"The Good Mother" by Rae Cairns

An audio book.

2014, Sarah, divorced from Evan and living in Australia, has daughters Alice (12) and Sofia (8), and a son Riley (16), who's offered 4 months of soccer training in Dublin. His father's prepared to pay. She doesn't want him to go - when she worked in Belfast she had to leave suddenly. She thinks that Riley won't be safe. But she relents.

She used to enjoy running. In 1997 Michael was her boyfriend in Belfast. Michael was exciting. Evan was solid and dependable. Michael was Dan's brother and defending lawyer. Dan's now high in the IRA. Her friend Jerry died.

For a month after Riley's departure, all's quiet. Stone, an Irish Dectective (whose aunt had been killed by bomb equipment that Dan McNulty supplied, and was connected with someone called Olivia) interviews her, and a plane ticket to Ireland is delivered to her - by Dan she suspects.

She decides to accept the offer, first agreeing to give Stone evidence provided her family's protected. She asks her father Max (ex-Army. She's not seen him for 17 years) to protect Riley. In Ireland she's taken to see Dan and (briefly) Michael. Dan tells her to get the case to court then say that he'd been sleeping with her on the night of the murder, otherwise her family will be killed. Max gets her a gun. She sees Riley. He's doing well at soccer camp. He has a girlfriend Siobhan. Sarah checks her out. She's 18 with a father in prison. She tells Siobhan that she knows she's spying for Dan (under duress?), and offers to pay her to leave, but instead, Riley orders her mother to leave. She becomes more friendly with Alec Stone.

We learn that her friend Jerry got away from a bad situation but was drawn back by at attack on his brother. Her friend Quinn is still around. His brother Liam deals in drugs. She buys drugs from him. She plans to plant drugs in Siobhan's car and tell the police. She gets drunk. Alec happens to be in the pub and gives her a lift to her hotel. She's flirty. He doesn't take up the offer. He says that if she asks about Olivia again he'll drop the case. Later he reveals that Olivia was her daughter who died because her estranged wife was high on IRA drugs.

Evan is assaulted. She throws away the drugs. She's abducted for 2 days, warned, then released. She sleeps with Alec. She's arrested for shooting at Alec (while she'd been abducted). Michael suggests to her that Alec told Dan about Sarah so that Dan would invite her to Belfast - all Alec cared about was Dan's conviction.

While in court she realises that Riley's been abducted. Max is killed. She helps Alec in a raid to free Riley and to get evidence that Dan's preparing a bomb. She tells Michael that Riley is his son. He doesn't believe her. She's caught. She tries to make Dan's gang to see that he's a psychopath, not interested in family or Ireland. He kills Michael (who hHad been protecting her). He gets her to drive a car with a time-bomb in it to the city centre. Unconscious Alec is in the back of the car. He revives, tells her that Riley is safe in another country thanks to Michael, then gets out. She drives back to the hide-out.

Days later, recovering in hospital she tells Alec that she sees no future for the 2 of them. A year later she and Riley return to put a stone on Michael's grave. The police and Dan's organisation have been purged. She first cold-shoulders Alec then asks him out.

There are some unlikely details. Would she really fall for Alec? That the gang left Alec in the car puzzles me. Max seems little more than a plot device. There's a standard sentence pattern to deal with emotions - "Stiffness entered his voice"; "Pain seared through her skull"; "Words dissolved in her mouth"; "Acid curdled in her stomach"; "Heat seared up her chest"; "shock fired up in his eyes"; "Sorrow darkened his eyes"; "her insides seared with heat", etc. I think "Sarah swallowed the knife in her throat" is going too far.

Other reviews

• debbish (There’s a strong theme of family loyalty here – in Sarah’s relationship with her children, and her father (Max’s) to her and her family. As well as Sarah’s former love interest and the moral dilemma he constantly faced – committed to upholding the law but supporting a brother intent on subverting it and believing he is justified in doing so. I liked the way Cairns portrays the relationship between Sarah and ex-husband Evan; the life they lived together and the end of their marriage. It felt very real… and surprisingly healthy. I also liked Irish cop Alec Stone who’s seemingly obsessed with bringing down those involved in the murder(s) years before ... I would have liked a little more information about Sarah and her father Max.)
• scatterbooker
• Goodreads

"Someone else's name" by Joseph Harrison (Zoo Press, 2003)

Poems from Antioch Review, Paris Review, Kenyon Review, etc., with an introduction by Hecht. Its three sections have promising titles - "Songs and Sonnets", "Stories", "Signs and Figures". Reading the introduction makes me realise that I'm likely to miss many allusions - to Frost, Shakespeare, etc. All the same I don't think I've missed much in "Sunshine and Rain", which lists contrasting pairs (e.g. Lear's wisdom and folly) ending with the more puzzling line "As words from long ago fill up this line". "Air Larry" is gently humourous I suppose.

