Review by Sally Shaw of “Betsy & Lilibet” by Sophie Duffy

It’s 2016, Bognor Regis, when a feisty voice is heard …

‘I never thought I’d be old. But here I am, sitting on a wee-resistant armchair in the overheated lounge of a residential home on the south coast.”

This is the introduction to Elizabeth Sarah Sunshine, born in 1926, London. A few hours later and a few miles away, another Elizabeth is born. One will wear a crown and be known to her family as Lilibet and the other will bury the dead, and to her family, be Betsy. She will be the ‘son’ at Sunshine & Sons undertakers, the family business. 

Betsy recalls her life over the past ninety years, as friends and family visit her at the retirement home. She journeys back to her childhood, relationships with her sisters. Marg and Mab, school bullies and best friend, Janet.  Betsy recalls the horror of the Blitz and how this led her to take the action she did to help Janet. 

It’s the visitors and staff at the retirement home that cause Betsy to reconsider events, her actions and the behaviours f others. Along with life’s complexities, family tragedies and unspoken truths, she drops in the three times she crosses paths with Lilibet and the influence this has had on them both. 

Sophie Duffy has written a protagonist in Betsy who will make the reader laugh, cry, be surprised but above all, want to listen to. Betsy has lived a life. The story is just that, about life, love, loss, betrayal and trying to work it all out, even at the age of ninety. 

About the Reviewer 
Sally Shaw completed her MA in Creative Writing in September, 2019 at the University of Leicester. She writes short stories and poetry. She is currently writing a composite novel relating to the Overhead Railway and Liverpool 5 area. She gains inspiration form old photographs, history and writers such as Sandra Cisneros, Deborah Morgan and Liz Berry.  Her short prose has been published in Newmag, Ink Pantry and the anthology Tales from Garden Street. Most recently she was longlisted in the Sunderland Short Story Competition. Sally worked as a nurse for thirty-three years and lives in Warwickshire with her partner and three pekin bantams. 

Seren Price, Aged 8, review of “Skellig” by David Almond

Skellig is a really good book. 

It’s about a boy called Michael who finds a man in the garage of his new house. The man has bones that are all weak, he has a disease called arthritis. Michael finds some strange lumps on the man’s back, they have soft feathers, he thinks the man might have wings. 

Michael’s mum and dad are always at the hospital because his baby sister is very poorly. The only person he can talk to is his friend, Mina, who lives next door.  Mina doesn’t go to school, but she is very clever and good at drawing. She knows all about birds and about the poet William Blake, who writes about angels. Mina and Michael help Skellig get better by bringing him Chinese food and beer.

They think Skellig might be a sort of bird-angel, especially when he helps Michael’s baby sister get better. 

This book is very different to other books I have read. It is very interesting because I learnt about clever girls, birds and their hollow bones, and William Blake the poet. It was good and sad at the end when Skellig got his arthritis fixed and flew away. 

About the Reviewer 
Seren Price is 8 years old. She loves to read all kinds of stories and has already written three of her own. She loves history and when she grows up, she wants to be an archaeologist. 

Review by Jeannette Flannery of “The Last of Us” by Harriet Cummings

The Last of Us tells the story of 82-year-old Nettie, a lonely widow whose memory is not as vivid as it once was. Ostracised by her neighbours, taunted by local children and estranged from her only daughter Catherine, Nettie enters the story as a sympathetic figure.

But when young handyman James arrives in the village Nettie is thrilled to discover he is an old friend of her daughter and the two of them quickly build an unlikely friendship. As James begins to question Nettie about her past, Nettie begins to remember treasured memories of her husband Harold, as well as memories she’d rather forget. James, much like the reader begins to wonder if Nettie is really a harmless old lady or if there could be truth in the rumours circulating about her around the village.

Harriet Cummings is an accomplished writer of the domestic mystery novel. Here, as in her first novel, We All Begin as Strangers, secrets simmer under the surface of an idyllic village. The reader experiences Nettie’s nostalgic memories for themselves in the tiny details; the music and miniskirts of the swinging sixties; Harold’s garish red Ford Cortina of the seventies. 

The sights and sounds as we travel with Nettie through scenes of her past are vivid but as the reader learns more about Nettie, we too begin to question her version of events. What really happened to Harold? Why doesn’t her own daughter want to talk to her? How much of what she remembers is the truth?

