Literary reviews by Tim Love.
Warning: Rather than reviews, these are often notes in preparation for reviews that were never finished, or pleas for help with understanding pieces. See Litref Reviews - a rationale for details.

Wednesday, 12 February 2025

"The Awkward Age" by Francesca Segal

Julia (english piano teacher) and James (american doctor) live together in London with Gwen, 15 (her daughter) and Nathan, 17 (his son). He has an older daughter, Saskia, who lives in the States with her mother. Julia's husband died of cancer 5 years before. Gwen doesn't like the new men in the house, but then, as a consequence of her dog dying, she and Nathan kiss and Nathan dumps his Oxford-bound girlfriend.

Iris and Philip (the parents of Julia's late husband) are separated, though they meet and phone often, and still have a joint account. Plain-speaking Iris had advised Julia to sleeping around (like she did) rather than remarry.

When Gwen and Nathan are caught hugging, they hint that they've done more than that. Gwen tells her mother that it's none of her business - after all, her mother didn't keep her up to date on her sexual activity. Gwen feels abandoned, that only Nathan cares, and he's at boarding school during the week. Gwen becomes pregnant. She decides to keep the baby - so she can be the centre of attention? So she has someone to love? There are tensions when Julia and James at heart side with their own children. I guessed (correctly) that the adults would come to terms with the situation then there'd be a miscarriage.

Meanwhile, Iris suddenly downsides. While clearing the house, she and Gwen discover baby clothes belonging to Gwen's late father. Later it emerges that she's downsizing to be closer to frail Philip. But when Philip learns that she'd lied to him years before, he starts seeing Joan. He takes her to visit the family. Joan and Gwen get on. Iris moves to France.

Gwen gives Nathan space while he revises for exams. He's not very interested in her after. Julia's not impressed. Julia and James see him snogging another girl.

In an untypical passage, James and Julia are walking home when they pass female athletes practicing. Julia's eyes catch on a girl who reminds her of someone. The girl's trying to trap her loose curls. Julia stops because she want to see the girl running. James feels awkward staring at girls in shorts so they walk on. They hear the starting gun go off.

Julia decides that James must hate Gwen as much as she hates Nathan. She feels she can only bring up Gwen properly if Julia beings her up alone.

A year later, having separated, James and Julia meet by chance. They both have strong feeling for each other, but it's too late.

A character "smiled to herself" - a common expression in novels, but I don't like it.

Other reviews

  • Alice O'Keeffe (while appreciating its artistry, I can’t love this book. The detail is spot on, and yet it lacks a sense of the bigger picture, of the events in the wider world that might play, too, on the emotional landscape ... It is a jarring omission in an otherwise skilfully crafted morality tale for our times.)
  • Hermione Hob
  • Kirkus review

Monday, 10 February 2025

"We are attempting to survive our time" by A.L. Kennedy (Vintage, 2021)