The following has more to it -

And now the world's a blank page, frozen hard    As disbelief, extreme As absence, blanketing the small back yard    In flash and fitful gleam, Concealing the cold earth we worked and scarred    Till harvest comes to seem A distant pageant in which we humans starred    Only in some dim dream (p.15)

"Dante Lost" is fun. I found "View of Baltimore from Green Mount Cemetery" (7 pages) tedious. "Peregrine Falcon on Skyscraper" is 3 pages of short lines (axxa rhyming stanzas: e.g. "All all the time/ A feathered acrobat/ Who's utterly at ease/ With the sublime")- a pleasant, informative read.

Here are some of the more prosaic lines from the sonnet sequence, "As if"

I'd love you, lady, at a lower rate If that would help. I'd take it to extremes. Send flowers daily, then send chocolate, And book us flights to Paris, where we'd go Sauntering down the boulevards, and sip Expensive wines ... ... One scene with you is all I'd ask to play: I'd ham it up, I'd play it to the hilt And make it run forever and a day. ... My credits don't amount to a hill of beans. My canon is a stack of might-have-beens, Assembled, with long labour, bit by bit. A tree fell, but nobody noticed it. Attack a windmill and the windmill wins ... Know you are always in mind and heart Where we are both together and apart. When sunrise sweeps the sky from gray to blue Or, shedding clouds, the moon steps into view

Now for some random extracts -

• In every story we read our own stories, As if the times gave us, in daily pages, Untimely legends we're the fractals of (p.29)

• He loved fly-fishing, and wrote poetry, Shy serious pursuits, where patience leads To lucky spots of brief felicity. The trick's to make the lure look natural, ... Then as an image rises to take the bait Jerk the taut line (p.33)

• The sign/thing sine curve thing, like thing and sign Were thing and wave at once, a cursive sign Written on water by wind with fire from earth In the richest contradictions of connotation, Doing a triple back flip telling a joke On up through inside under over and out. (p.82)

"Walking the wall" by Ann Phillips (Poetry workshop publications, 2010)

Poems (nearly 100 pages of them!) from Dreamcatcher, Iota, Obsessed with pipework, etc.

She writes in a note that "Neither have I edited them for consistency, especially of punctuation". There's syntax that would be confusing even if commas were used. Extra spaces between words are used sometimes instead of a comma. Some sections are indented.

The first few poems have variety - one-idea poems; short-lined poems; poems that are nearly prose; poems hooked on rhyme. Though no single poem convinces me, I'm happy to read on.

p.11 is one of many pages without punctuation. Sometimes the line-breaks are commas, sometimes they're used merely to make all the lines roughly the same length. It begins with "Solid being a dance of atoms/ a wall is a maze of maybe/ self a metaphor/ not of our choosing" which I like. And I like the later "a shiver of meaning/ crosses our minds with silver". But do I like the poem? I'm not so sure.

In "Stairs", "the active young go scissoring up,/ come back by the banisters sledging:/ the old go slower as the stairs go faster - / time is the other dimension" - I only understand the 2nd line of that.

"Solstices" (which has no comma or full stops) starts with "Two the lily-white boys/ at the solstices they stand" which seems unhelpfully confusing even if you know the "Green Grow the Rushes, O" song. Why not add a comma after "boys"? Better still, why not "Two lily-white boys stand at the solstices"?

"It is shapesharer/ with the ginko leaf" (p.24) means "it has the same shape as the ginko leaf". But why bother deviating from standard language in this way? That's a question I often asked myself when reading this book.

"The marrow was picked from me, shin-bone/ and holes were drilled to make me tibia flute" (p.30) needed a re-read - I parsed it wrongly. Why add obstacles? Why not "The marrow was picked from me, a shin-bone. Holes were drilled to make me into a tibia flute" or "They scraped out my marrow. drilled holes, made me into a tibia flute."

"Ely" has less-contorted syntax and is easy to like. "Rules" gets better as it goes along and might be my favourite.

"The Betrayals" by Fiona Neill

An audio book, each chapter from a particular PoV.

