"The Gilded Cage" by Camilla Läckberg

An audio book set in Sweden.

Prologue - Fay's ex-husband seems to have killed their daughter Julienne. This timeline is returned to every so often.

Matilda's brother Seb is dead (suicide). Her nasty father is in prison for having killed his wife. She starts a new life in Stockholm, meeting a DJ Victor and calling herself Fay. She becomes an Economics student (top student of the year), meeting Chris (female) and upper class Jack. When she breaks up with Victor, he threatens to tell Jack about her past. She starts a fire that kills him. Jack and Henrick (from a watching class background) start a company called "Compare", with Fay having an important role. She gives up her degree (and later gives up work) so that the company succeeds. 3 years after the birth of Julienne she's put on 10kg and the marriage isn't going well. She emulates the teen porn he watches, hoping to revive the relationship. She has a mutually satisfying quickie with an ex popstar. She's pregnant. Jack makes her have an abortion.

She discovers him having sex with a colleague, Ilva. He wants to divorce her. Thanks to a pre-nup she gets nothing - unfair, but she doesn't complain. She plots revenge. Her new landlady Kirsten was mistreated by a man (who hit her so she had a miscarriage) and helps her start a new life, planning the downfall of Compare. She seeks investors and influencers for female cosmetic products, calling her company "Revenge". 3 years later it's a big success. She gets Julienne (who lives with her) to install spyware on Jack's laptop. Chris has found the love of her life. She has womb cancer. At first she doesn't want to tell her boyfriend. When she does, he asks her to marry him. When Chris is already in his final coma, Fay tells her for the first time about her previous life. She kills Kirsten's nasty husband, who's been bedridden for years but seems to be improving.

Ilva is pregnant. Jack wants her to give up work to be a mother. Meanwhile, Fay's had a boob job and looks better than ever. She seduces Jack. Just before Compare's share are going public, Fay leaks info that hits the share value. Her plan is to buy enough shares when they are low to be the majority owner. She sends Ilva pictures of Jack having sex with a woman whose face can't be seen - her. When she finds nude photos of Julienne on his computer she fakes Julienne's murder, planting evidence. She sells up and leaves for the Med, joined by Julienne and Kirsten. Her mother is there too!

Other reviews

• Ewa Sherman (The Gilded Cage is about betrayal on many levels in urban environment with greed, and sex used as a powerful tool to manipulate and exert control, and as a result, many characters seem to be one dimensional, and various cliches abound)
• jackiesreading4leisure ( I just wish that there could have been a better way of seeing Faye, but I just couldn’t have any empathy for her at all ... if you are going to write a story that is with the #MeToo shouldn’t the character at least have some redeeming features? Yes she is a victim, but she also made some choices which really weren’t necessary.)
• westwordsreviews (Unfortunately The Gilded Cage becomes a farce instead of the glitzy, empowering feminist tale it attempts to be. ... According to Läckberg The Gilded Cage was based on The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, a 1983 novel by British feminist author Fay Weldon. [] The Gilded Cage has little of that ironic darkness and it loses the feminist message which Weldon might have intended ... Initially The Gilded Cage is an entertaining read, it’s well-written and has the potential for character development and a multi-faceted story. Even though it’s overdramatic and filled with clichés, one can look past this and the first one or two explicit, gratuitous sex scenes in the name of entertainment.)

"Full stretch" by Anthony Wilson (Worple Press, 2006)

Selected poems 1996-2006 from The Rialto, Seam, etc.

I think I prefer the older poems. The newer ones seem to have format-variety for the sake of it. "Spinach" is a sestina, which struggles. "We do not touch" is a loose pantoum. "Part-timer" is in loosely rhyming couplets ("vowels/careful", "piss/yourselves"). At the other end of the formalist spectrum is p.65 where there's "We are sitting in the blue Passat estate/ but we will not buy it./ It stinks of dogs for one thing (Labradors,/ at a guess) and the spec is really poor./ Sure it's got windows, sunroof/ and a boot the size of Alaska/ but the miles are wrong side of 65/ and for a K that's bargepole territory".

Leaving and arriving are common themes, uniting in poems where the narrator arrives after something's left, leaving remnants (evocative, mysterious). "What they left behind" is the most obvious example.