The Last of Us is a heartfelt exploration of loneliness, ageing and complicated family relationships: a slow burning novel where tension builds to a final devastating climax. I found the character of Nettie stayed with me long after I had turned the final page.


About the Reviewer
Jeanette Flannery is a writer of fiction for young adults. She loves all things Japanese and lives in the midlands with her partner and a pair of mischievous kittens.

Review by Colin Gardiner of “Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson

Cayce Pollard is a young American woman with a ‘sensitivity’ to corporate branding symbols. Cayce makes a living advising clients on the viability of their product. She has been hired by an eccentric, rich client to investigate the origins of a mysterious film clip that has appeared on the internet.

Gibson deftly draws the reader into a post-11 September world of espionage and intrigue.

The novel has a melancholic feel, suited to the geo-political tensions of the era.
His characters are sharply defined, in particular the protagonist, Cayce, who forms a sympathetic but sharp-eyed lead.

Gibson has a talent for describing the cultural undercurrents of the city. London, in particular comes across as a potentially lonely, but vibrant place, filled with possibility.

The novel works, both as a compelling thriller and as a curious historical time-capsule, written just before the social media boom of the mid 2000’s. Recommended for readers of science fiction, and techno-thrillers.

About the Reviewer 

Colin Gardiner lives in Coventry. He writes short stories and poems and has been published by The Ekphrastic Review, Ink Pantry, The Midnight Street Press and The Creative Writing at Leicester blog. He is currently studying a Masters in Creative Writing at Leicester University. More of his work can be read here

Review by Kathy Hoyle of “The Glass Woman” by Caroline Lea

        

The Glass Woman is a stunning debut from Caroline Lea, taut and atmospheric from the very first page. 

Set against the unforgiving claustrophobic landscape of an Icelandic winter, the reader cannot help but be pulled into this dark and isolated world of secrets and superstition. 

The year is 1686. In the remote Icelandic village of Stykkishólmur, the ice cracks, and a body is pulled from the water. The villagers have their suspicions, there is talk of murder, witchcraft and punishment … and newcomer Rosa is determined to find the truth. 

Rosa’s heart belongs to Páll, but when Jón Eriksson passes through their village and asks for her hand, she cannot refuse. A girl must be dutiful and pious and Jón is not the sort of man to take no for an answer. Desperate to help her ailing mother and knowing that Jón will provide for them both through the harsh Icelandic winter, Rosa agrees.

Rosa is afraid. The women of Stykkishólmur refuse to talk, save for whispers of Jón’s first wife, Anna and her mysterious death. Rosa must stay in the house, forbidden by Jon to be anything other than his dutiful wife, trapped and afraid. Then there is Petur, Jon’s strange but trusted friend, who seems intent on catching her out. Rosa must find answers. 

What are the noises she hears in the attic above? Why do the villagers fear Jon so? And what happened to Anna, his first wife?

In this tense and powerful story, Lea weaves a brilliant tale of mystery, witchcraft secrets and lies. This debut novel is rich, dark and poetic, with twists and turns that keep the reader guessing all the way to the end.  

About the Reviewer  
Kathy Hoyle is an MA graduate of Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. Her Flash fiction and short stories have appeared in various Online Zines. She has been shortlisted for The Exeter Short Story Award, The Fish Publishing Short Memoir prize and the Ellipsiszine Flash Fiction Collection Competition. She will write for chocolate. 

Review by Jonathan Taylor of "Walking the Coventry Ring Road with Lady Godiva" by Cathy Galvin

Famously, in Dante’s Inferno, the poet follows Virgil down through the circles of hell, meeting the famous dead en route. In Cathy Galvin’s new and compelling pamphlet, Walking the Coventry Ring Road with Lady Godiva, the narrator follows Godiva (‘Godgifu’) round the circles of Coventry ring road, ‘following a road, a river, a prayer.’ 

