Review by Jonathan Wilkins of "Lie of the Land" by Kerry Hadley-Pryce

The Black Country. Dark, foreboding  gloom-ridden. Lie of the Land is exactly the same: dark, foreboding with an aura of gloom and added tension as our main protagonist, Jemma, is faced with ever-increasing anxiety as she makes major life changes that have unforeseen consequences for herself and those around her. She had what seemed the perfect life but after what she thought would be a one night stand she is sucked into a relationship which has tragic consequences and tilts her balanced lifestyle. 

After an incredibly short relationship and against all her own misgivings, Jemma moves with Rory into a dilapidated house with ‘prospects’ so she is told, and endures a shocking nightmare event which the end of the novel contends with. The event is so unbelievable that it tilts her world from its axis as she faces life-changing dramas as she is pulled from normality into a world and life not of her choosing. There are so many strands to this novel. Does Jemma fall for Catherine her neighbour? What will happen to Rory as he is seduced into the orbit of Ed her husband? What happened to Amber, is it all a dream? Will Kaitlin prove to be a friend and to whom, Jemma or Rory? Just what happened to the missing child? Who or what is the lie of the land? Will Rory’s former fiancée Sophie ever recover? Exactly why did Jemma visit her in hospital? She doesn’t seem to be one who is clouded by guilt, but the nervous tension of her relationship with Rory and her ambivalent feelings towards him seem to push her into situations that she does not want to be involved in. She is yanked, almost kicking and screaming, into a world that is everything she doesn’t want and cannot escape. Is this the lie of the land, the bleak and threatening Black Country fugue?

All these questions remain unanswered. We are kept thinking, we are involved in the story and need to make a commitment to it. Throughout the tension that builds up is tangible. We feel every emotion alongside Jemma and care about her which is no small thing as she started off as quite an unattractive character. Hadley-Pryce writes and describes her world with consummate ease as she draws us into a nightmarish domain where reality and threat merge and Jemma cannot see what is real and what is illusory. Just what is it that wakes her at night? Who or what is making the sounds that invade her mind? What is the unseen threat to her happiness? Does her guilt shape her world, her truth? This is a fine example of a story with so many layers and themes, that we are compelled to read on - a story of a woman whose mind is teetering on the edge of fracture, a story that leaves us wanting more.

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 about Lie of the Land by Kerry Hadley-Pryce on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Peter Raynard of "Our Fathers" by Michael Brown

 

In a world where on the one hand powerful men are abusing their position through predatory activity towards women, whilst on the other there are surging rates of suicide in men under the age of forty-five, it is important that we write to fill the picture with positive portrayals of men, by subverting the notion of what a "real man" is. Poetry has responded to this more recently, with books by Jack Underwood and Ray Antrobus gaining recognition.

Michael Brown’s Overton Poetry Prize-winning pamphlet Our Fathers is a welcome addition to this trend. Being both a parent (of a daughter) and a son himself, Brown’s poems convey tri-generational relations, relations with other men, and boyhood escapades.

The opening poem "In the Men’s Group" sets a sad scene of "a man whose wife told him he is a waste of space," and "a policeman sleeping on a blow up bed at his parents."

We then move to a short powerful poem "Shift" which is reminiscent of poems by Fred Voss: "The man made of shopfloor swarf put down / The battered gold and green baccy tin // The machinery in his head diminishing // At the sink his wife can sense the shift in him."

His relationship with his father is set in the family car, a place where measures of a relationship unfold. In the poem "In Late Summer, 1983" they are on the M1 taking Brown to live in another town. Looking at his father to "stare across the front passenger seat / at Watford Gap, or some other nondescript place he’d check on the map / to look at the way we’d come, how far."

There is a confidence in the variety of form and sound of each poem, such as in "Aqua Terra," with off rhymes across lines, such as skill, kill, flint, and microlith.

Finally I like the way Brown ends the pamphlet with the poem "Cot Song" about the birth of his daughter (who is now a teenager at least), subverting a linear narrative, showing the fragility of a newborn life, the responsibility of a parent, and the signalling of constant renewal:

          Little limb reaching up

         for some response
         from us, such Gods

         who kept you
         in the cosmos of your cot.

