"Other people's comfort keeps me up at night" by Morgan Parker (Corsair books, 2021)

Poems from PANK, The Literary Review, Tin House, etc. Some poems have punctuation, some don't. Some have long lines, some have short ones. There are extra spaces between some words. It all seems rather random to me, like most of the line-breaks. One poem is double-spaced.

There's an introduction which didn't help me much - "while Beyoncé wants no part in the God talk, she has no issue with Queen and demands you bow. Morgan's project is Morgan. Morgan doesn't want God's problems. Queens for the most part suck.". Here are just a few of the many passages that baffled me -

• how the truth can feel like/ ant hills their sandy curves their tiny crests/ like nipples what I really want to ask is/ what do you think of the idea of progress/ and is it an injury I can fix (p.1)
• I strip down to a woman./ What is a woman?/ Women/ are a problem with a name. Girl,/ bye./ Power is money and my body (p.30)
• In this equation everyone stands for me./ Oh you in your strikened pose!/ Oh fly honey baby/ on the run and on the market! It's like pictures are words/ or sex is a Xerox machine (p.58)
• For now we are taking/ someone's grandma's pills/ I am slicing a wedge of brie/ with a comically large blade/ We walk a windy canyon and are safe/ Someone asks where the blood on the floor came from (p.74)
• Dawn is foggy/ an infinite blue stomach/ a child/ learning the function/ of a verb (p.94)

"Started Early, Took My Dog" by Kate Atkinson

An audio book.

1975. Leeds. Tracy and Ken Arkwright (police) are climbing to a 15th floor flat to investigate an incident. We learn later that they find the 2 week old corpse of a prostitute mother (Carol Braithewaite) and a child, Michael. Tracy's suspicious - the child says that his dad was the murderer, and the flat had been locked from the outside, but her colleagues don't follow those leads.

In the present, Tracy, 50+, a big woman, works in security in a shopping centre. She sees a woman, Kelly, (who she knows from her past life in the police) abuse a child and buys the child (Courtney) on a whim for £3k.

Tillie, 70+, has also seen the bad mother. She's becoming forgetful. Jackson helps her. Leslie takes her in for a chat. She's childless, had a miscarriage. Julia (Jackson's ex; his son's mother) and Tillie are both in "Collier", a TV series is being filmed locally. Tillie's confused when she sees the show on TV.

Colin abuses a dog. Jackson (once a soldier, then a cop, then a gumshoe) thumps him and takes the dog. "Tessa" (ex-wife, con-artist) stole his money. His daughter's Marley. His sister was murdered decades ago. He's become interested in culture. He has found out he has a young son. He's trying to find out about the past of a New Zealand client, Hope, who was adopted. He plans an interview with Linda (who deals with adoptions) about Carol.

Linda phones Tracy about Carol Braithwaite. Tracy phones Barry, who's still in the force. Barry has a secret.

In 1974 we get Ray's PoV. He's a policeman with a wife Marge. Marge is friends with Kitty who's married an older doctor. Both women are infertile. Kitty had been a model and a muse for a writer. An abortion 5 months into an unwanted pregnancy made her infertile. Ray had a carefree affair.

Tracy wonders about killing Kelly - a loose end - then entering Kelly's place finds that she's already been killed. Tracy's a suspect. She starts driving Courtney to a cottage she's rented but crashes into a deer. Jackson picks them up. When he leaves the car she drives away. A car picks Jackson up - a Private Investigator who'd put a tracker on the dog. The PI's called Brian Jackson. Jackson interviews Marilyn Needles, the reporter from 1975. She was told not to pry. Jackson's assaulted by 2 thugs. He's told not to pry.

We learn more about Tracy. She lost her virginity to her married driving instructor when she was 20, and got her own flat.

Jackson watches a train station incident - Tillie and a thug fall under a train while Tracy and Courtney (with new IDs) catch a train. In weeks they're in DisneyLand, Paris. The other Jackson's client is Michael Braithewaite - Hope's brother!

Back in 1975, we hear about the murder of Carol from the murderer's PoV - a detective, the father of Michael. His colleague, Eastman, covered it all up, arranged the girl's adoption with Kitty and husband, who emigrated to New Zealand.

Barry kills his daughter Amy (in a permanent coma) then himself. Ray is arrested - the other Jackson got Linda to confess. Ray gave the child to childless Kitty rather than his own wife.

It's entertaining. Several characters muse over how things have changed since their day. Several characters have similar senses of humour and feelings of disappointment - Tracy "only realised when they died that [her parents] would never love her"; A boy's acne is so bad that if you knew braille you could read his face. The plot is full of coincidences and parallels (Jackson finding a permanent companion - a dog; Tracy finding a child) at the expense of [psychological] credibility. The quality of the observation and character insight cover the cracks.

