Review by Sally Shaw of "Things We Found in the Ground: A Metal Detecting Journey through Britain" by Eleanor Bruce and Lucilla Gray

Things We Found In The Ground, written by cousins Eleanor Bruce and Lucilla Gray, is a book about how chance and circumstance leads to discovery. The introduction tells of childhood memories of the cousins. Bruce recalls weekends spent with grandparents in rural Lincolnshire, "natural wild landscape tamed into cultivated fields and pastures. It’s a vast, wide, flat patchwork of land that remains relatively unchanged today, and is utterly perfect for our weekend family tradition of an afternoon walk, topped off with a picnic diligently prepared by Mammette." It’s on one such picnic that Bruce discovers a piece of pottery peeking up through the earth. When her grandmother declares it’s Roman it leads to weekends full of wonderment, bonding with her grandparents as they search for more Roman sherds. On the other side of the world in New Zealand, Gray searches the shoreline for and finds "artefacts we call taonga, skilfully carved from stone, wood and bone many centuries ago by Māori craftspeople, that hold the greatest stories." Both girls keep their childhood wonderment of time absorbed, feeling safe with their discoveries and stories they tell.

In 2020, COVID-19 brings tragedy and circumstance for change, and both find themselves together for the first time since childhood, discovering in each other hope, purpose and metal detecting. They obtain permission to detect in the fields and land of the Lincolnshire village of Bruce’s grandparents. Lady-H is the eccentric landowner who grants the permission and with it gives the cousins her energy to find the history and people held within the land. 

Once they have the permission, for me this is when the journey through time begins. The cousins took me to metal detecting meets, to the inside of Lady-H’s home, to the patchwork fields of Bruce’s childhood and beyond. The beyond includes being taken to the time of the Roman invasion through the unearthing of a Roman military buckle and then I’m returned to the present by a Coca-Cola can. At times the cousins get stuck in the mud both literally and metaphorically. The writing kept me wanting to stay walking alongside them in those fields of mud, rain and digging. Willing them to keep going, they did: a thimble lost over 300 years ago tells of a time when a women had no right to personal property. They could, though, own domestic articles like "just a thimble": "it’s one of the few objects a woman had agency over in a world that was generally entirely out of her control." An enamel Royal Navy badge with a suspension ring, from which hangs a tiny blue metal ribbon, told the story of the the giving of miniature regimental brooches to loved ones, known as Sweetheart Brooches. These were symbols of love, waiting, not knowing and grief. The story of the Sweetheart Brooch uncovered the reality of life for those left at home. 

Bruce and Gray demonstrate that metal detecting is a way of life, a commitment made to finding artefacts that will teach us about the people who came before us, no matter how long ago. They have taught me about coinage, life in a medieval village and the importance of the past. They took me to Egypt and to the gold rush of America, on their journey to the end of the rainbow. 

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 Anupriya Sisodia of "The Life and Times of Agatha Christie" at Literary Leicester Festival 2026

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was walking into when I signed up for Literary Leicester 2026. It was my first ever literary festival, but I knew it would be something I’d remember.  

Wednesday 18th March began with "The Life and Times of Agatha Christie" in the Attenborough Arts Centre. I remember noticing how carefully I was taking everything in. Even before it started, the room already had its own atmosphere. It was full in that warm, expectant way: people gathering in clusters, coats coming off, festival pamphlets being flicked through, that quiet pre-event energy where everyone is just waiting for it to begin. And I even saw someone dressed as Hercule Poirot, moustache and all, which made me smile before I could even stop myself. Poirot, one of my earliest literary fascinations, was the kind of character I grew up thinking of as untouchable in his brilliance, so seeing him casually walking through a modern arts centre struck me as surreal in the best way.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Agatha Christie. I started reading her books when I was around twelve or thirteen. I didn’t realize then how long they would stay with me, quietly threading themselves into how I understand narrative, suspense, and character, or that I’d end up in a different country years later, listening to someone unpack her life in front of an audience. 

