Review by Jonathan Wilkins of "The Dancer from the Dance" by Janet Burroway

I found this an extraordinary book, one that seems to ignore time and could be set in any period but in only one place, Paris. The city is all important, as much so as the main characters. The descriptions of the Parisian world spill out onto the page, the apartment, the park, the house, museum, art gallery. The colours, muted or bright are described in all their glory. Paris is there before us, ready to be enjoyed, to be engaged with and to entreat.

This is first and foremost a love story. For the reader they have to decide whose story. Is it the city's or is it the main character's, the mystical Prytania?

She has descended upon the narrator, Stanford Powers a UNICEF official, via his son-in-law and he introduces her to his work and his family, and he gradually becomes entranced by her qualities, but does he fall in love with her? That to me remains a mystery and another reading of the book may supply an answer.

We do know that an acquaintance, Kenneth, falls in love with her, but then the bewitching mime artist Bernstein, though married, takes her as his lover. She gives in completely to his charms and causes considerable damage through doing this. Anger and resentment and even death follow her like a cloud, but she seems oblivious to this and the feelings of all around her, especially Bernstein’s wife Elena, and a reclusive artist, Riebenstahl. She breaks hearts, ruins lives and does so without a care in the world. This life she leads impinges on all of Powers’ friends and relationships, his work, his wife and his family, all against the picturesque backdrop of Paris. 

Though first published in 1965, the novel has aged well and is contemporary in so many ways as it shows how easily relationships can be built but also destroyed. The intricate networks are described with intimate detail and are joy to read, though also heart wrenching at times. How can one live a life without care and yet damage so much? The reader has to decide, is this behaviour acceptable or tolerable? Do we forgive because of Prytania’s seeming naivete? Who exactly is this young woman and what is Powers' role in this maze of emotions?

A wonderful read is before you. Do take a chance on this beautifully engrossing tale of love in Paris.

About the reviewer
Jonathan Wilkins is 69. He is married to the gorgeous Annie with two wonderful sons. He was a teacher for twenty years, a Waterstones’ bookseller and coached women’s basketball for over thirty years before taking up writing seriously. Nowadays he takes notes for students with Special Needs at Leicester and Warwick Universities. He has had a work commissioned by the UK Arts Council and several pieces published traditionally as well as on-line. He has had poems in magazines and anthologies, art galleries, studios, museums and at Huddersfield Railway Station. He loves writing poetry. For his MA, he wrote a crime novel, Utrecht Snow. He followed it up with Utrecht Rain, and is now writing a third part. He is currently writing a crime series, Poppy Knows Best, set at the end of the Great War and into the early 1920s.

You can read more abut The Dancer from the Dance by Janet Burroway on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Pam Thompson of "Pattern-book" by Éireann Lorsung

 

I first came across across  Éireann Lorsung in Nottingham when she was doing her PhD and was a generous host of poetry events. Since then, I have been enthralled by poems which have sprung up online, via her blog, her multiple passions, and just recently, her postal zine / newsletter. Gentleness, persistence and exuberance are just three of her qualities and all show up here.

Andrew Latimer’s cover design, for this substantial collection from Carcanet, repeats the name of the title in a subtle gradation of colours and which encapsulate its concept. In an interview with Jon McGregor at her online launch, Lorsung says that the colours in the repeated words on the cover are significant for the poems. 

She is avid – about poetry, other artists of all sorts, her people, her places (the English Midlands, the American mid-west, the low country of Flanders) the multiple possibilities of subject and form. Jon McGregor writes a long list of some of Lorsung’s subjects on the back of the book. These are a few of the things that stood out for me: bicycles, rivers, roses, rain, nectarines, ochre, language, parents, students, memory, elegy, frost, gardens, Magritte, poetry, chamomile, learning, brothers, blue, painting, pottery, yellow, tractors, sewing, autumn, fields, fieldfares, art, postcards, gold, sonnets, songs, friends. 

The book is dedicated to Shana, a friend from childhood and threaded through are poems reflecting their growing-up, what is lost and what remains: "When you get this note, it will be // the future … // Friendship is a kind of time-machine, it turns out" ("Postcard to Shana with Photo of Washington Avenue Bridge (Minneapolis)"). 