Other reviews

• Justine Jordan (Kate Atkinson's novels have always been built around lost girls ... Tracy's awkward transformation into would-be parent is wryly moving, and Atkinson swerves the obvious sentimentality by channelling it all into Tilly, who has her own pity-soaked memories of maternal heartbreak. Tracy's new role is also mirrored by Jackson's adoption of a particularly winning dog)
• shereadsnovels (there were too many [characters] whom I struggled to distinguish from each other; in particular, the other police officers involved in the 1975 storyline all seemed to blend into one which made that part of the book difficult to follow. There were also some subplots that didn’t seem to go anywhere and some important questions that remained unanswered at the end. Compared with the first three books in the series, I thought this one was disappointing)
• Amy Adams (Atkinson is operating in a gray area between realism and metaphor. ... Atkinson isn't interested so much in Tracy's character as she is in Tracy's situation--the sudden change of your world, the madness that is parental love, the way the inclusion of a child into your life fundamentally changes who you are. ... it's a fascinating book, intricately plotted, with layers of meaning playing off against each other, raising the ongoing challenge of how our culture treats children. Atkinson also liberally sprinkles the pages with ruminations on poetry and how it illuminates our lives.)

"History of wolves" by Emily Fridlund

An audio book.

Linda (her first-person PoV), 37, looks back on her life. At school the new, male history teacher, Mr Grierson, seemed interested in schoolgirls. A classmate, Lily, was rumoured to be having fun with him, the rumours gaining details over the weeks. He chose Linda to deliver a talk for an inter-school competition. She did it about the "History of wolves" and got an originality prize. Lily got pregnant. Grierson was put on trial (Lily had made an accusation about him that she later retracted). Child porn was found in his house. He hadn't slept with Lily though he admitted he'd thought about it. He got 7 years.

Linda lived in a lake-cabin. Classmates thought her a bit odd. Her mother, after leaving a commune, became a regular church-goer. When 15, Linda looked after Paul, 4, for $10 a day. His father was an astronomer, his mother was Patra. They invited her to spend the weekend away with them. She went. The father quizzed her about God. Later, at a trial, she's asked about the parents, particularly the father. Paul died of a brain swelling. Linda had tried to understand Paul's parents. The father was a 3rd-generation Christian Scientist. Patra had asked him out when he was her Prof. They were acquitted of negligence for religious reasons.

After her father died, Linda went away, not talking to her mother for 2 years. She slept with a mechanic who had a psychology degree and used Tarot cards. She learnt that her mother started living in the shed after the roof came off the cabin, and returned to her. She tried to track down Lily and Mr Grierson. She faked a letter from Grierson and gave it to Lily. She could imagine herself Lily by following the steps of a ritual.

Is there a difference morally between thinking about something and doing it? Grierson and Christian Scientists ponder over it. Linda wonders too, right to the end.

There's a lot of jumping forwards and backwards in time. Once the trial is mentioned, details from it are frequently mentioned.

Other reviews

• Sarah Ditum (when everything is explicitly foreshadowed, nothing is at stake. Fridlund carries on meticulously dressing her traps long after they’ve been sprung. In some ways, this is the standard literary fiction shortcoming of thinking plot is the least important part. In others, Fridlund’s weaknesses are her own. Characters tend to be vague outlines with tics. ... there are none of the subtle mechanisms that make characters coherent – and capable of acting surprisingly. There is only one mood: slow and sad)
• Lauren Kocher (The mystery surrounding Paul’s death does its work to pull the reader along, but Linda and her longing is our focal point ... Perhaps the most compelling part of this book is Linda’s reflection on the events of her childhood. By this point in the novel, she has gained enough distance to look back objectively, though she is still unable to understand herself)

"Find her first" by Emma Christie

An audio book.

It's mostly Andy's PoV and Betty's PoV. There's more than one time-line. In one, on the funeral day of Andy's mother, Stef had got an ultimatum through the mail.

Andy is a paramedic. When he was little, his sister died in the bath. It might have been his fault - negligence. Andy had a brief affair with his boss Vicky. His partner of 15 years Stef (who used to be a paramedic, who's had 3 miscarriages) did art when she took a break from work. Her teacher's Richard. Her sister is Alison - "pruned into an only child long before the cutting season".

Andy and Stef live in Portabello. Betty cleans for them, and liking chatting to Stef. Andy says that Stef is away on an art Retreat - actually he and Alison are carrying out a plan (Alison tells Andy she's losing her nerve). Betty, puzzled that Stef has left her phone and paints behind, researches into the Retreat. Her studio mates say that there's no Retreat, that there were rumours of Stef having trouble at work and home. The police tell Andy that Stef's id card (an old one she's lost) has been found in the flat of a criminal, Alex. Andy investigates. Alex's neighbours say that paramedics has saved his life (against his wishes - he kills within hours) after he slit his wrists.

