I currently have three books in my reading sphere: Edward Carey’s Edith Holler, his latest novel with his customary drawings, Gill Paul’s Scandalous Women, a very kind gift from Gill herself (thank you again!), and the book I’m often reading aloud to my rabbit because she likes it, Sarah Marsh’s A Sign Of Her Own, which is a book I read in full last year.

I’m going to start with Edith Holler. This book is very much in line with what I’ve previously read of Carey’s work, albeit that my experience is limited to one non-fiction (with illustrations) and some knowledge of a backlisted novel. It’s… kooky. I prefer that word to ‘strange’ even if kooky is a synonym for it because it’s more odd than anything eerie or creepy. It has its eerie moments – there’s a veil of the paranormal – but it’s unknown, at least at 270-odd pages in as I am currently as I write this, whether the paranormal is real.

I think I’d better include a premise – Edith is a 12-year-old girl in newly-Edwardian Norwich who lives in her father’s theatre along with a plethora of staff members. She has a great knowledge of her city but it’s knowledge she’s gained through books as she’s not allowed to leave the theatre – she was cursed by a scary child-disappearer that if she left the theatre, the theatre would fall down. It’s a novel where you know instantly you’ve got an unreliable narrator but you’re not sure by how much, especially as you get dialogue from the various members of the theatre family.

What I’m liking perhaps the most about this book is the way Carey’s used his drawings to supplement the purposefully limited evidence the reader has with which to form a conclusion as to what’s going on – the drawings are, by and large, of cardboard theatre cut-outs, child’s toys. Edith’s words suggest mental illness, or child abuse, or a play-within-a-book. The drawings add a suggestion of bog standard playtime.

It’s a fascinating novel – totally bonkers and full of internal monologue (fitting for a theatrical novel, really), with a very slow but steady build up to the truth. There’s some constant irritation for you, the reader, in Edith’s story, but never enough to make you want to give up. It reminds me rather of Paula Lichtarowicz’s The First Book Of Calamity Leek which had a similar flavour to Carey’s book but not – at least I believe at this point – the same reveal. (I wrote a second post on Lichtarowicz’s book in what is now way back in 2015. I ended up reading the novel again a few years later.)

My latest read – a secondary book on the go – is Gill Paul’s Scandalous Women, which is out tomorrow insofar as my writing this post goes (29th August). I had previously banked on Paul’s Another Woman’s Husband being my favourite of her books – though, disclaimer, that is still on my to-be-read – but having begun her tale of Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins, I have a feeling this latest one may end up being it. I’m at page 18 and already have something to discuss; the prologue creates a fictional TV interview (chatshow host variety, just with two guests going at it while the host looks on) between Paul’s entirely fictional editor character, Nancy, and the entirely factual Truman Capote. Paul notes Capote as a ‘longtime adversary’ of Susann’s – I double-checked this fact and, as it turns out, he didn’t much like Jackie Collins either – and has written a fictional interview that sounds very real in terms of structure and overall content. (This probably shouldn’t be a surprise because she also writes non-fiction; one of the things I love about Paul’s work is the way that you can never be sure – unless you know already or have read her author’s note – exactly what is fact and what is fiction.) I think it’s the boldness of the end of the interview I like the most; it involves what we’d now call assault and is quite shocking, while the host continues to look on. There’s a general misogyny subtext in the act, too, adding to the more blatant misogyny in chapter one.

I also like the way Paul has included a third person in a similar way as she did in A Beautiful Rival. In the latterly-mentioned book, the person is a real person but most of her story is fictional because history doesn’t say much about her; in Scandalous Women the person’s entirely fictional but has a job that was a very real position.

