Review: The Butcher’s Hook by Janet Ellis

Posted on 17/03/2016 by Hayley at RatherTooFondofBooks

The Butcher's Hook by Janet Ellis

Anne Jaccob is coming of age in late eighteenth-century London, the daughter of a wealthy merchant. When she is taken advantage of by her tutor — a great friend of her father’s — and is set up to marry a squeamish snob named Simeon Onions, she begins to realize just how powerless she is in Victorian society. Anne is watchful, cunning, and bored.

Her saviour appears in the form of Fub, the butcher’s boy. Their romance is both a great spur and an excitement. Anne knows she is doomed to a loveless marriage to Onions and she is determined to escape with Fub and be his mistress. But will Fub ultimately be her salvation or damnation? And how far will she go to get what she wants?

Dark and sweeping, The Butcher’s Hook is a richly textured debut featuring one of the most memorable characters in fiction.

I was thrilled to receive a copy of The Butcher’s Hook to review and began reading it as soon as it arrived. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this historical novel but it hooked (no pun intended!) me in from the first few pages.

This novel really felt like it had two distinct halves. The first half is very much about how repressed Anna Jaccob’s life is. She is living in a household that oppresses her, the family meals are often eaten in silence and there’s very little conversation to be had with anyone the rest of the time. Anna’s mother is very distant having suffered a series of lost babies and she’s recently given birth to a daughter; Anna struggles with her feelings towards the new baby and this further isolates her from time with her mother. The desire that Anna has for something to happen, to break free of this repression emanates off the page and you really get a sense that something is building in her.

Later in the novel Anna falls for the butcher’s boy and from that moment on her life changes dramatically. She becomes quite obsessed with this budding romance and will stop at nothing to get the boy. I was not expecting the novel to build in the way it did but it becomes quite the bawdy romp and very difficult to put down. I think I preferred the first half of this novel but the second half is impossible to look away from so it really does keep you turning the pages. The denouement of the novel is unexpected, but so good for that.

The style of The Butcher’s Hook reminded me a little of Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White with that real mix of period detail but the openness about sex and desire that you often only see in more modern set novels – the Georgian era of Jane Austen this is not! Anna seems like quite a modern girl trapped in a world that wasn’t yet ready for all she wanted, and indeed expected, out of her life. She is intensely frustrated that she can’t just do what she wants when she wants and that she has to surrender to what her father wants for her. I loved the nods to Dickens with little touches like the slimy man that Anna’s father choses for her to marry, who is named Simeon Onions.

I was torn in how I felt about Anna. In the first half of the novel I had moments where I felt sorry for her – I wanted her to experience some lightness in her life and some freedom from the oppressive home she’d grown up in. However, there were then moments where she behaved so horribly that I was brought up short and unsure what to make of her. Anna’s increasingly twisted logic and behaviour as the novel progresses seems to suggest that she always had a wicked side. She’s certainly a memorable character though and one that has lingered in my mind since I finished reading the novel.

All-in-all I loved this novel – it’s a deliciously dark and twisted novel that became something that I wasn’t expecting and it’s wonderful to find a novel that surprised me so much. I already can’t wait to read Janet Ellis’ next book!

I rated this novel 4 out of 5 and highly recommend it.

I was lucky enough to do a Q&A with Janet Ellis for the blog tour for this book, you can read that HERE if you’d like to.

I received a copy of this book for review from Two Roads Books via Book Bridgr.

As an aside I absolutely loved the cover artwork and the end papers in this book, they are stunning.

The Butcher's Hook janet ellis End Papers

I thought it looked a little familiar and then discovered that the company that designed the book’s artwork are called Timorous Beasties, who also designed the artwork on the Kate Bush concert tickets that we kept from when we saw her in 2014. I now so badly want to own some art by them so I’m saving up!

Kate Bush ticket

Q&A with Andy Owen (Author of East of Coker)

Posted on 14/03/2016 by Hayley at RatherTooFondofBooks

I recently got to do a Q&A with Andy Owens, author of East of Coker, and am pleased to able to share it with you today.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I am married with two young children and I live in West London. East of Coker is my second novel.

How did you first come to be a writer?

Through reading. I have always read – both fiction and non-fiction. More specifically, whilst working for the government in the UK on counter terrorism duties I read Moby Dick and was struck between the similarities between some of the characters and situations in the novel and some of those I was encountering in my day job. When Melville introduces Ismael to us speaking of the need when he feels it is a ‘damp, drizzly November’ in his soul, to get to sea, he highlights something enduring in human nature. He highlighted the same existential ennui that I was seeing in some of those that were going off not to sea, but the mountains to join terrorist organisations and that had formed a part of the motivation to sign up for some of the soldiers I had previously served with. Melville’s characters embark on a journey that explores themes of obsession, belief, belonging and the impact of charismatic leaders on a group – all themes I was interested in and were relevant to some of the issues of today.

