Review by Sally Shaw of "A Complete Success" by Colette Paul

 

A Complete Success by Colette Paul is a collection of fourteen stories set in Glasgow, giving the reader a sense of the reality of life. Paul writes about ordinary happenings that appear to go unnoticed but impact individuals' lives. 

The first three stories feature the same girlfriend and boyfriend. For me at first I was a little perplexed, as it felt like a novel. Nonetheless, I found that Paul’s writing style has a lovely easy flow. The ease of reading doesn’t reduce the impact of the writing. In "Mine," the third story, the girlfriend is struggling with becoming a new mother and her boyfriend not wanting her to have the baby at first: "I know it’s not fair to remind him, and I don’t want to keep reminding myself, but sometimes I can’t help it. It’s there, on the edge of my consciousness, like a shoebox on top of a wardrobe." This story made me share the newness of motherhood, the traumatic birth experience, the disorientation of the unknown and the girlfriend’s need for her own mother. 

Once I’d read the first three stories I slowed down, read a story, considered it, then continued. As I strolled through these stories I caught glimpses of myself, present and past, recognised individuals, uncovered an understanding of self, life, humans. Paul enables the reader to delve into themselves, and how life shapes people. "Marrakesh" made me question how grief affects people and consider: is anybody really who they present as? Paul takes the reader on a journey through the different stages of life, how age and experience impact actions. 

Paul is skilled at drawing the reader into a story, building up tension and emotion, taking the reader from laughing out loud to the depths of sadness and everything in between. The opening lines of "Best Friends" lead into a story about the complexities of friendship, and what effects differing upbringings and being away from home have on finding identity, love and a place in society. "I meet Josh on the first day of university, when he sits beside me in the lecture theatre. He admires my hair, which is platted round my head like Heidi, and I admire his jacket. It’s patchy brown suede, a with sheepskin collar, and he tells me he found it in the street." 

"The Tutor" is a story of youth versus age and education. In this story, Paul demonstrates the strong atmosphere and humour of her writing: "the boy loomed up suddenly behind me like a mushroom." "It was a freakishly hot evening, and the tutor’s wife answered the door wearing a white tunic and white trousers, like someone dressing for their first day in a cult." In "Jeffrey," Paul writes powerfully of endings and being on the edge of new beginnings: "Her arms still ached with the ghost of his weight."

A Complete Success is a beautiful book from the design of the cover to the placement of stories. Paul demonstrates the power of the short story, and the skill of writing a story while allowing the reader room to pause, think and find a conclusion for themselves. 

About the reviewer
Sally 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. 

You can read more about A Complete Success by Colette Paul on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Finola McLean of "Turtles All the Way Down" by John Green

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green, at the start, presents itself as a typical teen mystery novel. By the end, it is perhaps anything but. After being motivated by her best friend Daisy, Aza is persuaded to start looking for a local missing billionaire, who happens to be the father of her old childhood friend, Davis Pickett, with whom she later develops a romantic connection. The story slowly evolves into a coming-of-age tale full of developing relationships, friendship struggles and emotional moments.

This book is incredibly well written and incredibly compelling. One of biggest complaints about this book is that "there is no plot"; however I think this actually works really well in the context of the narrative. The story does not have a clear climax or resolution but rather meanders and suddenly spikes and then continues, just like real life. It makes the book feel incredibly true and relatable to our own experiences (despite never hunting down a billionaire myself) and makes the characters feel very vivid and relatable for the intended audience. Worries about homework, upcoming college applications and money, permeating the story also add to this effect. I do enjoy that there is a satisfying conclusion to both the beginning mystery and the relationships that surround the protagonist, despite the atypical format of the rest of the book. I also like the insistence at the end of the book that, despite this chapter being over, there is truly no perfect ending and that life indeed just goes on with both the highs and the lows.

Still, in my opinion, the reason this book works so well is because of its characters and how their relationships evolve over the course of the story. Aza, the point-of-view character, is compelling and interesting, not because of any special characteristic but because of her normalcy and relatability while still being her own character with personality traits and flaws. She has both great  insight and great inexperience. This can especially be seen with her relationship to best friend Daisy which is a highlight of the book for me. The way they argue, without a clear correct view point, and the way they then make up again despite their differences is incredibly heartwarming and thought out extremely well.