I particularly loved the affectionate "Postcard to Shana with Drawing of Blackbirds," whose precise sensory imagery of weather, nature and seasons is abundant elsewhere:

          Every warm thing of our girlhood calls us here.
          Blackbirds. Poems. The world: its tablecloths

          and rainy mornings, cities, hands, and flowers.

Lorsung makes everything shine. It all matters, and is worthy of being repeated, just as people’s lives, and memories of such, are enhanced by what has been known many times. 

There is generous love shown towards the ordinary and extraordinary and in finding poetic forms to hold them. The sonnet is a neat container, as in "Sonnet for the Second-Language Speaker," and "Sonnet with a Quotation from Millay," which remembers a childhood friend and what might have been. "Autumn Song" is a longer tour de force where phrases about places, nature, seasons, the body (and more) are shuffled then repeated in different iterations to breathtaking effect. This sounds like a random exercise but I’m certain it was far from it. 

Equally impressive are the sparer fragments  in "Miniscule Sequence" and "Attunement," the latter, being "after Thomas A. Clark":

           gold arrow                                        
           goldfinch
   

           world of ideas
           world of things

There’s so much more to say but I hope this have given some idea of how these poems convey the sheer joy of being in the world and appreciation of its patterns - as Louis MacNeice has written about the world, "The drunkenness of things being various."

About the reviewer
Pam Thompson is a writer, educator and reviewer based in Leicester.  Her works include include The Japan Quiz (Redbeck Press, 2009), Show Date and Time (Smith|Doorstop, 2006)  and Strange Fashion (Pindrop Press, 2017). Her  prize-winning pamphlet, Sub/urban Legends (Paper Swans Press), was published in the Spring of 2025. 

You can read a review by Gary Day of Sub/urban Legends on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Review by Sally Shaw of "The Two Keisukes" by Brian Howell

The Two Keisukes is written in the third person and printed on cream cotton rag feathered-edged paper. The elongated pages are hand sewn to form a beautiful booklet. This short story is written by Brian Howell, author of several booklets and novels that include Sight Unseen. 

Prior to reading this story I had no knowledge of Howell. The content description provided by the publisher inspired me to read it.

The opening paragraph intrigued me, the words clear and crisp: "He had been here before, no, not here exactly, but then, yes, that building, an old fashioned school building that could have been from almost any period before or after the war."

Howell writes with such precision and beauty. I felt the wonderment he holds for the man, Keisuke Kinoshita, whose identity is given halfway through the story.

The story takes place on an island and yet the reader is made aware of the possibility that it’s being viewed from a distance or on the margins of time. The reader is taken from the shore of the island into a wonderland of past, present and unknown. Keisuke walks through alleyways and corridors, taking in the sights and sounds filled with the forgotten waiting to be rediscovered: "Walking further to the edges of this large park-like area, he saw a very curious group of turquoise sculptures that was both painfully familiar and yet unidentifiable."

Throughout his wanderings of the island, buildings and alleyways I’m drawn to him, I like Keisuke - both of them. I form an insight as to where each Keisuke is, one on the island, the other between the island and somewhere else. Floating in the past, present and unknown, in my mind I have ideas, two to be exact. I won’t say anymore as this would spoil Howell’s story. I will say, that through reading Howell’s words I formed the opinion that Keisuke and the others named were indeed real people (I had no prior knowledge of the Japanese film industry and history), and I sensed the history and connections between them all. I visualised what was possibly happening to the two Keisukes, felt the emotions and the power of recall and realisation of life. The ending touched my heart in a non-sentimental way. 

Around the two Keisukes Howell provides a portrait of the culture and history of Japan and the enchantment of the Japanese film industry. I read this booklet over and over again, each time discovering something new. I have started to research the individuals within Howell’s story, such was the energy of the writing. This is magical storytelling of a country, people and industry I knew nothing about, but now I want to get to know them and read more of Howell’s stories.

About the reviewer
Sally Shaw has an MA Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. She gains inspiration from old photographs, history, childhood memories, and is inspired by writers Sandra Cisneros, Deborah Morgan, Liz Berry and Emily Dickinson. She has short stories and poetry published in various online publications including The Ink Pantry, AnotherNorth, Roi Faineant Press. Sally lives in the countryside. 