So, I started to write as I thought I had something to say on a subject that was been dealt with in a shallow and often ignorant way. It was something I had experience of and I thought I had found an interesting idea of how to do it – an idea that would mean it was a good story too. Since I started reading I had always been fascinated by how we recycle stories from one generation to the next. Ultimately I wanted to contribute to an important conversation that was been dominated by the loudest voices rather the most thoughtful. I also hoped it could be a way of helping raising funds for a good cause through donating the royalties.

What is your book East of Coker about?

If my first book Invective was about why people want to go off and fight, East of Coker is about what happens after you have ‘visited a place where the surface layer has been eroded and the bedrock that is beneath us all is exposed’. More than this it is also about how we can help each other move on. It moves through a London and an Iraq that shadows TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, asking what duty do those left behind have to those that would otherwise be forgotten and, how through acceptance of what we have done, who we are, and where we are all inevitably heading to, what happiness can be found. I think in the end it is a love story, but maybe not one in the traditional sense.

It follows the lives of Arthur, a wounded veteran of an old war, the love he left behind, an injured veteran of a new war and an Iraqi family in Basra, become intertwined as they all try in different ways to cope with the uncertainty the conflicts they have been exposed to has created. As their stories eventually collide in a hospital in London, while riots outside get closer each night, Arthur tries to free himself from the anchors of the past and ensure his new friend does not suffer like he has. As Arthur learns how to accept his fate he realises there is one more fight he must fight. He must reach the woman who has been waiting for him to return, for all these years, before time runs out. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a family try to cope with the consequences of a modern war fought on ancient soil by unwelcome intruders, threatening their way of life and traditions. I hope that despite some of its subject matter it is ultimately uplifting.

All royalties are donated to the Shoulder to Shoulder Project, a volunteer mentoring programme that supports ex-service men and women who are recovering from mental health issues or having difficulty adjusting to civilian life.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

Ultimately it is experience and imagination, in that order. Both books have started with ideas. The ideas themselves are inspired by the desire to tell stories from the perspective of those who may not have a voice. I agree with Susan Sontag when in ‘At the Same Time: Essays & Speeches’ she muses on what literature can do and she says ‘literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours’. She says that writers ‘evoke our common humanity in narratives with which we can identify, even though the lives may be remote from our own’. Our brains are hardwired to learn through stories, from when we first sat round the fire, to the parables of the early religions through the whole body of world literature. We learn what we are like and value as a society by understand our own stories, but maybe more importantly we learn what others are like, learn that we are more alike than different by learning the stories of others and experiencing the world through their eyes even for the brief time it takes to read a few pages. Writing gives you the opportunity to increase the amount of empathy in the world, which should provide enough inspiration to give it a go.

What is your writing routine?

I start with an idea, then do the research, then do the writing. Writing happens in bursts and mostly at 30,000 feet. I travel a lot with work, mostly to Africa and Latin America, so long flights are great opportunities to get focussed bursts done with no distractions.

What’s your favourite book?

It’s a really hard question to answer, there are so many and different books have meant different things to me at different times. In the last 12 months I read Sebald for the first time. Reading Austerlitz taught me that you could tell a story through the gaps in what you do write. It stayed with me for a long time after, just as Camus’ The Outsider had many years ago. On a list of my favourite books Joyce’s Ulysses, which made me first realise that you could write language in a way that reading it could be like listening to music, and Homer’s original. Hemmingway, Orwell and Graves writing on war influenced me greatly and I will always happily read anything by William Boyd, Julian Barnes, Marilyn Robinson or John Le Carrie. And Moby Dick obviously…

Is there a question that you wish an interviewer would ask that you’ve never been asked? What’s your answer to that question?

What will you have? A Guinness please

How can people connect with you on social media?

I am on Twitter (@owen_andy)

East of Coker is out now and available to buy on Kindle from Amazon. The book will also be available in print later this month via The War Writers’ Campaign. Please check out their website.

About the book:

The lives of Arthur, a wounded veteran of an old war, the love he left behind, an injured veteran of a new war and an Iraqi family in Basra, become intertwined as they all try in different ways to cope with the uncertainty the conflicts they have been exposed to has created. Each chapter is told through a separate voice seeing conflict from different sides.

Their stories eventually collide in a hospital in London, while riots outside get closer each night, when Arthur recovering from a stroke meets the injured veteran from Iraq who is struggling more with mental injuries than the physical ones he received in the incident he described to us in previous chapters. Arthur tries to free himself from the anchors of the past and ensure his new friend does not suffer like he has. He helps his friend realise he should talk to his family and learn to move on like he never managed to do. As Arthur learns how to accept his fate he realises there is one more fight he must fight. He must reach the woman who has been waiting for him to return, for all these years, before time runs out. He uses all his strength to make one final journey to find out that she is still there waiting.
East of Coker moves through a London and an Iraq that shadows TS Eliot’s Waste Land, asking what duty do those left behind have to those that would otherwise be forgotten and, how through acceptance of what we have done, who we are, and where we are all inevitably heading to, what happiness can be found.

