"Selected Poems” by Kate Clanchy (Picador, 2014)

Poems from Ambit, Magma, Poetry Review, Rialto, etc. collected from her 3 books - "Slattern", "Samarkand" and "Newborn".

First, some generalisations -

• In "Speculation", an eclipse is due - a dark "counter for the highest stakes" is about to slide over a brighter one. The persona's been told for safety's sake to watch backwards, in a mirror. This is compared to a relationship - "I thought of how it is with us - I stare, you turn away and flush." So the title refers to predictions about love as well as about gambling and the eclipse. Like many of her pieces, it's an extended metaphor.
• "Speculation" is 4 5-lined stanzas. Like most of her poems, it's made of equally sized rectangles. In this well-crafted poem I think the stanza-breaks are significant, as are many of the line-breaks. Hoever, most of the poems have fairly arbitrary shapes - line-breaks have to be ignored otherwise they're distracting. "Mendings" for example is printed as 22 short-lined triplets, but could have been couplets or prose.
• She's good at snapshots of relationships - the poems on p.18-21 capture moments. And there are moving (or soppy) soundbites - "Patagonia" ends with "When I spoke of Patagonia, I meant// skies all empty aching blue. I meant/ years. I meant all of them with you."
• "Grace Ethel must have heard it fall/ and thrash: a rush like love, at first,/ then a nagging, migrainous pulse,/ then a flutter like a faulty value/ in the chimney's hidden ventricle" (p.68, about finding a bird's skeleton up a chimney). There are many things "like love" in the book, even if they're not labelled as such.
• In my comments on 'Samarkand' that I wrote in 1999, I ended with "If she started writing short stories I fear her poetry production might cease." Maybe I had in mind poems like "The Bridge Over the Border" which starts with "Here, I should surely think of home -/ my country and the neat steep town/ where I grew up: its banks of cloud,/ the winds and changing, stagey light,/ its bouts of surly, freezing rain, or failing that,// the time the train stuck here half an hour./ It was hot, for once"
• Many of the poems from "Newborn" deal with situations common to new parents, situations that are often written about. All of the poems have something to say, but I don't think it always needs a whole poem/page to say it. The first ultrasound scan of the foetus is often awe-inspiring for parents, and poem-inspiring for poets. It's hard to believe there's anything new to say on the topic. "Scan" doesn't do a bad job considering, but it doesn't do enough. An exception is "Miscarriage, Midwinter" (a companion piece to "One, Two"), where a mother is playing with her toddler outside - "For weeks we've been promised/ snow ... I'm trying to scrape/ some together, to mould just/ the head of the world's smallest/ snowman, but it's too cold/ and it powders like ash in my hand"

Now some miscellaneous comments -

• I like "Slattern" and "Raspberries" (a loose sonnet) most
• I like "the child who trailed her sister like a slow-to-take-off kite" (p.56)
• I can see that some poems have more to them than I can comprehend. "Deep Blue" for example, may have allusions to "The Seventh Seal". I know that a famous chess computer was called "Deep Blue", and the poem is dedicated to John Blau (i.e. Blue).
• I like "you/ are putting me on, easily,/ the way a foot puts on a shoe" ("One, Two"). The persona is a woman sensing her ten-celled embryo.

"The Venetian Venture" by Suzette A. Hill

An audio book.

1950s. Rosy Gilchrist has been sent to Venice by her boss at the British Museum, Dr Stanley, to find a book of Horace translations annotated by Bodger. While she's there she discovers that an eccentric has offered $1 million for it, and a vase goes with it. Oxford (a descendent of Bodger) want it too. They send Edward Jones (24, from a good family but short of money) to look for it. He has a sister Lucia who lives in Venice. She knows Professor Cedric Dillworthy and Felix Smythe (a florist) who are in Venice to look after Felix's cousin's dog Caruso. Bill Hewson, an American painter is there, and Carlo Ricardo - once in an English PoW camp.