Lastly, Sarah Marsh’s A Sign Of Her Own which is about Ellen, a fictional pupil of telephone inventor Alexander Bell, who studies his ‘Visible Speech’ method of teaching deaf children how to speak because, in sum, we can’t possibly allow deaf people to speak in sign language oh the horror they must speak properly and integrate with the hearing population! Reading this aloud has made me appreciate language and the way words sound so much more than any other book I’ve read extracts aloud from. (My rabbit also likes The Great Gatsby but has shown a distaste for Pride And Prejudice – I’ve come to the conclusion it has to do with how much dialogue there is in any given book and how animated I am therefore or there-not. She is against hearing about Mrs Bennet’s poor nerves as much as Mr Bennet is.)

Through Marsh’s honing in on the way words are pronounced, the way the lips are shaped, and words that look similar or the same on the lips, you end up with a prose unlike any other and one that is interestingly perfect to be read aloud. (The first chapter is mostly dedicated to Ellen’s wondering why the two men with her are going on about peaches until they remember she exists and notice her confusion – it’s speeches, not peaches.) I suppose this is in tandem or a continuation of my interest in the way Marsh uses language in general – written, spoken, signed and, in the ARC, where quotation marks were included or left out – but I don’t think I would have appreciated this aspect of the book if I hadn’t actually read it aloud.

There is definitely something to be said for reading books aloud and A Sign Of Her Own is the absolute pinnacle for me in this. There is probably a whole post on this somewhere in my mind – Carey’s book is proving to be very fun and fittingly theatrical to read aloud. I’m loving it.

(My rabbit hates it.)

If you’ve made it this far in my ramblings, I salute you because I’m aware this is indeed very rambly! I definitely notice more and more, the more I read, and the more I read with different purposes (reading for pure pleasure is very different to reading for review which is very different to reading for interview which is very different to reading aloud) the more literature continues to become alive and the further the concepts and skill and application of both seem to reach.

Episode 105: Natalie Jenner

Charlie and Natalie Jenner discuss the war years and 1950s Italian film industry and the Vatican’s authority over it, changing working practices after being accused of discrimination, and including still-living celebrities in your book.

If you’re unable to use the media player above, this page has various other options for listening as well as the transcript.

Extreme choices.

Izabela meets Bill when he’s brought to her farm by the Nazis as part of a work team; the Nazis occupy Czechoslovakia but want to keep the industry going and when Izzy’s mother says that yes, they could do with some help on the farm (Izzy’s father and older brother have gone to fight in the resistance) the Nazis bring a couple of British prisoners of war. Izzy falls for Bill fairly quickly as he does her; her English isn’t good (and, to be fair, his Czech is non-existent) but it happens. And then the looks and touches and secret conversations turn into a longing to be together. Izzy makes a tremendous decision; she’ll join Bill and do a runner. The pair do so with Izzy dressed as a boy, hair shorn. It’s against everything in the wartime ‘rules’. Discovery would mean death.

The Prisoner’s Wife is an exhilarating tale of mental strength and deception. Based on a true story and told via a couple of different narratives – Izzy’s and Bill’s, which I’ll expand on in a moment – it provides an at times awful but nevertheless compelling and immersive story that leaves you with a couple of threads untied for a dramatic and meaningful finish.

Starting with the writing, Brookes’ prose is wondrous, fully of imagery and detailing that makes everything easy to picture. Too easy to picture, you might lament, when the horrors arrive, as you know they will. There are many chapters confined to very small places, yet these come alive as much as those of wider scope, owing to Brookes’ skill when it comes to description and, arguably, storytelling in general.

That then supports the earlier notion of immersion; an expansion must be made on narrative. Brookes does something very literary with her narratives. You have the regular choice – as there have been many books that do such by this time – of two narratives split by point of view as to cover both main characters, and a further choice to write one in first person and one in third. So far, so normal. But with Brookes’ story and her inclusion of language as a continual plot thread, the narrative takes on an additional purpose. Izzy’s command of English is slight, and in disguise she must remain mute so that her voice does not betray her. So then Brookes’ first person narrative shows the progression of Izzy’s English comprehension as well as provides the reader a way to know about her when she cannot speak. The latter is perhaps pretty obvious, but the former is particularly interesting for the way and times Brookes chooses to focus on it – at the start Izzy thinks a lot about English but by the end her progression is far more in the subtext. And then you have Bill’s third person narrative – it’s not so focused (he gets dialogue after all) and creates an interesting distance between him and yourself, the reader, where you end up caring far more for Izzy, the person who stands to lose so much more. You may even get irritated with Bill on occasion – he is far from the perfect person in Brookes’ narrative, away from any commentary on his situation as a prisoner of war, and is in fact often eclipsed by the other main (somewhere between main and secondary) characters.