‘This is an ambitious and thoughtful book, valuable both for itself and its charitable links. It weaves stories of loss and war around a structure of T.S. Eliot’s the Waste Land and speaks for, as well as supports, some of those for whom speech is difficult yet necessary in the wake of past trauma.’ Gay Watson, A Philosophy of Emptiness.

Blog tour | Review: Quicksand by Steve Toltz

Posted on 11/03/2016 by Hayley at RatherTooFondofBooks

Today I’m thrilled to be on the blog tour for Quicksand by Steve Toltz!

Quicksand PB

Wildly funny and unceasingly surprising, Quicksand is both a satirical masterpiece and an unforgettable story of fate, family and friendship.

Aldo Benjamin may be the unluckiest soul in human history, but that isn’t going to stop his friend Liam writing about him. For what more could an aspiring novelist want from his muse than a thousand get-rich-quick schemes, a life-long love affair, an eloquently named brothel, the most sexually confusing evening imaginable and a brief conversation with God?

Quicksand is quite the meta-novel. It’s about Liam, a failed writer turned police officer who decides to write a book about his best friend, Aldo. The novel flits from being from Liam’s point of view, to being from Aldo’s viewpoint as written by Liam, to what appears to be Aldo from his own point of view but the reader can never be sure if it is genuinely Aldo or whether it’s more of Aldo seen through Liam’s eyes. It’s never clear what is real and what is imagined, and it becomes increasingly blurred for the reader. The fact that we don’t know the real Aldo, only the one Liam tells us about, makes it all the more interesting because although the book is about Aldo, we learn so much about Liam and the cracks in their friendship. The first chapter of this novel is entitled ‘Two Friends, Two Agendas (one hidden)’ and that sums up the novel. It pays to remember this title as you progress through the book to the end as it gives much to ponder over regarding what Liam’s purpose was in writing this book about his friend, but also why Aldo wanted the book written – assuming he really knew about it, and also assuming that Liam hadn’t just made Aldo up to deflect his own anxieties and failures in life.

The opening chapter contains a whole section of Aldo spewing out one-liners that Liam is frantically trying to write down. I found it quite amusing and wondered whether Steve Toltz himself was making a point about great novels and how a one-liner can often be at the expense of plot and structure. I actually loved that it felt like an aside to camera, as if Toltz had briefly placed himself inside his own novel.

Some of the observations and ideas that Aldo has are truly hilarious, I honestly found myself laughing at times whilst reading about his ideas for businesses and reflections on life. His self-diagnosis of ‘clinical frustration’ is so brilliant as is his pondering over why clinical depression gets to be a disease but clinical frustration doesn’t. It’s amusing to read given what we know about Aldo but I couldn’t help thinking at the same time that there is a serious point in there about how people become so tied up in their frustrations about their life that it affects their ability to function.

I love the parts of the book that became self-referential particularly Aldo’s obsession with Mimi’s book The Fussy Corpse and how it has echoes of how Aldo’s own life would become. Some of the situations he got himself into were really quite mortifying but then his having to be carried whilst often shouting or demanding he be put down somewhere became quite cringe-worthy and led him to almost become the fussy corpse himself. Aldo’s increasingly frequent ideas about death and his requests for help mirror the little boy in the book too.

I didn’t know too much about this book before I started reading but I was expecting a darkly comedic novel, which this is, but what I didn’t expect was how much of an impact this book would have on me. There are aspects to this novel that are similar to my own life (I would imagine everyone who reads this book will recognise something of their own life in some of the observations Liam and Aldo make) and I have to admit that I found some of it quite difficult to read for this reason but I still couldn’t stop reading. It’s so utterly refreshing to read a book that is at times absurd, bordering on the ridiculous; it’s laugh out loud funny, and yet so utterly true to life at the same time!

On a personal note for me, having recently been told that my paralysis is permanent a couple of paragraphs really stood out to me and actually gave me a wry smile about my situation. It’s remarkable writing when you can feel the depths a character’s despair at his situation and recognise something of yourself in it, but still see the humour and laugh!

Aldo ‘caught phrases from the doctors such as ‘incomplete paraplegia’ and ‘crushed T5 and 6’ and ‘the absence of motor and sensory function’… while my own thoughts were actual… The blind get great hearing, the deaf a super sense of smell. What do the paralysed get again? And, does paraplegia every just, you know, blow over?’