One of the biggest talking points talking points about the novel is the depiction of the main character's mental illness, specifically obsessive compulsive disorder. This was probably the part of the novel I enjoyed the most. It is brilliantly executed. Because of the first person point of view, you are put into Aza’s mind and get a real sense of the torment that she faces everyday. And because of that she is incredibly humanised even in moments that would appear nonsensical to an outside observer.

All in all, this is a really great book that I would certainly recommend.

About the reviewer

Finola McLean is a sixth-form student currently studying History, Classical Civilisations and Latin at A-Level. She has a great passion for books and reading especially while sitting next to her cat. 

Review by Miranda Taylor of "Across the Universe: The Magic and Mystery of the Beatles' Creativity" by Steve Taylor

In Across the Universe: The Magic of the Beatles' Creativity, Steve Taylor accepts part of the Beatles' story: four working-class Liverpudlians who represented a nascent democratic collective consciousness - especially at the Beatles' creative zenith. But Taylor also argues that this interpretation flattens the Beatles' creativity as a group into a monolith and, in turn, homogenises their individual forms of creativity. Taylor analyses the band through a more revisionist lens in terms of their creativity and spirituality. The book begins with John and Paul's almost uncanny synchronicity at their first meeting at the St. Peter's Church fete in Woolton; it then follows a broadly chronological account of the band's chemistry, and how that managed to transform the Fab Four into embodiments of the 60s zeitgeist.

Taylor manages to distinguish the Beatles from other cultural staples of the 60s through the assessment of their creativity. Over twelve chapters, Taylor explores the unique circumstances that led to their creative success. He highlights the importance of Carl Jung's synchronicity, and, by following the Beatles chronologically, he is able to turn their narrative into a study of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. 

Through this, he persuasively frames their creative and spiritual development as simultaneously a movement toward self-actualisation and a rise to creative prominence. He describes the Beatles reaching the fifth, and highest level, of self-actualisation, a group dynamic that feels a need to evolve or progress; a group that fundamentally wants to grow intellectually, creatively, and spiritually. Self-actualisers have intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation; their motivation is fulfilled entirely from the self, rather than prestige or popularity. The Beatles' commercial success was, in this reading, a by-product, rather than the ultimate goal. Taylor insists that self-actualisation is the essential difference between the Beatles and most of their contemporaries. One example he highlights is Gerry and the Pacemakers: in 1964, they were about on the same level as the Beatles, yet by 1967 they had remained static, whilst the zeitgeist had shifted dramatically. The Beatles were able to match the zeitgeist, intuitively and with deft precision.

Personally, I thought that Taylor's emphasis on George Harrison stands out as the clearest of his arguments. Much previous research sidelines Harrison despite him being the member most devoted to the work of spirituality. Harrison continued to stick to a life of spirituality even after the Beatles’ split, and their subsequent, as Taylor puts it, "descent ... like a river split into tributaries then [stopping] and not flowing." Taylor resists the "quiet Beatle" caricature and frames him as integral to the band's creative development, highlighting how during the later Beatles period, Harrison seemed to lose interest in the guitar as his primary instrument. During this era, Taylor notes how Harrison moved towards sitars and organs, evident on "Blue Jay Way" and "It's All Too Much." Without the guitar as his primary mode of expression, Harrison's creativity was audible in the group's projects. Taylor cleverly uses this to show that Harrison's creativity is not a side story to the Lennon-McCartney narrative. Rather, it exists as one that proves to be a distinct route to the group's apex of self-actualisation.

Across the Universe serves less as a conventional biography of the Beatles than a psychological and spiritual revisionist study of the Beatles' creativity. Taylor makes the band's ostensible "magic" and "mystery" less monolithic yet simultaneously more human through his chronological retelling of the band's story. He is able to give familiar material a new angle, even if at points he risks making coincidence do a bit too much explanatory work, only lightly implying the existence of something otherworldly. But for Beatles fans interested in the subject, the book acts as an incredibly thoughtful contribution to a comprehensive study of the Beatles' creativity, offering even the most knowledgeable fans a new orientation of a familiar story. The Beatles' "magic" emerges as the convergence of distinct, synchronised, and sustained group creativity.