These other characters, then, they must be noted. Staying away from where they are located and who they are exactly as to avoid spoilers, you have Ralph, who becomes very important to Izzy, Max, who is a more quiet, bookish, sort (it’s not major but there’s a book-about-books thread going on here), and Scotty, whose character development you are sure to enjoy. Indeed Brookes develops all three characters, and some others, very well so that the various themes and, certainly, the history we’re looking at here, is relaid all the better. Brookes’ employs every aspect of storytelling in her explanation of the various scenes, showing how everything contributes towards the greater whole in a particularly notable and poignant way.

Necessarily, given the circumstances, the romance is mostly confined to thoughts and certainly the thrill is in the deception. Where romantic thoughts come in they are Izzy’s, understandably. This all said, it’s in Izzy’s thoughts of romance that a fair amount of her character development can be found – she beings very much a young woman, taken up completely by thoughts of Bill and forgetting the world (which is of course really dangerous) and ends up mature beyond her years. Part of this development, which in some ways coexists with the use of language, is in Izzy’s adoption of the persona of the fictional boy she becomes. She starts to think in terms of Algernon Cousins, her secondary identity, which becomes interesting in itself.

Better get to history – I’ve spoken about near everything else at this point! Brookes ups the anti and fools you sometimes into thinking it’s alright (well, alright as alright can be in the situation). You do become somewhat immune to everything after a few chapters – oh, they’re on the run but they’re finding places to sleep… oh a POW camp is scary but there’s an established routine – but the answer to ‘how much worse can it get?’ is, probably (I won’t assume how much you know about the war) ‘worse’, every time. There are some unapologetically realistic authors of wartime fiction – people such as Kristin Harmel with her baby murders, Jennifer Robson with the gas chambers, and Vincent Lamb with things I’m still trying to forget to this day; Brookes is on the same level. This is the war, and you can have a romance and some happier times, but it is still a war.

Two last things of note. Firstly the question of class that is looked at in the novel – it takes a backseat because it’s not as important as… well, the subjects included in the previous paragraph, but Brookes does include a small study of classism in the army through one of her characters and the effects it has on a general level. This happens in a POW camp and in the POW camp we also see – second thing of note – some of the lesser-known tasks given to dissenting prisoners. Brookes spends a good few pages on the subject – it’s yucky. It’s also something this reviewer’s never read about before and she’s read a fair number of wartime novels.

In sum, then, The Prisoner’s Wife is an expertly written, page-turning, novel that will do well on the shelves of any reader of WW2 fiction and historical fiction in general. It has the characters, it has the facts, and it has its romance when the time is right.

Publisher: Century (Penguin)
Pages: 396
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-529-12428-6
First Published: 16th April 2020
Date Reviewed: 29th August 2024

This list isn’t exhausted; I’ve chosen to exclude books that I’ve reviewed and some I’ve posted about on Instagram – this post is an edited version of the books that have entered my life since April.

Chloe C Peñaranda: The Stars Are Dying – From the publisher for interview. This has a The Hunger Games-esque aspect to it with vampires, a romantasy with darkness. I’m very much looking forward to giving it a read.

Edward Carey: Edith Holler – From the publisher for interview. I’ve previously read Carey’s B: A Year In Plagues And Pencils and enjoyed his style (I’ve also a copy of his Madame Tussaud novel, Little, I really should read some time…)

Gill Paul: Scandalous Women – This is with much thanks to Gill Paul who gave me a copy of her book. It’s out in the UK now and looks at the work and rivalry of Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann. I have high hopes for this book.

