Review by Simon Elson of "The Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham

If you haven’t read The Day of the Triffids, then firstly I envy you as you can read it for the first time, but secondly, I bet you know what a Triffid is. The book turns seventy this year and is the perfect example of the sci-fi sub-genre Post-Apocalyptic. You may have seen one of the two BBC adaptations, the first made in 1981 starring John Duttine was great, the second made in 2009 starring Eddie Izzard was mediocre at best. The 1962 film starring Howard Keel has the same name but it didn’t seem to be based on the book I’ve read!   

I digress, back to the book. It takes the form of a first-person memoir by Bill Masen and you only know what he knows; any further information is told to Bill and recounted by him. It starts with him in hospital with his eyes bandaged after a Triffid sting nearly killed him. During the previous night what was described by the news as a comet storm lit up the night sky and was a worldwide phenomenon. Bill, however, later suggests a different cause for the lights. Everyone who watched the display is now blind. You quickly learn that he has no dependents or relatives alive and is in a unique position to tell us about the origin of the strange plant.

The novel follows his adventure through London where he meets his future partner Josella Playton, an infamous novelist who had written a Fifty Shades style of book. He battles with both the Triffids and the fact that most other people are now blind. An interesting minor character is Coker, an Orator – a voice for hire, who starts off as an enemy of Bill.     

The author John Wyndham is almost prophetic in this work. The Cold War was only a few years old when he wrote it, yet he has it escalating to what it became in the sixties. The space race, satellites (Sputnik was launched seven years after it was written), a weapons defence system that sounded very much like the STAR WARS system proposed by Reagan in the eighties and genetically modified crops are all described perfectly.

A lot of classic sci-fi novels (Jules Verne and H. G. Wells etc) whilst still excellent have noticeably aged, whereas The Day of The Triffids with the exception of a couple of paragraphs (mainly describing News-reels at the cinema) could have been written yesterday 

I’ve read most of Wyndham’s other novels. The Kraken Wakes runs this book a very close second. In 2009 a ‘lost’ novel of his, Plan For Chaos, was published posthumously. It was, for me as a lifetime Wyndham fan, a disappointment. Some critics described it as almost unreadable. I’ll remember him for the almost perfect novel The Day Of the Triffids.      

   

About the reviewer
Simon Elson is a Freelance Features Writer. His articles  have appeared in numerous national magazines including Best of British, Derbyshire Life and Writing Magazine. He also writes for the popular cycling website Veloballs.com and has been a guest blogger on The Huffington Post.   

Interview with Gail Aldwin

Gail Aldwin is a novelist, poet and scriptwriter. Her debut novel The String Games was a finalist in The People’s Book Prize and the DLF Writing Prize 2020. Her first children’s picture book Pandemonium was warmly received. In July 2021, Gail’s second novel This Much Huxley Knows will be released. It tells the story of community tensions during Brexit from the viewpoint of a seven-year-old narrator. Gail regularly appears at literary and fringe festivals. Prior to Covid-19, Gail volunteered at Bidibidi in Uganda, the second-largest refugee settlement in the world. Her home overlooks water meadows in Dorset. 

Interviewed by Dawn Knox

DK: Why do you write?

GA: As humans, I think we all need a creative outlet. For others, it may be cooking or gardening or painting, but for me, it’s all about writing. I find the whole process absorbing: from the terror of a blank page to the gruelling process of getting a first draft down. The drafting and redrafting bring joy. I love the way stories become nuanced and layered with more detail and crafting applied. I find nailing the plot the biggest challenge and when it’s done, this brings the greatest satisfaction.

DK: What do you write?

GA: Like most other people, there are shopping lists, birthday cards, emails even the odd letter. Of course, my most focused forms of writing are for publication and include contemporary novels, poetry and short fiction. I also co-write plays and comedy sketches that have been performed at venues in Dorset, Brighton and Salisbury. When I set out in 2009 to become a published writer, I never imagined I would also have a children’s picture book published. Writing for children was the last thing on my mind! It was while working as a lecturer delivering input on children’s books to students at the University of South Wales that I struck upon the idea for Pandemonium. Over the years the idea for a cheeky panda causing havoc in a department store developed. The proposal for a full-colour children’s picture book aimed at 2–7-year-olds was accepted by Victorina Press and Fiona Zechmeister appointed as the illustrator. It was then the intensive collaborative work began to ensure the text told one story and the illustrations told a parallel and more nuanced version. 

DK: Who do you write for?