 

About the reviewer
Miranda Taylor is studying English Literature and History at University. She loves the music of the Beatles, the Monkees and My Chemical Romance. 

You can read more about Across the Universe by Steve Taylor on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Paul Taylor-McCartney of "The Lady of Atlantis" by Constantine

 

Atlantis is one of those stories so deeply embedded in the imagination that it can be difficult to approach it without the weight of everything that has come before. We think of a lost civilisation, catastrophe, mystery and the irresistible possibility that somewhere beneath the myth there may have been a real place. In The Lady of Atlantis, Constantine takes that familiar legend and brings it back to human scale. 

The novel is inspired by the archaeology of Akrotiri and by what the author describes as his own interpretations of Minoan writings, but its real strength lies in the attempt to imagine what such a world might have felt like from within. Thira is not presented merely as a doomed civilisation waiting to become archaeology. It is a living society, with its own beliefs, customs, relationships, expectations and hierarchies, inhabited by people who naturally assume that their world will continue. 

At its centre is Sa-ra, a young priestess who has always heard voices. Within her culture this gives her a particular spiritual authority, yet the novel is interested in more than the mechanics of prophecy. Sa-ra’s gift is connected to intuition, judgement and an ability to perceive what other people sometimes cannot articulate for themselves. This gives the spiritual dimension of the book an appealing ambiguity. The author does not simply reduce ancient belief to superstition viewed through modern eyes, nor does he demand that everything be understood in straightforwardly supernatural terms. Instead, belief is allowed to exist as part of the fabric of Sa-ra’s world. That, for me, is one of the more interesting aspects of the novel. The prose has a deliberately simple, formal quality which suits Sa-ra’s world and helps maintain a sense of historical distance. There are moments when that register may require a little adjustment, particularly for younger readers, but it also prevents the setting from feeling overly modern. Importantly, it is balanced by humour, warmth and moments of very recognisable human behaviour. 

Historical fiction about the ancient world can sometimes make its characters feel suspiciously contemporary. Here, there is a genuine attempt to imagine a society operating according to different assumptions. The place of women, religious practice, ideas about marriage and social responsibility are not treated simply as curiosities but as ordinary elements of Sa-ra’s experience. At the same time, the emotional concerns remain immediately recognisable. People love, doubt, worry, desire approval and try to understand what their futures might contain. In one early episode, a woman seeks Sa-ra’s guidance over which man she should marry. What matters about the scene is not the prediction itself, but Sa-ra’s understanding that prophecy cannot remove the uncertainty inherent in human relationships. Marriage, she recognises, will always contain both unforeseen hardship and unexpected happiness. It is characteristic of the book’s wider approach: grand ideas are repeatedly brought back to individual lives. 

Of course, that becomes especially significant because the reader knows something the characters do not. The world of Thira is unstable. The mountain is stirring and catastrophe is approaching. Yet life continues around it. People make plans, form relationships and imagine futures. It is this contrast between the enormous scale of what is coming and the ordinary lives being lived beneath it that gives the story much of its poignancy. There is something particularly affecting about treating Atlantis not primarily as a mystery to be solved, but as a home that people believed was permanent.

The novel also raises interesting questions about the relationship between myth and history. Atlantis has accumulated centuries of speculation, reinvention and fantasy. By rooting his version in Thira and Akrotiri, the author imagines the legend as a possible echo of real experience: a prosperous society, a natural catastrophe and memories transformed in their transmission. We tend to encounter ancient civilisations after their stories have ended. We know which cities disappeared, which cultures changed and which disasters came. The people themselves possessed none of that hindsight. They experienced their lives forwards, surrounded by all the uncertainty, hope and expectation with which we experience our own. The Lady of Atlantis understands that distinction. Its most affecting idea is therefore also its simplest: before Atlantis became legend, it was somebody’s present. And Sa-ra’s world matters not because we know it will be lost, but because to her – and to everyone around her – it is still entirely alive.