Daisy's 21. Her boyfriend Kip is meeting her mother Rosy (a doctor specialising in Breast cancer) for the first time. Her father Nick (a memory specialist - he knews about false memories) walked out 7 years ago. She has a younger brother Max. Nick lives with Lisa (lawyer, now Yoga trainer), who used to be Daisy's best friend. Lisa has a daughter Eva, who was Daisy's friend, and Rex, who lives with his father Barry. Daisy intercepts a letter from Lisa to Rosy saying she has terminal breast cancer, and that she has something to tell Rosy. There's a key to Lisa's house in the envelope which gets lost before the envelope reaches Rosy. Rosie had an anxiety syndrome (or OCD) that made her do rituals to keep the ones she loved safe. She thinks she's having a relapse. She gets Kip to move in.

Max is a med student with a girlfriend Connie who's rather older than him.

Nick and Lisa are going to marry. They're going to tell their kids about the cancer after. Lisa's refusing chemo, preferring coffee enemas. She denies that she's contacted Lisa when Nick asks.

Rosy used sex to feel alive again after the break-up. She's active on Tinder. Someone she's having regular sex with, Ed, a few years younger than her, suddenly becomes part of her team at work. She hadn't known he was a doctor. She tries to dump him. He finds out her address, meets Kip and Daisy.

When Daisy was 12 the 2 families went on holiday. When she was on the beach nervously waiting for Rex to arrive and take her virginity she sees her father and Lisa have sex (though during Nick PoV section, he says they didn't get that far). Barry has serious drinking problems. Max fancies Eva. Daisy's obsession issues seem to worsen after that holiday. Max does all he can to help.

Back in the present, we learn that the note Daisy received that holiday saying to meet Rex on the beach was written by Max. Daisy had got into trouble at school because Eva had overdosed on a party drug that Daisy had brought to a gathering (she'd wanted to make peers like her). Max tells his father that Daisy's OCD started after Daisy saw him and Lisa having sex on the beach. Nick says it's a false memory - they were just friends at the time.

Instead of a hen-party, Lisa goes to a karmic, detox health weekend with Nick, who loses patience with the tutors. Rosy's using sex to get Ed out of her head. She swipes right before realising that the man is Barry. They meet all the same, for a chat. He'd considered a revenge shag with her. Now that he's stopped drinking he has a busy time with women. Lisa meets Rosy, apologising for the effect she's had on Daisy's health. She says that Nick has found a younger woman. Rosy invites Lisa onto her special chemo trial. She sleeps with Barry after all. Daisy meets Rex who tells her that he didn't send the note.

Nick discovers he's been sleeping with his son Max's girlfriend. From a distance Max watches Lisa strip and walk into the sea. A celebration swim?

Nick doesn't act/think like someone whose partner is rapidly dying. The Rosy+Barry and Max/Nick+Connie relationships at the end are unconvincing.

Other reviews

• jenmedsbookreviews
• damppebbles
• noveldelights (Max is infatuated by women who treat him badly. From Daisy, we see how her OCD controls her; from Max we find out about the guilt he has been carrying around since childhood; from Nick we discover how he uses life to justify his weaknesses; and from Rosie we see that she is unable to make new romantic attachments following being betrayed by the two people she trusted most. ... in parts I found it a tad disjointed with things left unclear. For me it was ambiguous in parts, especially the ending which really frustrated me. )
• handwrittengirl (‘The Betrayals’ was a difficult book to get into, filled with a complex and unlikable characters. Towards the end, I was almost looking forward to finishing it. ... The characters are complicated and self absorbed, all caught up in their own dramas and constantly seeking reassurance or forgiveness. At times, I found their neediness and drama irritating)
• Rebecca McCormick ( There are questions that are left unanswered when they shouldn't have been, and I felt like the last twenty percent of the book was a bit rushed and not entirely satisfying)

"Don't Let Go" by Harlan Coben

An audio book.

Sexy Daisy tricks older Dale Milton into driving her home from a bar while drunk - a set up. She's done it before. Rex, a cop, gets him to stop. Dale shoots and kills him.

Inspector Napoleon (Nap) Dumas is visited by police (Bates and Stacey Reynolds). He had a twin brother Leo (who he still often refers to as "you"). Leo and girlfriend Diana died together on a train line. Suicide? Murder? His parents (French father) are dead. He volunteers at a battered wives refuge (and attacks husbands who have behaved badly). 15 years before, he used to go out with Moira. When she disappeared he put her fingerprints on the database with instructions that he should be contacted if she found. Moira is Daisy, which why the police are visiting. Nap deduces that Dale was going through a divorce and had fallen into a trap that would damage his case. But the man in the car had a fake name. Perhaps he was a hit man paid to kill Rex?