GA: When writing fiction, I always have the reader in mind. I strike upon one person (usually female) and create an imagined dialogue with them as the work progresses. I don’t go as far as giving them a name but I’m pretty clear about their age, family commitments, work, interests etc. When I’m sure about who I’m writing for, it’s easier to tailor the voice of my characters and the plot to its readership. Without this in mind, my story could easily get wildly out of hand and go down all sorts of avenues and dead ends. For poetry, the process is different with a focus on patterns of words and images. 

DK: When do you write?

GA: Starting out as a writer, I was still working as a teacher and bringing up my two children. I got up at 5am each weekday to secure quiet time dedicated to writing. I no longer have a day job but I continue to get up early to complete a few writing tasks before breakfast. With more free time, I approach writing flexibly. If I don’t sleep well, you’ll find me tapping away at my laptop. It’s not good sleep hygiene but when ideas are flying around my head, I like to pin them down. 

DK: Where do you write?

GA: I share a desk with my husband in a back bedroom of our Dorset home. He has the lion’s share of the space and I’m bundled at one end. I don’t mind because when I’ve got my head down, the writing environment really doesn’t matter. So long as it’s quiet and there’s a power point, I simply plug in my laptop and get to work. 

DK: How do you write?

GA: Plotting is the most difficult part of writing a novel. I now plan to the nth degree before committing a word to the page. In the past, I’ve wasted too much time writing without knowing where the story was going to attempt that again. I write most things on a laptop but I always have a notebook at my side and my diary. I like to set deadlines and make ‘to do’ lists which help to keep me on top of the process. Writing a novel is an unwieldy beast only tamed by good organisation! When working collaboratively on comedy sketches and scripts, my co-writers and I use an online website called WritersDuet. This enables us to work on one document from our different homes and we talk using a WhatsApp group call. This works well and I even contributed to some comedy sketches using this method while I volunteered in Uganda. 

About the interviewer

Dawn Knox enjoys writing in different genres and has had romances, speculative fiction, sci-fi, humorous and women’s fiction published in magazines, anthologies, pocket novels and books. She’s also had two plays about World War One performed internationally which led to the book, The Great War: 100 Stories of 100 Words Honouring Those Who Lived and Died 100 Years Ago. Recent books include The Macaroon Chronicles, a series of quirky adventures on the exotic Isle of Macaroon with Eddie and his zany friends. It is written in a similar style to The Basilwade Chronicles. Both are published by Chapeltown Books. And her latest is written with writer friend, Colin Payn, and is a cli-fi romance called The Future Brokers. You can follow Dawn on her blog here. She is on Twitter here.

This interview was first published on Dawn's blog here. 

Review by Sally Evans of "Upturned Earth" by Karen Jennings

A men’s book written by a woman, this historical novel about late-nineteenth-century mining conditions in a South African township is a thoroughly researched and detailed portrayal of a community of poverty-stricken workers dependent on mine work for a living. It cleverly keeps the workers in view, using a few middle-men with various degrees of conscience to hold the story together. 

Blindly overseeing rough justice, Hull, the new magistrate, deals with fights and spats in the corrupt society. He comes across the boy Noki whose brother has been arrested and disappears. Noki’s search for his brother holds the timeline of the story, until the inevitable mine disaster in which Noki is one of the few to survive. The incompetent Hull faces up to his shortcomings, leaving his amateur natural history studies to warn the sympathetic rich mine owner’s daughter away as she tries to intervene in a workers' strike on behalf of her absent father. Their incipient romance is torn apart as she is sent home with her jars of homemade jam intended to feed the starving. Her father, brought back from the comfort of Johannesburg, sends his daughter back to England and deals with the strike in the only way he knows, with soldiers and a massacre. There are strong male characters among both workers and controllers, but mostly the women come packaged as ‘women and children’ or are otherwise drunk and in despair. 

The acceptance of rough and ready life, dangerous sea transport, lack of education and comforts, poor communications and uncheckced wickedness, give this world a grim reality. We come to believe in the boy Noki, the Cornishman Tregowning, and the motley nature of this mining community. Sympathising with Noki and to some extent with Hull, the reader is drawn into the unfolding disastrous story to make a racy and unusual novel. 

It is always difficult to guess how individuals would respond to historical conditions. What knowledge can we have of people’s feelings in such times?  A novel such as Upturned Earth fills the gaps in historical records with imagination and informed guesswork. We are shown the responses both of the workers caught up this situation and their overseers, as these men rationalise the harsh world they are helping to maintain.