Dr Mark Aldridge led the talk. The way he spoke about Christie felt grounded and engaging rather than distant or overly academic. He walked us through her life as if her story still pulsed with warmth and movement. I realized I was listening more than writing; my notes turned into scattered fragments. When I listen, my attention naturally shifts to thought, and my imagination crafts its own scenes alongside what I’m hearing.

At one point, he mentioned The Mousetrap and its extraordinarily long-running history since 1952. Immediately, my mind connected it to home: I thought of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, a popular Bollywood film that has been showing for decades at Maratha Mandir in Mumbai, India. Two very different stories, two very different worlds, yet both enduring, because people keep returning to them, generation after generation. It seemed like one of those cultural overlaps your mind makes without asking permission, where distance doesn’t matter as much as shared longevity, shared affection. I didn’t say any of it out loud, obviously. I just let the thought sit there for a moment, like a small bridge between places I carry in me.

The Q&A session carried a particular sense of meaning. People were asking questions with such care, such curiosity, as if they weren’t just seeking answers but trying to understand the texture of Christie’s legacy from different angles: her narrative arc, structure, the psychology behind her characters. There was something very communal about it, not performative, but shared. Like everyone in the room was gently adding to the same unfolding conversation.

By the time the session ended, I felt something subtle settle in. Christie’s work lives on not just because people read it, but because it is constantly re-entered and re-imagined. Each reader brings something new to it, and in doing so, keeps it moving forward. I left carrying that thought: stories don’t belong only to the past or the page. They find new rooms, over and over, just like this one.

About the reviewer
Anupriya Sisodia is a published romance fiction author, pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. She is an avid reader who loves writing stories with realistic, relatable characters who experience emotional and exciting journeys on their way to a happy ending.

Review by Anupriya Sisodia of "Red, White & Royal Blue" by Casey McQuiston

Imagine this: the First Son of the United States falls in love with the Prince of Wales. Yup. That’s basically Red, White, & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, and I cannot even begin to explain how obsessed I am. From page one, I was hooked, half the time laughing so hard I nearly cried, the other half swooning so much I was basically gasping through the pages, unable to put it down. 

Alex Claremont-Díaz is chef’s kiss. He’s witty, chaotic in the best way, over-the-top, and somehow manages to be both obnoxiously charming and painfully relatable. The kind of guy you’d want to be best friends with but also low-key fangirl over. And then there’s Prince Henry. He’s all poise and perfection, very "prince-y," but he’s secretly this soft, dorky, totally lovable and hilarious human once you see past the crown - definitely the kind of guy who makes you just want to hug him forever. And their dynamic? Electric. That whole "enemies who kind of hate each other but maybe also kind of don’t" thing that starts as a staged truce. Absolute chaos in the best possible way. Watching their friendship grow, sneakily morph into something heart-stoppingly romantic, had me internally screaming like a maniac the entire time. And the teasing! The banter! I swear, it should be illegal how adorable it all was. 

But it’s not all swoons and drama. What really gets me is how real their journey was. Alex struggling to balance being the First Son while actually being himself, Henry questioning everything he’s been taught and learning to just be, and watching them figure it out together, with all the mistakes, the secrets, the little victories, it’s just so raw and human, and messy in the best way, full of moments that made my chest ache and my heart swell at the same time. And beneath all that laughter and tension, the novel doesn’t shy away from the deeper themes: identity, family, self-expression, and what it really means to be yourself, learning to stand in your own skin when the whole world is watching, making it so much more than just a romance. Add in the interplay of American politics and British monarchical traditions, and McQuiston’s signature humor, and every chapter feels bigger, juicier, and somehow more romantic. And the side characters? They are absolutely unforgettable. There’s fierce June Claremont-Díaz, protective Bea, supportive genius, aspiring data analyst and VP’s daughter Nora Holleran, goofy Pez, brilliant Zahra, formidable President Ellen Claremont-Díaz, endlessly loyal and dependable Shaan, and many more. .. each bringing their own personality and presence, making the world feel full and alive. 