Review by Rachael Clyne of “maybe i’ll call gillian anderson” by Rhian Elizabeth

If I find myself reading a collection from cover to cover in one go, it’s a sign of enjoyment. I relate to Rhian’s witty and conversational style and admire her honesty about her shortcomings, which she does with flair. The title poem opens the book with her daughter leaving home: "sometimes i find myself standing / in the empty room, screaming: / alexa, what the fuck am i meant to do now?" The shock lifts the lid on her own Pandora’s box of youthful chaos and disastrous liaisons – a familiar journey to me. The poet does not shrink from sharing her dysfunctions and excesses and finds herself becoming a single mother aged eighteen. Although hard, it provides an anchor for her love. It seems a stable relationship is beyond reach, as in her poem "lobster" in which a lover tries to engage her in a conversation about the soul: "i felt like a lobster drifting / in a restaurant tank / watching you popping / the champagne / while i waited to die." The book carries a tone of unfulfilled longing and wading through broken glass. The poet’s use of "i" as her personal pronoun hints at an incompleteness of self.

Inevitably, a daughter cannot permanently fill the gap, which the poet must learn to fill with herself. Gillian Anderson is a fantasy crush, representing a longing to be made beautiful by love. Fantasy can get us through, but will not heal us. Perhaps finding ways to love and forgive our brokenness is what makes us feel beautiful. I enjoyed Rhian Elizabeth’s first book, girls etc, but this new collection digs deeper. Rhian’s self-exploration in maybe i’ll call gillian anderson is a milestone on that journey and her generosity is a gift to those of us on the same quest. 

About the reviewer
Rachael Clyne is a retired psychotherapist. Her first collection Singing at the Bone Tree (Indigo Dreams) concerns eco-issues. Her latest collection, You’ll Never Anyone Else (Seren Books), explores themes of identity and otherness including, migrant heritage, LGBTQ and relationships.    

You can read more about maybe i'll call gillian anderson by Rhian Elizabeth on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Gary Day of "Sub/urban Legends" by Pam Thompson

Brilliant, disorientating, splendidly polyphonic: these poems provoke, puzzle, baffle and delight the reader. Each one bears re-reading, not least the title poem, ‘Suburban Legend.’ Its zigzags, elisions, and turbo-charged imagery are typical of the volume. Everything is happening at once and at speed. The reader is not sure of their bearings or of what’s happening. Is a cooker being dumped or being used to make a meal? Who are the characters and what is their relation? The man is ‘the scourge of our town’ but there’s clearly more to him than that. The imagery is partly cosmic ‘I identify Venus, lucid tonight’ and partly quotidian ‘just a sponge and soapy water.’ The diction is a heady brew of the earthy, the enigmatic and the arcane. How often do you hear the word ‘brumous,’ meaning foggy or wintery, these days?

‘The Keys’ should be anthologised in any future volume of British twenty-first-century poetry. It is situational, symbolic and finishes with a wonderful shift that makes the poem just soar. ‘My Life as a Bat’ has a mysterious sub-text. Revenge against a former lover? Difficult to say, but it is extremely well wrought and humorous as well as sinister. The image ‘ricocheting in a cave’ conveys both fury and despair. ‘Reading my mother’s diaries’ is one of the most poignant poems in the collection. The last line is just beautiful. 

There is a lot going on in these pages. The search for something beyond the obvious in ‘An afternoon’; the relation of art and life in ‘Fête Galante’; the eerie atmosphere of ‘Explorers, Antarctica,  1901’;  and the soothing blues of ‘the evening garden.’ Throughout there is a sense of broken things that can’t quite be put back together, and the poems invite the reader’s to help join the fragments

About the reviewer

Gary Day is a retired English lecturer. He has had poems published in Vole, Ekstasis, Acumen and The Dawn Treader. His 'Anne Bronte's Grave' was highly commended in last year's Artemesia Poetry Competition.

You can read more about Pam Thompson's Sub/urban Legends on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Amirah Mohiddin of Joanna Nadin’s "Birdy Arbuthnot’s Year of 'Yes'"

Joanna Nadin’s Birdy Arbuthnot’s Year of 'Yes' is an evocation of coming-of-age in the 1960, following Margaret (later known as Birdy) Arbuthnot on her journey to the secret of living with a capital L. It is a novel filled with vividly rendered, eccentric and true-to-life characters.  