There isn’t room for more women in this book. The kindly but immature Iris – Hull uses her first name but once – is sent back to England. Jam making, and looking after her young privileged son, are all she is fit for. Was it absence of power among women that made those worlds so harsh? Was it an acceptance that mining was necessarily inhuman?

This book enlivens history, the purpose of historical fiction, and looks critically at an actual industry, which is something that can be done better in fiction than in reports. A nicely produced book and a worthwhile read. 

About the reviewer
Sally Evans is a bookseller and poet.Her books include The Bees (2008) and Poetic Adventures in Scotland (2014), both from Diehard publishers. She edited Poetry Scotland for 20 years, and is currently studying for a PhD at Lancaster University. Her novel Wildgoose: A Tale of Two Poets is due out from Red Squirrel's Postbox Press soon.

Review by Tony R. Cox of "The Beloved Children" by Tina Jackson

The Beloved Children is skilfully crafted and delights with every page, every character, every action and a plot that trips the light fantastic with the touch of a master wordsmith.

The central characters, the Three Graces and the surreal, magical wardrobe mistress and her even weirder Russian ragdoll, meet up in Fankes Music Hall in 1940s wartime London. The teenagers’ dancing establishes them in vaudeville as well as the hearts (and elsewhere) of the audiences of servicemen. Author Tina Jackson’s crafted words dance on every page. They flow and wave, weave, dip, bow and curtsey, pirouette, twirl, trip, slip and entice, and always captivate. At the end of every chapter the reader takes a breath and smiles at the audacity of the almost physical movements of the writing. But such choreography requires strict discipline and, while Jackson’s writing is almost florescent, every word has its defined place and role.

Jackson’s characterisation brings wartime London and music hall entertainment to vivid life. There’s brutality, brutal relationships, rampant egos, beauty and style, weird and wonderful characters, heinous crime and retribution, villains and heroes, and the constant threat of a single bomb, physical and metaphysical, falling to obliterate everything and everyone.

Rarely do I pick up a book and read just for the sheer pleasure of experiencing a free-flowing style that knits and sews the plot seamlessly into the lightness of touch. The Beloved Children is a flowing, twisting, turning adventure through blitzed and dangerous London up to the present day.

The Beloved Children is also the only book I’ve read where the word ‘Terpsichorean,’ and its many shortened and linked forms, are used so often and to such great effect.

About the reviewer

Tony R. Cox is an ex-regional journalist, ex-public relations consultant and now the author of the Simon Jardine crime thriller series, which features a young reporter who is drawn into the plot through his search for a front page lead story. Published by Fahrenheit Press. He was born in London, and has lived in Scotland, Cheshire,  Pakistan and Derbyshire, and is now retired in Leicestershire. Writing has never been a choice; it’s been a drug since he was at school.

Review by Katy Johnson of "Love You Gone" by Louise Mullins

I love a psychological thriller involving entangled relationships and when I saw that this one was set in Bristol where I grew up, I couldn’t wait to get started!

Gemma, an 18 year-old student with her life ahead of her, has disappeared and is soon found to have been murdered. As the story unfolds, it’s clear there’s no shortage of people who’d like to have seen Gemma gone including her stepfather, real father, friend (and love rival), her tutor with whom she was having an affair, his wife, and Gemma’s angry boyfriend. I love the way the author peels back the layers of these multi-faceted characters to reveal their innermost thoughts and secrets, and reasons to hate each other as their lives intertwined.

My favourite character is the person best equipped to solve the mystery, investigative journalist Rachel – but she’s an alcoholic and has a history with one of the suspects, so is she reliable? Can she trust her own addled judgement, and can she stay safe?

I’m obviously biased when it comes to the setting but I felt it was ideal, with the iconic suspension bridge the perfect place for the dramatic climax, which would make a great TV scene. I recognised the places (right down to my local coffee shop!) which made it even easier to visualise the scenes in this suspenseful read.

Love You Gone is a fast-paced, twisty read that I devoured in one go, and highly recommend to fans of psychological suspense. 

About the reviewer
Katy Johnson is a bookworm, blogger and writer with a passion for flawed characters, dysfunctional families, old houses and dark secrets. She's a journalist, editor and author of four novels including The Suspects, and a history book, published as Katharine Johnson. When not writing or reviewing, she can generally be found drinking coffee, walking with her canine writing buddy, or patching up a small farmhouse in Italy where two of her books are set. This review was first published on her blog here.

