Micro Review 18 (2025)

 

The Eights by Joanna Miller (Penguin Books Ltd.)

Wow! What a book. I can't remember the last time I stayed up past midnight because I just *had* to finish a book.

Set just post WW1 this book follows the residents of corridor 8 at St Hugh's College, Oxford as they start their university studies. They are among the first cohort of women students to be granted full student status and who will be awarded their degrees fully at the end of their course.

The four women, like all students in halls of residence, couldn't be more different but a bond is forged between them and they become close friends as their first year unfolds. All of them have secrets and past traumas to overcome - but none of these feel unreal or too modern and I just felt like I was a fly on the wall of 1920s Oxford.

The legacy of both the suffrage campaigns and World War One loom large and you really feel just how the impact of the latter in particular affected everyone in some way or another.

I see this book as a wonderful female centric companion to In Memoriam by Alice Winn, and also to Pip William's Bookbinder of Jericho  and even Jessica Swale's play Blue Stockings.

One thing Miller does so well is to bring in real life people into the story without it feeling like a name drop or research being crowbarred in to the plot - the story is just brilliant and I think it is another that will end up on my 'best of' lists at the end of the year. I really hope that it does well and appears on lots of prize lists!

Many thanks to Net Galley and Penguin for my advance copy of this novel

Micro Review 10 (2024) Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize

 

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (Penguin Books)

As I started reading the books for the Debut Fiction Prize so late I was aware that this was the overall winner as I started it, and as I've enjoyed all the books so far (and one is one of my top reads of the year) this one had an awful lot to live up to.

Again on paper the book was right up my street:

An exhilarating, fiercely original story of brotherhood, war and art, and of daring to dream of something bigger than ourselves.

It's 412 BC, and Athens' invasion of Sicily has failed catastrophically. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are held captive in the quarries of Syracuse, starving, dejected, and hanging on by the slimmest of threads.

Lampo and Gelon are local potters, young men with no work and barely two obols to rub together. When they take to visiting the nearby quarry, they discover prisoners who will, in desperation, recite lines from the plays of Euripides for scraps of bread and a scattering of olives.

And so an idea is born: the men will put on Medea in the quarry. A proper performance to be sung of down the ages. Because after all, you can hate the Athenians for invading your territory, but still love their poetry.

But as the audacity of their enterprise dawns on them, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between enemies and friends. As the performance draws near, the men will find their courage tested in ways they could never have imagined...

The author is also based in Norwich so another tick in its favour...

Sadly the book wasn't quite my cup of tea, I had hoped that it was just the abridged Book at Bedtime version that wasn't for me and that the full book would connect.

I can't quite put my finger on why the book didn't work for me. The story was interesting, I knew both Euripides plays being performed and the characters/setting were strong. I also quite liked the way the characters spoke in a vernacular way, it just left me cold and I didn't find it either a comedy or a tragedy.

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at the discussions where the winner was chosen to find out why this one won - it was good but just not a winner in my mind.

Micro Review 9 (2024) Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize

 

The Silence in Between by Josie Ferguson (Transworld)

Next from the Debut Fiction list for me was The Silence in Between and again on paper just the type of book I adore:

The Silence in Between is a historical novel based in Berlin in 1961 and during the Second World War. Lisette lives in East Berlin but brings her new-born baby to a hospital in West Berlin.

Under doctor's orders, she goes home to rest, leaving the baby in the care of the hospital. But overnight the border between East and West closes, slicing the city - and the world - in two. With a city in chaos and armed guards ordered to shoot anyone who tries to cross, her situation is desperate.

Lisette's teenage daughter, Elly, has always struggled to understand the distance between herself and her mother. Both live for music but while Elly hears notes surrounding every person she meets, for her mother - once a talented pianist - the world has gone silent. Perhaps Elly can do something to bridge the gap between them. What begins as the flicker of an idea turns into a daring plan to escape East Berlin, find her baby brother, and bring him home....

This is the 3rd book I've read this year that is set all or partially in East Berlin during the Cold War and all of them have been absolutely brilliant - with this one sneaking ahead by a whisker.

As the author says in the end notes so much of this book seems to be too far fetched to have any historical basis where as the opposite is actually the case - and Ferguson makes the facts from history books and documentaries come to life in an incredibly visceral way. 

Some of the book makes for very hard reading but from page one I was hooked and I can definitely see this one being on my 'best of' lists at the end of the year. 

(The overall winner of the prize was announced as I was reading this one and I was genuinely upset that the prize didn't go to Ferguson.)

Micro Review 8 (2024) Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize

 

Mongrel by Hanako Footman (Footnote Press)

This was my second read from the Waterstones Debut list simply because it was the next book that arrived from the library!

This, on paper, was much more the type of book that I pick up naturally: 

Mei loses her Japanese mother at age six. Growing up in suburban Surrey, she yearns to fit in, suppressing not only her heritage but her growing desire for her best friend Fran.

Yuki leaves the Japanese countryside to pursue her dream of becoming a concert violinist in London. Far from home and in an unfamiliar city, she finds herself caught up in the charms of her older teacher.

Haruka attempts to navigate Tokyo's nightlife and all of its many vices, working as a hostess in the city's sex district. She grieves a mother who hid so many secrets from her, until finally one of those secrets comes to light . . .

Shifting between three intertwining narratives, Mongrel reveals a tangled web of desire, isolation, belonging and ultimately, hope.

I did like the book as I was reading it, but I worked out the connections between the three characters quite quickly but it was an enjoyable read to work out how the stories would intertwine and how they would react if and when they met.

Much of the book is quite dark, and very adult in content and while I'm glad I read it you can't really call it enjoyable.

Micro Review 19

 

A Burning by Megha Majumdar (Simon & Schuster)

proof copy

Again regular readers may realise that this book was actually in my top 10 for 2020 but that I hadn't reviewed it. I was a bit sneaky adding it to last year's top reads as it was only published a few weeks ago - in 2021.

However this was a book that really made an impact on me and was certainly one of the best books I did read last year so I bent my (pretty non-existent) blogging rules!

This book brings to light a lot of inequalities that exist in modern India and very much like Two Tress Make a Forest and Kim YiJung, born 1982   really made me reconsider my opinions on the nation.

The book has a simple plot outline: 

Set in contemporary India, Majumdar’s debut is a pulsating character study based in the aftermath of a terrorist attack and the complex, conflicting legacy that the atrocity unleashes on ordinary people’s lives. 

but is so much deeper than this. It brings to light the stories of minorities and also shows how quickly someone can be radicalised. It also shows the dangers of social media, albeit in an extreme manner.

I'm loathe to say too much about the book as the gentle (and not so gentle) unfolding of the story is one of the best things about it. In many ways the tone of the story reminded me of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and how that made me think when I read it. For a debut book this is astounding and Majumdar is definitely an author who's next book I will be eagerly awaiting.