About the reviewer
Paul Taylor-McCartney is a writer, researcher and lecturer. His interests include dystopian literature, queer studies, YA fiction and initial teacher education. His poetry, short fiction and academic articles have appeared in a wide range of print and electronic media, and fiction titles he recently worked on as commissioning editor have won regional readers’ and publishers’ awards. His debut novel, Sisters of the Pentacle, was published by Hermitage Press in 2022, and his first non-fiction title, Cornwall Uncharted: Mapping Cornwall’s Queer History of Concealment, Culture and Creativity, was published by The History Press (June 2026).

You can read more about The Lady of Atlantis by Constantine on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Pam Thompson of "Skinship" by Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana

 

Skinship is Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana’s second collection after Sing me down from the dark (Salt, 2022) and is both a development and continuation from the previous collection. Corrin-Tachibana lived in Japan for ten years, experienced two marriages and the challenges of coming to terms with cultural expectations, not least judgements by in-laws, and indeed her own mother.

Skinship (its meaning in Japanese, "skin-to-skin contact") sees the narrator returning to Japan after a fifteen-year absence. Candid personal narratives are delivered via a variety of forms, predominantly variations on the zuihitsu and haibun. 

A zuihitsu draws together loosely-connected fragments of different types of writing. It allows narrator and reader to travel through time and place and to grasp several understandings about an overarching subject. Take the opening poem, "Skinship: a zuihitsu," which flickers through various memories around the birth of the narrator’s son, "Our son was born in Kalamazoo Hospital," and signals aggressions she meets along the way: the nurse who seized her nipple and "shoved it" in the newborn’s mouth; the mother-in-law who insists she eats an omelette which makes her sick, the increasingly ominous significance of a song, "I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo! Recorded in 1942 by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra." 

The Forward-prize shortlisted" ‘Madame Gout: a zuihitsu" draws its title from the writings of Benjamin Franklin in his dialogue with the Gout:

                                                                       Madame Gout. You know my 
          sedentary state and on that account, it would seem, Madame Gout,
          as if you might spare me a little, seeing it is not altogether my fault.

The rest of the poem is diverting and entertaining, beginning with accounts of the rich food the poet has eaten leading to the "foot twitch" on the train journey when she is talking to the "tattooed Norwegian." As we learn about famous gout sufferers, for instance, and the word’s derivation, "from the Latin gutta, a drop of liquid," we also sense the poet’s frustration at her husband’s repeated statement that "gout is common in Japan." The final couplet stings and conveys much about the relationship: "Your husband asks how is your foot? For the umpteenth time. / He is happy you are in the house when he returns from golf."

A haibun combines a section or sections of prose with one or more haiku. Traditionally the prose sets a scene, perhaps describes a journey while the haiku provides an oblique commentary or reflection on the prose. There are harsh times certainly but "Haibun from East Lothian," with its precise details of landscape, of plants and birds and joy with a lover, temporarily blots out other concerns even as the haiku hints at warning:

                                                                The spiky cockle I carry back
          from the bay, held sideways, is a pair of birds nestling their
          heads. Upside down it is erotic. And for a few days, in a
          whitewashed cottage, I do not think of your spoilt daughter
          … my teenage son … or of the stranger husband, in the spare room.

above marram grass

quartering short-eared owls

pursued by corvids

A "burning haibun" usually has a darker intent. In at least three sections, an act of erasure is performed on the initial prose which is then reduced to a haiku. "Fishbones: A Burning Haibun" gives insight into the narrator’s fraught relationship with her mother. She was "Rarely praised" and "there were plenty of stories about the trauma of having me." The poet "yearned, even as an adult, to hold her attention." The prose section ends with "She hates me cooking Dad fish. Throws open the lounge windows. Has no patience. For fishbones." The haiku which emerges from the erasure encapsulates chillingly what the broader narrative has conveyed:

I diluted her –
she spat words,
fishbones

The inclusion of the Japanese language, its phrases and characters, adds an extra visual and aural dimension. The different layouts of the poems are a visual treat too as is their attention to the nuances of social behaviour. I admired the shifts in tone, the balancing of heartbreak with resilience and sardonic humour and the narrator’s no-holds-barred approach to her material. There are so many more threads and features to be explored (e.g. music, literature, art – for instance the sharply poignant poems written in response to Yoko Ono’s Music of the Mind exhibition at Tate Modern) in this rich and inventive collection.