Birdy has always rued her fate of living in Surbiton, a suburb in the Southwest of London, far from the excitement of Soho. She knows there must be so much more to life than retaking the Cambridge entrance exams and being an unpaid receptionist to her father’s dental surgery. Determined to make her life more novel-like, Birdy vows to say 'Yes' to every opportunity and chance that comes her way in the new year. So, when given the chance to move to the heart of London, Birdy ventures forth on a new adventure meeting fantastic and fascinating characters each more vibrant than the last. 

Some of my favourite sentences include: '… I’ll never see Charlie again. And oh! I do so want to see her, to be in her orbit. What a girl— no, a woman, she is! A walking, talking exclamation mark! I am not sure what that makes me. Something innocuous, like a comma, perhaps. At best, a semicolon or rogue apostrophe.' 'And I know, too, that I am an exclamation mark. And that this, all of it, is Life with that capital L.'

The pages of Birdy Arbuthnot’s Year of 'Yes' are filled with Birdy’s distinct narrative voice. Nadin captures the voice of a young woman in search of her place in the world in the first few sentences. This voice leaps off the page, almost as if coming to life. Across the novel, we see Birdy going from perceiving herself as 'something innocuous, like a comma' to realising that she, too, is capable of being an exclamation mark. Her journey of striving for independence, growing in confidence and recognising her own worth is beautifully poignant. Birdy’s arc across the novel follows her interactions with the new people she meets: Charlie (later known as Charity), Cal, Rollo, Ted, Val, Aster. Together, they form a found family of sorts, each going through their own transformations thanks to Birdy’s actions as 'Little Miss Fixer.' 

Overall, I really loved the wit, humour and heart packed in the pages of Joanna Nadin’s Birdy Arbuthnot’s Year of 'Yes'. It’s a true masterclass in writing a strong, distinctive narrative voice. 

About the reviewer
Amirah Mohiddin is a published short story writer and an educator of Creative Writing. She has recently passed her practice-based PhD reconstructing female storytellers from Arabic Literature in a young adult fantasy novel. Her short stories have been published in magazines, ebooks and physical books, including Dancing Bear Books, Litro Magazine, Post-mortem Press, The New Luciad and Sanroo Publishing. Her novel, Devoured by Stories, is currently represented by agent Leah Pierre of Ladderbird Agency. 

You can read more about Joanna Nadin's Birdy Arbuthnot's Year of 'Yes' on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Penny Walsh of "Moments of Grace: Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry by Scriptorium Writers and Guests," ed. Fiona Linday

This anthology is nicely written and set out, along with the intermittent photographs and art to accompany the works. It is an ideal book if you have only a few minutes to spare a day and want to read something, for each contribution is short. 

I am sure that those who have faith will find something in it for them and enjoy the messages being put forward. 

About the reviewer
Penny Walsh lives in Lincolnshire and is a debut author with her middle-grade children's story Prince Percival's Pesky P.A.N.T.S! of which she has a second instalment manifesting. Penny is also writing a memoir about her journey and battle with severe Endometriosis and IVF, the prologue of which was published in two anthologies Venus Rising and Good Girl, Bad Period.  She has had articles published on Medium.com, was commissioned to write a poem for a local event, and has had a short story published in the anthologies Family Matters and Making Our World Better (both of which were part of the University of Leicester's Attenborough Arts). 

Review by Harry Whitehead of "Syllables of the Briny World" by Georgina Key

Georgina Key’s Syllables of the Briny World offers a poignant and vivid magical realist evocation of Hurricane Ike’s devastating rout of the Texas coastline in 2008. But the book is about more than simply the catastrophe that claimed nearly two hundred lives. It is a novel about relationships. 

Pete is an alcoholic, washed-up fisherman incapable of straightening out for long enough even to spend time with his children, his divorced wife having given up on him long ago. Izzie is eighteen, struggling to come to terms with her queer identity, an unsympathetic mother making her life miserable as she traverses the complexities of her first relationships. Agnes and Earle are retired, upright pillars of religious and moral fortitude. Clementine and her friend Dorie both lost children and are struggling to emerge from grief alongside fallible, if well-meaning, men. And Clementine can see the dead. After her boy, Finn, drowned, she wandered the shoreline trying to reclaim him from the Sea-Mother, hearing his lost voice in the wind and the waves. Now, just as the storm approaches, she sees a ‘Lost Boy’ on the beach, who leads her to her son. No one, least of all her husband, believes her. The Lost Boys, meanwhile, have their own agenda.