By the end, I was a blubbering, laughing, fangirling mess, and honestly I didn’t even want it to end. Red, White & Royal Blue is messy, beautiful, hilarious, devastatingly heartfelt, and swoony. It’s the kind of book that makes you stay up until 2 a.m., the kind you text your friends about in ALL CAPS, the kind that makes you believe that love can actually feel like it’s changing the world.

Honestly? I’m never letting go of Alex and Henry. Not now. Not ever. 

About the reviewer
Anupriya Sisodia is a published romance fiction author, pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. She is an avid reader who loves writing stories with realistic, relatable characters who experience emotional and exciting journeys on their way to a happy ending.

Interview with Annabelle Slator

Annabelle Slator grew up writing stories in the depths of the British countryside. After achieving a degree in Creative Writing, she spent most of her twenties working with brands and start-ups in London and New York. Nowadays, if she isn’t spending time writing, you can almost always find her obsessing over niche internet drama, practising her fencing parry or mooching around vintage fairs and flea markets. Annabelle’s first contemporary romance novels, The Launch Date and Risky Business, were inspired by her time working in the wild world of dating apps and the tech industry. You can read more about Risky Business on Creative Writing at Leicester here. Annabelle's website is here. 

Interviewed by Anupriya Sisodia

Q: Tell us more about the Risky Business: what inspired you to write a modern, fast-paced romance set in the tech start-up world? 

AS: Risky Business is inspired by my experiences not only working in the tech and start-up industry, but working exclusively for women-run and female-founded companies. It admittedly is not the sexiest world to set a romance, but it was an area I felt was relatively unexplored in the romance genre and something to which I can bring a unique perspective. 

Q: Were there any scenes or moments that were especially fun or challenging to write? 

AS: The set-up and opening chapters were the most challenging to write, and were rewritten several times during the drafting process. I was trying to hit a balance between a dynamic main character with plenty of agency whilst making sure she "stumbled" into the circumstances of the story instead of actively choosing to deceive everyone from the start. The chapters I found the most fun to write were the meet-cute chapters, the first carefree, flirty night Jess spends with Oliver. I found those chapters to be incredibly cathartic for a character who had spent so long focusing on her own anxieties instead of living her life to the fullest. 

Q: What genres or topics do you enjoy writing about the most? 

AS: I love romance! First kisses and romantic tension are always the most enjoyable parts of the process, but blending self discovery and growth is the most satisfying part of writing, even if it’s not as fun as flirty banter and hijinks in the moment! 

Q: How do you approach blending humour, tension, and romance in your storytelling?

AS: I like to champion the idea that romance is inherently hilarious and should be treated as such. Having a crush makes you do and say things you never thought you would, that you would laugh at somebody else doing, and often look back at and cringe. I approach humour, tension and romance in the same way. Whether they are clashing or in sync, they often work hand in hand to create something magical on the page.  

Q: How do you handle writer's block or creative doubt?

AS: For me, writers block has never been a massive issue because I am always working on multiple projects as once. If I’m stuck on a part of a story, I will focus on another for a few days until the knot in my mind becomes untangled. I also find working on something physical, like cooking or even going for a long walk, helps immensely if I’m really stuck. Ultimately, creativity is a muscle; it can get tired and that’s okay but it needs to be exercised regularly to keep working.  

Q: Are there specific messages or feelings you hope your readers take away from your story?

AS: I hope my readers feel inspired to take their dreams seriously, but also not be too hard on themselves. In the past I have felt a lot of the feelings Jess (and Grace in The Launch Date, my previous novel) experience, and I learnt a great deal through them. I hope readers have the same experience. 

Q: Did you draw on any personal experiences or observations about gender dynamics in tech or in general while writing Jess’s journey? 

AS: Not necessarily direct personal experiences, but witnessing how female founders are treated in the space was a huge inspiration for the story. I think most women can relate to the experiences Jess has in the book, or know someone who has. In particular, Risky Business was inspired by the real-life story of two female entrepreneurs who created a fake male CEO called Keith Mann to dodge tech industry sexism. Ever since reading a news story about this in 2017 I had wondered what would happen if you took that concept further, hiring a man to be the face of a company who was nowhere near qualified. 