 

About the reviewer
Pam Thompson is a writer, educator and reviewer based in Leicester. Her latest pamphlet is Sub/urban Legends (2025, Paper Swans Press). She is a Hawthornden Fellow.

You can read more about Skinship by Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Emma Lee of "Not Even October" by Tim Relf

Not Even October is a collection that looks back on the ordinary moments that shape lives, while hoping that life still has more to offer. In "Time is running out" a "welcome home" banner feels celebratory until the poet learns it’s "for someone you later heard was coming home for the last time" which gives it an extra poignancy.

There are poems that push at what poets are "supposed" to write or not write about, e.g. in "Roadkill," where "poets must not linger by dead objects in the road" and those who claim there are rules are 

          the people who claim prose poems don’t exist then spend hours picking
          at the bones of line breaks. You’ll find them staring off –
          heroically and tragically – in their author photos as if they’re trying
          to see beyond joy and love, beyond moons, shards, flowers, geese,
          lambs, crows, cow parsley, beyond the whole damn kit and caboodle
          of clichés.

The frustrations of bureaucracy and "computer-says-no" scenarios feature too. "Proof of life" drips with the exasperation of those captcha tests. 

The title poem is about lighting the first fire of the year as the chill of autumn begins, memories of "sleepovers, beaches, bike rides," and ending "I’ll sit and watch / today go up in smoke." "May" deals with the superstition of bringing hawthorn into the house, as the poet breathes "in a shower of speckled blossom. So much for that stench: / it’s a myth. If this is how death smells, well, perhaps / there’s nothing to be afraid of, after all."

There’s a wry humour and Relf relishes poking fun that those who impose restrictions while championing those who rebel, demonstrating how humans connect and evolve. Not Even October probes the everyday, asking readers to see the extraordinary in the ordinary and look again at what seems familiar in these lively poems.

About the reviewer
Emma Lee’s publications include a novel Stalling an Ambush (Pegasus 2026) and poetry collection The Significance of a Dress (Arachne, 2020). She co-edited Welcome to Leicester (Dahlia Books, 2016) and Over Land, Over Sea (Five Leaves, 2015), reviews for magazines and blogs here. She is Treasurer for Leicester Writers’ Club.

You can read more about Not Even October by Tim Relf on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Lee Wright of "On Memoir: An A-Z of Life Writing"

Blake Morrison’s early ambitions did not include becoming a life writer. Then his father died, prompting him to explore parts of his relationship with him that he had never considered before. Death was the trigger for memoir. "For others it might be a disturbed childhood, or addiction or mental breakdown, or the threat to the environment, or displacement to a new country, or the chaos of the political world," Blake says. 

In my case, a film was the "trigger" and the realisation back in 2020 that I had things to say about how this film had set me on the path to becoming a writer. As far back as I can remember, I have felt a compulsion to create. As a boy, I’d invent stories in my mind, not to share with anyone, but just to entertain myself. The stories played out like films, since they all grew out of cinema I had watched. Something shifted in me when I watched a film – like a wave dragging me under, and with it, a desire to see a new world below the surface. Even now, films can still spark that urge, though in adulthood the catalyst sits more with literature than cinema. My PhD, which became a memoir, was set in motion by a particular film.  

Let me explain. 

I remained stuck, essentially, in illiteracy until the age of fourteen, at which point I first encountered John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980). I avoided reading at school, where children like me were mostly overlooked. I acted like I understood, although I never attempted to decode the words. I was ignorant and lazy. At the time, I probably felt more indifference than shame about it. There was no belief that reading could unlock anything, not the way films seemed to. It also felt like a waste of time, a door I didn’t need to open. Reading had no place in the life I was expected to live. The Fog, however, left me with questions I wanted answered. It felt layered enough to make me keep coming back to it. Some of the scenes in it changed how I saw my future. 

