Apollo 8 And Other Stories is an award-winning re-imagining of the Apollo 8 launch, examining what would have happened if that space flight had been unsuccessful in its mission to orbit the moon.

By telling the tale from the point of view of Richard, a man who had been a child when the launch took place, she gives the piece a deeply personal viewpoint that makes it identifiable to all, so that the moment when he believes he about to meet the recovered crew for the first time is palpably intense. ‘”He had waited a lifetime for this. He wished the internal mikes were off. He wanted to whisper, “Welcome home, gentlemen.'” Continue reading →

Book review – Unwrecked England by Candida Lycett Green

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Unwrecked England coverBooks compiled from magazine or newspaper columns occasionally struggle to offer the cohesion of a coffee table book written with that end in mind, but this isn’t the case with Candida Lycett Green’s Unwrecked England.

Selected from 17 years worth of her columns from The Oldie magazine, Unwrecked England is a vast, deep pool of a book that you’ll want to dip your toes into, wade up to your waist in or dive head-long into.

Candida’s passion for England’s wild places was passed down to her by her mum Penelope and dad, St John Betjeman, and in her preface to the book she writes of happy childhood memories spent exploring the countryside. Far from being a simple travel-guide, the book is a celebration the best of England’s unspoilt areas, from entire villages to a single oak-tree, so that while her entry on Ashdown is largely factual, other pieces are a glorious mishmash of impressions supplemented with quotes from diverse sources ranging from modern-day horse traders and pub landlords to historical diarists, artists and poets. Continue reading →

Book Review – A Room Swept White by Sophie Hannah

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A Room Swept White pbIn her psychological thriller A Room Swept White, Sophie Hannah examines the contentious subject of guilt and innocence surrounding cot death cases.

A serial killer is targeting women accused of murdering babies. The first victim is Helen Yardley, a woman convicted then acquitted of killing two of her own children, who then went on to campaign for the release of other women in the same circumstances. A mysterious card is found on her body, marked with seemingly meaningless numbers laid out in neat orderly row.

The story is told through the viewpoints of the police involved and a woman named Fliss Benson who has been given the job of making a documentary of the acquitted women, and who has received an card identical to the one left with Helen Yardley. Continue reading →

Book review – All The Birds, Singing, By Evie Wyld

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All The Birds, Singing coverOpening with the discovery of a dead sheep, Evie Wyld’s second novel is a sensuous, brutal, disquieting book that will seep under your skin and haunt your dreams. Protagonist Jake Whyte is a strong, mostly self-sufficient sheep farmer making a life for herself on an unnamed British island where the weather is harsh, and the local people nonplussed by this new, unsociable Australian in their midst.

But now something is killing her sheep, and memories of the past are tugging at her.

In alternate chapters, the stories moves us forward and back, like an insistent tide. The flashbacks move through her past towards childhood, written in a present-tense form that gives them an immediate sense of urgency as we search through her experiences for the ingredients that have made her the frightened, solitary creature she is today, and, most specifically, what caused those terrible scars on her back. Continue reading →

Poetry book review – Notes from a Bright Field by Rose Cook

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Notes From A Bright Field book coverI encountered this poet at the night of readings I took part in for Telltales at Penzance Literary Festival. In a sea of stories and performance poetry, Rose Cook’s poetry rang out as something deeper and more substantial than most – nourishing in a way that few assortments of words achieve.

Because as writers, that’s what we’re trying to do, isn’t it? To string words together in ways that are original and fresh, yet cut through to a truth all can recognise and potentially be enriched by?

Rose has a defter hand than most, or should that be a keener eye? She sees the world with uncommon clarity, noticing the things, small and large, we might easily overlook, and helps the reader view it afresh. The collection reads as being distinctly personal yet generously shared, as Rose talks us through strolls through woodlands, pointing out the birds she seems to love, then sweeps us indoors to peek into her mother’s hand mirror, to spy contains reflections of “my eyes, quick green,/ wild sticklebacks in a rain pond.” Continue reading →

Slavonia: the undiscovered corner of Croatia

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River Danube, CroatiaThe following extract is part of one of my travel features, and can be read in full at Travelbite.com.

That night we stayed at Hotel Dunav, an exquisite family-run hotel set on the shores of the River Danube – Dunav in Croatian. With its own sandy beach, a multitude of outdoor seating and even its own pleasure cruiser, this is a popular spot for vast wedding and Christening parties, as well as providing a tranquil getaway. I woke shortly after dawn and meandered along the riverbank in the early light, watched by a flock of crows that flapped their way from tree to tree as I passed.

From here it’s just a short journey into Ilok, Croatia’s easternmost town (pictured above), with 1km of intact medieval walls, a lovely old stone church and a state-of-the-art museum, one of the few in Slavonia with displays in English as well as Croatian, overlooking the river to Serbia. Continue reading →