  • Panic Attack - Ronnie, 5'6" on tip-toe is at a train station after visiting his mother. He sees a beared man - "It's not a hipster bastard beard he's got, and not the full Gandalf I-have-mice-in-here nonsense, either. Average beard. Not a while bloke trying to show off being Muslim." The woman beside her seems in trouble. He helps - not too much or little. She's had a panic attack. She and he got on the train in different carriages. We learn that he's been protective to his mother when young. He killed his nasty father, whose body wasn't found for weeks. He wants the women to find him and ask for help. No.
  • Everybody's pleased to see you - At the Salazar bar/cafe/restaurant, it's like Cheers - if you're the right sort of person, it'll be like home. Chic too - "the Salazar's latest mirrors, said to have once reflected the Ceausescus". The clients are interesting - "You might take them for sisters ... They don't share a mother, they share a surgeon". Near the end we're told "We can all have the Salazar and have it forever, any one of us, anyone who is a Salazar kind of person". No.
  • Walker - A bride of 2 days, walks after midnight barefoot from her hotel to the beach. She recalls the wedding ceremony, how her mother-in-law apologised for mistakes. The bride thinks she might have made a mistake, that she's not worthy of love. No.
  • Waiting in the Jesus queue - The narrator thinks "No one ever gets to be spontaneous without rehearsing". He's rehearing a TV interview. He's a celeb, famous from a TV kids show that's long finished. He's in films now, and is thinking of writing a book. Chloe's left him. Invited to a kid's deathbed he fled. He's trying to recover. The worst so far
  • Unanswered - Adopted, knowing he lived on a UK bombsite, the narrator as a boy sometimes left the house in night, being found by policemen etc. He married Julie. He learnt he was born in Germany. He ;lkstracked down the soldier involved with his transfer and discovers how he was saved in Berlin. They went to live in a house also on a bombsite. It saved his marriage. Julie died, childless.
  • Inappropriate staring - The narrator (who repeatedly says she wants to see choughs and is thirsty) is separated from her alcoholic husband. She has a son, Peter. She's back in Jersey where each year holidayed with "uncle" Mort. She's sorting out his house. She finds letters and presents that were sent to her and returned to sender by her parents. She's visiting the Zoo. She watches a son and mother bicker about the son's wife. They comment on the gorillas' behaviour. Her parents argued. She and Peter don't. The son and mother stare at her as they talk about gorillas' maternal habits etc. Mort in his will said that he loved the narrator, who wonders if he was her mother's old lover. Was she his daughter? When the big male appears, the mother suddenly grabs the narrator's hand, saying "He looked at me". The narrator (reported speech) launches into a rant about injustice, racism, rape, etc. The crowd turn to watch. The mother weeps, the son suppresses his anger. (I like it)
  • Am Sonntag - Berlin? She wakes late. She'd arrived the night before in borrowed clothes, in a truck. From her window she sees people relaxing by a lake. She recalls Laszlo being attacked and killed. She remembers summer days, hears a piano being tuned. She wanders in the big house as if in a dream, following the piano noise. Reaching the tuner, she realises that her husband, daughter and mother have gone, but she's alive. The ending is "It will be terrible, this surviving"
  • It might be easier to fail - "I know he's not in change any more, but guilty's guilty" thinks the 1st person PoV who uses words like "implacable" and "demeanour". He keeps under observation the guarded house where his target ("darling of the people ... peacemaker between nations") lives. The narrator's daughter died in a hit-and-run van incident. The target's decisions were responsible for killing children. No.
  • Point for lost children - Anne (Scottish, homeless, a battered wife who couldn't have children) is sitting on the floor at Leicester Square Tube station when Marilyn (a do-gooder?) sits beside her, trying to help. Anne remembers her therapy, her childhood. She counts if she feels stressed, counting seconds if there's nothing else to count. Marilyn tells her about her dead daughter and starts crying. The police move them on. They pass the place where lost children are dealt with. (It became rather formulaic/predictable as the backstories trickled in, but maybe that was a point. It's all first person, using reported speech, which breaks the standard guidelines.)
  • Even words have meaning - It's 1944. Post-war exhaustion. An oxbridge war correspondent (1st person PoV) has crossed Europe to a desert. People are killing themselves (guilt, despair). He's lost confidence in the quality of his reports back home. We learn about a doctor who did mercy killings. His colleague Stillwell disappeared/died in strange circumstances. Perhaps he returns sometimes to kill them one by one. (I can see how this could have worked - a mind losing touch with reality having witnessed too many atrocities)
  • New Mexico - The "I" (Phoebe) is recording her 100th episode of Post-Traumatic Podcast. No guests this time. She starts with an ad for a travel bag with lots of personal safety features. She left New Mexico at 13 after her mother left without warning and her father killed himself in the car she'd abandoned. Phoebe went to live with her mother's parents in Colorado. She started cutting, etc. 6 years ago, new DNA tests revealed that her mother had been the victim of a serial. The police called her in to show her photos that that the killer had taken - some only moments before her death, when she knew she'd die, her eyes looking into the future at Phoebe. (OK)
  • Spider - Anne and Raph (an academic couple) are trying to hide from their kids Tom (7) and Deborah the fact that things are left on their doorstep - stones, poo, and (in the past) notes. They've moved to aa village from a city. Anne doesn't know the best way to deal with the spider in the bathroom. The children find one in the garden and aren't scared of it. They wonder about takingit to the bathroom. Some of the notes contain racist abuse - Raph's a German Jew. And she's black? Though it's daytime she goes round the house with the kids turning on lights "so that everyone can see us being happy when the dark comes"
  • We are attempting to survive our time - A couple argue in front of people near the top of Cologne cathedral. The narrator thinks "I am holding back and being flexible because women are flexible and compromise ... I know he's always chosen women who will hurt him". He says she's just like his mother. She thinks he shouts just like her father. They descend to the city, hold hands again. "We are attempting to survive our time" is a quote from the Voyager craft. She thinks that "We live in a time when a bag with no owner can only hold terrible things."

