Forgetting Zoë by Ray Robinson

This was another of my holiday books, although why on earth I thought a novel about the abduction and abuse of a ten year old girl was appropriate fare for a nice summer holiday is beyond me now.

Suffice to say this a horrible book, but then by the very nature of its subject matter it has to be. On the plus side it’s also really well written, and it’s also quite moving in parts, well, if you can get beyond the misery and depravity that it’s centred on that is.

Forgetting Zoë tells the story of the psychopath Thurman Hayes, a victim himself of a brutal and hateful upbringing, and his abduction and subsequent eight year incarceration in a bunker below his house in the Arizona desert of a young girl, Zoë Nielsen, who he kidnaps when she’s on her way to school one day. It tells the story of how the abduction impacts and ultimately destroys Zoë’s mother, and of the impact, both immediate and long-term, of the abduction and abuse on Zoë herself.

Robinson’s novel takes in Stockholm Syndrome, domestic and sexual abuse, murder, torture, and all points in between. Thankfully though the writing is sparse, and so much of the worse stuff is left for the reader to guess at. Anything else and I suspect I’d have been denouncing this book as exploitative and sensationalist, but as it stands it’s not.

This novel is pretty unrelenting in its ugliness. It is a good book, but it’s definitely not a book to reach for if you’re after something life-affirming or if you want something to cheer you up.

One Day by David Nicholls

This was my holiday book, and I have to say, I loved it. In fact it made me cry (and laugh), and there aren’t many books that can do that.

The premise of Nicholls’ book is really simple: the story begins with the two main characters, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, meeting on 15th July 1988, St Swithin’s Day, which is the night of their graduation. The next day the couple have to go their separate ways, but we get to catch up with what they’re up to, on the same day, 15th July, for the next 20 years.

So we follow Emma as she moves to London and gets a mundane job in a Mexican restaurant, and then later in an inner-city comp, and we follow Dexter’s rise to C-list celebrity fame as the presenter of some godawful late-night mockney yoof programme. All the while the couple keep in touch, through letters, phone calls and meals out, and at the weddings of mutual friends and acquaintances. We follow them as they grow older and as they develop relationships with other people, and we follow them as they deal with the everyday challenges of 20th/21st century living.

Unfortunately there’s no way to convey what makes this book so special through a plot summary like that. But take my word for it, it really is. Special that is. It’s the sort of book you regret finishing: that you get to the end of and then wish you had another 400+ pages to go. It’s the sort of book you push on all your friends and family, saying “go on, read this, I just know you’re going to love it!”

So go on, read it, I just know you’re going to love it.

A Bad Day For Pretty by Sophie Littlefield

Sophie Littlefield’s second novel, A Bad Day For Pretty, doesn’t disappoint. In fact this follow up/sequel to A Bad Day For Sorry, which I read and raved about earlier this year, is just as good as the first: it’s funny, it’s serious, it’s light-hearted, it’s dark, it’s all the things I liked the first time around.

The best thing of all though about this book, or should I say about this series of books, because there’s certain to be even more of them, is the central character Stella Hardesty. And yes, I do still want to be her.

Here’s a taster:

Because that woman was Stella Hardesty, who’d taken her own husband out with a wrench those three and a half years ago – and who never intended to let another woman get smacked around if she could help it.

And usually Stella could help it. Could help the woman who heard about her in a whispered conversation, who tucked her name away in a far corner of her mind, until the day came when things finally got so bad that there were no other options. When the courts failed, when the restraining order didn’t manage to restrain anything, when the man who promised he’d never do it again at ten o’ clock forgot his promise by midnight. When a beaten woman finally picked herself up off the floor and washed off the blood and took inventory of the latest bruises and something snapped and she decided this time was the last time – when that day came, she knew where to go and who to see: Stella was ready for the job.

There is a slight change of tack this time around, in that instead of doling out vigilante justice to a man, Stella finds herself defending one. But whatever you do, don’t let that put you off

Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

Stella Hardesty, avenger of wronged women, is getting cozy with Sheriff “Goat” Jones when a tornado blows none other than Goat’s scheming ex-wife, Brandy, through the front door. Adding to the chaos, the tornado destroys the snack shack at the demolition derby track, pulling up the concrete foundation and unearthing a woman’s body. The main suspect in the woman’s murder is Neb Donovan—he laid the foundation, and there’s some pretty hard evidence pointing to his guilt. Years ago, Neb’s wife asked Stella for help getting him sober. Stella doesn’t believe the gentle man could kill anyone, and she promises his frantic wife she’ll look into it.