A bookseller is killed. Edward is found struggling in a canal. Bill jumps in to save him, in vain. Cedric thinks that Bill's efforts look more like trying to drown than save. Lucia, Edward's sister, isn't too upset - he'd always been a pain. Rosy thinks she's found the book but it's identied as a fake. The vase has been seen at Bill's studio. An unsent letter to Bill from Edward is found, which looks like a blackmail threat.

Felix and Guy are tied up. Bill threatens Rosy. Bill is the baddy, The bookseller had helped make a fake. Guy and Felix save her. Guy and Bill die. Felix disposes of the bodies using a gondola. There's a paragraph where Rosy recalls the episode as an 80 year old in a care home - strange. There's a funeral, and Rosy gets the book in the end for nothing.

Too many of the characters come straight from a farce cast. I'd like some of the characters to feel something. And I'd like more of the atmosphere of Venice to come through, not just some details.

Other reviews

• Radmila May ()

"Roundabout of death" by Faysal Khartash

An audio book set in Aleppo, Syria, 2012.

1st (Jomaa, once a teacher) and 3rd person. Intellectuals and coffee bars, whores, soldiers, black-marketeers, children from raided villages.

Snipers from minarets, carbombs, fighter planes, suicide bombers, Russian rifles.

Streets which change allegiance overnight. Trouble visiting his mother. Bribes.

His son is arrested, abused, released. Jomaa goes to Raka, hoping to rent a house there, to get away. It's changed since he last visited. ISIS have taken over. A man come on his bus, asks each woman who her guardian is (one of them is being accompanied by her 12 year old daughter), cuts fingernails of the passengers if they're too long, threatens the bus driver who should have checked. 3 heads hang from the clock-tower. He meets Baha by chance, a friend he first met in Paris, who once dreamt of a film career. They have a meal. Next morning he's disappeared on a Jihad mission - he's been trained. Jomaa decides to go back home.

He feels lumps on his head - something to do with sex. Strange. The translator tries to explain them in their notes. I'm not convinced.

"In the hollow of the wave" by Nina Mingya Powles (Nine arches press, 2025)

Poems from Poetry Review, Magma, etc

Beyond me. I liked "Snow fragment", "Dog-hearted" and "Blue trees".

Other reviews

• Rebecca Tamas (The book also deftly engages with the uneasy beauty of nature during a time of ecological crisis, drawing on her upbringing in Aotearoa New Zealand to create vividly unsettling images of a changing world)
• Jade Cuttle (At first, the collection seems more interested in fabric than any form of terra firma. ... But then a shift – subtle but sure – towards more consequential themes occurs.)

"The Crossroads" by Niccolò Ammaniti

An audio book.

Cristiano (13) is woken by his drunk 37 y.o. father Reno Zena. The neighbour's dog is barking. His father gives Cristiano a gun and tells him to kill it - Reno doesn't like the owner Castordan anyway.

Quattro Formaggio, a bit slow, has assembled a giant nativity scene from found parts. Reno had protected Quattro Formaggi ("the idiot") from when they were in the chidren's home.

Teresa has left Dannilo because he's an alcoholic and he was responsible for their daughter's death. Danillo's planning a bankraid, crashing through the wall with a tractor. He works with Reno and Quattro Formaggio.

Christiano likes (and is teased by) 2 girls at school - Esmiralda and Fabiana. He sees them shop-lift. The girls fancy Tekkon. Christiano slashes his motorbike tyres. Tekkon and his mates attack him, and threaten him for 1000 euro. Cristiano's dad, thinking the attack unprovoked, makes Cristiano attack Tekkon with a bat. Quattro Formaggio fancies one of the girls as well - she reminds him of a porno favourite.

Reno wants to keep Cristiano, so he's careful to keep their social worker Beppe happy. Beppe's starting to go out with Ida, his best friends wife. They have sex in a campervan. The roof blows off. Ida wants to live with him. Later, Beppe runs over a foreigner while driving. He's not dead after all.