When asked what a poet should do in their writing, Louis MacNeice said "mention things." Brown mentions plenty of things in a short space of sixteen poems. He is rewriting what a man is, and what men can be, in a world where other so-called men catch the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

About the reviewer

Peter Raynard is an independent researcher, poet and editor of Proletarian Poetry. His three books of poetry are: Precarious (Smokestack, 2018), The Combination: a poetic coupling of the Communist Manifesto (Culture Matters,2018), Manland (Nine Arches Press, 2022). A debut pamphlet (a heroic crown of sonnets), The Harlot and the Rake: poems after William Hogarth, was published by Culture Matters in September 2024.

Review by Neil Fulwood of "Beethoven: The String Quartets" by David Vernon

Erudite without being pretentious, learned without being dustily academic, philosophical without being obfuscatory, David Vernon’s wonderful book, Beethoven: The String Quartets, whirls the reader through Beethoven’s sixteen string quartets, locating them in every possible context - social, political, religious, historical, contemporary - as well as rigorously exploring their relationship to the rest of Beethoven’s oeuvre. Vernon comes across as a polymath, an intellectual and a man of culture. That he also demonstrates wit, warmth and humanity is the icing on the cake. Beethoven: the String Quartets is the kind of book that sets the gold standard for non-fiction.

About the reviewer
Neil Fulwood lives and works in Nottingham. He has published four full poetry collections with Shoestring Press, No Avoiding It, Can’t Take Me Anywhere, Service Cancelled and The Point of the Stick; and a volume of political satires, Mad Parade, with Smokestack Books.

Review by Lee Wright of "Two Sisters" by Blake Morrison

Blake Morrison’s younger sister, Gill, passed away at 67 from complications related to alcoholism. His latest memoir, Two Sisters, recounts Gill’s heartbreaking decline into severe alcohol addiction, worsened by the additional burden of losing her eyesight. Though Morrison cannot directly live through Gill’s specific challenges, he empathises with the physical, and psychological toll of such a loss. 

Morrison’s half-sister, Josie – the result of their father’s affair with a family friend – is the second sister featured in the memoir. Her paternity was confirmed through a DNA test just eight months before she tragically took her own life. 

Another interpretation of the title is that it reflects two versions of Gill: one sober, the other intoxicated. As a young girl, Gill was bullied at boarding school, and ultimately died alone, curled up on a strip of carpet between a bed and a radiator. Two Sisters is more experimental than Morrison’s earlier memoirs, blending excerpts from his diary with chapters that explore real-life brother-sister relationships, such as those between Charles and Mary Lamb and Dorothy and William Wordsworth. This elevates Two Sisters from a straightforward memoir into a broader, more reflective examination of familial dynamics and the complexities of sibling relationships. By weaving in these external examples, Morrison invites readers to compare his own experiences with those of historical and literary figures, prompting questions about the ties that bind. Many argue that those who are stronger have a responsibility to help the weaker. On the other hand, there are opposing views that emphasise individual responsibility, suggesting that it may not be the duty of the strong to help the weak if it infringes upon personal freedom. Morrison maintains that ‘It’s what happens with addicts. They kill your compassion. For a time Gill’s drinking killed mine.’ 

Whether it should be a brother’s responsibility to look out for his sister depends on individual values, and the specifics of the relationship between siblings. Do siblings have a moral obligation to support and care for each other? In the end, each familial relationship is unique. ‘Sisters do go missing,’ writes Morrison. ‘They go missing in horrible ways, abducted, murdered, forcibly married, disappeared for causing trouble to the powers that be. And sometimes they go missing by choice, to escape their families or – as we’ll discover later in this story – because they’ve fallen out of love with life.’ Morrison’s decision to write about his sisters is driven by a desire to make sense of their lives and to reconcile with the past. Two Sisters is infused with a profound sense of sadness as Morrison also processes his own emotions and commemorates his lost siblings as if their spirits were peering over his shoulder, watching him type and reading his words. After finishing the memoir, the final few lines of enslaved poet, Phillis Wheatley Peters’ 1773 poem, 'To a Gentleman and Lady on the Death of the Lady's Brother and Sister, and a Child of the Name Avis, Aged One Year,' came to mind: 

          Methinks I hear her in the realms above,

          And leaning forward with a filial love,
          Invite you there to share immortal bliss
          Unknown, untasted in a state like this.
          With tow'ring hopes, and growing grace arise,
          And seek beatitude beyond the skies.