Q: You set the story across Rome, Paris, and Vienna. How did these locations shape the plot and the characters’ personal growth? 

AS: Originally, this story was just set in London like my first novel, The Launch Date, but with the mechanics of the story being punctuated by rounds of a tech competition, the idea of just going back to the same hotel events hall every few chapters seemed very boring. I also wanted to make the competition as expensive as possible for Jess without it seeming ridiculous. Tech is a very pricey industry to enter and often excludes people who have great ideas but no financial backing. Making these an international escapade not only made the competition more dynamic but also gave me the opportunity to have fun and flirty scenes between Jess and Oliver outside of a hotel foyer, like the aeroplane bathroom, the French countryside cafe and the Italian dive bar. 

Q: What is your favourite part of being a writer? 

AS: Apart from the obvious of fulfilling a childhood dream of being a published author, it’s amazing to have a job that is so creatively fulfilling. The personal freedom is also a huge part of being a full-time author that I did not anticipate being one of my favourite parts. It can be stressful, not always knowing what the next year will hold and waiting on publishers for feedback etc, but it’s the best job I’ve ever had. 

Q: What personal advice would you give aspiring writers?

AS: Writing to a schedule was one of the best decisions I made when I first started writing full novels. If your goal is to be published, your first book is most likely the only one you will ever write on your own schedule. When writing The Launch Date, I deliberately gave myself a year to plan, write and edit the manuscript before querying, as I knew that was the rough timeline a publisher would give me. As it turns out, I had even less time to write and edit Risky Business, so I’m really glad I had the experience of a tight turnaround before things got serious! 

Q: Finally, what are you currently working on?

AS: I can’t reveal too many specifics right now but I’m currently finishing up something a little bit spookier than The Launch Date or Risky Business, but just as exciting and tension-filled. You can follow me on instagram @annabelleslator or tiktok @annabelleslatorauthor for future updates! 

About the interviewer 
Anupriya Sisodia is a published romance fiction author, pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. She is an avid reader who loves writing stories with realistic, relatable characters who experience emotional and exciting journeys on their way to a happy ending.

Review by Anupriya Sisodia of "Calling Sehmat" by Harinder Singh Sikka

I still remember walking out of the theatre after watching Raazi in 2018 feeling … unsettled. My chest felt tight, my mind restless. I couldn’t stop asking myself: could someone really live like that? It stayed with me for weeks, until I finally picked up Calling Sehmat. I didn’t expect it to affect me the way it did, but it left me quieter than I was before I started reading.

Sehmat doesn’t enter the story like a hero. She feels like someone you could know, just a regular college girl from Kashmir, studying in Delhi, living an ordinary life. And maybe that’s what makes everything that follows so hard to process. There’s nothing exaggerated about her, nothing cinematic. Just a quiet strength that reveals itself slowly.

What really stayed with me was how her life changed because of her father’s last wish. Being married into a Pakistani military family, not for love, but for a mission, feels like something out of fiction, but knowing it’s rooted in reality makes it heavier. As she steps into this role during the 1971 India-Pakistani war, you can almost feel the tension settle in. Every moment of her life becomes deliberate. I think what struck me most was how different she felt from her portrayal in the film. In the book, she isn’t unsure or passive. She’s alert, thoughtful, and incredibly composed. The way she adapts to her new environment, builds trust within her in-laws’ family, and carries out her responsibilities, it all feels so controlled, so precise, that it’s almost intimidating. And yet, underneath it, you can sense the pressure she’s constantly under. One mistake could undo everything. There’s also something deeply unsettling about how normal everything around her seems. People are living their lives, forming relationships, trusting her, while she’s holding onto secrets that could destroy them. It made me think a lot about how war isn’t just fought on battlefields. Sometimes, it’s hidden in everyday spaces, in conversations, in silence.

Sikka’s writing is deceptively simple, almost like a personal conversation over tea. There’s no dramatic build-up or heavy language, but somehow that makes it hit harder. You’re not distracted by how it’s written, you’re just there, inside her world, feeling everything with her protagonist - her fear, her loneliness, the constant awareness that she can never really relax.

