Book bloggers

Beckenham Man wins Booker* prize shock!

* Not really..... Ok, so it's not the Booker Prize, and I'm not the only winner. But after thinking of myself at times as a Wooden Charlatan (Yes, Imposter Syndrome stalks the land of writers), it's nice to be declared a Golden Wizard. Have a look at the review below, by the CEO of The Golden Wizard Book Prize, Louise Jane. By the way, Book 1 of the trilogy, The Watcher and The Friend, was also awarded the prize! Review After finishing ‘A Cold Wind Blows’ by R.J. Barron, I find it still echoing in my mind; it is such acaptivating and reflective read that stays with you.Like the first installment in the series, this book presents an exceptional combination of youngadult fantasy and historical components, offering a distinctive and unparalleled reading journeythat you won't encounter anywhere else. Consequently, the plot is ingenious; it is not onlyfascinating but also rich in depth, brimming…

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Another Great Review for A Cold Wind Blows

"A slice of fantasy brilliance" Always great to get reviews out of the blue from someone who so clearly gets it. This one from AndrewSarahBookReviewer. Yes, that's their mysterious handle. Have a read and see if you agree by reading it yourself. Links to Amazon at the end of this blogpost. "A Cold Wind Blows doesn’t read like something written by a man testing his first dip into children’s fantasy. It reads like someone who knows how to pull history, myth, and magic into one big imaginative storm, and then quietly pretend it’s all casual. But here’s the catch, it’s almost criminal that a story this rich, this layered, and this cinematically British isn’t stirring up more noise online. Let’s start from the top.You’ve got Silas Cummerbund, a name that sounds like it belongs in both a Dickens novel and a secret magical agency. The man’s half mentor, half mystery, and fully fascinating. Then there’s Princess…

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Bonnie Garmus’ debut novel in “surprisingly good” shock

When I was thinking about this review, I searched for something from the professionals, and came across this, from Stephanie Merrit in The Guardian. Merrit is the real name of the very fabulous S J Parris, writer of the Bruno Giordano historical detective thrillers. And just like in those books, she is right on the money regarding this new novel from Bonnie Garmus. This is how she starts her review: "Every now and again, a first novel appears in a flurry of hype and big-name TV deals, and before the end of the first chapter you do a little air-punch because for once it’s all completely justified. Lessons in Chemistry, by former copywriter Bonnie Garmus, is that rare beast; a polished, funny, thought-provoking story, wearing its research lightly but confidently, and with sentences so stylishly turned it’s hard to believe it’s a debut." She’s exactly right. I started the book, primed and ready to savour…

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Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

A review Doerr’s latest novel is his first since the Pulitzer Prize winning All the Light We Cannot See. That book was a particularly happy accident for me. I found it lying around the house, and knew nothing about it, so began it with no expectations. After about thirty pages or so, I knew I was dealing with something special. I browsed this new one in Waterstones in the run up to Christmas and rejected it. It just didn’t sound like my cup of tea: three separate stories spanning several hundred years, including a sci fi section, all linked together by a fictional fragment of a Ancient Greek text. No, thank you very much, I’ll pass on that. How wrong I was. This is a singularly brilliant novel, one of the best I’ve read for years. Each section is perfectly realised: the stories of two of the little people on opposite sides of…

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Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley – A Review

The acclaimed author of "Elmet" delivers her second novel Fiona Mozley This is an unexpectedly fabulous book. Mozley received lots of critical acclaim for her debut novel, Elmet, published in 2017, but, I have to confess, I was underwhelmed by it. It seemed to me to be one of those novels that sacrificed the more humble virtues of plot, character and credibility of motivation for obliqueness and a certain poetic sensibility. Having arrived at an interesting (though not really believable) story, she recast it through a vague lens of obscuring the connections and back stories and motivations to make it more “interesting”. The reader is forced to become a detective, piecing together fragments of description and dialogue, working out time shifts and changes in perspective until a narrative emerges just in time for a vaguely satisfying resolution to come into view. Of course, you can only do this if you’re an experienced and…

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Beautiful World, Where Are You?