That, I thought, was enough of a reason to embark on a memoir. The difficulty was that it proved harder to write than I had initially imagined. Yes, I did my research, devoting the next six years to reading memoir after memoir and British Film Institute book after BFI book, trying to discover the secret ingredient that would make the combination pleasing to the reader. Yet every draft I produced left me with a bitter aftertaste. Most of the self-help books about writing nonfiction failed to help. I see now that I was looking for something like an A-to-Z: much like the road map of Great Britain my father kept tucked inside the seat pocket of his car. His advice was simply: "Never set off without a map."  

It was only a matter of time before Blake Morrison came to my rescue, just as he did in 2016, when he delivered a public lecture at the University of Leicester. I had never been in a lecture theatre before, and that experience prompted me to apply for the MA in Creative Writing. That course eventually led to my first published pieces and, later, to a PhD. 

Few writers can move so effortlessly between forms and make each book into a captivating narrative, but Morrison is one of them. I repeatedly come back to this moment in the story, the moment that shaped my growth as a writer. Three of Morrison’s works – Too True (1998), a collection of essays; The Last Weekend (2010), a novel; and Two Sisters (2023), a memoir – have made him one of the most important writers in my life. His latest book, On Memoir: An A-Z of Life Writing has further shaped my thinking. For me, it may well be the most significant of all his works. It’s not a rule-book or a teaching textbook, but a set of ideas, examples and suggestions assembled as an A-Z. The book’s categories run from "Addiction" all the way to "Zzz," prompting Morrison’s dry observation: "Unless it’s a guidebook for insomniacs, no writer wants to send people to sleep." 

Morrison discusses the mechanics of the form in a way that will reach every reader. As I devote myself to writing creative nonfiction, I have been guided – much like Morrison – by the work of other writers. "Writers find their way through other writers. They’re looking to be themselves but can’t get there on their own," says Morrison. By examining writers ranging from Samuel Pepys to Tim Lott, Maggie Nelson and Jenn Ashworth, the book reflects on the challenges of creative nonfiction and explores why the genre matters. 

Introduce this book in a Creative Writing class and it is likely to go off like a hand grenade, particularly through its discussions of plagiarism, offence, sex, and vengeance. Morrison has never been afraid to broach difficult subjects, as readers of his book on the James Bulgar murder case will know. Then again, as Morrison says, "Upsetting people is part of the business." Morrison has taught me not to fear the lethal shrapnel, and On Memoir can be our body armour. 

About the reviewer
Dr Lee Wright holds a PhD from the University of Leicester in Creative Non-Fiction and has had numerous pieces of short fiction and non-fiction published. 

Review by Jonathan Wilkins of "Neon Steel" by Jennifer Maritza McCauley

I will start at the beginning with the "Episodes" as McCauley calls them - and what’s not to love, they entice you into the book and once there, you cannot escape. They are: 

Online

The Girl in the Bomba Dress

Afro Otaku

For August Wilson and Romare Bearden

The Text Message

OAV: Neon Steel

Viper/Sweet

Smoke Break

Romeo Must Die (Again)

Batman in Pittsburgh

The Con

Commercial Break: Writing Fiction

OAV: The Vampires of Pittsburgh

Commercial Break: The Day the Salt Ran Out in the City

Respect the Chair

Epilogue: Eat N’ Park

Neon Steel is an energetic, genre-melding collection that feels at once like a teenager's mixtape, a manga, and a missive to Pittsburgh. Jennifer Maritza McCauley blends magical realism, pop culture, and sharp storytelling in a book that vibrates with life.

All the "Episodes" are linked, despite their odd names. Neon Steel is a glorious celebration of the often-overlooked Black "nerd culture," Afro-Latina identity, and the process of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1990s and early 2000s. It follows anime fans, vampires, indie rappers, robots, and pleasure-mongers as they move through their neighbourhoods, their friendships, and the bewitching otherworld reverberating beneath real-world stuff.