Kaliane Bradley: The Ministry Of Time – I saw this book in a bookshop. No idea what it was about. I definitely have a thing for very plain covers with fonts that have been jazzed up. I now know that it’s about Arctic exploration and potentially some time travel.

Kristin Harmel: The Paris Daughter – Harmel’s latest book has been much lauded and I did love The Forest Of Vanishing Stars.

Kristy Woodson Harvey: A Happier Life – Woodson Harvey’s latest; I said in a TikTok video, and probably also on this blog, that since reading The Summer Of Songbirds I would be reading more Woodson Harvey. My second read, The Wedding Veil, confirmed it.

Sue Lynn Tan: Daughter Of The Moon Goddess – I first saw Tan’s book on Amazon and didn’t realise she was big on BookTok, at least it sounds like she was before I saw any videos.

Susan Stokes Chapman: The Shadow Key – I wanted to read Pandora back when it was released and never got around to it (and don’t have a copy either). I thought I’d get ahead of my inevitable desire for her second novel and buy a copy early.

Tan Twan Eng: The House Of Doors – Years ago I stayed at a monastery for a week (they had a guest house) and the bookshelf in the common room had a copy of The Garden Of Evening Mists. I kept meaning to pick it up and see what it was about, but didn’t. And then every now and then I’d remember it and knew I had too many books to read to consider it. Like with Susan Stokes Chapman, when this newer book was released I made a decision.

Toshikazu Kawaguchi: Before We Say Goodbye – My friend bought a copy of Before The Coffee Gets Cold a while back, and told me of Kawaguchi’s fame. I’ve suggested we read each of our books at the same time and compare as much as is possible.

Zadie Smith: The Fraud – I don’t believe this requires a comment!

I’m currently reading both Edith Holler and Scandalous Women, and The Stars Are Dying will follow as soon as one of those ‘slots’ is up for grabs. I’ve currently a podcast TBR and a not-podcast TBR to work with and that’s proving fairly manageable so far; I’ve been actively using the idea for a month or so after a few months of thinking about it.

Tell me about your latest books!

The rom-com of the summer.

Maya rushes to the Tube train; she’s late for work again. As she puts her makeup on she notices the incredibly hot guy sat across from her is looking at her; they begin conversing. Noah only recognises they’ve reached his station when they arrive and he rushes off the train, gesturing to Maya to call him. But he didn’t give her his number – they didn’t exchange any details. Then Maya finds the notebook he’s left behind; when, later, her co-workers push her to open it, she finds it’s full of a ‘thirty things to do before turning 30′ list. With her friends’ influence, she decides to go through the list herself one thing at a time, adapting the goals as needed (Maya’s never going to be a physiotherapist and she’s not sure about jumping out of a plane), in the hope that she’ll run into Noah at some point, give him back his notebook, and maybe forge a lasting connection. But in starting the list she meets an irritating guy at an art class, and then when her parents find out she wants to pursue her Masters, they request she starts looking for a husband at the same time. Maya’s life has been monotonous for years; she’s going to change that right now.

The Thirty Before Thirty List is Tasneem Abdur-Rashid’s second rom-com following 2022’s Finding Mr Perfectly Fine. If you had been hoping that book 2 (well, book 3 if you count her pseudonym) would be just as good as the first you’re in luck – it’s not just as good, it’s even better.

Leaving that there before I end up in full Marks And Spencers puns territory, The Thirty Before Thirty List has everything: solid plot, solid character development, a highly satisfying case of author answering the reader’s questions when they have them, and good pacing.

Told in the first person, you get a great sense for who Maya is but Abdur-Rashid never shies away from letting the reader figure things out before Maya does when it makes sense. There is in fact only one place where it takes Maya too long and that is arguably to show how in her own head Maya is; flawed characters, highly realistic and relatable characters, are Abdur-Rashid’s bread and butter.