About the reviewer
Lee Wright has an MA in Creative Writing and is currently working towards a PhD researching memoir and film. His fiction and poetry have been published with Fairlight Books, époque press and Burning House Press.

Review by Julie Gardner of "The Box" by Susan Jordan

This novel tackles difficult themes but Susan Jordan’s experience as a psychotherapist means that she writes with authority and compassion. The two main characters are Richard, overwhelmed with grief after the sudden death of his wife, Kate, and Kate’s twin Jo whose already fragile mental health is at breaking point as she tries to deal, not only with the loss of her beloved sister, but also with emerging memories of traumatic events from their childhood. 

The novel is written in the third person but each chapter focusses on one of the key characters, mostly Richard and Jo, although three chapters are given up to Marian, the mother of the twins and one to Fran, Richard’s sister. This shifting perspective works well and the unfolding narrative provides insights into how different people deal with grief and trauma as well as suggesting ways in which well-meaning relatives, friends and even professionals can sometimes get it wrong. 

The box of the title contains Kate’s ashes and a thread running through the novel is the need Richard and Jo both feel to find the right place to scatter them. This provides a satisfying framework within which the story is told. Jordan avoids sentimentality and while the ending provides a satisfying conclusion to the narrative, it avoids being too neat.

About the reviewer
Julie Gardner is studying towards a PhD at Nottingham Trent University, focussing on Silence and Voice in the poetry of Vicki Feaver and her contemporaries. He poetry pamphlet Remembering was published by Five Leaves Publishers in 2024.

You can read a review of Remembering on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Review by Peter Raynard of "Orbital" by Samantha Harvey

Set completely on a space ship, the Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey (her fifth) melds the claustrophobic (as opposed to clashes) with the constant expanse of Earth, as the ship zips around in sixteen orbits. The descriptions of our planet are beautifully done, and you get an understanding of the different terrains, whilst accepting their common home. Inside, the inside lives of the astronauts and cosmonauts (British, Russian, American) are traced against this backdrop. The research that must have been put into the writing is exhausting – but never did the research distract from it being a novel. 

There is the constant paradox of a vessel moving at enormous speed whilst they are cocooned static within it: "They retreat inside their headphones and press weights and cycle nowhere at twenty-three times the speed of sound on a bike that has no seat or handlebars, just a set of pedals attached to a rig, and run eight miles inside a slick metal module with a close up view of a turning planet." 

I would have liked a bit more narrative to the personal story about each naut, but realise this is only a minor frustration, given their static station. But the poetic nature of the earth is brought out in Harvey’s poetic descriptions: "The way the planet seems to breathe, an animal unto itself …. It’s the black hole of the Pacific becoming a field of gold or French Polynesia dotted below, the islands like cell samples, the atolls opal lozenges."

I was surprised to see the book only getting 3.3 out of 5 on Goodreads/Amazon; however. I would agree with some of the criticisms regarding the limits of the inner life of each character but disagree with those who felt it repetitive – it was of course repetitive. They keep on going round the planet, but it is never the same view and that is the point. Our planet keeps coming up with surprises. This will be a novel I will go back to, as there is much to consume in such a small space, one spinning in parallel to the earth’s kaleidoscopic vastness.

About the reviewer
Peter Raynard is an independent researcher, poet and editor of Proletarian Poetry. His three books of poetry are: Precarious (Smokestack, 2018), The Combination: a poetic coupling of the Communist Manifesto (Culture Matters,2018), Manland (Nine Arches Press, 2022). A debut pamphlet (a heroic crown of sonnets), The Harlot and the Rake: poems after William Hogarth, was published by Culture Matters in September 2024.

Review by Jonathan Wilkins of "The Therapist's Daughter" by Megan Taylor

My usual thriller and mystery oeuvre is Nordic noir; apart from that I do love a Golden Age mystery thriller  I usually ignore British crime thrillers as I find them lazy, prosaic and trope-ridden. The alcoholic / womanising / heartbroken / secretive detective on a moral crusade is, for me, boring and a concept that it seems writers cannot avoid, so when I started reading The Therapist's Daughter I have to be honest it was with low expectations.