A thunderstorm messes up people's plans in several of the stories. Reno changes his mind about the bank raid. Fabiana is accosted on a remote road by Quattro Formaggio, who mixes up porn with reality. Quattro kills her, calls Reno for help, then accidentally wounds Reno and leaves. Reno calls Cristiano for help. Cristiano finds Fabiana dead and his father, dying and takes him home and he's rushed to hospital. He survives. Cristiano deals with the corpse.

Dannilo hears that Teresa is pregnant and that a faulty child-seat was responsible for his daughter's death. He wants to buy a painting of a crying clown. He tries to do the bank raid alone. He's not driven for years. He dies at the wheel, speeding into the wall.

Beppe offers to stay for a week with Cristiano so he needn't go into care. He had plea-bargained with God, promising to break with Ida if the foreigner wasn't dead. Quattro Formaggio seeks God's help to save the life of Reno, then decides he should kill him instead. He starts calling himself "Carrion Man".

In the end, there's a service for Fabiano. Her father can't understand how God could let it happen. Cristiano know his father, bad though he is, couldn't have killed the girl. Quattro Formaggio kills himself.

Other reviews

• Ian Thompson (Ammaniti's allusions to 1970s film and B-movie schlock place him at the vanguard of Italy's so-called giovani cannibali - young cannibals)
• Toby Litt (The novel's title in Italian was Come dio comanda ... sections and chapters are a page or half a page long. Almost every scene contains a twist - and, because of this, the reader soon starts second-guessing the action. If a scene begins with a character fearing impotence, it will end with them sexually triumphant. If a character seems to have died, they will be resurrected. Also, every scene has an explicit point. The characters are shunted around with no regard for plausibility. ... this isn't a realist novel at all, but an Italian version of Deep Southern Gothic - complete with white supremacist father, idiot rapist sidekick, loser alcoholic sidekick and - at the centre of it all - a traumatised but virtuous child)

"The Bullet That Missed" by Richard Osman

An audio book.

Connie Johnson (in her 30s) is in prison, awaiting trial. She is still running a drug ring. She's inside because of Bogden and Ron Richie. She plans to take revenge.

Ron Richie, Ibrahim (a psychologist), Joyce (78) and Elizabeth are old people who meet on Thursdays to solve cases that have stumped the police. They're interested in the Bethany Waites case. They think that talking to Mike Waghorn, a TV newsreader, might help. Pauline, his make-up artist, a widow for 6 months, joins in. Bethany was a TV reporter who uncovered VAT fraud. Her car went off a cliff. Her body was never found. She'd told her colleague Mike that she had discovered something important. Mike doesn't tell people that he suspects that Fiona (an ambitious colleague of Bethany then, now famous on TV) might have had something to do with it. Heather Garbut was imprisoned for the VAT fraud. Jack Mason, her boss, got away with it.

Elizabeth (ex MI6) and slightly demented husband Steve are kidnapped by "the Viking", an expert on money-laundering. Elizabeth is told to kill Victor (his money laundering rival) else Joyce will die. Victor, ex KGB now living in London, was nicknamed the Bullet. He and Elizabeth had been almost lovers. Elizabeth fakes his death, firing into the ceiling instead of into Victor. He stays in hiding with Joyce.

Bogdan and Donna (a policewomen) have sex on their first night. Bogdan does jobs for Elizabeth and plays chess with Steve. Donna's colleague is Chris. The Kent boss of police is Andrew (who writes novels).

Ron starts dating Pauline. Ibrahim visits Connie in jail and gets her to interview Heather. Soon after, Heather's dead. Ibrahim becomes Connie's therapist. Elizabeth and Joyce entertainingly interview Fiona. Ron chats with Jack. The Viking, by looking at the bullet-hole that in Victor's penthouse, realises that Elizabeth has tried to fool him. He tries to kill Victor, but is drugged by Joyce. He agrees to help Elizabeth. Mike has always been grateful to Bethany for helping him come to terms with being gay. Jack is found dead.

Ibrahim et al realise that the laundered money had gone to people with the names of characters in Andrew's story. 2 days later, Andrew is set up to meet The Viking. He'd been told that the Viking could recover the laundered money (£10 million). The meeting is broadcast live on Fiona's feed. Victor appears, and then Mike. Andrew confesses.