There are many characters in this book that in other books might be too large a number, but here each character is developed enough within the scope of their literary placement (main, secondary, and so on) that it never becomes difficult to keep up and you never forget any of them either. Shout outs should be given to Maya’s mother, Maya’s brother Malik, cousins Pinky and Pretty, and co-worker Lucy, whose role as ever-closer-friend as the journey continues is rather lovely. There’s another interesting thread of friendship throughout as Maya gets to grips with best friend Dina’s continued (but not large) distance as the latter takes more time for her growing family and Maya works with these changes, learning to turn to others when Dina isn’t available and taking the moments Dina is available as special. (Anyone who’s at or been through that age when your friends or yourself are going through the changes brought about by having children will appreciate the author’s approach.)

All these words and not one about the romantic aspect… like Finding Mr Perfectly Fine, there are a few contenders here. There’s obviously Noah, the guy from the train; there’s Zakariya from art class (because you know he’ll be there somewhere); and then there’s the man Maya’s parents set her up to meet in a dekha dekhi arrangement. There are also a couple of other men involved in romances. Please note, artistic license may have been used here to prevent spoilers.

You find yourself working out what you think will happen, Abdur-Rashid says, ‘not so fast’, and this repeats throughout. It’s exhilarating – when you put the romance thread together with the use of communication in the book, Abdur-Rashid’s priorising of reader questions, laugh-out-loud humour, and nods to popular culture (Bridgerton gets two nods, thank me for that info later) you get a book that you want to finish as quick as you can because you want to find out what happens. You also find yourself in a situation where you mourn the loss of your ability to read in a more measured fashion because you know books aren’t written over night and you’ve a long wait ahead of you for the next book because it hasn’t been written yet. (Unless you haven’t read the author’s first book in which case I’m very envious. You’re in for another treat.)

All that to say – okay, really I might just have got carried away with how well this book is written – the romance is top-notch, brilliantly done. You’re unlikely to disagree with who (if she does pick one) Maya chooses because the author again never shies away from details. There are no really bad guys here but there are definitely ones more suited than others.

So to the promised inclusion of what happens to Zara (the main character from the author’s previous book)¹ – you get a good number of pages to not just find out where Zara ‘went’ after her book was over but to enjoy a bit of the ride along with her. And perhaps the best bit – you’re not left hankering for more after she makes her exit. It’s a very decent closure.

Last thing – you’re going to get hungry reading this. Food is a big part of the novel. It’s there for the regular mealtimes, it’s there for gatherings, and it’s there when people need another person to lean on and talk to. It’s there for meetings and karaoke and post-shopping refuelling and potential in-laws all meeting for the first time.

The Thirty Before Thirty List is excellent. It’s fun, it’s well-written, and, as a bonus, it leaves just enough questions at your feet for you to spend a good time afterwards thinking about whether you agree with one or two characters’ actions. This is always a great thing to close a book on, and also a review – I’m still questioning one character’s resolution and I like the fact that I am very much.

I was invited to and attended the launch of this book.

Publisher: Zaffre Books (Bonnier)
Pages: 380
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-838-77818-7
First Published: 18th July 2024
Date Reviewed: 15th August 2024

Footnotes

¹ See my interview with Tasneem, episode 85 of the podcast.

I’ve read some good books this summer (I’ll leave chronicling August until later). I remember some years ago, a blogger called Judith said that she doesn’t write many negative reviews any more (by that time) because she’d got really good at knowing whether she’d like a book or not prior to choosing it. I remember being mystified by this, but now I feel I’m getting there myself.

All books are works of fiction.

Elaine Chiew: The Light Between Us – Tian Wei lives in 1920s China; he finds a letter from a woman from the next century. In 2019 in Singapore, archiver Charlie finds a letter from a 1920s man, written to someone else. By placing their subsequent letters in the way they found their firsts, both Tian Wei and Charlie are able to begin a correspondence across time, and over time it may develop into something more as the pair share their worries and successes. Fans of The Lake House/Il Mare, and The Time Traveller’s Wife will enjoy this in particular, but the subject matter, especially in terms of Tian Wei’s time and life, will interest many others. Chiew’s writing style is focused on details but not at all in a way that becomes overly much – it’s difficult to describe, but her prose is singular and her focuses appealing.

