"Plot and counter-plot" by Helena Nelson (Shoestring Press, 2010)

Some sonnets - loose and tight ones appear on facing pages early on, establishing the stylistic flexibility. There are rhyming pieces that are like Stevie Smith or folk songs - "O" and "Oh" are used. There are short pieces like "Teller" (which has an "ab cd ad cb" rhyme scheme). There are psychological dialogues like "The Hill" where a man leaves a woman to climb a hill alone. It ends with "He doesn't ask about the view from the top./ She doesn't tell him she didn't reach the top.// She might think, 'This is the story of my life'/ but although this the story of her life// that is not what she thinks./ She thinks something else."

"Blackbird singing at dusk" by Wendy Pratt (Nine Arches Press, 2024)

Poems from The Friday Poem, Under the Radar, etc. It starts well, and continues at that level for while. Themes include identification with landscape (or parts of it - water or a boulder), grief (a daughter's death and a more recent death of a father), bird imagery, language, personal/family/geological history and the consequences of having rural upbringing.

A boulder dreams (p.13) and sings (p.17). In the final poem, "Boulder returning in echoes of self", the first 3 short stanzas begin with "If I was the boulder"; "If I was the glacier"; "If I was the valley". The final 3 stanzas those topics echo back, the 1st lines being "But the valley was opened up"; "Though I looked like I was still"; "Though I was scraped I was granite".

A few forms are used. p.18 is a duplex (a form new to me) - 8 couplets of roughly 10-syllabled lines where the 2nd line of a couplet links (often by a common final word) with the 1st line of the next couplet. The poem's first and last lines are similar. p.22 is a golden shovel. p.34 is a specular.

Overall I like the book, though I'm less sure about some early lines in poems that end with good imagery.

• I like the idea on p.24 when accompanying her father to hospital then letting him go on alone is compared to accompanying an astronaut to their rocket prior to take off.
• "Excavating the bone house" sounds too much like research until part IV - "In the valley of the glacier/ the tops are the edge/ of your world ... If you want [a] PhD/ you have to climb over the edge ... The tops form the roof of my mouth/ where my flat vowels sound themselves.// The tops are the height to which I can reach./The tops are the grimy extractor fans/ of fish and chip shops"
• "Sara Lee" is clear enough, but there's too little content.
• "Eleven" has too many unoriginal lines. It ends well with "I want you to know that today/ I carry you up to the cemetery like/ a goldfinch on my shoulder/ and that you bob away in the air/ and then back again, and that/ it makes me happy/ to imagine us this way"
• "My Woe Waters have been sleeping/ twenty-five years dry and still/ Woe tries all her tricks to tempt/ a rise, to tickle water from my chalk bones" continues the identification with landscape (p.56)
• I like "My mother, a wren at his ear, calling and calling" ("Intensive Care Unit Two") though it echoes "Eleven"
• "This year you come to me in the rain,/ ... columns of you drifting across// the distant valley of me" ("Thirteen"). I like this imagery that ends the poem.

Other reviews

• Jade Cuttle (Smell is one of the hardest senses to describe, but it is one of Pratt’s strengths. As her grief deepens and her animal senses sharpen, aromas become more present, as if attempting the impossible and compensating for her loss.)
• S the poet (It is a literal set of songs with both beauty and urgency that remind we will never escape the inevitability of our own lives, and that to live with them well is an experience that fundamentally alters our souls to the good. ... My favourite poem, amongst constant smart and astute observations of the lives, people and memories her environment contains and the lives of others, plus the grief tied to deeply personal losses, are ten lines entitled The Men Who Drive Tractors.)

"The Tutor" by Daniel Hurst

An audio book - 5 hours, which is short. Chapters are in different PoVs - Amy, Nick, Michael, Petra - with an omniscient narrator for flashback chapters. Chapters often end with hints of what's to come - e.g. "Little did I know it at the time, but ..."

A school is burnt down.