There's no pressure to be brief. The extra words don't reveal more about the character - they're generic verbosity. There's often a revelation towards the story's end, some significant backstory detail (often involving a death) that's been withheld. Sometimes at the start we're explicitly promised a revelation.

Other reviews

  • Alex Preston (Almost all of the characters in these stories are, as one of them describes himself, “unreliable in the head”, prone to visions and elaborate self-delusions, all in the attempt to get through the day)
  • Chris Power (for much of We Are Attempting to Survive Our Time she constructs her stories in the most non-dramatic ways possible: this book is an orgy of telling, and it makes for exhausting reading. ... Numerous stories that sound engaging in outline are scuttled by their execution ... The best story here, by some distance, is the one in which showing far outweighs telling ... “Spider”)
  • Lee Randall (Throughout this collection she traces psychological cracks to their sources, engaging our empathy ... Standout stories for this reader include ‘Everybody’s Pleased to See You‘ ... She excels at balancing disdain with empathy, and even her racist has his humanity.)
  • Rosemary Goring (All but one of the stories here is in the first person. ... In places Kennedy’s writing is slack and repetitive, sounding more like the spoken word than the concision and allusiveness necessary for a memorable short story. The sudden reveals in several tales feel overly dramatic and manipulatively tragic, as if everything that matters most must spring from profound sorrow or loss. The bookends of the collection show Kennedy at her best. ... Panic Attack ... We Are Attempting To Survive Our Time)

Saturday, 8 February 2025

"Death of a mermaid", Lesley Thompson

Prologue – at Shoreham, a woman on the shore at a deserted naval battery is accosted.

Then at the catholic school, there was a little group of girls – Karen Monday, Freddy, Toni and Mags - who called themselves the Mermaids. When Toni's father's murdered, she becomes more popular. She shoplifts.

20 years later, Freddy is in Liverpool. She has been in a relationship with Sarah (a lawyer, fluent in French) for 2 years, but it’s rocky - Freddy resents being a trophy wife, so she breaks it up. Toni is now PI Kemp. She’s returned to Shoreham after working in London. Her partner is Ricky, who owns a trawler. She’s called out to a wrecked car – driver dead, female passenger bad. The driver was Karen’s son (who worked on Ricky’s boat). Toni (who’d been bullied by Karen at school and hadn’t seen her since) goes to deliver the news and finds Karen dead. Strangled. Karen ran a fish van. Mags is a librarian.

Freddy is called by Mags to say that Freddy’s mother Rennie has died. Her father died a long time before - disgraced by Freddy’s lesbianism? Freddy’s not been back for 20 years. Her brother is Ricky. Another brother is Andy (a limp. Dyslexic. married to Kirsty with 3 kids). Ricky suggests that she take over Karen’s round while awaiting the funeral, and the animal hotel. Rennie's left nothing for Freddy in the will.

Rennie had been running an animal hotel from the house. A hampster was Karen's. There's a lot about someone saying that Freddy's father liked going to sea, though Freddy knows he didn't.

Toni wonders why, if the boy had intended suicide, would he have taken his girlfriend (Tracy) with him in the car?

Mags is gay. Freddy and she made love once in the battery. Toni suggests that they made a good couple and could try again. But Mags is a keen Catholic.

Ricky's fingerprints are in the tiolet where Karen was found dead. Neighbours think that Karen's car and clothes suggested she was rich. Toni watches Ricky being interviewed by her colleague and isn't impressed.

Freddy, on the way to meet Mags at the battery is intercepted by Sarah, who wants Freddy to claim money through the courts.

Mags is assaulted. She wakes tied up in darkness.

Toni still pick-pockets. Why? It gives people who know power over her.

A car tries to run Freddy over. Later, Freddy sees that Ricky's car is damaged.

The animal hotel, with animals running free in the house, offers a chance for the animals' actions to act as metaphors.

Her brothers think she abandoned the family, not knowing she was gay.

The battery is empty of people when searched but there are signs that Mags and Sarah were there. Sarah is brought in for questioning.

There are sections from Mags’ PoV that she’s in a container.

Why does Freddy lie about giving Sarah permission about acting on her behalf?

Freddy learns that her father was gay. The police (i.e. Toni) know too.

