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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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