He consults a schoolfriend. The dead people belonged to the "conspiracy club" - to do with a secret missile launching site nearby. The site didn't used to be secret - school trips were arranged to it - but security was increased when it became an "agriculture research centre" (when the missiles became nuclear?). 3 months after Leo/Diana's death it closed down. Other club members were Hank (brilliant but has mental problems - he's recently disappeared) and Beth (who's been out of contact for years. She's made an effort to hide her identity but they track her down).

Diana's father Oggy has guided Leo through his career. He's a police boss now. He says that on that final night he saw that Leo was high when he collected Diana.

A rumour on social media said that Hank flashed to schoolgirls. Nap tracks down the initiators and finds out it's not true - people wanted to get rid of a wierdo. Hank is found hung from a tree, castrated. He left a tape of that night.

Ellie, the boss of the wives refuge, tells him that she suspects he's been attacking husbands. He doesn't deny it. She tells him to stop.

Nap tracks down Andy Reeves, the boss of security of the old camp. He tells Reeves about the tape. Reeves assaults him, takes him to a warehouse to torture him. Moira saves Nap, killing Reeves. She takes him to the woods to relive the night. She says they were shot at. As she ran away she heard a scream. She reported nothing and has been on the run for 15 years. They go to her room and make love. Nap's still puzzled about why the murders are re-starting after 15 years. He doesn't believe that Hank killed himself. How did Moira escape from the professional hitman?

The FBI interview him with people (including a state prosecutor) around. Nap tells everyone what he thinks. An FBI agent starts to attack him. Nap knocks him out and escapes. He and Moira drive to see Beth. She says that Leo LSD'd Diana as a joke and took her to the wood. A prisoner escaped, and Diana got caught in the crossfire. Nap meets Oggy, already suspecting the truth. Oggy says he found Diana dead and killed Leo, faking their death. He was the hitman who killed Rex (he let Daisy go because she wasn't a witness to the original incident. He killed Hank. Nap stops Oggy killing Beth, him or himself. He realises that he might have caught his vigilanty tendencies from Oggy. He plans to live with Moira,

Fast paced. A good read. Some phrases attracted my attention -

• "Daisy wore a clingy black dress with a neckline so deep it could tutor philosophy" (parodying the hard-boiled style?)
• "the play button descends with an audible click" (but aren't all clicks audible?)
• "Hank's eyes dart about like scared birds trying to find a place to land" (from Nap's PoV - which explains why it's a cliche?)

Other reviews

• Kirkus reviews (What secret could the Conspiracy Club have discovered that would remain so dangerous for so long? Sadly, the answers are neither as interesting nor even as surprising as the setup. This may be the first time most of perennially bestselling Coben’s readers will beat his hard-used hero to the solution.)

"Some histories of the Sheffield flood 1864" by Rob Hindle (Templar Poetry, 2006)

A pamphlet of poems from Staple, etc, with adverts from the Sheffield Telegraph and Sheffield Times, 1864. The poems are about victims (there were over 250) and survivors - slices of life all presented in much the same voice though one's a 1st person PoV by a dead 14 year-old. I like the pamphlet - as much for the factual info as the poetry. A suicider was saved from the river and locked up over-night. When the water rose to his armpits he pleaded to be let out. He survived, but the Inspector who freed him caught typhus and died.

"Amicable numbers" by Mike Barlow (Templar poetry, 2008)

A pamphlet of poems from Dreamcatcher, Interpreter's House, Poetry Nottingham, The Rialto, Seam, Smiths Knoll and Staple. I've been in all those magazines. Many of them have long gone.

I like some of the lines - e.g. "You're a crowd of strangers at the crem" (p.23)

I like some of the poems - e.g. "The Long Loss" and "Driving home". "The house without memory" is an interesting experiment, based on "This is the house that Jack build". It uses rhyme.

There's a typo on p.9 - "An obedient hounds sleeps at our feet".

Other reviews

• Kirsten Irving (Barlow is concerned with the significance of intimate moments and quiet observations, from the blister on a palm left by a wedding ring to a phone call to a dented charm. This works well in the unspoken frustration of ‘A First Anniversary’ ... I don’t feel the observational style comes off quite as well in ‘The House Without Memory’.)
• D A Prince (It provides more nourishing reading than many full-length collections.)
• Tony Williams (the methods Barlow uses to explore this material are quiet, elliptical: he generally uses a slightly prosaic free verse, which needs the strong images he puts in to quicken things ... When things go wrong, when the sense of intimacy isn’t sufficiently realised, the poems can look slight (I didn’t like ‘Cauliflower Cheese’, for example); and sometimes (‘Shift’) I was left wondering whether a poem was slight or, rather, delicate ... My favourites here are the ones where Barlow allows more leeway to the strangeness of his imagination—‘Twins’, for example)