Former client Chrissy Shaw is now employed at Stella’s sewing shop and she helps with the snooping as Stella negotiates the unpredictable Brandy and the dangerously magnetic sheriff.

This is the thrilling sequel to Sophie Littlefield’s critically-acclaimed debut, A Bad Day for Sorry, which won an RT Book Award, was an Edgar Award Finalist, and is shortlisted for an Anthony and a Macavity Award. Stella Hardesty is a heroine to watch—join her on this next adventure for as fiercely funny and riveting a story as there is to be found in crime fiction.

I’ll second that.

The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver

As I’ve already admitted, I actually came close to giving up on this book when I was only a few chapters in to it. In fact, to be honest, I nearly gave up on it a couple of times. I’m really glad that I didn’t though, because once I’d got past the stuff about the protagonist’s childhood in Mexico I was completely hooked, and of course, as is always the case with these things, once I’d got to the end I suddenly understood just how vital to the plot those first few chapters were, and how important it was that I’d read them properly and not just skipped over them (as I was sorely tempted to do).

The story follows the life of the writer Harrison Shepherd, who is the product of a short-lived marriage between a dull and disinterested American father, and a spirited, flamboyant Mexican mother. It begins in the late 1920′s, when Shepherd’s parents have already split up, and when his mother has taken him with her back to Mexico; and it ends in the late 1950′s, when McCarthyism is at its height (Shepherd has moved back to the US by this point), and when Shepherd’s writings and past associations with communists such as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Leon Trotsky have brought him to the attention of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

In the period in between this Shepherd grows from boy to man: he briefly attends school in the US, and then, following his expulsion from the place for some mysterious “scandal” involving him and another (male) student, he finds work, first as one of Rivera’s plaster mixers, then as a cook in the Rivera/Kahlo household, and then later as Trotsky’s translator/secretary and some time confidante.

Following Trotsky’s assassination Shepherd returns to the States and there begins his new career as a writer. Well, I say new, but in actual fact Shepherd has spent almost his entire life writing, as the journal entries and letters that Kingsolver uses to make up the bulk of the book attest. Let’s say instead then that he becomes a professional writer, penning best-selling Aztec novels, and achieving such popularity that he’s eventually driven to hide away from his rapidly growing army of fans.

He hires a secretary, Violet Brown, to help him cope with the daily deluge of fan mail, and it is Brown who, following his disappearance, ultimately pieces together the story of his life, carefully transcribing notebooks and letters that Shepherd thought had been successfully destroyed.

And if any of that sounds boring, trust me, it’s not (well okay, apart from the first bit, but persevere and I promise you you won’t regret it). Kingsolver is an accomplished writer, and she manages to bring alive an intriguing period of history, one which I for one knew very little about. I’d never heard for instance of the Bonus Army before I read this book, and I have to confess to being completely ignorant of the Rivera/Kahlo/Trotsky friendship as well.

Don’t get me wrong, this is fiction: but it’s fiction that’s based on true historical events and people, and it’s written with the same consummate storytelling skills that Kingsolver brought not only to The Poisonwood Bible, but also to her earlier works.

The Lacuna is a cracking read, and Kingsolver well deserved to win this year’s Orange Prize for it.

Following the Orange Prize (part 2)

First published June 9th 2010

I’m a bit swamped at the moment so I haven’t really got time to do this subject the justice it deserves. But just in case anyone’s forgotten, here’s a quick reminder that the Orange Prize for Fiction winner will be announced tonight.

Personally I’m rooting for either Barbara Kingsolver, for The Lacuna (which I nearly gave up after the first couple of chapters but which I’m so glad I persevered at), or Lorrie Moore for A Gate at the Stairs.

My (purely hypothetical) money’s actually on Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall, but, despite my earlier vow to read all the shortlisted books this time round, as I didn’t manage to read that one, (and to be perfectly honest, no amount of bribery would ever persuade me to read a novel set in the 15oo’s [seriously, life's too short]), I’m not in a position to say much about that book at all. Except that it’s big. Very big. In fact it’s a veritable tome of a book.

But anyway, good luck to all the authors, and fingers crossed in particular for my two…..

My daughter wrote some more poems

Post first published May 18th 2010

My oldest daughter, the poet, wrote some more poems, and now they’ve been put together and published in a book.

It’s called Bridge, and it’s available online from Gatehouse Press. And I might add, it’s well worth a read.

And yes, I am shamelessly promoting my own daughter. But that’s not just ‘cos I’m her mum and it’s my job, it’s because she’s a wonderful poet and I’m really proud of her, as I am of all my children.

And anyway, if “I carry books like babies on my hip” isn’t one of the best first lines of a poem, ever, then I don’t know what is.