This is not really an inferno – the narrator remarks at one point ‘there are no circles of hell, just this road’ – but rather a kind of limbo, a ‘circling sandstone,’ which, at least in these poems, delineates a circular history, as much as it does a city’s geography. Like W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, Galvin’s beautiful pamphlet is a walk through a circular, eternally-recurring history of destruction – from the city’s bombing in the Second World War, to the ruinous rebuilding of the city in the 1950s and 60s, to the poverty and job losses of the 80s, captured by the Specials in their well-known song about Coventry, ‘Ghost Town,’ and ultimately to post-industrial decay:

          Just watch me walk beside the demolition
          of buildings that once rose to post-war visions,
          the planners pleased the bombs sanctioned their plans …

          [then] more bombs. More cries of Liberty. Unions,
          monasteries, militants, all have their day;
          Carmelites and car factories the same. 

For the poet, these wider histories of destruction and rebuilding are intertwined with her own personal history: she notes that ‘the ring road … was built the year I was born,’ and her parents, who came to Coventry to work in the car factories, are buried in a cemetery close by one of the ring road’s flyovers. ‘Words wait in my flow to return,’ declares the poet, and the poems themselves are a kind of ring road, marking a circular return to home and the poet’s past. Ring road is history, geography, poem – and even human body: just as the ring road seems to contain the city’s past, so ‘the dead walk within our hearts’: ‘I stroll my body back to what holds within / its light, its stone, its bare bones.’ 

This is a past that does not vanish, but persists like light, held in the body, in stone, in the road, in Galvin’s haunted poetry; the dead may be dead, but they also ‘walk within our hearts.’ This a cyclical history that is not just a matter of circles of hell or destruction, but one which also involves persistence, renewal, possibility. The River Sherbourne becomes a potent symbol of this more optimistic element: routed under the ring road, it eventually returns to the surface to join the Sowe and Avon. ‘Culverted under ring road,’ Galvin writes, ‘the river sinks beneath the streets / holds its breath,’ but ‘Sherbourne will not die’:

             The light will come – 
           this stream re-emerge; tunnels crack, 
           supporting towers collapse …
     – all must repeat – in rubble, nettle, willow, fern. 


About the reviewer
Jonathan Taylor is an author, editor, critic and lecturer. His books include the novels Melissa (Salt, 2015) and Entertaining Strangers (Salt, 2012) and the poetry collection Cassandra Complex (Shoestring, 2018). He directs the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. His website is www.jonathanptaylor.co.uk. 

Review by Jonathan Taylor of "The English Disease" by Lydia Towsey

As with her previous poetry collection, Lydia Towsey’s second book, The English Disease, is full of poems which are musical, lyrical, performative, but which also jump off the page into the ears and mouth of the reader: poems, that is, which work equally out loud or ‘in-loud’ – heard via silently-moving lips in the mind’s-ear of the reader. 

In these poems, the reader hears of modern England’s diseases and their symptoms – as well as possible cures, some which help, some of which make them worse: ‘There must be a shot. / There must be a cure // for the English disease, the English disease.’ Towsey asks diseased England to ‘write back’ to her, so she, like a poet-doctor, can diagnose what is wrong – and what might be right, too. Among the militant nationalists, the ‘men in monocles abusing privilege,’ the ‘treatments / elections and referendums,’ the war-mongering, the failed primeministers, the arms sales, the xenophobia, she traces a counter-narrative, a counter-culture, a half-obscured English tradition of resistance, hospitality, rebellion, subversive humour, courtesy, a ‘decency of queues.’ This is a crypto-Socialist England, not unlike that imagined by George Orwell in his great essay The Lion and the Unicorn, which needs to ‘remember the speeches’:

          We shall welcome them on the beaches. 
          We shall welcome them on landing grounds. 
          We shall welcome them in the felds and in the streets. 
          We shall welcome in the hills. 

          I remember Monty Python, 
          I remember Bowie, 
          I remember Boudicca, 
          I remember Bevan.

Politics, though, is not all speeches and heroes, not all Boudiccas and Bevans and Guy Fawkeses. It does not only happen on a national scale. It is also a uniquely personal force, as universal as gravity, which operates between people in queues, friends sharing cups of tea. And Towsey’s poetry beautifully captures moments of connection between the political and the personal, the macrocosmic and microcosmic. It stands with Jung, when he declares that ‘the psychology of the individual is reflected in the psychology of the nation.’ In Towsey’s poetry, family history, parenthood, eating disorders, tea drinking, queuing, politeness and its opposite all reflect the psychology of contemporary England – a psychology which intermingles all these things with a traumatic history ‘built on broken bones / returning boats to burning homes.’ 

