Happy Family by James Ellis

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Happy Family by James Ellis

Germaine Kiecke, an art critic and broadcaster, is the lead character in this well-crafted and thought-provoking novel. Or, is she? Several characters reflect different facets of the story, so reading it feels like walking in a portrait gallery, or flicking through a graphic novel. Because Germaine’s childhood was destroyed by vindictive abusers, she learned early in life how to escape from reality into fantasy. She has difficulty in sustaining relationships, and fails to ‘articulate the images in her mind’. Her live-in lover has moved out, and she leads a solitary but contented existence, finding comfort in playing ‘Happy Family’, an augmented reality game, because ‘inside the bubble was better than outside’.

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From the Type Face #1

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From the Type Face #1

I hope 2020 is bringing you good health, terrific books to read and brilliant writing opportunities. I’ve chosen to focus my time and energy on the areas where I already have a toe-hold, humorous writing and book blogging, so I don’t enter writing competitions. However, I know many of my contacts like to take part in short story, flash fiction and novel events, and some of them have won prestigious prizes. Here’s a link to a great free source of competition opportunities.

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The Day Jack Sacked His Therapist by Marie Gameson

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The Day Jack Sacked His Therapist by Marie Gameson

When your therapist is your sister, how can you sack her? That is the intriguing question posed by Marie Gameson’s witty tale of City broker Jack, whose tragic childhood has turned him into an all-purpose scapegoat. Because of a mystery connected with his mother’s early death, Jack shows all the signs of being cursed, leading others to see their own demons in him. Although Jill, his well-meaning sibling, keeps telling Jack that nobody blames him for whatever happened to their mother, it is obvious from the start of the novel that he feels weighed down by all the problems of the world.

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Something To Live For by Richard Roper

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Something To Live For by Richard Roper

A funeral marks the end of a life, but it makes a fine beginning to a story. Richard Roper opens his moving and humorous novel, ‘Something to Live For’, with a funeral where there’s only one mourner. Working for the local council in the Death Administration department, it’s Andrew’s job to search through the belongings of people who have died alone, seeking funds to cover funeral expenses, as well as contact details for family and friends. If he finds neither, Andrew has to arrange a Public Health funeral. These are not as uncommon as you might think. In the UK, local authorities spent £5,382,379 on public health funerals in the 12 months up to April 2018.

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Nightingale Point by Luan Goldie

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Nightingale Point by Luan Goldie

A single dreadful event, on a summer day in 1996, changes the lives of the inhabitants of a city tower block forever. Some of the residents have been living as strangers in neighbouring apartments for decades, others are connected by long gone family traumas and their continual struggle to ‘get by’. No-one affected by the disaster will ever be the same again.

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Happiness by Aminatta Forna

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Happiness by Aminatta Forna

Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist visiting London to deliver a conference keynote speech, is an internationally respected expert on PTSD. Jean, an American, is a biologist, studying urban foxes on a short-term EU contract. They bump into each other, literally, on Waterloo Bridge in London. By coincidence, they meet again a few hours later, through their joint efforts to help a homeless man and his dog. After that, the two strangers go for a drink and their stories begin to intertwine.

Personally, I was more drawn to Attila, ‘a man so tall he appeared to be wading through the crowd’. His physical stature is matched by his big heart. When it becomes clear that he must take responsibility, not only for finding his missing niece and her child but also for rescuing his former lover, Attila steps up without hesitation. A childless widower, he is alone in life through circumstance, not by choice. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the horrors he has witnessed in theatres of war, he loves to laugh and passionately enjoys the good things of life. He relishes flavours, and asks to be seated close to the kitchen in restaurants, so that he can enjoy the appearance and smells of the dishes being carried past. Whenever an opportunity offers, he dances.

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A Knife to the Heart by Barbara Nadal

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A Knife to the Heart by Barbara Nadal

Forty years on, a wealthy but broken family must relive the dreadful events surrounding a young married woman’s alleged suicide. Although Cetin Ikmen has retired from the Istanbul police force, he is persuaded to investigate this not-so-cold case. A historian has discovered, in a ruined seaside villa, the Ouija board that predicted the bride, Deniz, would be the first of those present to die.  While Ikmen delves deeper and deeper into the circumstances surrounding her violent death, both past and present are obscured and illuminated by dynamics motivating the surviving relatives.

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The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

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The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

Disrupting the reader’s complacency is what Sara Collins does best. Identifying with Frannie, we face the historical realities of slavery, but there’s also plenty of humour, passion and adventure in her story.

Collins’ description of Frannie’s passionate relationship with her aristocratic mistress is only one brilliant facet of this exciting, unsettling book. In addition, there are colourful accounts of life below stairs and on the streets of London, recounted by Frannie in response to her defence lawyer’s desperate plea, ‘For God’s sake, give me something I can save your neck with!’

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The Stepney Doorstop Society by Kate Thompson

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The Stepney Doorstop Society by Kate Thompson

The Stepney Doorstep Society is a heartfelt and entertaining celebration of strong, intelligent, working-class women who took on not only poverty, but also Hitler’s Third Reich, in a never-ending struggle to care for their families and support their community.

A Boomer friend of mine, born a few years after WW2 ended, spent his childhood playing on London bomb sites and has the scars to prove it. I know the district this book is about and in the past I met many elderly people who had been through the kind of experiences described. While I was reading it, I wondered if I might have encountered some of the old ladies who shared their memories with Kate Thompson, because their voices came across as genuine and familiar.

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The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star by Vaseem Khan

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The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star by Vaseem Khan

This book, and indeed the series, is illuminated by the personality of Inspector Chopra, a detective whose motto in life is ‘honesty, integrity, decency.’ In spite of every distraction that the underbelly of Mumbai life can throw at him, he adheres to these principles. He is a family man of great tenderness but also immense toughness. If his ‘maudlin silences’ occasionally annoy Poppy, they are understandable in the context of the corruption and greed he faces every day. ‘In our country, honesty is like the scent of blood in shark-infested waters,’ he complains.

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