Amy (40) used to go to the school. She didn't like it. Nor does her 15 year old son Michael. Her husband Nick liked it. He's clever. He works with computers from home. Their daughter Bella likes school too.

Only after a few chapters do we learn that someone died in the fire. (My guess is that Amy was in some way involved with starting it. Maybe the fire in the prelude wasn't the old fire, but a new one, lit by Michael?)

Michael's flopping exams, so his parents decide to hire a tutor. They hire a very cute 28 y.o. Swede Petra after Michael rejected a 52 year old english woman. Amy's worried that Petra and Nick will get on too well - Nick had an affair 10 years before. Bella's being bullied at school.

Petra fancies Nick. Realising this, he sacks Petra and gets the 52 year-old. Michael is in love, and continues lessons at Petra's flat, paying for them by selling his video games. Petra returns to the house when she knows Nick is alone. She's not really a tutor. She's about to seduce him when Michael returns. (I wonder what Petra's connection to the school fire is.)

In the old time-line we learn that an innocent school girl was charged and was killed in prison.

Amy's sent a photo of a person. We're not told for a few chapters who the person is (a rather artificial tension-builder). It turns out to be the dead girl. Petra knows that Nick has a personal bank account of successful investments and blackmails the couple for £200k. They pay.

3 months later the family celebrate because Michael has scraped passes. The couple still don't know how their secret got out. It dawns on them that it was strange how the search page for tutors had only listed 2 people - Sue and Petra.

In a chapter from Sue's PoV we learn that she was a prison friend of the falsely accused girl. Nick had started the fire and the girl had been framed because she'd bullied Amy, Nick's then girlfriend. Petra was really English Stacie, another inmate. Sue had learnt (and bought) cyber skills (how?), so she could get into Nick's machine, create fake web sites, etc.

Other reviews

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"How much the heart can hold" (Hodder & Stoughton, 2015)

An anthology of stories 15-30 pages long that "explore the concept of love" - unrequited, obsessive, familial, etc.

• Before it disappears (Rowan Hisayo Buchanan) - Joy (Chinese origins) and Richard are about 30, married for 5 years. He deals with wills. She started cutting when 15. After Richard's brief infidelity her eating disorder returned, trying to starve herself. Now she can hardly walk. Doctors have given up. He takes her for a holiday in a Scottish cottage. He feeds her honey. In the night she sees a unicorn and goes outside, naked. Richard saves her. She starts eating more, so next time she'll be strong enough to leave. When Richard goes shopping she goes down the road, falls down. A unicorn nuzzles her. She gets on it and heads off.
• One more thing coming undone (D.W. Wilson) - When he returns home late (bad weather nearby the Rockies, an accident), Duncan (1st person; he's 41) is visited by Animal Brooks after 20 years. Audrey and their child are asleep upstairs. Animal asks if he loves Vic Crane. Duncan starts the 5 hour drive to her. Animal catches him up. She's living in Animal's old house, where Duncan lived for a while. "They say your first love is the most intense and the most lasting, but maybe it just takes the most from you, leaves the biggest hole," he thinks. They exchange news of their lives. Vic has a Ph.D. Are they still in love? They give each other a chance to make the first move. They both know Animal died a while ago. He drives home. "You end up loving people for their habits, for the things they do without knowing." He and Vic petered out, that's all.
• White wine (Nikesh Shukla) - The first person narrator (Asian male; an unsuccessful artist; aware of racism) has a younger sister Rupa (successful accountant, unaware of racism). Their wise mother is dead. Rupa's boss is being unfair to her. She learns about white wine because he likes it. Later he helps her move. She's left her job because her company didn't sack her racist boss. (not as good as the 2 previous stories)
• Magdala, who slips sometimes (Donal Ryan) - Maggy (her 1st person PoV; she's nearly 40) and Robert were lovers at school until Robert's parents made him pick posher girls. He married Ursula Fox and has 2 kids. She's filled her spare room with a 1/72 scale diorama of their lives together. His brother had killed himself. Her mother died, then her father. She slips sometimes, sleeing with hopeless men hoping to become pregnant, imagining Rob with her.
• Codas (Carys Bray) - Big Kev (60+) calls Louise (the 3rd person PoV; piano teacher) because her father (Phil, 69) fell while coaching a football team. Max, her son, plays too - but he also does ballet. She takes her father to hospital - a stroke. He has an op. She's been separated from (but still friends with) David for 2 years. Her mother lives abroad. He only wants Louise to visit him in hospital. Max doesn't want anybody to know about the ballet. Max insists in visiting. He shows his grandad a video of him doing ballet. (I like it)
• The love story (Grace McCleen) - She lives with her parents in a terrace house. Her mother's a happy housewife. Her more distant father is a well-off builder. She's top at school. At 8 she makes scenes in her room and plays out love stories. She's impressed by the concept of a story she reads where a boy searches for the girl he loves only to discover that he was a girl at birth, transformed into a boy by a witch. To become that girl, the boy must die. On holiday she sees many couples in love. She watches her parents, who are more loving. She's unsure about what sex is. She is overwhelmed in the pool by an intense moment of joy. Nothing will be the same again. (No)
• The human world (Bernadine Evaristo) - God (1st person PoV) tells us that some believers give him/her a bad reputation. S/he lives in orbit, watching a hundred screens. S/he can't do miracles - s/he can make people think. S/he's outwitted by the Deep Web. (Easily the worst piece in the book.)