‘Everybody weighed in. Everyone looks on the bright side for you. They’re really positive about your situation. Nobody feels under qualified to offer medical advice. The preposterous suggestions they’re not ashamed to make! Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, to torture someone with an incurable illness or a permanent disability is easy. Name the most ludicrous, disreputable remedy imaginable – eg. bamboo under the fingernail therapy – and swear it fixed a friend of yours. The dying or disabled patient, sick in heart and soul with desperate feeling that he hasn’t tried everything to restore himself, will quick smart reach for the bamboo. They will also tell you about exceptional individuals who did exceptional things even with exceptional limitations. This is in no way relevant to my case’.

There is so much sadness and loss throughout this novel, but so much humour too. I’d expected this book would be very surreal, and it is at times, but actually it’s a very honest exploration of friendship, and of life in general. This is such a unique novel; it was one of those reading experiences where I didn’t want to put the book down for a second because it was so good, but then I didn’t want to get to the end too soon for the same reason! It’s an incredible book.

This is the first novel I’ve read by Steve Toltz but I loved it so much that I’m definitely going to buy his previous novel, A Fraction of the Whole, and I can’t wait to read it.

I rated this book 4.5 out of 5 and highly recommend it!

Quicksand is out now.

I received a copy of this book from Sceptre in exchange for an honest review.

My review is part of the Quicksand blog tour, please visit the other stops on the tour.

quicksand_facebook_post

Review: Time to say Goodbye by S. D. Robertson

Posted on 10/03/2016 by Hayley at RatherTooFondofBooks

Time To Say Goodbye

Is there ever a right time to let go?

HOW DO YOU LEAVE THE PERSON YOU LOVE THE MOST?

Will Curtis’s six-year-old daughter, Ella, knows her father will never leave her. After all, he promised her so when her mother died. And he’s going to do everything he can to keep his word.

What Will doesn’t know is that the promise he made to his little girl might be harder to keep than he imagined. When he’s faced with an impossible decision, Will finds that the most obvious choice might not be the right one.

But the future is full of unexpected surprises. And father and daughter are about to embark on an unforgettable journey together . . .

The synopsis for Time to Say Goodbye doesn’t give much away about the plot at all but from tweets that I’d seen I had my suspicions about what the book might be about and I was right. In a nutshell this is a novel about a man who has promised his young daughter that he will never leave her. Ella has already lost her mum and so this promise is incredibly important but sadly promises are sometimes broken despite our best efforts.

Will has no choice in the end about leaving Ella because he is killed in a road accident. He finds himself outside of his body and he knows he simply has to find a way to get through to his little girl, to comfort her. The problem is whether this is going to be a good thing for Ella in the long run, or should she be left to adjust to life without her dad.

I love the premise of this book, I seem to be quite drawn to novels like this and have read a few now that are in a similar vein. I really wanted to fall in love with these characters and their stories but it just lacked a little something for me. I was expecting this book to be a real tear-jerker but, while there are moments that are incredibly emotional, it didn’t quite get there for me. I did love Ella and Will but I wanted to be focused on them and it felt like there were just a few too many elements to the sub-plots that kept me away from the main story for too long, and this stopped the emotional connection that I wanted to have with Ella and Will.

Having said that, there are some very moving moments throughout the novel. I adored the moment when Will finds Ella in a dream, it was such a special scene and really did get to me. I treasure the dreams I have of my late mum as they are the only times when I can hear her voice, in real life I can’t remember it anymore so the days when I wake up and just for a fleeting second I can hear her are wonderful. I felt such a fluttery, happy feeling when Ella finds Will on that beach, it’s an incredible moment and it seemed so real and believable.

Some of the scenes with Will and his father were beautiful and very emotional too. I’m sure so many people wish they could have just one more minute, or wish they had the chance to tell someone they loved them just one more time but in real life once someone is gone, they’re gone and there are no do overs.

Will’s anguish and distress about whether he should stay as a spirit with his daughter was heart-renching to read. To know that leaving Ella all over again could likely cause real emotional damage to her but to stay having seen the potential future she would have left Will with such a terrible dilemma. I could feel Will’s pain radiating off the page and was so hoping that he’d find a way to have peace and for his daughter to be ok.

My issue with this book is purely down to the fact that I wish there hadn’t been so much going on alongside the main story with Will and Ella. I know sub-plots are there to move the main story along and to maybe add in the odd twist but in a book that relies so much on the emotional dilemma of the main character, too many distractions away from that just watered down the experience a little bit for me. The moments that I loved in the book were absolutely wonderful, and so believable – I just wanted more of them.

On the whole this is a good debut novel, and I’m looking forward to reading S. D. Robertson’s next book! I rated this 3.5 stars.

I received this book from Avon via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

Time to Say Goodbye is out now.