Sally Rooney’s third novel frustrates and disappoints in equal measure. I’m sad to report that the answer to the question posed by the title of Rooney’s third novel, “Beautiful World Where Are You?” is, “Well, not here, at any rate.” I had looked forward to this for some time, keenly anticipating more of the glorious writing that characterised “Normal People”, a novel I loved, with great surprise after finding her first effort, “Conversations with Friends”, a full blown example of the Emperor’s new clothes. The critics gushed, and told us we were witnessing a new kid on the block who was authentically chronicling life and love as experienced by the middle class, educated twenty-somethings of Dublin (and by extension, everywhere else). I found it tediously thin and empty. “Normal People”, on the other hand, is one of the great novels of the twenty first century, a subtle and beautiful story of an enduring…

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A Review of Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

The Great American Novel: the weight of expectations and current US obsession with Christianity is too much for Franzen's latest effort to bear. For a certain type of contemporary fiction lover, there exists a fascination with the pursuit of The Great American Novel. The very idea seems to me born out of a longing for old school respectability in the ranks of American commentators. American pre-eminence in the new cultures of the Twentieth century only serves to sharpen the longing for recognition of their excellence in proper culture – fine art and literary fiction – rather than the bubble gum worlds of the movies, TV and pulp fiction. It speaks to a notion of America being both looked down on for its cultural poverty at the same time as being lionised as the world’s major superpower, politically and economically. “Give us some respect”, it seems to shout, “we’re just as good as you…

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“It was the day that my Grandmother had a cup of tea” – In Praise of the Slow Start.

Earlier this year, the best-selling British crime author, Mark Billingham (left), caused a little controversy at the Times Cheltenham Literary Festival when he said that if a novel does not grip him after twenty pages he “throws it away angrily”. He reckons that he does this with 50% of the books he starts to read. “Life’s too short,” he says, “and there are so many great books out there.” This is an opinion that has divided readers, but it’s one that will be familiar to anybody who has tried to submit a manuscript to publishers or agents, and it’s very much in line with their thinking. You know the drill: submission guidelines that specify the first three chapters in the initial submission. The publishing and self-publishing industry is a growth area of one thing above all else. And its not new novelists. No, it’s companies largely inhabited by people who have fallen foul…

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The Mercies

I’d seen this book here, there and everywhere over the last year or so. At first, I lumped it in with that slew of novels, all with a similar style of colourful, swirling patterns on the cover and a one-word title, that were so much in vogue in the last year or so. You know the ones I mean – The Familiars, The Foundling, The Binding, The Corset. I tried all of those, having a love of the gothic, but didn’t finish any of them. I found them pale imitations of the real thing, compared to, say, one of the early Sarah Waters books. The other thing that put me off trying this one, for quite a long time, was Millwood Hargrave's children’s novel, The Girl of Ink and Stars. Despite it’s wonderful title (a title that, incidentally, put paid to my own novel, The Girl with Stars in her Hair) I found…

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Wolves in Winter -The Watcher and The Friend and the Joan Aiken legacy, Part 2

Standing on the shoulders of giants In the first part of this blog, I wrote about my serendipitous discovery, over many years, as a teacher and a parent, of Aiken and the Wolves Chronicles. Here, I’m going to look at the links between her wonderful books and my own children’s debut, “The Watcher and The Friend”. It wasn’t until much later, after my book was written, that I realised the connection. Even when my editor had explicitly asked me about the inspiration, and the books I would compare it with, I did not come up with “Wolves of Willoughby Chase”. Budding writers will be familiar with this part of the process. Agents are thinking about selling, marketing, promoting. And that leads them to think about genre. What other books is your book like, so we can directly appeal to lovers of those books in the hope that they will give your book a…

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