Interview with Linda Rosen

Linda Rosen is a twice-published author living in America. Formerly a fitness professional, Linda became a novelist when her debut The Disharmony of Silence was published in March 2020. Linda’s second novel is Sisters of the Vine, published in March 2021. Her books are set in the “not-too-distant past” and examine how women reinvent themselves despite obstacles thrown their way. Linda was a contributor to Women in the Literary Landscape: A WNBA Centennial Publication for the Women's National Book Association and has had stories published in online magazines and print anthologies. She is a member of the Women's Fiction Writers Association and the Women’s National Book Association where she is National Recording Secretary and Selections Coordinator of the Great Group Reads committee which chooses books for National Reading Group Month. Her website is here.

About Sisters of the Vine

Housewife and mother with a loving husband to take care of her – that’s all Liz, a Fifties gal, ever wanted. Over her father’s objections, she drops out of college to marry Rick, who dreams of living off the land. They buy a farm on a verdant hillside in the Hudson Valley, but can’t agree on what to plant. When they discover French-American hybrid grapes, Liz is confident they’ll be happy. Grapes are classy.

As the rich soil sinks into her soul and the vines begin to thrive, the marriage grows rocky. Refusing to disappoint her father again, Liz is determined to make her marriage work ... until she discovers a photograph hidden in the old barn.

Faced with impossible decisions, Liz is desperate. She has a vineyard ready to harvest and no idea how to accomplish the task. Does she have the moxie to flourish? Or will she and the land turn fallow?

Sisters of the Vine was published in March 2021 by Black Rose Writing. 

Interview with Gail Aldwin

GA: Sisters of the Vine is your second novel. Can you tell us about your debut, The Disharmony of Silence? 

LR: Thanks for asking. I’m happy to. The Disharmony of Silence is about a clandestine love affair in 1920s Brooklyn that leads to a family secret held for eighty-four years. Carolyn Lee, the protagonist, is desperate for family. When she discovers this shocking secret, she is determined, against all advice, to reveal it. The secret has the potential to tear lives apart. Or, it could bring her the closeness and comfort she longs for. It all depends on how she handles it.

GA: The Disharmony of Silence was published at the start of the pandemic. How did this impact on you as a writer launching a debut novel?

LR: Actually, having my debut published during this time was, for me, the silver lining in this pandemic. With book events all turning to virtual, I was able to “meet” readers from all over, from places I never would have gotten to if events were in person. In addition, the writing community is extremely giving and many well-published authors stepped up to help promote me, as well as my fellow 2020 debuts. Facebook groups were formed with on-line book clubs and podcasts and Zoom took over virtual book talks and interviews. I’ve met so many wonderful writers who I now call friends. And met readers, who I probably never would have met if not for Covid 19 shutting down in-person events. That said, I am looking forward to this pandemic being over and am so very sorry for everyone who has lost a loved one to this horrendous virus. 

GA: A sense of place is important in Sisters of the Vine. How do you choose your settings?

LR: Thank you. I worked hard for the vineyard to come alive. Settings are so important to me when I read a novel that I wanted to make mine evocative. I want my readers to inhabit place, smell the aromas and feel the textures. Therefore, I choose places that I know well, where I’ve walked the streets and ate the food, heard the birds sing, or, as in Sisters of the Vine, stood in vineyards, felt the grapes in my fingers, smelled the rich moist earth and tasted the bold wine. 

GA: I understand the vine to be symbolic of womanhood in your novel. Was this your intention?

LR: Absolutely. The original title for the book was Flourish because as the vines flourished, so did Liz and the women. I’m glad the title changed. Sisters of the Vine is so much better and, as I wrote the second and third drafts, and more, the vineyard became more of a character, more of a metaphor for Liz’s life and for all the women in the story – hopefully for all women in general.

GA: An inherited diamond marquise ring features in Sisters of the Vine. Why did you include a piece of jewellery in each of your novels?

LR: The Disharmony of Silence centers around the mystery of a cameo brooch. The painting in the story, of a woman wearing a cameo, is actually what brought me to write the book. When I added the diamond ring to Sisters of the Vine, it didn’t dawn on me that I had something going with jewellery. When it was pointed out to me that jewellery is part of my brand, I decided to stick with that and I’m adding an emerald to the book I’m working on now. So, to answer your question, I suppose it is simply organic. I hadn’t planned it for books one and two, but now, for future books, I am.  

GA: In Sisters of the Vine, we see the women characters offering each other mutual support. How do you plan character development in your novels?