The novel gently charts the resilience of the people who inhabit the thin strips of land along the Gulf of (yes!) Mexico, land destined ultimately to be reclaimed by the sea. An environmental novel, then, certainly. But its green credentials are ever-so-delicately woven through the gripping interplay of the various characters' lives. We witness both tragedy and hope unfold amid the ferocious drama of the real events of Hurricane Ike. Highly recommended.

About the reviewer
Harry Whitehead is a novelist and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Leicester where he directs the annual free literature festival, Literary Leicester. His new environmental thriller, White Road, is out in September from Claret Press.

Review by Rennie Parker of "Saltburn" by Drew Gummerson

Drew Gummerson is evidently a writer from the "more is more" school of creativity, like a speeded-up Dickens with additional body-parts. If the phrase can be made more inclusive, with ideas springing off from ideas like a hi-energy trampoline school, you can bet this author will be on it. For example, he need not say that the University holds its Innovation Fair in the "hired-out" waiting room of the railway terminus, for the simple reason that it must be hired out if it is normally the waiting room, but does it matter? No, because the story rushes on to the next gleaming sentence and the hired-outness serves to illustrate how triple-layered everything is in Saltburn-world. 

Everyone here is on the make. If it moves, you sell it or hire it, because otherwise someone will be selling or hiring you instead. And underneath the relentless bonhomie there's a current of barely suppressed rage at how society has turned out. For example, there's a boardgame comes with "bonus points for disposing of homeless people or setting fire to food banks," although the game itself is based on the 1970s hit "Mousetrap," judging from the description. So it's something nostalgic and sweet, followed by something that kicks you where it hurts; Gummerson knows how to deal both sides of the coin. And he's not bothered whether you find his characters pleasant or not - the somewhat off-colour second son of the glove manufacturer is the sort of person who'd be best avoided on the train, and his eventual paramour Captain Nemo could have done better, methinks.

I loved the evocation of a rundown seaside environment, because we've all been to a version of these places, most likely on a budget childhood holiday. It's the world of McGill postcards garnished with Gillray sentiments, and it's resolutely set in the past, no doubt to encourage our belief in some of the magical-realist events and allegories. If the pricing is judged around the newly decimalised coinage in 1972-73 and all the older ladies look about as appealing as Ena Sharples, it's not so surprising to find a mermaid at work in the penny arcade and to discover that the local nuclear reactor is powered by ex-pit ponies. It's safely in the past, where anything can happen. Sometimes, I feel the author writes things just because he can (for example, his intonation shifts unexpectedly into a hardboiled American phase at one point) and maybe there's an added homage to one of his literary heroes. I'm enjoying the ride, but I would like to see what happens when Gummerson harnesses his writing elan to something where he isn't burning through his subject matter at such speed.

However, don't do what I did and return to the book after a few days away. I've got too many questions. Why is this character collecting underpants? Why is Sven called Sven? Have I missed something? Why does everyone have a Binatone TV? And even though the New Puritan Party attempts to ruin everyone's lives, even if your guesthouse is nightly paraded-past by convicted penitents on their knees, there still might be too many bums and willies for some readers. I suspect I'm not the ideal reader Gummerson was thinking of when he wrote -  or rather, ran gleefully after - this book. The imagination behind this must look like Dinsdale's Joke Shop in the Hepworth Arcade in Hull. I've never read anything like it. And you won't either, which is why you should hie down swiftly to the nearest not-mega-retail-outlet and book an excursion to this most unusual resort. But don't be fooled by the cartoon framing, and be aware that some of the images might be close to the bone.

About the reviewer
Rennie Parker is a poet living in the East Midlands, and she is mostly published by Shoestring Press. Her latest collection Balloons and Stripey Trousers, a nightmare journey into the toxic workplace, came out earlier this year. She works in FE and blogs occasionally here. She is also on Twitter/X and Bluesky.

You can read more about Saltburn by Drew Gummerson on Creative Writing at Leicester here.