We get a bit of Stef's PoV. After the funeral she wanted to get away from sad Andy. There are complaints about her being drunk on the job.

Betty follows Richard to a hut in the woods. He's carrying a bin-bag. Betty finds a sequence of paintings of Stef, her body gradually disappearing. There are flies and blood.

Betty finds Stef on her favourite hill which she'd painted many times (her dead babies are buried there). Stef has Motor Neurone Disease (hence the complaints that she was drunk at work; hence the sequence of paintings). She wanted to kill herself while she could still move her hands to work a syringe. The plan was that she'd inject herself, then Alison would find her. Stef's hand's are too weak so it's lucky that she was found by Betty (who is Alex's half-sister and lives with him). Betty helps.

The language can be elevated - "two soft, grey silhouettes tattooed onto the frosted window".

Other reviews

• John Verpeleti (I must admit to being confused by the 'now and then' timelines, some italicised chapters and a story delivered with rotating third-person accounts ... If a totally unknown plot path is your thing, then this is one for you)
• Vicky Weisfeld (A smaller number of chapters are told from Stef’s point of view, from six months earlier ... these time shifts can be a mite confusing, but in the end make sense.)

"Cloudless" by Rupert Dastur (Fig tree, 2025)

Catrin (46, a piano teacher) and John (who left school at 14) run a farm in Wales which is struggling. Their relationship is struggling too. They've 2 sons. Rhys is 16, and Harri, a soldier, has just started a 6 month stint in Iraq having got a degree from Bangor. Their dog Flint is getting old. Catrin's widowed mother Alice still lives in the house where Catrin grew up. She's always thought that John wasn't good enough for her daughter. John's dad died after a tractor accident and later his mother died. The farm's been in the family for generations.

So the scene is set for wife/husband aspirational conflict, with the sons as pieces in the game as well as observers. Sections are mostly Catrin's or John's 3rd person PoV. They begin with quotes from "The Report of the Iraq Inquiry". On p.25 for example it says that Fallujah "was 'littered' with IEDs which would need to be located and made safe before reconstruction could begin in earnest" which could be an analogy for their relationship. Landscape and rural life form an expressive backdrop - there are sections where knowledge about farming, fishing, or hunting shows.

John is drinking and gambling - the banks are sending warning letters. Tim is an old friend with a much bigger farm. Catrin asks if he'd buy the farm off them. She sees Matt in town for the first time in years. They were at school and Uni together. He was an artist and they'd thought of sharing a creative life together before he'd left for London. They start having sex. John tells Catrin about his gambling.

John and Rhys ride in the last hunt before the ban. Matt is separated, with two daughters. "Catrin catches Matt watching the young man as he walks away and she wonders if the rumours that had circled at university had any substance".

On p.135 we read that the Iraq situation "could destabilise the Middle East, create a safe haven for international terrorists and damage the reputation and morale of the UK defence forces". John is angry that they can find no weapons of mass destruction. Harri's letters home are full of nostalgia.

Bailiffs arrive. They go off with her much loved piano. She phones her mother for help only to find that she's already given John £8k. John hints to Steff that he knows about her affair. So they both feel guilt.

Harri returns for 2 weeks - his 3rd-person PoV. During his stay he gets his father to go to Gambler's Anonymous (by telling him about far worse experiences in Iraq), talks to Rhys about his school behaviour (Rhys says it was caused by rumours about Harri), pays off bits of his father's loans, and continues his long-felt passion for farm-hand Simon.

When Matt returns to London he invites Catrin down for the opening of his show, suggesting she should stay the night. At the show there's arty-chitchat and bitchy comments about Matt - that he'd sleep with anything that has two legs. His wife slashes a painting. Steff leaves immediately. Her menopause is starting. They meet some weeks later at Llandudno. He tries to explain himself. She breaks it off. When he gets in his car John gets in too, with a sawn-off shotgun. He scares Matt, then leaves.

He accepts Tim's generous offer for part of the land. The dog's dying. Catrin and John ride horses together while The Grand National is on, to distrast him. She feels a little better - maybe thing will work out. He and Alice have got her piano back. While she plays a piece she's being composing during Harri's time away, the phone rings.

It's years later. We're led to believe that Harri is dead. Rhys (who's about to marry) and Simon are helping with the farm. They've opened a Rehab Centre for Soldiers, and accommodation. Harri is in a wheelchair. Everybody seems content. The farm and family have survived.

Other reviews

• republic of words (Books on recent history need to tread a thin line between over-familiarity ... and avoidance ..., and Dastur attempts to do both by quoting from contemporary sources on the Iraq War to give a sense of what those at home would know of what was happening on the ground. It doesn’t quite work, leaving much of Harri’s tale on the cutting room floor, but it does offer the sense that his parents are in a purgatory not of their own making.)
• Goodreads

"The Killings at Badger’s Drift" by Caroline Graham

An audio book set in 1987.