Emma Cowell: The Island Love Song – Ella, Georgia, and Georgia’s daughter, Phoenix, have travelled to the Greek island of Hydra to spread their mother’s/grandmother’s ashes. For Ella, the trip is very difficult – she was last on the island as a teenager, one beautiful holiday with the love of her life before he suddenly and intentionally disappeared; he was a musician and years later she still has to bear listening to his hit song that was written about her. For Georgia it all needs to go strictly to plan but at the same time she probably needs this time away from her husband. And Phoenix is along for the ride. Ella’s turmoil comes to a head when she makes a surprise discovery, and the trip for her mother morphs into something else entirely. There’s a lot to appreciate here – setting, characterisation, and Cowell’s deft decisions when it comes to letting the reader know more; I shan’t be more specific than that to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say it’s a page turner and enjoyable.

Mark Stay: The Crow Folk – Wartime Britain. Faye Bright has grown up in Woodville, Kent (fictional village, real county). She helps her dad with his pub, she’s a local volunteer for the war effort, and she’s a bell ringer at St Irene’s. She’s also started to have some strange experiences and has found a spell book of her late mother’s which has left her, unsurprisingly, with a heck load of questions. One day animated scarecrows approach a group of villagers but none of the villagers believe what they’ve seen. Except Faye… and perhaps Miss Charlotte, the woman commonly thought to be a witch… and maybe also Mrs Teach, there’s always been something about her. So now not only is there a war on, but Faye’s got this book she wants to learn from (which also includes a recipe for jam roly-poly for some reason), and she’s got to work with the bonkers situation of scarecrows coming to life, led by a demon – who’s a scarecrow, too – while the fair number of villagers who saw these scarecrows don’t believe it happened. But they better do at some point – that demon’s not joking. This is a wonderfully comedic low fantasy fairly similar in tone to Terry Pratchett and Claire North’s The End Of The Day.

Mark Stay: Babes In The Wood – Pretty much straight after the episodes with the crowfolk, and getting towards the Battle of Britain, Faye and co have situation on their hands involving Kindertransport children, creepy artwork, and secret meetings. Brilliant again, this time with a little more darkness and specific WW2 themework.

Mark Stay: The Ghost Of Ivy Barn – We reach the Battle Of Britain. It’s coming soon to a witches’ circle near you (well, they hope). Also, there’s the ghost of a pilot in one of the villager’s barns that Faye needs to help. This book has the best dialogue in the series, I’d say, wherein the plan to get the Nazis not to bomb Britain is to communicate to them, in chant, ‘you cannot cross the sea’. In English.

Mark Stay: The Holly King – Book four sees the season of Christmas and the attempt by an ancient god to take over the village. Less travelling this time, if you count Kent to the coast as ‘travelling’, but as always, lots of fun.

Susan Muaddi Darraj: Behind You Is The Sea – A book of connected short stories about which I’ve been using the term ‘fractured narrative’, Muaddi Darraj’s story in stories focuses on American Christian Palestinians as they find their identities, as they work with horrible truths they discover, as they work with wonderful truths they discover, and as they work with the different generations. Focusing mostly on the same family and featuring a good few extremely poignant stories, this is a stunning book told in lovely prose that necessarily differs per point of view.

Was it a ton of reading? No, but it was a ton enjoyable and so far August has been just as good.

Episode 104: Matt Ottley

Charlie and Matt Ottley (The Tree Of Ecstasy And Unbearable Sadness) discuss Matt’s type I bipolar disorder and how it has influenced this, his latest book, and his life in general. As Matt is also a composer and illustrator and the book involves both, we also discuss in detail the creation of the music and artwork.

Please note that there are mentions of child sexual abuse and attempted suicide in this episode.

If you’re unable to use the media player above, this page has various other options for listening as well as the transcript.