Still, if this national history is reflected in individual actions and, indeed, individual poems, it can also be distorted, refracted, resisted – through utopian moments of friendship, through twisted nursery rhymes, reconceived myths, and a new language that Towsey calls ‘Zomblish.’ Towsey’s are visionary poems which reflect national psychological states, and then go on to shatter them, in order to piece together new, better ones – of ‘Donald Trump saying sorry. / Fiscal reform to favour the many. / My daughter sleeping through the night.’ A better England – a better world – is possible, and Towsey’s poems hold out that hope: 

          Build me a picket fence, 
          form me a queue. 

          Shall we sit for days on end 
          and talk as weather beats on tents?

          The light that sets on the British Empire 
          points from yesterday to a new tomorrow. 
          This land might grow a new beginning. 

          This generation must find a way. 
          There must be a salve.

About the reviewer

Jonathan Taylor is an author, editor, critic and lecturer. His books include the novel Melissa (Salt, 2015), the poetry collection Cassandra Complex (Shoestring, 2018), and the memoir Take Me Home (Granta, 2007). He directs the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. His website is www.jonathanptaylor.co.uk. 

Review by Bobba Cass of Author Event with Carol Leeming MBE FRSA at Everybody's Reading Festival 2019

This evening of the festival celebrated the writing of one of Leicester's outstanding poets.  Carol Leeming read from her contributions to collections about Leicester, Welcome to Leicester and An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Leicester, and from her own publications, The Declamations of Cool Eye and the forthcoming, The Eclipse of Dread. The poetry moved from place to person to politics, giving the audience an integration of intensity and vision.

And it was an audience to honour our city - diverse in ethnicity, gender and age with a particular De Montfort University following from the Confucius Institute. Perhaps outstanding was the selection from Love the Life You Live, Live the Life You Love, the second of what will be a choreopoem trilogy. Here Leeming's rootedness in Leicester enables a monologue sustained in dialect and rude in reflection.

And the audience went away wanting more. The Eclipse of Dread promises to be an excoriation of Thatcher's Britain with scrutinies most apposite for our times.


About the reviewer
Bobba Cass is a grey poet and gay grandad who organises a monthly open-mic poetry event, Pinggg...K!, and writes children's fables for Creatures Creatives Collective.

Review by Lee Wright of "An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Leicester" ed. Jon Wilkins

In 1975 the French novelist and filmmaker Georges Perec spent three days recording the everyday events he witnessed through different café windows in the Saint-Sulpice Square.  The result of this became the much-loved An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, a short collection of observations that has since been held up as an example of good writing. It is an eerie, fascinating read, turning the somewhat innocent act of people watching into something more surreal and sinister. The short book takes the reader on a journey of secrecy, privacy and voyeurism. So much so, that Perec’s piece deserves to be on the bookshelf next to the best collections of Raymond Carver, who in turn was fascinated by and wrote about similar subjects.  

Inspired by Perec’s work, writer Jon Wilkins has published and contributed to his own attempt at exhausting a place. His new anthology An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Leicester brings together seventy-three separate pieces comprising stories, poetry and monologues by a whole host of writers in an attempt to wring out everything that makes up the city of Leicester. And there is some rich material to exploit. Authors such as Colin Wilson, Sue Townsend, Joe Orton and Julian Barnes were all born of the city. In recent times there has been the exhumation and reburial of Richard III and of course Leicester City’s Premier league win of 2016. But it is the little things written about the city that hold the most pleasure. Poet and musician Lauren M Foster’s poem, 'Bus Stop, Woodhouse Eaves,' opens with the lines:

It’s late.
I wait
some more.

And goes on to describe two separate conversations which end with the poet graffitiing the bus stop timetable whilst waiting for the bus that never arrives. This short poem best captures the inconsequential moments that Perec was striving for when he wrote his Paris project. So too does Lisa Williams’s flash fiction piece, 'Community,' which captures a ripple-effect moment in Victoria Park that is as beautiful as it is satirical. There are also reminisces of being bought apples from Leicester market and political poems of belonging. But the best parts of this anthology are the ones which read like a water-damaged love letter to the small moments as they happen in the city - which Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris was all about. 


About the reviewer
Lee Wright was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire in 1980 and has been writing both fiction and non-fiction since 2008. He has just completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester.