Review: Our Kind of Cruelty, Araminta Hall

From page one, it's clear that Mike is crazy about V, his sexually voracious girlfriend.

By the end of chapter one, it's clear that Mike is simply crazy and V is a young woman called Verity who is trapped in a toxic, obsessive relationship.

Both the strength and weakness of Our Kind of Cruelty was, for me, its structure as a domestic thriller; it has all the tension of the genre while simultaneously subverting the formula. However, the reader awaits twists and about-turns that never come - in this novel, what will be, will be. Nevertheless, the inevitability of events is compelling. 

This is an intelligent novel and the author has an important point to make about controlling men and the treatment of women in the criminal justice system. The fact that the novel has been tagged as a "Gillian Flynn-style" thriller - Flynn being the reigning queen of the twist - adds to an aftertaste of unresolved expectations. Perhaps more insight into Verity's thinking would have added clarity, and a little more nuance would have lifted the ending.

Our Kind of Cruelty ploughs a pitiless path, and Hall's portrayal of a man with an unravelling mind is chilling. Her accomplished writing traps us inside Mike's disturbed mind - seeing up close the twisted logic that justifies his actions - resulting in an addictive and affecting read.

Published 3 May 2018

With thanks to #NetGalley for a review copy

A Love Letter to Switzerland

This is one of the most intimate pieces of writing I have ever shared: a love letter to Switzerland, the country that welcomed me for seven years, where my children and my novel were born. Thanks to my colleagues at The Woolf Quarterly over in Zurich for prompting me to write it: digging into the emotions that inspired a whole novel was a challenge, but cathartic!

Click...

to read my Love Letter to Switzerland on The Woolf.

Review: The Blackbird Season, Kate Moretti

The latest gripping read from Kate Moretti starts with an eerie spectacle: thousands of dead birds fall from the sky onto the sacred ground of a small town's baseball field. It's the first act of desecration in a story that navigates the grey areas of abuse of power and defilement of trust. The panic over the birds sparks a chain of events that unravels the bonds of the whole community. Told from several points of view, the story circles around Nate Winters, a beloved teacher and baseball coach who is accused of taking too close an interest in one of his students. The languid atmosphere that Kate Moretti conjures up in her crumbling town, wilting under its poverty and summer heat, belies the pace and verve of this nail-biting suspense.

Review: The Food of Love, Amanda Prowse

I like to surprise myself now and then by venturing outside my usual literary stamping ground. I first ‘discovered’ Amanda Prowse when she became the latest big name author to join my publisher, Lake Union Publishing. Her back catalogue and the loyalty of her fan base made me curious about the ‘Queen of Family Drama’ - and what I might learn from her writing.

The Food of Love tells the story of the Braithwaites, a regular if somewhat bohemian family who don't have much money but compensate with a love of life and each other. Freya spends her days cooking and writing about food. When she’s called to her youngest daughter’s school by a teacher who suspects that Lexi may have an eating disorder, mum dismisses the concern. After all, who knows more about nutrition and healthy eating than a food journalist?

What ensues is a heart-wrenching and uncompromising portrayal of the way anorexia can tear apart a life and a family. Amanda Prowse has spoken of the research that goes into her ‘big issue’ novels, and you can feel it throughout The Food of Love: Freya and Lexi perform an intricate dance of secrets and lies, revealing the devious and destructive nature of the illness. Freya also displays the self-delusion of a parent who doesn't want to hear the truth—while this makes her character unsympathetic at times, I applaud Prowse for not offering easy solutions to a complex issue.

By its very nature, the subject of anorexia — whereby the patient may improve only to relapse — gives the novel a repetitive feel. Prose offsets that spiral with a mystery sub-plot—Freya, the father and the older sister write letters to Lexi ahead of an unspecified event. Could it be a wedding, a graduation - heaven forbid, a funeral? It keeps the action moving even while circling the main issue.

The Food of Love will interest readers who like the emotional lives of characters in the forefront of the drama.

Review: The Good Widow

Jacqueline “Jacks” Morales is horrified to hear that her husband, James, has been killed in a car crash on the idyllic island of Maui, Hawaii. Adding insult to injury, he died alongside a young woman, Dylan, who appears to be his mistress. Reeling from a double-blow of grief and betrayal, Jacks agrees to accompany Dylan’s fiance, Nick, to Maui in search of answers. While Jacks anticipates an emotionally painful trip, she has no idea of the trauma and obsession that will escort them on their journey.

The location of Hawaii works especially hard in this gripping psychological thriller. First, it’s easy to share Jacks’ hurt—and sympathise deeply—when she learns that James took a ‘holiday of a lifetime’ with his bit-on-the-side. As soon as she arrives on Maui, the juxtaposition between the romance of the setting and the reality of her anguish is stark; and also ripe for conflict and the kind of confusion that keeps the chapters fresh. 

The Good Widow is perfect for anyone who likes secrets and lies; and to keep guessing and second-guessing to the last page.

***

The Good Widow by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke is available on Amazon

Why a dog plays a central role in my debut novel

Meet Horatio! He’s a character in my novel, All the Little Children. The girl is my daughter and she’s not in the novel, although her wit and wisdom provided some of the best lines spoken by my fictional children.

We met the dog five years ago at a riding stables in Switzerland and hit it off. He’s a sweetheart. And HUGE. This photo doesn’t quite do him justice. He's massive.

Some writers cast famous actors into lead roles, but I only ever cast Horatio. Looking back, I wonder why I gave such an important narrative role to a dog?

Here’s what I think was going on. The main character in All the Little Children is not an easy woman. Marlene Greene is brilliant in many ways – a success story who seems to “have it all” – but we see behind the scenes and behind the eyes. She doesn’t feel like a success.

Loving doesn’t come easily to Marlene. She wants to, but it gets stuck inside – as she says at one point, “like one of those sneezes that just won’t come”. The daily chaos that comes with running a business and a household of three children doesn’t make matters easier – it’s difficult to access soft feelings when life is hard.

When disaster strikes and Horatio picks Marlene to be his guardian angel, we see what she’s capable of, emotionally speaking. So Horatio is there to be loved. Although, pretty soon, Horatio has to prove that he’s a guardian angel too.

Review: The Beautiful Dead, Belinda Bauer

Reading Belinda Bauer thrillers when you're alone in the house is never a good idea. Reading her books when you're alone and supposed to be writing your own novel is a terrible idea. With the story dipping and diving between the surface tension of the plot and the depths of the characters, it is hard to come up for air.

Eve Singer is a TV reporter on the 'meat beat' as a crime correspondent. Although a fairly typical hack in terms of ruthlessness and cunning, her squeamishness and aplomb in the face of casual sexism from rival hacks give her instant appeal. Most sympathetic of all, her home life is almost as tragic as the news she covers day-in, day-out. When a serial killer bursts onto the scene - literally, he sees himself as an artist - Eve thinks she has a chance to make the big time. Until she realises that she might become the next item on the evening news.

The baroque nature of the killer, who bears a passing resemblance to whatsisname from Silence of the Lambs, is alluded to in the butterfly-strewn cover art. But that is perhaps the only over-familiar aspect of this elevated crime novel - Bauer rings unusual notes that lift The Beautiful Dead out of the realms of the ordinary; lashings of black humour, a sweet little romance, a touching father-daughter plot line, and a wonderful kick-ass female detective whose diminutive size belies her mad skills.

Fans of crime fiction will love The Beautiful Dead. Fans of a nicely-turned phrase will too.

On the Edge

On a perfectly normal family holiday to the south coast of England, I wandered to the edge of this cliff. It was the silence that drew me there - not until you get right to the lip of the land does the sound of the surf warn you of the danger ahead. After a few seconds - enough to film this video - my vertigo kicked in and I scurried back to the path. The sheep who sleep on the edge watched me retreat with disdain.

Later that day, I wrote a short story about a woman who stands on this spot, looking for her family, scared she may fall. Little does she know that she's already fallen.

The story, called The Lily Stains White, is available for free by clicking the orange banner at the top of this page. 

Cliff top near the Smugglers Inn, Weymouth UK

Radio Daze: how a career in broadcasting influences my fiction

“Let the listener invent their own dragon.” I can’t remember who uttered this line, but it has stayed in my mind since last century, when I took a BBC News Skills training course in London.

The nervy young broadcast journalists renamed it News Kills. Until a man in tweed came to our stuffy classroom to impart his code for living: “It’s only radio, but it’s what we do.”

I learned to create sound pictures that let the listener see “their own dragon”. Why state you’re on a beach when you can immerse the audience in surf and seagulls? Why say an interviewee is nervous when you can hear his shallowness of breath between carefully-chosen words? A broadcaster, like a novelist, is a magpie for the glimmering detail that sparks life into a story.

To read more of my guest post about how a career in broadcasting influences my fiction, visit Women Writers.