Review: Sisters and Lies by Bernice Barrington

Posted on 08/03/2016 by Hayley at RatherTooFondofBooks

Sisters and Lies by Bernice Barrington

One hot August night, Rachel Power gets the call everyone fears. It’s the police. Her younger sister Evie’s had a car crash, she’s in a coma. Can Rachel fly to London right away? With Evie injured and comatose, Rachel is left to pick up the pieces of her sister’s life. But it’s hard fitting them together, especially when she really doesn’t like what she sees. Why was Evie driving when she doesn’t even own a licence? Who is the man living in her flat and claiming Evie is his girlfriend? How come she has never heard of him? The more mysteries Rachel uncovers the more she starts asking herself how well she ever really knew her sister. And then she begins to wonder if the crash was really the accident everybody says it is. Back in hospital, Evie, trapped inside an unresponsive body, is desperately trying to wake up. Because she’s got an urgent message for Rachel – a warning which could just save both their lives . . .

As soon as I read the synopsis for Sisters and Lies I was keen to read it, and it did not disappoint. Evie has been in a car crash and is in a coma; her sister Rachel is just back from an overseas book tour when she gets the call about Evie. Due to Rachel having been away for a while she isn’t fully up to speed about what has been happening in Evie’s life of late and so when she arrives at Evie’s flat, having visited her at the hospital, she doesn’t know what to make of finding a man there claiming to be her sister’s boyfriend. Immediately I was hooked because there is suspicion straight away over this man and I wanted to know more.

The novel is told alternately by Rachel, in the present day, and through Evie’s thoughts, who whilst in a coma is finding her memories are beginning to come back to her from a few months previously and she’s trying to piece together to work out what happened to her.

I felt drawn both to Rachel and Evie and really empathised with the way they behaved because they had recently lost their mother. In the face of such pain it can make siblings close off from each other if they have different ways of coping so it was entirely plausible to me that Rachel would have no idea about her sister’s life while she was off on a book tour on the other side of the world. There were some small aspects of this book that didn’t feel completely plausible but often with thrillers you do need to be prepared to suspend disbelief to a degree – all I want to get swept up in a great story when I’m reading and this book does just that!

Sisters and Lies starts off as more of a mystery novel but the tension builds so fast that by the second half I found myself racing through the pages wanting to know what was going to happen and to find out if I was trusting the right people! The red herrings along the way did cause me to doubt myself on more than one occasion about who they bad guy might be.

Sisters and Lies is a brilliant debut novel – it’s thrilling, it’s twisty and it doesn’t disappoint! I rated it a solid 4 stars and I highly recommend it. I can’t wait to see what Bernice Barrington writes next!

Sisters and Lies is due to be published on 24th March and can be pre-ordered now.

I received this book from Penguin Books via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

Guest Post by Elle Turner (author of Tapestry)

Posted on 04/03/2016 by Hayley at RatherTooFondofBooks

Today I’m excited to share a guest post from the lovely Elle Turner, author of Tapestry.

Hi Hayley! Thank you so much for having me on Rather too fond of Books!

I guess every writer is a reader too and most are likely to be influenced by the books they’ve read, whether this helps them to develop their own style, helps them decide what they want to write or, as in my case, unwittingly influences most aspects of their life!

The first books I remember being a big influence in my life were the Famous Five books. I talked to the characters, (out loud, not in my head. I remember my mum once calling me back from a stream in which I was paddling and having a right good old conversation to tell me to tone it down!). I wanted to be George and had a stuffed tartan dog that slept at the bottom of my bed. No prizes for guessing his name!

When I was a little older my mum gave me a few books in the Abbey Girls series by Elsie J Oxenham. These books followed the lives of young women and schoolgirls growing up near an Abbey in High Wycombe. Red-haired Joan and Joy were the original Abbey girls and the series followed them into adulthood, with eventually their own children following the original Abbey Girls’ traditions. I came to the stories when Joan and Joy were adults. Joy was already married with twins and the next generation of abbey girls were coming through the school. I was very taken with the notion that Joy had red hair. This was something that followed me into my early adult years during which time I tried several shades! (As well as red hair I also ended up with twins, so perhaps the moral there is be careful how far you let yourself be influenced… 😉 )

By the time I was in my teens I found A Woman of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford. I bought it for 20p at a jumble sale and had to make my own cover because it was falling apart. I loved that book and I’m sure it’s responsible for me wanting my own business. I was at the right age to appreciate, and benefit from, a strong female lead in a book and they don’t come much better than our Emma. I’ve just discovered the Emma Harte series of seven books is on Amazon. I didn’t realise there were seven books, I’ve only read the first three, but I daren’t buy it just now or I’d never get anything else done!