"Afraid of the light" by Douglas Kennedy

An audio book. The title comes from Plato - it's fair enough if the young are afraid of the dark, but it's sad if adults are afraid of the light.

The 1st person PoV, Brendan, is a 56 year-old uber driver in L.A., who has a degree in electronics and had worked in sales for decades before being laid off. He's always cowed to authority figures. He's married a Polish Catholic, Agnieska. One miscarriage, one cot death and a 24 year-old daughter, Klara, who's rebellious. His wife has become ever more fundamentalist, especially re abortion. They live together but haven't slept together for years. He's not a risk taker. He's never met the love of his life.

We learn what it's like being an uber driver - the tactics, the money, the rules. He delivers an old lady, Elise, to a building, then sees someone bomb it. He drives Elise away. He learns that she's an ex-French prof who's now a Dula, and the place was an abortion clinic. She says that those who offer to light the way often lead you to darkness. She takes him into her confidence, telling him about her abortion and her late husband - "whenever the loneliness hurts, I tell myself I was lucky". Her daughter (who she doesn't often see) is planning to marry an old, very rich man. She pops out to her lawyer (presumably to change her will).

His daughter tells him that Patrick Kallayer has just given the wife-battering charity she works for $2m. He also finances "Angels Assist", an anti-abortion group which Agnieska, her friend Teresa, and his old priest friend Todor work with. It was Todor who's convinced Brendan not to divorce. Kallayer's rich enough to manipulate the police.

After another (this time televised) incident at a clinic, Agnieska locks him out. He stays with Elise. Klara contacts him to say she's in a safe house with Amber. She's been held for 3 years by Kallayer. She's 17 and she's 5+ months pregnant. She wants an abortion. Todor wants to talk to Brendan. Todor goes on TV to say he's against violence.

Brendan and Elise go to the safe house. Amber has taken Klara's gun. Elise negotiates. Because Amber is too young, Elise thinks she should have the baby.

Brendan's called by his wife's sister to be told that his wife's had a heart-attack and is about to die. Brendan and Klara rush back. It's a trap (it's surprising that they weren't suspicious). A thug, Todor and Teresa drive with Klara and Brendan back to the safe house. Todor thinks that Kallayer saved Amber, who was made pregnant by a bodyguard. Todor is Kallayer's confessor. When they arrive, there's a gunfight. Protecting Amber, Elise is killed. Teresa is killed. Todor kills the thug and tells Brendan to shoot him, making it look like the thug killed him. Klara and Brenden escape, calling an ambulance for wounded Amber. They take with them a bag full of cash.