LR: Before I begin writing, I give my main characters a full biography: birth date, color of hair and eyes, body type, marital status, etc. and then I go deeper to their personalities, their idiosyncrasies, emotional triggers, habits, even if they get along with their mothers. I make them human, to the point that one day I was walking down the street and saw someone coming towards me and almost told my friend who was walking with me that the woman looked just like Carolyn (my protagonist in Disharmony)! Sometimes something happens when I wonder what Liz or Carolyn, Kate or any other character would say. I hope my characters are as real to my readers as they are to me.

GA: You’ve now had two novels published, what’s next?

LR: In addition to being interviewed and having virtual book talks for Sisters of the Vine, I’m working on book 3 set in South Florida in the late 1960s. At this point, I’m getting words on the page. I am what’s called a pantser. I don’t outline or plan too far ahead. I know my characters, my theme, and I have an idea where I’m going with the story and I let it come to me organically. The characters talk to me and sometimes when I wish they would keep quiet so I can sleep! It’s fun. And this has been fun, too, answering all your questions. Thank you for having me.

About the interviewer
Gail is a novelist, poet and scriptwriter. Her debut coming-of-age novel The String Games was a finalist in The People’s Book Prize and the DLF Writing Prize 2020. Following a stint as a university lecturer, Gail’s children’s picture book Pandemonium was published. Prior to Covid-19, she volunteered at Bidibidi in Uganda, the second largest refugee settlement in the world. Her second novel, a contemporary story for adults, This Much Huxley Knows, uses a seven-year-old boy narrator to show the adult world in a new light and will be released in July 2021. It explores friendship and community tensions during the Brexit referendum. When she’s not gallivanting around the world, Gail writes at her home in Dorset. Find out more about Gail on social media: Blog: https://gailaldwin.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/gailaldwin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gailaldwinwriter/

This interview was first published on Gail's blog here. 

Review by Jon Wilkins of "Scent" by Isabel Costello

“For the greatest burden is to exist without living”: this quote by Victor Hugo begins our read and, throughout the novel, we are to ask ourselves, is Clementine living the life she deserves or the life she has created for herself? Why does it seem she is being punished? What has she done in the past to be deserving of her fate?

This is a really beautifully written book with delicate depictions of character, place, and time. I was enchanted by it. Clementine is a well-crafted person and so believable. 

She makes perfume in her artisan shop in Paris. I can smell this scent, just as I can smell the city of Paris and the countryside of Provence, and when we visit Marseille all the smells of the city and the sea are there for us to indulge in. This is so appropriate for a book entitled Scent. But what scent are we to follow?

It is this that makes the novel so believable, almost tactile in its descriptions and imaginings. I love the scene of her apartment and the energy that flows from the page when she describes it - and her place of work with its inner cocoon where she mixes her perfumes and is safe until a figure from the past arrives. Her former surroundings of Provence with its heat and its history weigh heavily on the outcome.

Clementine is a complex character trapped in a loveless marriage to Édouard, flirting with the idea of an affair with Frédéric when a lover from the past, Racha, arrives in her perfume shop. What chaos will she bring to her life, a life she has chosen to lead in a particular way after the frenzy of her youth and her mother's constant vitriol?

Her assistant Suzanne, a Vietnamese woman who we thought might also be a candidate for an affair, looks down on her just as she looks down on Clementine’s best friend Martha, who looks down on everyone else. It is a strange cast of characters and also a large one, with each being developed cleverly as an individual and recognisable to the reader as a person in their own right. Bastien, Clementine's gay son who hates his father, and Apollinaire her daughter, Édouard’s favourite who is out in Australia, are just as important as Frédéric the antique shop owner. Then there is Dolores, the impossible customer striving for a perfume that is just out of reach for the creator and the wearer.

You can see there are so many avenues that we can be taken along, and indeed we are. I think you have to read this. It is an intense, yet delicate story of love lost and love wanted … but also complex in the way we are asked to dissect the outcome of Clementine’s musing. Just what scent is she following and can she find it?

About the reviewer
Jon Wilkins is sixty-five. He has a gorgeous wife Annie and two beautiful sons, and loves to write. He is a retired teacher, lapsed Waterstones’ bookseller and former Basketball Coach. He taught PE and English for twenty years and coached women’s basketball for over thirty years.  He has always loved books and reading. You can read a review of Jon's recent novel, Poppy Flowers at the Front, here. His website is here. 

Review by Simon Elson of "The Separation" by Christopher Priest

My favourite novel genre is sci-fi (preferably earth-based and near-future). I’ve read most of Jules Verne, a lot of H. G. Wells and pretty much all John Wyndham, although recently I’ve been reading World War Two fiction – Ben Elton and Jack Higgins. The other day on a recommended books list a title I’d not heard of popped up - The Separation by Christopher Priest (published 2001) that straddled both genres. It’s already making ‘classic sci-fi’ lists after just a couple of decades. 