The first book on the school syllabus that I recall resonating with me was Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It’s such a famous book that we probably all know it’s about the burning of books as they are no longer allowed in society. Books are thought to cause unrest and unhappiness as they risk leading people to think. Better to be anesthetised watching screens the size of walls pump information that doesn’t take too much processing…

Eep. A scary, but wonderful, book.

Although I’d always wanted to write myself, it wasn’t something I seriously considered I could do until a few years ago. Around the time I was trying to figure out if I should go for it, I read Addition by Toni Jordan. It was the right book at the right time because I remember thinking, ‘Yes, I really want to do this too,’ while I was reading. I don’t tend to re-read books because the mountainous TBR pile is always calling, but I re-read this one.

In fact, that’s probably the only thing the books here have in common – I’ve read them all more than once!

Thank you so much again Hayley for having me on your blog. Best wishes to you and all your readers. Happy reading!

Tapestry

In hope, in pain,

we lose, we gain,

but always and forever

the human heart braves life

in light and in shade

A collection of twelve short stories exploring the complexities of life and love.

Tapestry – Available now from Amazon http://hyperurl.co/ymjfs2

Elle dedicated Tapestry to her mum so, to celebrate Mother’s Day weekend in the UK, Tapestry is free from 4-6 March 2016.

About the Author

Elle Turner writes contemporary women’s fiction and lives in beautiful Scotland with her husband and two children. She loves scones, Coronation Street, all songs by Sara Bareilles and will happily admit to having little or no sense of direction. If you offer her a 50:50 she will ALWAYS get it wrong and, despite living in Scotland, she rarely manages to wear shoes that don’t leak.

If you would like to find out more about Elle or her writing, she’d love to see you at www.elleturnerwriter.com on Twitter @ElleTWriter, Instagram elletwriter or she’s on Facebook as elleturnerwriter

Review: Look At Me by Sarah Duguid

Posted on 03/03/2016 by Hayley at RatherTooFondofBooks

Look At Me by Sarah Duguid

Synopsis:

Lizzy lives with her father, Julian, and her brother, Ig, in North London. Two years ago her mother died, leaving a family bereft by her absence and a house still filled with her things: for Margaret was lively, beautiful, fun, loving; she kept the family together. So Lizzy thinks. Then, one day, Lizzy finds a letter from a stranger to her father, and discovers he has another child. Lizzy invites her into their world in an act of outraged defiance. Almost immediately, she realises her mistake.

Look at Me is a deft exploration of family, grief, and the delicate balance between moving forward and not quite being able to leave someone behind. It is an acute portrayal of how familial upheaval can cause misunderstanding and madness, damaging those you love most.

My Review

I loved this book and once I started reading it I honestly couldn’t put it down. I’ve been in a major reading slump for weeks but this book just caught my imagination and I devoured it. I’ve stuck sticky notes all over the book, not just to remind me of things I wanted to make sure I referred to in this review but also for me to look back on myself. The passages about grief in this book were so poignant and really captured what grieving for a parent is like.

Lizzy and Ig are both adults but still live within the family home they grew up in, and in many respects they have remained child-like. The day Lizzy finds out she has a sister that she’d known nothing of she immediately reacts and sends a letter off to the mystery woman without ever stopping for a moment to consider the possible consequences; it’s an immature reaction but an understandable one.

Eunice then arrives in their lives; she is very girly and inquisitive, immediately wanting to see all of the family home and speculating about where she would have fit in if things were different. She is very perceptive and this isn’t particularly noticed by Julian, Lizzy or Ig and it allows Eunice to get under their skin and to find a way to really insert herself into their lives. Lizzy becomes increasingly discomfited by Eunice’s presence and often wonders how she can be rid of her yet, even though they are all adults, she never actually just has the conversation with Eunice about when she is likely to leave; ultimately she’s partly intimidated by her and partly still so mired in grief that it all takes too much energy and thought to deal with.

I couldn’t help but empathise with Lizzy over the pain she felt at the loss of her mother, at times it was visceral and it brought back the pain, and the strange sense of bewilderment – those moments of being somewhere but not really being fully present – that I felt at losing my own mum. Duguid demonstrates Lizzy’s grief so poignantly and I felt so sad for her, yet at the same time I was never sure how much I could trust Lizzy, she seemed to be telling the truth and yet she felt like an unreliable narrator. We mainly see Eunice through Lizzy’s eyes, which meant the reader’s view is tainted by what Lizzy sees, or wants to see, in her. It makes for a brilliant dynamic in the novel and although I knew from the prologue that something terrible was going to happen, I never predicted exactly what, or who, that incident would involve.