Amber survives. The baby is dead. On CNN they see Todor, who they thought was dead. He reveals his version of what happened (would the police have allowed that?). He says the thug was the father of the baby. Todor leaves Brendan and Klara out of the story. Klara leaves for Amsterdam.

Elise left Brendan a flat and money. The solicitor arranges money for Klara too, and a divorce. Brendan returns the cash to Todor and goes to Arizona for a year or so, back to nature. Todor, who'd been well paid by Kallayer, is shot.

I never got bored. The debate about abortion wasn't too prolonged. I was curious about how Brendan's battle with his principles would end.

Other reviews

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• writing.ie

"The book of Prague" by Ivana Myskova and Jan Zikmund (eds) (Comma Press, 2023)

In the introduction it's pointed out that Prague suffered little WWII damage because because the country surrendered to Germany (the Western allies wouldn't support Czechoslovakia if it fought), and that the Velvet Revolution in 1989 brought its share of problems. It's useful to know this history because the stories aren't all contemporary - one of the authors died in 1977.

• Everyone has their reasons (Simona Bohata) - old Kostya (a repeated pickpocket) is released early on parole from prison. The prison boss thinks he doesn't know he's dying from cancer, but he does. He gets the train to Prague to stay with his friend, Standa, who'd been imprisoned for being a capitalist in the olden days but is doing well now. Kostya explores. There are so many tourists, but passports/credit-cards aren't worth nicking nowadays. His old neighbourhood is almost unrecognisable in parts. He visits his card-playing neighbour from 50 years before. Kostya learns he has a son, Jiri, also in jail, and that the mother had recently died. He feels guilty. He realises he and his son had been in the same jail. He gets himself arrested so he can find Jiri and help him by telling him about helpful Standa. Liked the plot and the period detail.
• A memory (Jan Zabrana) - In 1952 a sacked University worker (ex theology student) is struggling to find work. After 2 weeks in an abattoir he's sacked. He walks almost penniless in the rain. The river tempts him, but he goes to the public baths instead, which revives his spirits. Interesting details, but not much of a story.
• Blue (Marie Stryova) - Her ex-boyfriend Rom knocks, asking for a walk. They go by the river, where they used to go. "In the air over the water there hung a bright, melancholy blue, the kind that evokes sadness or discontent, that whips up loneliness, and that kindles unbelievable dreams and desires". She's studying for exams. They've split up 3 times. She feels guilty because he's so sad. She kisses him, she walks apart from him. She sees a couple making love in the grass. If she and Rom made love it would be private and universal. Even at the end, half way across the bridge, she's unsure. I'm not convinced - the sky, river, lovers and bridge are too obvious symbols
• The Captain's Christmas Eve (Petr Borkovec) - The narrator as military service helped in an old people's home. Nobody was coming to collect "The Captain" for Xmas so on Xmas eve the narrator took him to his family. The house that the captain had the address for was boarded up. They tried some other houses and found one where a young woman knew him and welcomed him in. I don't get it
• A summer night (Michal Ajvas) - Walking by Prague cathedral, the narrator's attacked by an 8 ft high clam that continues laboriously to follow him even after he gets on a tram. He hears a voice offering him companionship and pearls. He escapes. A few days later he sees the clam on the motorway heading out of town. He worries if a squid will come for him next.
• The Liben (Bohumil Hrabal) - In the 1950s the narrator moved to Liben (outskirts of Prague). S/he fell in love with the streets, pub and people of the neighhood, and got married there. Going back years later somebody is still typing in their room. The area's overgrown. No.
• All's well in the end (Irena Douskova) - Zeb's father died 12 years ago. 6 months ago his mother died. She converted to Jewish when 66 (when her father died) though the only known Jew in her family tree was her father's father. She knows about the rules of Orthodoxy etc. She wanted her ashes buried in the cemetery under Zizkov tower (the 2nd oldest cemetery in Prague), illegally, at Easter. He tries to do this, drinking first for courage, but the fence is high, people are around, and he falls asleep drunk. At home he dreams of snakes, which his wife associates with sex and infidelity. He goes to a little 1890s overgrown cemetery out of town. After he buries the bones he realises a 15 year old oriental girl's been watching. He explains what he's done. She says she'll put flowers on the grave - she's christian.
• Realities (Marek Sindelka) - The narrator gets out of a taxi with Anna and crosses a bridge once famous for suicides. They stroll through the night past ads and screens - "Our century's love life is perhaps an even bleaker activity than tourism ... We could go over to my place right now, struggle into those ready-made costumes of male and female desire ... the rock'n'roll of the body has long since faded out, the lead singers have been shot and there are too many revival bands to count ... None of these stories offer an insight into the past - they offer an insight into Google ... We've coated it with another layer of reality which entertains us and makes us money. Now we just have to unlearn how to eat and breath .... We are alone, Anna, [] we've sent coded Mozart and a scanned Mona Lisa by radio waves and [] we expect to find someone as lonely as us somewhere in the clusters of galaxies. This intergalactic mating call ... we sing Mozart the way children sing to banish their fear of the dark. We show the Mona Lisa to the Milky Way the way we would show it to mummy". They end up at an all-day party then at night pile into a taxi with booze, tv, and new friends. (the book's longest, with the least about Prague.)
• Zizkovite (Patrik Banga) - The narrator, neither Roma or gadjo, enjoyed the community spirit of the area. He learnt music from the Romas, and computing from the gadjos. After 1990, shinheads and other Roma districts attacked the Zizkov Romas. The area become gentrified. The narrator found his way out, became a web designer and had a children. He lost contact with his childhood friends. Revisiting the area, he notices that so much has changed.(Sounds like autobiography)
• Waiting for Patrik (Veronika Bendova) - The narrator Veronika, 19, works in an antique shops. She's fed up with tourists and the heat. Her boyfriend Patrik left for England the day before. An ex asks her out for the evening. She walks home with her dog, happy. At the end she jumps forward 30 years - the shop closes, her ex suicides, she marries Patrik and has 5 kids, there'll be covid, but Prague will remain beautiful.

"Deception" by Lesley Pearse

An audio book.

In 2015 Alice (divorced) meets a man, Angus, at her mother's funeral who says he's her (and her sister's) biological father, and that her mother changed her name. She wasn't always an easy person to be with, but Alice is shocked. She assumed Ralph was her father.

We go back to 1950. Janet, 10, is the result of an affair her drink-loving mother had. She's poor, clever, and wants to be an actress.

We return to the main timeline where Alice is discovering her mother's past. This is interrupted by further scenes from her mother's life - a victim of parental violence; care homes, etc.

She doesn't share the news with Emily her sister or Ralph, her adoptive father. How much does he know? Why hadn't he now revealed to his daughters what the truth was? A friend (retired policeman) does some checking online for her, discovering that Angus was indeed a bigamist and had gone to jail, and that her mother had changed her name several times. She had been an actress. Alice doesn't seem destabilised by this. She'd wondered why she hadn't been told about her mother's past, but had never been especially curious. She tracks down a woman who was in the same play as her mother, and chats to her. She finds out that her mother ran a brothel, etc. The facts (or at least the reasons for the lies) gradually emerge. The only good favour her mother did for someone backfires, Ralph knew little of his wife's previous life. While following up leads, Alice meets a man she likes enough to marry. Meanwhile, her sister's growing bored of her husband.

We're sometimes told an episode twice, from different PoVs, but the viewpoints aren't different enough. Alice never wrongly deduces. The ages of the characters are chosen to make the plot work, but make some of the characters unlikely. And could Angus really (financially) keep one of his marriages secret?

Other reviews

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