Miss Emily Simpson (80) sees 2 people having sex in the woods. Later when she's at home she phones the Samaritans. There's a knock at the door. Next day she's found dead. Her friend Lucy (also a spinster) is suspicious (she reads whodunnits) and goes to the police.

Detective Tom Barnaby (who likes gardening) has a wife who does AmDram but can't cook, a daughter Cully who's at Cambridge doing a degree, and a colleague Troy. Because there are doubts about the professionalism of the local doctor (Trevor Lessitor), Barnaby gets a PM done and finds Simpson died of Hemlock poisoning

Barbara Lessitor, 40+, is pretty. She began shoplifting make-up and clothes when 15. While a virgin, she attracted a boss at work who got her pregnant. When he gave her money to get an abortion she left her job and become an escort. Then she found a widower, Trevor Lessitor, in a supermarket. They married, but Barbara has never been liked by Judy, Lessitor's plump daughter. Barbara is having an affair and for some reason needs £5k.

Catherine Lacey, pretty, is about to marry Henry Trace - a wheelchaired widower who owns a farm. Her brother is Michael, an artist (who Henry's supporting? Who Judy fancies?). The farm manager is attractive David Whiteley, separated, with a son he's not seen for a while. Phyllis is the live-in house-maid (and sister of Henry's first wife), who'll have to leave. Henry's first wife died in a shooting accident. Barnaby researches into it. Michael was one of the beaters. Denis is gay - his mother's nosy.

Trevor frequents an up-market brothel because his wife doesn't like having sex with him.

Denis's mother is violently killed. She's been keeping notes about goings on and has been blackmailing people. Phyllis is arrested for the death of Henry's first wife. She confesses (she wanted Henry), and is found dead in the night in a police cell. A bloody knife is found in Michael's house. He's arrested too. He says he sketched Judy for 2 hours when the 2nd murder happened, and the knife was planted. Barbara admits to having an affair with Whiteley (whose wife says is violent and over-sexed). Trevor says she can stay if she submits to his conditions. She rejects his offer.

In the end Michael and Catherine are the guilty ones. They were in an incestuous affair. Tom debriefs to Lucy.

Other reviews

• mysteriesahoy (The heart of the novel though has to be the mystery and I am disappointed to say that in this respect I found the book a little lacking. ... Too much hinges on discoveries about personal lives, while our understanding of the case itself felt a little static.)
• Cat Eldridge ([the characters] feel like simple and not terribly interesting plot devices, not real beings. ... Kudos to the TV series’ writers for changing Barnaby and Troy from less than appealing characters into individuals worth knowing!)

"The continental affair" by Christine Mangan

An audio book.

A woman sees a man in a train. They act as if they're strangers. They met 2 weeks before. There had been problems in Belgrade. They're on their way to Istanbul. It's the 1960s.

Henri was born in Algeria to a French father (Marseilles) and Spanish mother (Granada). He went to university and became a policeman to make them happy. When they died in a car accident and the political situation in Oran was difficult, he went to Spain, doing undercover deliveries/pickups for his family. On a job to collect money at the Alhambra he sees a woman drop money and another pick it up. He follows her towards Paris.

When Louise Barnard's invalid father died, he left £40. She decided to spend it on a holiday to Alhambra rather than on his funeral. She's 28, a factory worker - tall, strong, thin. Her mother had left for Paris years before, sending just one letter back. When she'd found the £5,000 she'd been almost penniless. She decided to head for Paris by bus. She can speak French.

She finds out that her mother died. She catches a train to Istanbul. He follows. She tells him about her father and the money. She wants to change her life. At Istanbul they realise that they're being followed by a man - one of Henri's Spanish associates. They can't lose him in the Grand Bazaar. She ends up with a gun and the follower is wounded. She escapes, claiming she's lost the money.

In the epilogue she's at Oran years later hoping Henri will pass by.

Other reviews

• Janice Ottersberg (The structure of the novel is complex and requires close reading. Pivoting on a mysterious event in Belgrade, the narrative switches between two legs of the journey – before Belgrade and after.)
• Kirkus reviews (The book is front-loaded with too much backstory, but a patient reader will quickly be rewarded by an unconventional heist narrative that is equal parts moving and thrilling. ... The novel is a smart riff on a familiar genre, with complex protagonists and a cliché-defying love story.)
• RoughJustice (The Continental Affair has an unusual structure, which at first is a little confusing, but ultimately serves the story well. Each chapter begins with the pair sharing a train carriage not far from their final destination. These scenes are followed by a flashback, told from their alternate points of view, bringing the story forward to the present.)