I found Eunice exhausting to read about, she is ever present and always trying to be right in the centre of everything that happens. She wants to make her newly discovered family revolve around her. I could feel the increasingly stifling atmosphere closing in around the three original members of the family; it made me feel quite claustrophobic at times. I did ponder over the way that it felt like Eunice as a character was a metaphor for the way grief enters your life so suddenly and with no guidebook, it turns everything on its head, it makes you view your whole life in a different way and from a completely different angle. And eventually the raw, disturbing nature of it goes away and what is left is a sense of peace but everything is still forever changed.

This is a short novel but it packs one hell of a punch. I actually finished reading it a couple of weeks ago and I’m still thinking about it now. I was very lucky to receive an advanced reading copy of this novel but I loved it so much that I treated myself to a finished copy to put on my favourites bookcase. Not many books make it onto there but this one absolutely deserves its place, I know it will be one that I read again and again over the years.

Look At Me is disturbing and beautiful, and is so honest and raw; a stunning debut that you absolutely won’t want to miss!

I rated this novel 5 out of 5 and can’t recommend it highly enough!

Look At Me is out now and available from all good bookshops.

I received a review copy from Tinder Press in return for an honest review.

Blog Tour | Review: The Silent Girls by Ann Troup

Posted on 01/03/2016 by Hayley at RatherTooFondofBooks

Today is my stop on The Silent Girls blog tour!

Synopsis

What if everything you knew was a lie…

This house has a past that won’t stay hidden, and it is time for the dead to speak.

Returning to Number 17, Coronation Square, Edie is shocked to find the place she remembers from childhood reeks of mould and decay. After her aunt Dolly’s death Edie must clear out the home on a street known for five vicious murders many years ago, but under the dirt and grime of years of neglect lurk dangerous truths.

For in this dark house there is misery, sin and dark secrets that can no longer stay hidden. The truth must come out.

Finding herself dragged back into the horrific murders of the past, Edie must find out what really happened all those years ago. But as Edie uncovers the history of the family she had all but forgotten, she begins to wonder if sometimes it isn’t best to leave them buried.

My Review

I started reading The Silent Girls without knowing too much about it and by the time I’d read the prologue I was hooked!

The prologue is set in 1964 and describes a convicted murderer being hanged and a murder taking place on the same day. The novel then moves to thirty years later where Edie’s Aunt Dolly has died and Edie has come to clear out her house. Almost immediately she walks into the middle of a group on a murder tour and being told all about the gruesome murders that had happened on the Square all those years ago. Edie shrugs it off but I was immediately on edge, yet unable to wait to find out more about this infamous Square.

Edie soon meets Sophie, a homeless young person in need of a safe place to sleep, and the two start to become friends. I loved Sophie’s character. Edie is in a vulnerable place, she is going through a divorce and is dealing with the death of her aunt, and it seems that some of the people around her on the Square might not be all they appear to be, so when Sophie turned up it felt like Edie might finally have someone on her side.

The atmosphere in the novel is so claustrophobic and stifling; at times I really felt like I was inside Number 17 with Edie. Troup is such a great scene setter; I read a lot of this book during the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep and I swear I could smell the damp and rot – I could feel the sinister atmosphere and I really did feel very unsettled by some of the things in that house. The story of the house continues to unfold in such an unnerving way that I was honestly actually sat on the edge of my seat at some points!

It seems like just about everyone on Coronation Square is hiding something, some secrets being more horrific than others. I enjoyed the mystery aspects of this novel and the gradual reveal of who knew what and when. I also liked that the novel isn’t really about whodunnit so much as it’s a look at a mix of characters and the pasts they are trying to keep hidden, it felt refreshing and different.

This was the first book I’ve read by Ann Troup but I’ve already bought her previous novel and plan to read it very soon. I’m definitely now a fan and will be looking out for her next novel!

I rated this novel 4.5 out of 5 and highly recommend it.

Thank you to Jenny at Neverland Blog Tours for sending me a copy of the book to review as part of this blog tour.

The Silent Girls is out now, you can find it here:

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B015QM8AP8/ref=x_gr_w_bb?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_w_bb_uk-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28441057-the-silent-girls?ac=1&from_search=1

The Silent Girls book cover

About the Author

Ann Troup

Ann Troup tells tales and can always make something out of nothing (which means she writes books and can create unique things from stuff other people might not glance twice at). She was once awarded 11 out of 10 for a piece of poetry at school – she now holds that teacher entirely responsible for her inclination to write.

Her writing space is known as ‘the empty nest’, having formerly been her daughters bedroom. She shares this space with ten tons of junk and an elderly Westie, named Rooney, who is her constant companion whether she likes it or not. He likes to contribute to the creative process by going to sleep on top of her paperwork and running away with crucial post-it notes, which have inadvertently become stuck to his fur. She is thinking of renaming him Gremlin.

She lives by the sea in Devon with her husband and said dog. Two children have been known to remember the place that they call home, but mainly when they are in need of a decent roast dinner, it’s Christmas or when only Mum will do. She also has extremely decent stepchildren.