And then there’s the aftermath. When Sehmat returns to India, it’s not relief that defines her; it’s the profound weight of everything she’s done. You can feel how much of herself she’s lost along the way. It’s not just about what she gave up in the moment, but what she can never get back. Her life doesn’t simply go back to normal, and I think that’s what makes her story feel so real.

By the end, I didn’t feel inspired in the usual sense. I just felt … still. There’s admiration, of course, but also a kind of sadness that lingers. Sehmat gave everything without expecting anything in return, not recognition, not peace, not even a sense of closure. I think that’s what this book changed for me. It made me see patriotism differently. Not as something loud or visible, but as something deeply personal, often carried alone. Even now, thinking about it, Sehmat doesn’t feel like a character I read about. She feels like someone whose life I briefly stepped into, and couldn’t quite leave behind.

If you do pick up Calling Sehmat, don’t expect a dramatic spy story. It’s quieter than that, more reflective and deeply human. But it stays with you in a way that’s hard to explain, and even harder to forget.

About the reviewer 
Anupriya Sisodia is a published romance fiction author, pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. She is an avid reader who loves writing stories with realistic, relatable characters who experience emotional and exciting journeys on their way to a happy ending.

Review by Lisa Natasha Wetton of "Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet" by Cathi Rae

This is everyday life, simply depicted, suicide taken in a stride, elongated spaces between the words giving breath where there is none. The reader is given space to pause to reflect and then continue, taking in the gravity of this subject matter in as easy a way as possible. 

          "Is this real?"
          "Shit, I think it’s real"
          "He really really did it"
          running in real time
          while time has stopped for you.

Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet is a series of poems based on real-life stories, creating a narrative that shines a light on issues around men's mental health and the tragedy of male suicide. In her preface, the author refers to it as "a 21st century tragedy." She brings home the finality of life-ending decisions made in everyday circumstances, in order to make individual men visible in a culture that, as the collection quietly argues, has made them very easy to overlook.

Every kind of suicide and situation weaves through this collection. Teenage boys, middle-aged men, drunken fathers snatched from life in a moment that cannot be taken back. Some planned, some more spontaneous, all terminal and unchangeable. The sadness and tragedy are stark and unrelenting, with a wish that it could be something other. 

The simplicity of descriptions mirrors the commonality of suicide. Men of all ages are taking their lives under the compounding weight of circumstances that ground them down - feeling unseen, carrying shame they were never equipped to name, or simply exhausted by the effort of continuing. 

In the opening piece, "Slicing Through the Information Superhighway with a Scalpel," Rae writes about the process with which she created the content:

           my computer glitches
           won’t stop scrolling page after page
           name after name after name
           until I have to look away block away the tears
           writing elegies for dead men I didn’t meet.

Poem after poem, man after man, the weight of it builds and builds. These are not isolated failures, not men who simply couldn't cope. They are every age, every background, every circumstance. "Club 18 to 35" feels like the collection's breaking point. This is an almost-angry reckoning with what we are doing to men, and what we are allowing to continue.

Male suicide is becoming an often silent, global epidemic, with men dying by suicide approximately three to four times more often than women. Rae reaches out to shed light on an issue that must be addressed. These poems provide perspectives of people choosing to take their own lives and how, as well as acknowledging those left behind. 

In "Finders," Rae bluntly puts it, 

          your discovery       just a delay
          in the everyday of commuting home
          a flicker of frustration
          and then reset
          Someone has to find you ... 
          someone who will keep that memory
          forever
          even if they wish they couldn’t
          who might prefer that you had stayed
          unfound.

Here, she acutely presents the devastating impact that ripples out from suicide. Lights go out on a life, as the world inevitably, indifferently, keeps on turning. This is a collection that deserves to be read widely - not as a comfortable experience, but as a necessary one. 