Freddy tells Andy (who she trusts!) that she thinks Ricky tried to run her over, and that there’s a racket involving selling over-quota fish via the van, the police being involved. They agree to have a family reunion on the trawler (at night, in a storm). Freddy hopes to convince Andy by finding a hidden hold where the "black" fish are stored, but Andy's the worst brother. The police find out they're out there. Mags knew about a revised will, so she was a danger to the brothers. Karen had found out about the black fish and was blackmailing the brothers. Mags' last thoughts (or Freddy's before she's saved) is that she's become a mermaid at last. Mags and Andy die.

Phrases like "Freddie's sarcasm failed to mask a hurt." have PoV issues.

Other reviews

Wednesday, 5 February 2025

"Stretch of closures" by Claire Crowther (Shearsman, 2007)

Poems from Magma, PN Review, Poetry Review, TLS etc. 90+ pages.

Here's the first of 3 stanzas from "Next Door Moon" - "The boat man is throwing Claire de Lune/ in the bin. Tiny jackets of sound/ hang on the curl of his next door moon.". The other stanzas don't help me interpret this. I wonder whether "Claire" in the poem is an allusion to the author. Maybe he's throwing her book away - "jackets" could be book jackets? The title's not helpful either.

Here's the last stanza of "Wyvern" (23 lines) - "In the days of smocks, I'd have been drunk/ from scurvy grass ale like the boys/ around Wandsworth Plain, sobering up/ on saloop, made of cuckoo flowers"". The earlier part of the poem suggests that women are less constrained by gender-roles than hitherto. Here, (as in "Parent", which would be straightforward were "gravity" not used so strangely) it seems to me that a standard plot has been poemed-up.

”Lost child” has “Planes rise/ and fall as if ground were a shaking blanket” which I don’t get, and “The small original airport building stands apart, a mother at a school gate” which I do.

”Moods” begins with “Once I had a motorway of hair, long, black, stood up to stresses well. You trafficked it” then later “Ah, motorways. We protest because they seem to lace our towns with ladders” (in what sense?) and ends with “How together we watched the uncontrollable underneath of my hair” Eh?

"Foreigners in Lecce" has "An outburst of autumn birds, like rust or falling oranges in a courtyard" Eh?

In the "Untitled" section, more poems are traditionally mainstream in their aesthetics. I can follow "Boom". "Posts" is shaped. "Glide" has "A signer opens her gate of hands       for the deaf" (shame about the in-line spaces). I can follow "Motorway Bridges" (maybe my favourite so far).

I think I get "Fail Safe" but so what? And it's prose except for the shape, which isn't worth it.

I like some of the "Forthcoming Titles" poem, though nowadays I think it would be classified as prose.

Monday, 3 February 2025

"The Times Literary Supplement (Nov 8, 2024)"

A tabloid newspaper, 28 pages. Mostly essay/review pieces. Books on philosophy, history, etc are covered, as well as literary works. There's one poem - "The Bat" by Robert Bernard Hass, which begins with "Observes the world mostly upside down/ And clinging fast to branch or ledge/ Lays heaven at his feet, hell at its head./ Its smiling face inverted into frown."

  • I liked Adam Mars-Jones' article about musicals.
  • Alan Jenkins' review of an anthology of Elegies is too much like the default for such reviews, discussing what should and shouldn't have been included.
  • Reviews usually unclude some adverse comments. For example. Michael Hughes' review of Niall Williams' "Time of the child" says "the fabular symbolism and Dickensian overtones ... are not tempered by equal doses of novelistic decorum or psychological plausibility"; "it would be redundant to indict .. the novel .. for its sentimental whimsy, since this is the furrow Williams has chosen to plough"; "it is fascinating to see such hoary old hokum spun from the pen of a real virtuoso."

Saturday, 1 February 2025

"The Coffin Club" by Jacqueline Sutherland

An audio book

Parallel timelines - one starting when she met her husband-to-be, and another starting some months after his death.

It's Oct 2016. Cat is at her late-husband Sam's graveside. She's returned to tell him that all's ok now (the "you" of the narrative is Sam). She owns several houses. She blames herself for the accident. She's remarried and is now a mother.

He was rich and introduced her to a new social world. They'd wanted children. She'd had to have a hysterectomy. Her frozen eggs had thawed. Then they were in a car accident. He died. She had a badly scarred face.