In a former incarnation she was psychiatric nurse, an experience which frequently informs her writing. She has also owned a cafe and an art/craft gallery. Now she only makes bacon sandwiches as a sideline, but does continue to dabble with clay, paint, paper, textiles, glue…you name it. Occasionally she may decide to give away some of these creations (you have been warned!).

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TroupAnn

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anntroupauthor/

Website: https://anntroup.wordpress.com/

Blog Tour | Q&A with Janet Ellis, author of The Butcher’s Hook

Posted on 01/03/2016 by Hayley at RatherTooFondofBooks

Today I am thrilled to welcome Janet Ellis to my blog for a chat about her debut novel, The Butcher’s Hook.

How did you come to be a novelist and how long have you been writing for?

I’ve wanted to write for as long as I can remember. My desk drawer (and more besides) is full of jottings, poems, beginnings of stories and snatches of prose. But The Butcher’s Hook is the first book I finished. So the answer is really :- for ever and quite recently!

What is your writing process?

I try and write daily, but not always at the same time or with the same word count. I often write scenes that I know I want to include somewhere, then store them – it’s like having a mood board of episodes and characters waiting to be placed in the narrative. I read everything aloud, too, as I think it’s a great way of discovering if the tone is consistent- and avoiding repetition. Of course, that includes dialogue (my poor neighbours).

The Butcher’s Hook is historical fiction but seems modern too, not least due to the way that Anne Jaccob’s sexual awakening is described. It reminded me a little of Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White in the sense of it being historical mixed with more modern elements. What inspired you to write this novel, and in this particular way?

Thank you for the comparison, that book’s a favourite. I’m driven by the idea that, although they wore different clothes, saw different sights and were influenced by different things, people of any past time, however distant, experienced emotions as we do. We feel everything from love and hate, or envy, greed and sorrow just as our forbears did. Reading diaries- which illustrate this perfectly- was a big source of inspiration. Confirmation, too, of the fact that no matter what is happening around us in historical terms, we’re all mostly concerned with ourselves. My teenage diaries certainly bear this out.

I found Anne fascinating – at times I really liked her and wanted her to find love and happiness and then at other times she had quite a selfish, self-absorbed streak which made her harder to like. I really enjoyed this about her though, she was in my head all the time when I wasn’t reading as I tried to weigh her up and I miss her now I’ve finished reading the novel. How did her character and personality come about, and did you enjoy creating her?

How lovely to hear that. I loved creating her. She really is a character apart, she isn’t me! And I often felt the same ambivalence about her behaviour. I toyed with a different , rather happier , ending but realised she’s her own worst enemy, and enjoyably so. There’s a kind of twisted logic in how she behaves, everything happens for a reason as far as she’s concerned. I hope she’s funny, too, as my favourite people have a sideways take on life that I enjoy. I’ve got friends whose behaviour is sometimes exasperating -but I love them. I know that -apart from her often terrible actions- I feel the same about Anne.

Finally, is there a question that you wish an interviewer would ask that you’ve never been asked and how would you answer said question?

Do you mean apart from ‘How did you get to be so fabulous? (Answer: I have NO idea!)? This is a great question… I haven’t ever met a question that I thought was too awful to be answered, and nothing’s off limits, but maybe there’s something about what my parents would have thought – they’re both dead now- that I’d like to mull over. But I can’t come up with the question myself , as it makes me weepy to even think about it.

Synopsis of The Butcher’s Hook

‘Do you know what this is?’

He holds a short twist of thick metal, in the shape of the letter ‘S’, sharpened at both ends. I shake my head.

‘A butcher’s hook,’ he says, testing the tip of his finger against each point. ‘A perfect design. Whichever way up you use it, it’s always ready. One end to hook, the other to hang. It has only one simple purpose.’ He stands on a stool and fixes it over the bar above him. It waits there, empty.

He climbs down. ‘Pleasing, isn’t it?’

GEORGIAN LONDON, IN THE SUMMER OF 1763.

At nineteen, Anne Jaccob is awakened to the possibility of joy when she meets Fub, the butcher’s apprentice, and begins to imagine a life of passion with him.

The only daughter of well-to-do parents, Anne lives a sheltered life. Her home is a miserable place. Though her family want for nothing, her father is uncaring, her mother is ailing, and the baby brother who taught her to love is dead. Unfortunately her parents have already chosen a more suitable husband for her than Fub.

But Anne is a determined young woman, with an idiosyncratic moral compass. In the matter of pursuing her own happiness, she shows no fear or hesitation. Even if it means getting a little blood on her hands.

A vivid and surprising tale, The Butcher’s Hook brims with the colour and atmosphere of Georgian London, as seen through the eyes of a strange and memorable young woman.