About the reviewer

Lisa Natasha Wetton (aka Lisa Life) is a regular contributor to the English pages of L’eco de Sitges, Barcelona. She is a Creative Artist, Coach & Hypnotherapist. She collaborates on Writing Retreats with American Author Will Bashor, with whom she co-authored Soul to Pages - A Weekend Journey to your Novel/Self-help book, a process used to support budding writers that incorporates meditation and visualisation sessions. She is currently refining edits on her first completed book, A Guide to Spirituality from a Working Class Girl. She has a twenty-year history working in Dance & Theatre and has been based in Barcelona for almost seven years. You can find Lisa at https://linktr.ee/NewLisaLife.

You can read more about Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet by Cathi Rae on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Paul Taylor-McCartney of "The Language of Now" by Anne Caldwell

Anne Caldwell’s The Language of Now is a collection of prose poems that moves quietly but insistently through memory, landscape and the fragile textures of everyday life. Rooted in a northern sense of place, the book also engages with illness, ecological unease and the emotional afterlife of recent years.

Caldwell has become one of the most assured contemporary practitioners of the prose poem, and this form suits her especially well. These pieces are compact but spacious, lyrical without becoming vague. They unfold in paragraphs that seem at first conversational, then deepen into something more meditative. Her work returns repeatedly to bogs, backstreets, moorland, weather and overlooked urban edges, yet these are never simply settings. They are charged spaces where memory, vulnerability and the more-than-human world meet.

Caldwell’s restraint is one of the collection’s greatest strengths. She lets emotion gather around an image until it becomes quietly affecting. In "Wasp’s Nest," the speaker listens for "the ragged edges of our lives," a phrase that captures much of the collection’s mood: vulnerability, endurance and the sense that contemporary life often feels slightly frayed. In "Widdop Gate, High Summer," the moorland is described as "egg-shell delicate," and later as "a map of the whole world in miniature." These small phrases open outward with surprising force.

Some of the most moving poems connect strongly with questions of class, culture and language. "Boundary Lane, 1974" in particular stirs that recognition. Its backward glance towards a childhood street, and towards the social world carried in place and speech, suggests how deeply early surroundings shape us. Caldwell’s attention to ordinary language and remembered environments prompts a nostalgic return to childhood: to voices, habits and local textures that once seemed fixed. What these poems understand so well is that growing into the present often means letting go of much that was once familiar in order to make way for the new. 

The title poem suggests another dimension of the collection’s thinking. Caldwell writes that the language of the present moment "now drifts away like a driftwood smile … or a Spring moon waxing and waning." These images capture the book’s underlying concern with impermanence: the sense that language, memory and even identity shift continually with time.

Elsewhere the emotional register deepens into something more intimate. In "Lost Daughter," the line "I wrote a letter: Dearest Daughter, how I longed for you. To hold your butter-coloured toes in my hands" carries a tenderness that is both personal and universal. The image is simple, yet it holds an entire emotional landscape within it. 

What emerges from The Language of Now is a poetics of attention. These prose poems do not seek dramatic revelation. Instead they offer something quieter and more enduring: a way of seeing the ordinary world with renewed sensitivity. In a literary culture that often rewards urgency and noise, Caldwell’s work reminds us of the value of patience, listening and careful noticing. This is a subtle, moving collection that stays with the reader long after the final page, and invites return, offering a brief but beautifully crafted space for quiet reflection.

About the reviewer
Paul Taylor-McCartney is a writer, post-doctoral researcher and lecturer. His interests include speculative fiction, queer studies, children’s fiction and initial teacher education. His poetry, short fiction and academic articles have appeared in print and electronic form. He recently published his debut children’s novel, Sisters of the Pentacle (2022), and his work as commissioning editor resulted in two titles winning prestigious regional awards. His first non-fiction title, Cornwall Uncharted: Mapping Cornwall’s Queer History of Concealment, Culture and Creativity, is due to be published by The History Press (June 2026).

You can read more about The Language of Now by Anne Caldwell on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Iain Minney of "The Dark Fields" by Alan Glynn

Adam Glynn’s 2001 debut is probably best described as the fabled "positive drug story," albeit a cautionary tale about drug use. Strong themes of addiction, excess and greed run through it like a stick of rock.  

