Book news - Orange Prize longlist

The longlist for this years Orange Prize has just been announced and it includes Lottery by Patricia Wood, which Rachel has already reviewed for us.

The shortlist is due to be announced on 15th April and you can find the full longlist here.
Update: We have a review of another longlisted book to post shortly. Keep watching this blog.

Nella Last's War

edited by Richard Broad and Suzie Fleming

I want to review this because it was such an unusual and compelling reading experience, and has stayed with me since. Nella Last was a volunteer for the Mass Observation Diaries, a project which started just before the war and continued for nearly 30 years. Many such diaries were collected in order to build up a wide-ranging document of social history.

This book is compiled from the diaries kept during World War 2 by Nella, a housewife who lived in Barrow in Furness. It was recently dramatised on TV as Housewife, 49 by Victoria Wood, who took the part of Nella. Although this was very watchable, it couldn’t come near the experience of reading the diaries. It becomes clear that Nella, who had previously suffered with “her nerves,” as they used to refer to depression, found the writing a great emotional support, and the reader becomes her confidant. At the same time, she has a writers gift for picking out details that bring a scene or a character alive. You constantly feel yourself to be looking over her shoulder as she describes her struggle to maintain a household through the privations of the war, the worries and tragedies as deaths occur around her, or the politics of the local WI. She has a slightly edgy relationship with her husband, whom she distances from the reader by referring to him throughout simply as “my husband” - unlike her sons, Arthur and Cliff, one in a reserved occupation, one away at the war. Her feelings and reactions to events are human, unselfconscious and genuine, and it’s impossible to reach the end without developing a great affection for her.

It’s a great irony of the book that she sometimes mentions that she would like to be a writer. As someone said, the poignancy is that she will never have known that she really was one.

reviewed by Christopher Bazalgette

Book news - Galaxy British Book Awards

The shortlists for the Galaxy British Book Awards 2008 have just been announced and you can find the full shortlist details here.

Who do you think should win each category?

One Good Turn

by Kate Atkinson

In ‘One Good Turn’ Kate Atkinson has spun a story of compelling complexity. The plot is a patchwork of breathtaking episodes cut from the lives of a wide cast of characters.
What did Kate Atkinson do with this novel? Well, she made me fall in love with her hero, Jackson Brodie. He’s irresistible and the most sympathetic character in the novel.
Then she made me cry. You'll have to read Chapter 49 to find out how!

The plot is well structured and has a satisfying conclusion, and it provides a framework for some beautiful use of language and intriguing literary touches.

This passage illustrates her brilliant powers of description.
'Martin looked in horror at the glass of orange liquid that Paul Bradley came back with but felt obliged to say 'Thanks', and take a drink. He was sure there were cells in his liver that were committing suicide rather than deal with Scotland's two national drinks together in one vile cocktail.'
There are a huge number of characters in the book, but Kate Atkinson has made every single one of them real. She’s got under their skin and picked out the telling details that make each person what they are.
Though emotional, the story telling is never without humour. The predicaments of Martin Canning – crime writer – and his creation Nina Riley, give plenty of opportunity for amusement and also a thought provoking twist at the end of the novel.
As I read the book I wondered for a brief time why Kate Atkinson wasn't writing another novel just like 'Behind The Scenes At The Museum'. Until I realised that she wasn't because she couldn't, because she's moved on and this is ultimately a more satisfying book because of that.
‘One Good Turn’ is the second book featuring Jackson Brodie. He first appeared in ‘Case Histories’.

reviewed by Helen M. Hunt

Over

by Margaret Forster

Over is not a book full of action, but rather a convincing psychological study of grief and how individuals react in different ways.

Louise and Don’s teenage daughter Miranda has died in a sailing accident. Louise, a kindly infant teacher, slowly picks herself up and tries to move on, whilst supporting Miranda’s twin sister and younger brother, but Don becomes obsessed with searching for answers, with trying to find something or someone to blame. Louise tells the story of the inevitable disintegration of a family, with frequent time shifts between the new life she is building for herself and earlier events.

I read this book at the time that Mohamed Al-Fayed’s evidence from the inquest of Princess Diana was being reported and the grief of an unexpectedly bereaved parent, with a natural instinct to need to apportion blame, seemed all too familiar.

The novel is beautifully written in spare prose where every word counts and where much is left unsaid, for the reader to deduce. It has emotional authenticity in its depiction of how a tragedy can shatter ordinary lives yet, at the same time ultimately provides the impetus to rebuild and try to carry on. Despite the subject matter this is moving rather than overwhelmingly sad and at 200 pages, it is a perfect length for a book where not much actually happens.

reviewed by Catherine Walter

So Many Ways To Begin

by Jon McGregor

I hadn’t come across this author until now. He was born in 1976, and this is his second novel. The first looks more experimental, and I haven’t yet read it - but this one I found both compulsively readable and beautifully crafted. It chronicles the life of David Carter, a convincingly imperfect, but very appealing character who feels to the reader quite tangibly real, as does his wife Eleanor. He has one particular obsessive pursuit through most of his life, but I won’t spoil the book by saying exactly what it is. It seems connected, though, with his work as a museum curator, and his early interest in artefacts of the past which leads him to that occupation. The chapters are each headed with one such item, a relic of the period of his or his family’s lives that are being described.

What struck me about this book was the way that the author, on the one hand, describes the minutiae of the character’s lives with a close-up realism which makes you feel you can touch them - but on the other maintains a perspective of distance and a view of the progression of time which enables the reader to see them as if from high above. This is done partly by making carefully judged switches in time period during the narration, which I found made the development of the book all the more compelling. These jumps seem to complement the characters’ own memories, and their judgements on their own past, and uncertainties about their future. An absorbing book which I recommend highly.

reviewed by Christopher Bazalgette

In Search of Adam

by Caroline Smailes

I first heard about this book on the internet last year and didn’t think I could bear to read it. The subject matter of child sexual abuse, suicide, mental illness and self harm seemed just too bleak. But then I read some reviews and realised that this book might be special. I bought it, read it and was blown away.

Jude Williams, aged six, wakes up one morning and finds her mother dead in bed, a note by her side which reads …gone in search of Adam… This is the beginning of a lifelong quest for Jude and a struggle to make sense of a world which treats her so badly. Caroline Smailes has captured the voice of an abused child to perfection. Along the way we understand so much more than Jude herself and we just long to hug and protect her, to tell her that someone is finally listening now.

It is, of course, not a comfortable read and you will need your tissues, but the innovative use of language and typography brings a touch which lifts the novel out of the ordinary and draws you right into Jude’s head. When you get to the end, you read the author’s thoughts and realise that there are further layers of meaning you had missed along the way.

Caroline Smailes has also recently published a complimentary novella, Disraeli Avenue, consisting of snapshots of the lives of the other inhabitants of the street where Jude lives. It is available here as a FREE download, with the option to make a voluntary donation to a small charity, One in Four, which supports adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. A charity that is so called because apparently one child in four suffers like Jude. Through Disraeli Avenue, we can all help to make a difference.

reviewed by Catherine Walter