What makes Neon Steel remarkable is each Episode's fluidity. We are introduced to a secret coven of vampires hiding out in steel mills; we see an explosion into fireballs when a character’s rage becomes supernatural. These shifts cleverly show how fandom, imagination, and cultural hybridity shape our identity. McCauley moves fluently between realism and fantasy, often within one paragraph, creating stories that are dynamic and always unpredictable.

Neon Steel is bold and inventive, and it evokes a genuine, deeply felt response in the reader. It doesn’t fit with any one genre. The book uses magical realism and pop-culture tropes to chart the coming-of-age journey involving its central protagonist, Adrienne, alongside a cast of outsiders seeking identity and connection.

We discover the underground world of Afro Otaku, and we see a reinterpretation of The Terminator as a manga narrative featuring a purple-haired robot. The characters determine the core of the book: young people negotiating in-betweenness, racial, cultural, social, or personal. McCauley’s central figures are lifelike, intense and often flawed; they are real people searching for something. Themselves? Another world? Otherness? Pittsburgh is always there as a backdrop, yet also as a character: uncompromising, neon-lit, of course, and full of secret places and other worlds.

What makes the collection uniquely compelling is its clear structural framing. McCauley models the narrative after a season of classic Japanese anime, organizing the linked stories like television episodes complete with commercial breaks, interstitial sketches, and standalone OVA-style interludes.

At its core, Neon Steel analyses the intersection of Black, Afro-Latina and Asian pop-culture influences, delving deeply into the subcultures of youth who find community in spaces where they are historically underrepresented: anime fandoms, manga, cosplay, comic books, and arcades. Underneath the vibrant pop-culture parodies and speculative elements lies a tender portrait of youth, alienation, and the emotional safety found in chosen families. It’s a celebration of fandom, identity, and the communities we build when the world doesn’t quite know what to do with us. For readers who love hybrid fiction, magical realism, or stories that centre Black and Afro Latina nerd culture, this is an exceptional work from one of today's most exciting writers. McCauley has captured the nostalgia of night-time anime blocks and dial-up internet with a distinct, unapologetic voice. Ultimately, Neon Steel acts as an energetic, intensely personal, and stylish celebration of individual discovery for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider.

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 Neon Steel by Jennifer Maritza McCauley on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by San Lin Tun of "On the Bodies of Strangers" by Hannah Stevens

Having a tattoo on the body has a reason behind it, and it also seems that a tattoo has a story to tell. To use the theme of tattoos for a collection of short stories is significant, original and a daring attempt to bring meaning to life. One can see a tattoo as it is or one can assume that it is for bodily decoration, but in reality tattoos speak for themselves.

On the Bodies of Strangers by Hannah Stevens includes twelve stories and the author captures distinct and indistinct tattoos on human body and links them with human experiences and lives. People might get tattoos out of necessity or out of fancifulness, but indeed, they have interesting stories to disclose.

The author’s tone is not expansive, but short and precise, taking readers to the exact critical moment in characters' lives, one where they will be surprised with the twist she has used in her writing techniques. That is a skill only a few writers possess. Her characters range from adolescents, to adult men, women, jailors, etc. All of them have their own tattoos to characterise them. Some represent pure sensation, some are for curing trauma, some represent hope and a better future.

Reading these stories will leave behind thoughts, surprises or smiles on the face of readers. One can confidently say that Stevens executes the stories very well. She does not take much time to develop characters but readers can sympathize or understand the emotions, feelings, and sensations of the characters in a very short space and time. 

Among the stories, my two favourites are "The End of August" and "Naming of Bones" because they ended up with unexpected twists and many things to ponder upon afterwards. All of the others are very readable and enjoyable, too. After reading Stevens's stories, I am silently looking out for a person with a tattoo in real life, and trying to decipher the meaning of it, because of the magic spell of her writing is still prevalent in my mind.     

About the reviewer
San Lin Tun is a writer and acoustic guitarist living in Yangon, Myanmar (Burma). He is a Gold Olympiad Winner at the Guitar Olympiad 2025 and a recipient of Yorgos Foudoulis Culture Award 2025/2026 and has published over a dozen books and two music albums. 

You can read more about On the Bodies of Strangers by Hannah Stevens on Creative Writing at Leicester here.