More-traditional drug users fall somewhere in-between hallucinating hippies, giggling stoners or hyperactive, gurning ravers, with the perception being uniformly negative. The "positive" drug in this novel, "MDT-48," allows the user to remain uncluttered, learning and performing practical tasks with a radically, evidence-based improvement, unlike other drugs, which merely mess with the user’s perception of themselves. In other words, MDT is the ultimate drug fantasy: it actually DOES make you smart and interesting.

Eddie Spinola is a something of an average guy; a little past his prime and stuck in a rut. The writing assignment he requested isn’t the labour of love and salvation he thought it’d be, and he has little else lined up on the horizon.  But a happenstance encounter with his ex-wife’s shady brother quickly changes his fortune. Literally.

Now (with a certain tiger-in-his-tank) Eddie’s blasting his way up the ladder a little too quickly and a little too impatiently for his own good, in order to quell his various appetites … and with his secret stockpile in place, but all manner of gaps, cracks, hallucinations and allegations becoming increasingly obvious and hard to ignore, the only question seems to be how much higher can Eddie go?

A neat and original premise is wonderfully executed (especially for a debut) and metered out with appropriate caution and respect to the subject of drug use, rather than the fantastical and pithy romanticism that could have been applied to a substance that, thankfully, doesn’t exist. Although MDT could essentially be considered an aid to concentration (some sort of hyper-concentrated Ritalin, for example), it allows the story to expand on "Addiction to ambition" as another interesting sub-reference to the Reaganomics era, to which so much is unfortunately owed.  

The writing style is pleasant too, with the quasi-autobiographical first-person narrative providing a rewarding full-circle twist ending, that underlines what must have been a genuinely thorough and painstaking research process, allowing the author any number of hidden in-jokes. The tycoon character "Van-Loon" seems suspiciously similar to a figurehead brand like Trump, the so-called "Psychopharmacological" writer probably references Tim Leary, and even the title is taken from a line in The Great Gatsby.  There’s even a theme on lost (and rediscovered) love, and a pining for lost youth, signified in Eddie's love of drugs that he used to enjoy back with his ex-wife.

About the reviewer
Iain Minney (B.A. in Journalism & Creative Writing): tall, "mature," sober, comedian(ish). He has dabbled in stand-up comedy - which he has been writing since he was teenager - as well as being involved with comedy sketches, local filmmaking groups and working on local radio for a number of years both as "Head of News" and having his own weekly 3-hour show. He has been interested in writing for some time and even tried recording a number of audiobooks of short stories he's written together with satirical rants based on the standup he never quite "stood up" with. He loves old punk and 80s rock music, all manner of movies, and Bill Hicks and George Carlin SAVED HIS LIFE. But that's a whole other conversation.

Review by Lisa Williams of "Gentle November" by Alan Edward Roberts

"He was a magician but not a very good one": this is a book seemingly at first about an affair. The couple have just eloped, but I wouldn’t file this under "romance." They masquerade uncomfortably as father and daughter. There seems to be very little excitement and not much joy.

The story, we discover, is about a woman on a collision course, her life a "runaway train of sad events" heading towards a waiting desert. Namibia, specifically the Skeleton Coast, beckons from a childhood map, a "turbulent flight" away on a "long-ago upstairs landing."

This is somewhere she’s dreamed about, but again she doesn’t seem to be enjoying herself. Things happen around her: life is out of her control.

We walk along a parched landscape of haunted trees and wrecked boats, the backdrop to a beautifully painful tale. This small volume is an intriguing story, one that pulls you in and demands to be read in one sitting. Gentle November is peppered with disturbing scenes and images and is skilfully haunting. We never find out the woman's name. This leaves a superb sense of unease, makes you feel like perhaps you weren’t paying her enough attention, and the story consequently lingers beautifully on, long after you’ve put the book down.

About the reviewer
Lisa Williams has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. She writes word-limited flash fiction, mostly drabbles - stories of exactly one hundred words. You can find her online @noodleBubble.