I like "The boot", one of a number of poems where mysterious remnants are found. "Leonard Cohen is my barber" ends the kind of imagery I'd like to see more of - "like fog lifting from a harbour/ or a woman's back, her dress/ sliding with hurry to the floor".

I think I don't understand the effect he's hoping the poems will achieve. Reading "February" or "The difference" my reaction is "So?". "Pay" is a dramatic monologue oddly shaped into 4-lined stanzas. Why? I don't think it's much good. Laid as prose the quality would be clearer. "Hiding" is better, but the layout (this time 5-lined stanzas - for a change?) again makes me suspicious. "A jogger" and "The Lodgers" are examples of another class of his poems - the thinly disguised list.

"Landmarks (NFFD anthology 2015)" by Calum Kerr and Angi Holden (eds) (NFFD, 2015)

60+ Flashes and Micros on the theme of Geography.

Much to like. Some pieces that stick most in my mind are "On location" (Jon Volkmer), "A curious state of affairs" (Ingrid Jendrzejewski), "Diverted" (Marie Gethins), "Landmarks" (Ian Shine), and "And a bottle of rum" (Garreth Wilcock).

"The Cuckoo Sister" by Alison Stockham

An audio book.

Maggie, ex-costume designer and a reluctant mother of Eliot (1) and Emily (2) spills boiling water over them by accident. She takes them to the hospital in Cambridge. Her sister Rose arrives, so does Steven, her husband who she's not getting on well with. She walks out, catching a coach to Scotland where she's stopped from killing herself at a beach by Ailsa who she knew online. Rose and Steven take the kids home, Rose looking after them. Maggie is out of contact but the police know that she bought a ticket to Glasgow. Laura visits the family's house weekly - she's a friend of Maggie who had discouraged her from her shotgun marriage.

Rose quits her job to look after the children. She realises that she hasn't been a supportive sister. She also thinks that whatever Maggie's mental state, it wasn't thoughtful of her to just disappear. She finds Steven physically attractive but not appealing. He accepts that he hadn't helped enough with parenting. They discover lots of pills at Maggie's bedside.

On Emily's birthday the phone rings. Rose takes it. There no voice but Rose assumes it's Maggie. She says that Maggie must be ill and that there's no rush to come back.

Maggie writes letters to her children weekly that Ailsa says she's sending. Rose starts sleeping with Steven. They don't tell the children about their biological mother. Some neighbours aren't impressed. When Emily starts pre-school, it's as if Rose is her mother.

Laura tracks Maggie down. Maggie returns. She's upset that the children don't know that she's their real mother. Rose and Steven say they did it for the sake of the children. There's an agreement that Maggie pretends to be their aunt from now on. She does this partly to wait for an opportunity to take over her old role. Sometimes this cover-story is put under pressure by a random meeting in the street, or by a mistake by Maggie/Rose's parents.

Steven walks in front of a car and dies. The news is given to Maggie, Rose and the children together. While looking for the will, Maggie finds her letters. Steven must have hidden them. They go to Scotland. Ailsa suggests that they visit the beach. Maggie thinks that a stay will help the whole family.

Surely she would have somehow arranged to get feedback from the letters. Surely she'd have kept in frequent touch with Ailsa. There's little observation (of the children especially) and lots of repetition as the characters think over issues without adding new arguments. I think there are some infelicities in the writing -

• "Emily rose her head"
• "fear rose the hairs on the back of her neck"
• I have trouble working out statements like "[the children] were more resilient than anyone had feared" - maybe it's correct, but shouldn't "feared" be "hoped"?

I wasn't convinced.

Other reviews

• A. J. Sefton (It is quite a slow book with the ideas and arguments being repeated often with no conclusions in a circular fashion. Not much happens either. However, the most disappointing feature is that there is no medical, social services or legal intervention. A new mother disappears without trace, her phone found in the street, and the police only manage to find a couple of cctv images and give in? No news coverage, even locally? A bit unrealistic in Britain I think. An easy book to read, if a little long winded)
• elspells (I sometimes found myself sympathising with a character, nodding along, only for them to go a step to far and for me to recoil at having empathised with them. It’s a morally grey, tangled situation, and I loved puzzling it all out and thinking about the wider implications.)

"Placeholders" by James Roseman

An audio book.