We then get Bethany's PoV from Dubai. She faked her death (with the unknowing help of Pauline) when she received a bullet in the post. She used some of the illicit money.

I like the style. Osman handles old people's loves, dementia, etc, with understanding, and can do man-talk. He can switch the tone convincingly. Plot credibility and entertainment are well balanced. He uses fewer intellectual/literary allusions than Kate Atkinson does.

Other reviews

• Alison Flood

"When Will There Be Good News?" by Kate Atkinson

An audio book.

30 years after her novelist father left and the rest of her family were savagely killed, Joanna is a married doctor in Edinburgh with a 1 y.o. child. Reggie Chase (a clever 16 y.o. girl, who lives alone) helps with childcare. She lies about her mother being alive (she died on holiday with her new lover). Her brother Billie, 19, misbehaves. She's tutored by the dying Miss McDonald.

Jackson Brodie (ex-army, rich from an inheritance) gets a hair from Nathan, 2 y.o. who's at nursery school in Yorkshire. His ex-wife is Josie. Their 12 y.o. daughter is Marly. His ex-girlfriend is Julia, who claims that Nathan isn't his.

Louise (40 - a chief inspector with son Archie, 16. She used to work with Jackson) has re-married Patrick (surgeon, with a Ph.D son). An amusement arcade owned by Joanna's husband has burnt down - not the first of his places that has burnt down. Louise investigates, discovering that Neil's struggling financially. She has to visit Joanna anyway, to tell her that the killer, Decker, is about to be released. She cares about Alison Needler too, whose husband went crazy and has gone missing.

Neil says that Joanna's gone to stay with an aunt in Yorkshire until the press stories about the killer's release calm down. Brodie misses her - she was her confidante. She's suspicious - Joanna's car and phone haven't gone, and the baby's comforter (bloodied) is found by the dog.

A train crash is caused by Miss McDonald's driving. She dies. Reggie saves the life of Brodie, who was in the train. When Brodie wakes in hospital, he has the ID of Andrew Decker. Later he recalls who he is.

2 men wreck Reggie's flat, saying they're looking for a guy called Reggie Chase. She reports her suspicions about Joanna to Louise, and tells her the name of the man whose life she saved. Reggie visits him, and helps him out of hospital by claiming she's his daughter. He wants to get back to London to meet his wife Tessa (a museum curator; they've known each other for 4 months) at the airport. He has an accident in a rented car with Reggie. Louise picks them up. Meeting Jackson again has made her have doubts about her marriage. She's investigated Joanna's aunt - she's been dead a fortnight. Joanna had recently met Decker in prison.

Reggie enlists Jackson to track down Joanna. She's being held hostage by people who Neil owes money to. She kills her imprisoners. Reggie and Jackson give her and the baby a lift home. The police track down Decker who shoots a colleague of Louise then kills himself. Nobody finds out who killed the kipnappers. Tessa turns out to be a fake who's gone off with Jackson's money. Louises is about to leave her husband.

The main characters engage in entertaining internal monologue, dropping literary allusions and asking themselves questions. They have an interest in language and figures of speech. There are many observations and fun phrases -

• "who looked as if she'd knitted herself"
• "dressed in a uniform that would have allowed her to drown in a vat of Heinz tomato soup without anyone noticing""

Other reviews

• Patrick Ness (Atkinson began tackling life and death and fate and love with a freedom and fluency unseen in her earlier novels. By becoming a crime writer, she has - in a way that other "literary" types may wish to note - become a better literary writer than ever: funny, bracingly intelligent and delightfully prickly. ... Lovers of the crime genre have given Atkinson a hard time for her use of coincidence, and truth be told, the first half of When Will There Be Good News? can be a little hard to swallow ... By putting coincidence so firmly in control of her plot - all the way through to its very last page, where two protagonists are revealed to have an even deeper connection - she starts to raise larger questions of destiny and fate)