But the book defied my expectations. The Therapist's Daughter is an intricately woven, incredibly deceptive work that commands the reader’s attention.

My usual reading base is the cosy Royal Oak in Kirby Muxloe and on three visits I was chilled to the bone by the plot of The Therapist's Daughter. It is psychologically challenging as befits a tale about a psychotherapist's daughter. What an irony that the lead character, Caitlin, seems to be the most damaged of all the protagonists.

We are led down so many paths that at times it is hard to imagine where they lead, and that is the whole point, as through the multiple points of view and recollections of past and present, we are taken on a twisted journey to the final truth. Or is it? Even when we accept that we know the answers to the cleverly labyrinthine plot we are thrown off guard and off-kilter as a new avenue opens up.

There may have been a murder and a convicted murderer, but who is the true villain? Do we meet them at the end? Is a life-long love fulfilled or is it to be scattered into the air along with the protagonist's hopes and dreams? The misdirection is constantly bewildering, though never takes the reader away from the central plot lines. We have to discover our own truth as well as the characters'.

And there are so many characters, all so different, so roundly described and so easily shaped into the narrative. All are believable, most are easy to like, all have their challenges and faults, all make up the whole.

This truly is a "must read" book, well-written and easy to read. Challenging and welcoming, it interrogates the past and the present and as we career to the denouement, even in front of the Royal Oak's fire, we shiver and ask again. "Who was the killer?"

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 about The Therapist's Daughter by Megan Taylor on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Tracey Foster of "The Path of Peace: Walking the Western Front Way" by Anthony Seldon

Establishing a path for future generations to tread in the footsteps of silent witnesses was the goal of Douglas Gillespie, a young officer serving at the front in 1915. Seldon, an author of historical books, had spent a long time researching the First World War and was particularly intrigued by a letter Gillespie wrote to his headmaster, expressing a desire that in the future, everyone should walk in the footsteps of soldiers of both sides of the war: a path of peace, a path of remembrance, a walk to honour those who fought for our future. Gillespie’s vision for Via Sacra gained some support in 1916 when his posthumous letters were published by his parents in the book Letters from Flanders. This was quickly dismissed after the turmoil unleashed on the countryside in the battles of the Somme and Passchendaele rendered it almost impossible.

Back in 2021, Seldon found himself at Kilometer Zero, during a pandemic, attempting to walk the whole Path of Peace. Recording the journey on his phone, he attempted to do two things, undertaking two walks in parallel: "One, through Covid-affected villages in the present moment, with flies and sweat, while trying to puzzle out the route; and two, walking a hundred years ago along the old front line, missing the flies and sweat, the fear and noise."

This is a walk that is unmarked, built on and bordered, a path that is hard to define, often blocked and private. Undeterred, Seldon battles along stretches of B roads, lined with ossified tree stumps and relics of war. He recalls entries from First World War diaries: "Here nature is disfigured by war. There is not a tree trunk which does not bear the trace of shot or shell; the bark of the pines bears gashes, other trees are amputated halfway up or cut close to the ground."

Seldon reflects, whilst walking, what the original aim of a path of peace was. Gillespie wanted hikers from both sides to walk this route to comprehend where war can lead. Seldon decides to ruminate on those he has offended throughout his literary career and concludes "it’s painful. But walks, like prayerful silence, can change us within."

Utilizing war poetry and archive diaries, the walk is undertaken with reference to strategic advances and losses and the personal correspondence of those that endured it. Kipling was one of those whose story parallels the sad fate of many British families awaiting good news back home. After pushing his seventeen-year-old son into war, he was later devastated by his senseless death in battle. John Kipling, inexperienced and naive, was an officer in the Battle of Loos, recklessly leading his men into a charge with a head wound. His death led Kipling to write: "I have many times asked myself whether there can be any more potent advocates of peace upon earth than this massed multitude of witnesses to the desolation of war."

The war cemeteries that line this walk bear witness to the numbers of silent witnesses who leave behind only a name, and for many more not even that.