A year or so after his death she'd considered suicide. She ran a deer over (which reminded her of Sam) which led to her visiting an animal sanctuary run by Ginny. Cat started looking after dogs for money, and Ginny (50ish) introduces her (late 20s) to the singles scene. "New Horizons" (nicknamed "The Coffin Club") is a group for the bereaved. She meets Niko who has a 5 y.o. daughter Midge. He works in a care home. Because of BrExit he might have to return to Spain.

Cat once sneaked into a nursery to steal a baby (here - not for the first time - the conceit of recounting her life story to "you" blurs). She tells Niko this. She was in a mental home for 3 months.

They marry. He doesn’t want any photos of him to be online, and is nervous about social contacts in general. She and Midge get on well.

She learns that her friend Ginny has a reputation for being an animal rights nutter. Niko’s suspended from work on suspicion of “will-chasing”. She sets up a joint account with him, and changes her will. She surprises him with tickets for a holiday in Malaga (where he used to live) which he turns down. Midge tell her that Niko has a secret. Niko secretly phones someone in Spain and is taking £100s from their account.

In a creaky bit of plotting, Matteo, a friend of Niko's, appears. Niko is distant. Matteo invites her to be a Facebook friend and she accepts.

She lends Ginny (a self-harmer) £5k. It's not enough. Her place will be repossessed in 2 weeks. Niko wants to pay off her mortgage. The narrator contacts local media to start a campaign.

Matteo warns her that Elena's relatives are planning to visit the UK. She's beginning not to trust Niko (the transition from unquestioned love to distrust is too seamless). She thinks he's planning to leave with Midge.

We learn more about her upbringing - her mother's death.

She confronts Niko. He says that while he was in a boat with wife Elena and Midge, a phone message came through from Elena's rich family that they wouldn't invest in him, which caused him to brake and Elena to go overboard. Her family blames him and threatened his mother, killing her cat.

She thinks Niko is trying to poison her and runs to Ginny. Niko follows. She realises that Ginny and Niko have contrived to defraud her. Niko said it had started as a trick but now he loved her. Ginny says that actually she's doing the poisoning. Cat tells then that the money goes into a trust that Midge can use when she's 21. Ginny aims a gun at Cat, Niko intercedes and Cat gets shot. Cat runs off towards beehives, Niko (allergic to bee stings) chasing. She releases the bees and he dies. Not long after holiday tickets arrive - he really had planned a surprise holiday.

After the car accident she'd not called 999. It might have saved him.

She starts dating again, looking for widowers with young children. She's ready to use the poison on then that Ginny used to her.

Yes, Cat is an unreliable narrator, but she's presenting herself to us and "you" (her late husband) which rather blurs matters.

Other reviews

Wednesday, 29 January 2025

"The Saint of Lost Things" by Tish Delaney

An audio book

Lindi (her PoV, first-person), 50, is living with her aunt Bell, 71, in rural Ireland. We learn that Bell was her mother's identical twin, that Lindi was treated as a bastard, her father a gypsy. She recalls the day when she was 7 when her mother's body was brought back to the house.

She's 6ft, mentally unstable. She once slashed her throat. She's in and out of the clinic, works part-time in a bank. There's a case of family secrets in her aunt's room that she goes through - she had a brother, she discovers her father's name (her mother took her to see him once, on a beach).

Sections often end with a new fact that a later section gives the details of - she had a son for 8 weeks; she killed her grandmother, etc. At 18 she went to London with Miriam to train as a nurse. Miriam went home after 3 months (she's still a friend - she has twin grandchildren). Lindi got pregnant on the night she first kissed a friend. He turned out to be a priest. She was pressurised to give the child up for adoption. Back in the present day the local priest tells her that her son Kieran will be performing in a play nearby. He looks so much like her nasty grandfather that everybody guesses who he is. He's married with 3 little kids. The grandfather says that he'll make Kieran heir to his farm if he visits and becomes part of the family.

Within 3 weeks Kieran and his family have moved in. Kieran soon ejects the violent grandfather from the house. He moves in with Bell and Lindi. Lindi tracks down her father who says that her mother died on the way to a man who wasn't him - the man who made Bell pregnant. Lindi walks into the water but changes her mind. The grandfather dies. His will is unsigned so Bell is in control of everything. And Bell is her mother.

A cuckoo clock keeps sounding to remind us that people have invaded other's houses.

Other reviews