Boston. Aaron and Jake are colleagues, sharing a flat. Aaron's brother Mo died while being a soldier for Israel. He'd been studying to be a doctor at Harvard. That was 5 years ago. He hasn't talked to his parents since. Aaron meets Roisin (Irish). She's been in a controlling relationship with Brian and doesn't want to return with nothing back to Ireland. She works in a cafe. Her colleague Sofia is going out with Percy who's trying for an annual bonus of $50k. Her boss Charlie starts touching her. The first time Roisin and Aaron sleep together he has erectile issues. He's an hour late to their 2nd date. She invites her to the synagogue - he goes 3 times a year. Her mother's protestant, her father's catholic. They were ostracised by their parents. Roison was brought up without religion. Aaron explains the rituals and tells her about his brother and the bouts of paralysing sadness he experiences.

When she finds out that he takes cocaine, she breaks up with him for a month. Her visa expired 2 years before. If she goes back to Ireland she won't be able to return to the States. She contacts him after she's sacked. They sleep together again. She's pregnant. She wants to keep the baby. She's thinking of returning to Ireland. They stay with his parents, preparing a nursery in the basement, and he finds out that his father has inoperable cancer. Over meals he and his father argue about the UK's treatment of Ireland as a way of discussing Israel. She tries to understand Jews. Aaron tells her that 50% of Jews are atheists, and that Jewishness is as much ethnic as religious.

Over the phone she hears the Xmas sound of her family home at Dublin. When Aaron's father suddenly dies she realises that she's not been entirely integrated into the family. She returns home.

We learn nothing about the relationship between Aaron's mother and Roisin after she's made her decision. And we learn little about why she made the decision (at that moment, especially).

Other reviews

• Eliana Jordan

"Strangers" by C.L. Taylor

An audio book set in Bristol.

Alice Fletcher, clothes shop mananger, is 46. Lynn's her friend. She lives with her daughter Emily. She's dating. She's helped by Simon when she's mugged by a date. Simon dates her. She gets anonymous warnings about him. He tells her he was about to marry then called it off.

Gareth failed to get into the police. He's been a shopping centre security officer for 25 years. He has a demented mother and a father who disappeared years before. A spiritualist/psychic, William McAsee, has been given a donation by his mother. She's been receiving cards - "To my darling Joan ... John". From McAsee? Gareth's being blackmail for £500 by a subordinate, Liam Dumford, because he'd taken an unannounced break.

Ursula, tall and fat, ex-teacher, shop-lifts to order, and delivers parcels. She has to move out of a house-share with Charlotte. She moves in with eccentric Edward. She wonders what is in his cellar. She used to be in an affair with Nathan but we died in a street fight. She thinks a woman that she delivers parcels to is being abused by her husband, Wilson. He complains, and gets her sacked. But she's right.

3 men have gone missing. One of them is Liam. Gareth is questioned.

Alice goes to the cinema with Simon. She sees Ursula in the audience. Simon suddenly says they have to leave. He breaks off the relationship. She's puzzled. She discovers that he's an ex DJ who did pranks. He's being stalked and threatened.

Gareth's mother disappears. He thinks that Georgia, the 13 y.o. daughter of his single-parent neighbour Kath, knows something.

Ursula hears scatching from the cellar. Maybe the missing men are there. She breaks in to discover ferrets - Ed's secret pets. Ed has many pictures of Simon on his wall. Ed is the stalker?

As Alice is closing her shop, Georgia is found hiding. She'd made a friend of Gareth's mother because her own mother was too busy. She sent her the postcards to make her happy. Her classmates had bullied her into shop-lifting. Ed holds Alice, Ursula, Lynn and Simon at knife-point. Gareth gets in a fight with Ed. Ed dies, the others are saved. Gareth's mother is found dead, sleeping rough.

Emotions are objectified -

• "indignation bubbles in Alison's chest"
• "She forces a smile onto her face"
• "Irritation is starting to show on his face"

etc

Other reviews

• meredithrankin (The other issue was the number of flashbacks. A chapter would open from one character's point of view in present tense. Then it would immediately switch to past tense and recount what had happened recently. ... the switch from present to past to present again confused the order of events and felt unnecessary. Why not simply tell the story as the events unfold?)

"The Ambassador" by Tom Fletcher

An audio book.