Its subject matter of Nazi Germany alternative history has been done a lot: Fatherland by Robert Harris, The Man in The High Castle by Phillip K Dick, SS-GB by Len Deighton, 48 by James Herbert to name just a few of them.  Because of this I nearly passed on it. I’m glad I didn’t. It was different to all the books I mentioned; it was a novel with a real ‘Oh!’ moment at the end and then a sleepless night trying to make sense of the whole book.

I hope my last comment and the sci-fi label won’t put you off. It’s not a Hitler-wins-war scenario where England lives in fear. It starts in the present day and tells its narrative through several people’s first-person memories and historical documents.

The style of it, rather than being like alternative history, was more like normal historical fiction. it reminded me a little of Robert Harris’s book Munich rather than his Fatherland. I’d also say in places there was also a touch of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five without (spoiler alert for people who haven’t read S-H-5) the aliens.     

There were plot twists and turns all the way right up to the last full stop. If I’d been reading a physical copy of the book, I’d have been aware of arriving at the last page as I would have run out of paper to turn but reading an electronic copy it was less obvious. I tried to read the next page to find notes about the author. ‘WHAT…’ was my thought, so I turned back and re-read the last couple of pages, savouring them more the second time, then finally understanding the end (I think) after an hour or so of not sleeping, even though it was late. 

If when I’ve finished a book, I think ‘Oh no, I’ll never read that book again for the first time’ then that’s how I judge how good it was. This was one of those books.

  

About the reviewer
Simon Elson is a Freelance Features Writer. His articles  have appeared in numerous national magazines including Best of British, Derbyshire Life and Writing Magazine. He also writes for the popular cycling website Veloballs.com and has been a guest blogger on The Huffington Post.

Review by Kathleen Bell of "Travellers" by Michelene Wandor

Travellers by Michelene Wandor is a thin book with great depth. The eleven poems within repay many re-readings. They suit this time. When we’re urged by politicians and the media to take single, simple views about almost everything, these poems offer complexity and multiple perspectives. Even 'Beached,' at two pages the shortest poem in the book, keeps shifting viewpoint ranging from the texture of cowrie shells 'fine ridged, oval' to the surfer 'haloed spiderman red / by the sinking sun' and the 'crow-black verger' sweeping sand from the cathedral nave.

Other poems are more complex still. 'The Clock of Heaven: a Fugue' begins with a Marc Chagall painting but reaches back through time to John Harrison, inventor of the marine chronometer. It travels across seas too, taking us on a voyage where 'winds whistle and sing,' listing luxuries associated with colonialism and plunder – 'cloves gold silver pearls / diamonds calico ebony,' pausing to hear Harrison play the viola da gamba, before whirling out into the expanse of space where 'the earth is a cog in the clockwork universe.'

Shifts of power play out in the Biblical story and handed-down tales of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Even in the opening sensual encounter there are warnings of a future in which 'women’s voices and / instruments will be banned' – a prohibition later lifted. In the final section a family of Ethiopian Jews, now outlawed, encounter the poet in Regent’s Park where 'isn’t it strange' one woman says to her, 'how we live / such different lives.'

'Travellers' and 'Two Men' explore, obliquely, hundred-year-old roots of today’s Middle East conflicts. The 'Travellers,' Gertrude Bell and T. E. Lawrence, meet in the desert. Both have found happier selves in Arabia: 'he has quitted his English self / in England she is just a woman, an empty jar / here she is in linen and khaki.' But for all this, their first loyalty lies with their own government. 'The British will break their promises' the poem’s commentary reminds us. 'They have sold the same camel twice.' The 'Two Men' are Khalil al-Sakakini and Alter Levine, both poets, imprisoned together in 1917 because 'the word "guest" is sacred from Jordan to Euphrates.' There is some common ground but also crucially different hopes for a future in the same land. Finally free, 'they take down the tent and depart.'

About the reviewer
Kathleen Bell's new poetry pamphlet Do You Know How Kind I Am? will be published shortly by Leafe Press. A book-length collection, Disappearances, is scheduled for publication by Shoestring in the autumn. Until last year Kathleen taught Creative Writing at De Montfort University. She lives in the East Midlands.

You can read more about Travellers by Michelene Wandor, and an extract from it, on Creative Writing at Leicester here.