Seldon finishes his work at the coast of Ostend still under Covid restrictions and worries that he may not be allowed back into Blighty. He returns in 2022 to cut the ribbon on his newly marked path where the word has spread about Gillespie’s Via Sacra, France and Belgium committing to maintain the route and add way markers: "A walk to enhance and deepen life, not to dwell on loss. A 1,000 Kilometer path along the whole Western Front, with people of all nationalities walking side by side, learning from the silent witnesses where war leads, feels like a drop in the ocean. But it is a drop which is becoming a stream, a stream which will become a mighty river, a roaring sea."

About the reviewer

Tracey Foster started off in a long career as an Art and Design teacher but wanted to refocus her creative energies into writing poetry and prose. After helping others find inspiration in the world around us, she took an MA course in Creative Writing at Leicester University and has not looked back. She finds inspiration in the past and the events that shape us. Previous work has been published by Comma Press, Ayaskala, Alternateroute, Fish Barrel Review, Haiku Foundation, Mausoleum Press, Bus Poetry Magazine, Wayward Literature, The Arts Council and she writes on her own blog site, The Small Sublime, found here.

Review by Tracey Foster of "Fewer, Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects" by Glenn Adamson

Reading this book reminded me of the adage: "Poets, we get it. Some things remind us of other things." 

All very amusing, but it doesn't explain why we have such an obsession with the objects we keep about us. While I write this, most of the human race is presently hunched over, worshiping at the altar of the flat screen, including myself.

Adamson investigates our need to accumulate and collect things and vocalize our appreciation of the world around us. He highlights the classification method used by Susan Stewart in her book, On Longing, in four categories: "The gigantic, the miniature, the collection and the souvenir." We name and claim large objects to bring them into our reach: mountains, oceans, planets and galaxies. We dissect and scrutinize our world down to the smallest cell or microbe. Then there is our need to catalogue and collect every variant until there are no gaps, and our desire to hold items once connected to our loved ones or historical figures. All these aspects make us human.

Our language is haptic-infused. Manual, manufacture, manoeuvre, we feel our way through life and have an impulse to touch objects to inherently understand them. The sixteenth-century art historian Giorgio Vasari said, "It is necessary to have the compass in the eyes and not the hand, because the hand works and the eye judges." Touch was previously thought the lesser of the senses, linked intrinsically to manual work and the lower classes. Helen Keller redefined how intrinsic our hands are to being fully cognizant of the world around us. Her book was the first to delve deeply into the importance of our fifth sense to fully see. 

Adamson spent time at the V&A museum and was director of the Arts & Design Museum in New York whilst writing this book. He is an advocate of moderation, reducing our world of stuff to just the essential or aesthetic. He explores William Morris' mantra: "Have nothing in your house that you know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." 

This book fully explores our relationship with objects, whilst maintaining a plea for living a life less cluttered. This seems a valid call following on from the excess of Christmas, the frenzy of exchanging goods and the aftermath of stuffing our homes with even more items we don’t really need. Museums are often guilty of acquiring masses of objects that spend their whole life in storage. Adamson spends one chapter exploring our multifaceted response to antiquities in museums, including paintings: "Any painting is an embodied moment of truth."

We bring our experiences and expectations when we visit museums. This can skew our reactions and temper our responses. Galleries lay out a default blank slate; cabinets are clear and clutter-free to allow us personal interaction with each object. Visitors experience a unique reaction, dependent upon race, gender, age and class, transforming everyday items into "cultural icons."

This book pleads for restraint when amassing items around us, a quick calculation of the carbon footprint we contribute to and collate in our world of stuff. Adamson is a believer of mend and reuse or, like the Japanese art of Kintsugi, the need to learn to live with the broken, as a memento of our time here on earth. The book is a call for a resurgence of material intelligence: as our stuff gets more technical, we become more removed from its creation: "Skin should be understood a site of intelligence." We should be more discerning with it. 

About the reviewer

Tracey Foster started off in a long career as an Art and Design teacher but wanted to refocus her creative energies into writing poetry and prose. After helping others find inspiration in the world around us, she took an MA course in Creative Writing at Leicester University and has not looked back. She finds inspiration in the past and the events that shape us. Previous work has been published by Comma Press, Ayaskala, Alternateroute, Fish Barrel Review, Haiku Foundation, Mausoleum Press, Bus Poetry Magazine, Wayward Literature, The Arts Council and she writes on her own blog site, The Small Sublime, found here.