A prologue introduces many people -

• Ed Barnes, the UK's ambassador in France. His wife, Lady Emma, works in a bookshop - Hemingway and Co. Their's wasn't a love which began with hot passion. It's fading. Ed thinks she might be having an affair with a bookshop worker.
• General Max Crawford (embassy security)
• Lynn Redwood - foreign secretary. Ed and her had an affair.
• Orelee - Algierian-born lawyer, nicknamed "sparrow"
• Lenny Goddard - butler. He's been there 20 years. Caribbean
• Aula Fitzgerald - Le Monde reporter
• Amena Joshee - an Indian who's become an embassy resident. She'll die in an hour

A week before, Magnus Pederson meets a fat Russian, Chirkin. Pederson has lots of compromising info on public figures, including Ed Barnes. More people are introduced -

• Sophie Rawlings - a new speechwriter
• Alem - Brown's deputy, a woman married to a woman.

It's post-Covid - life has changed. Amena, a friend of Emma at Oxford, criticises governments online. When she asked for asylum at the embassy, it couldn't be refused. While Ed gives a speech, her throat is cut. A camera's been installed in herroom. The French police arrive. Ed soon sends them away. He's worried about the safety of his daughter, Steph. Pederson leaks his info about several people - their browser histories, etc. Spies, prospective US governors, etc are exposed, leading to suicides and wrecked careers.

Ed wants to run the investigation - something at last that he can be committed to. And it might impress his wife. He doesn't think it was a suicide (people say that Alema had a martyr complex). He wants to know if there's a connection between Danish Anarchist Pederson and Amena. The Dissenters tell people to protest outside UK embassies. One of them sets himself alight. There are other suicides. Ed sees that the bloodied knife at the death scene has been swapped.

He's told he has to go to London. There he’s dismissed by his boss. His wife uses the opportunity to move in with her lover. Ed goes to Oxford to follow a lead. He discovers that Taythan is researching into sentiment analysis. He finds Aula there, following the same lead. She receives a death threat. She’d been in close touch with Pederson and Amena. Amena had planned suicide and Aula was supposed to report her last words to spur the campaign. But something went wrong. Maybe Lenny had been Amena’s messenger. Did Pederson think that Aula had tried to talk Amena out of suicide? The 2 of them go to Wales to hide out in his cottage. In the dark, someone lurks outside. Max Crawford appears, saying he’s killed someone (American, he thinks) and wants Ed to help him bury the body.

They decide that the cottage isn’t safe. Ed goes to Copenhagen to find Pederson. He turns up armed to Pederson's warehouse HQ and find him. It's so easy he assumes he's expected. He and Pederson debate the future of civilisation. Pederson is about to release more secrets. Pederson tells him that Aula did indeed fail to follow plans, and Lenny had been helpful. Crawford was working for the Americans. Pederson says that there was another helper within the embassy. Pederson's about to show Ed Amena's final video when the warehouse is raided. Pederson's killed. Ed survives. The warehouse is blown up by a US missile that the president announces as a strike for freedom.

He goes to Lebanon to meet Russians - they have a video of Amena's last minutes. Negotiations fail, but he learns from Aula why Pederson hated him - Steff was the only woman he ever loved. Were Taythan and Emena working together? Did the Americans consider them a threat?

He returns to Paris. He learns that the next set of leaks will reveal that Lynn had had an abortion (his child). Crawford and Aula have disappeared. He fears that Lenny is in danger, knowing too much. He finds out that Aula and his wife were much closer friends than he thought. He talks to his daughter, who tells him that she was there at the end. Lenny is found dead - looks like suicide.

He understands why Taythan's work is useful - predicting people's wants is a useful tool of control. He's still puzzled about why Crawford saved them, and why the knife was swapped.

Steff had told Crawford to protect him from news about her that might upset Ed. He tried to destroy the evidence etc. He died in the Copenhagen bombing?

In the epilogue, months later, we learn how the cast of characters have fared. Taythan is on a super-yacht. Ed and Steff are living in a big house in England. Emma is living with a new (female?) partner.

I assumed that Steff was involved, though Ed didn't consider it. When he did find out, he wasn't very shocked. Nor was he stunned to learn that his wife had dreamed of raising a family with Amena. And Steff talks calmly about how she assisted Amena's death.

I like the diplomatic chit-chat -

• "master of the weaponised anecdote"
• "I think you're a rebel, but you don't yet know what you're rebelling about"