Micro Review 23

 

Quarantine Comix by Rachael Smith (Icon Books)

eProof from Net Galley

I am sure that in the next few years there will be a plethora of books using the Covid-19 Pandemic as a plot device but for me Quarantine Comix is the first I've read and I loved it.

I'd not come across the cartoons on social media over the past year and I am not sure where I saw this mentioned (my already wonky memory seems to have not enjoyed Lockdown 3) but I am glad I put a request in for the book.

While I was lucky enough to be with my husband and to keep working throughout the past year so much else of Smith's comics rang true to me. She really has captured the boredom, fear, weirdness of time as well as the wonder of nature & small things just as I experienced them. (I would just like to reassure my family who read this blog and might find the book too that Mr Norfolkbookworm & I didn't drink as much as Rachael and her housemate, nor did we drink at such odd times of day!)

Thinking on this book further, and discussing it with a friend who also got access to the early copy, I've come to the conclusion that this book had such resonance for me because like the author I was lucky that no one in my close circle appears to have caught the virus  - although there were family losses from other causes that were exacerbated by Covid.

This book is all about the fears and 'what ifs' of the past year and not the actual illness itself - for that you need to read Michael Rosen's Many Different Kinds of Love. 

When it comes to 'souvenirs' of this odd time I'd definitely include this book in a time capsule - it is just how I recall 2020.

Cat Step - an #IndieBookNetwork review

 

Cat Step by Alison Irvine (Dead Ink Books)

Expanding my reading horizons has always been important to me, whether it is new genres, locations, languages in translation, or new publishers. The IndieBookNetwork initiative is really helping me do the latter as without that I'm not sure I'd ever have come across Cat Step.

The publisher blurb reads:

One mistake can unravel everything…

She only left her daughter in the car for a minute; just a quick minute whilst she ran into the shop. She barely thought twice about making the decision, but it soon began to consume her every thought. And not just her thoughts, but those of every neighbour, police officer and social security worker in a fifteen mile radius. But this is her child. Surely she knows best?

After she’d made the move to a small town in Scotland, the rolling hills and blustery beaches seemed to be the perfect backdrop for her and her four year-old daughter, Emily, to start again. It wasn’t always easy just the two of them, but Liz was sure that she could manage this time. And now this?

Sometimes, one mistake is all it takes to unravel everything. Cat Step is a lyrically sparse novel about judgement, intergenerational relationships, community, class, and the expectations that we place on mothers. With sharp prose Alison Irvine has crafted a compassionate narrative that compels you to read on.

And that is a pretty good precis of the book, but what it leaves out is the feeling of overwhelming dread that the book gave me from the first page.

From the start I couldn't tell which way the book was going to go, there are so many strands that add to the feeling of dread, but in general terms they were all 'real' and on the surface 'nice' so why was I so nervous?

I'm not going to spoil anyone's reading of the book except to say all of the threads are drawn together well, and that at no point did the story tip over into the unbelievable. It really did feel as if this could happen to anyone in the same circumstances. Once one action is taken, or one mistake is made then life can just snowball. Individually they are nothing but like that snowball they just keep getting bigger until you are somthered.

The chapters were nice and short for the most part, so when I really couldn't bear the tension any more it was easy to stop, breathe and then come back to the book. 

I don't think I'd have found this book without the chance from Bex, especially with the new lockdown (and how little I am going into shops this year anyhow) but I am glad that I did, I don't think that it will ultimately make my best of the year lists but it certainly had a really powerful effect on me.

Cat Step was published by Dead Ink Books on 5th November and I was provided with a free copy to review as part of the Indie Book Network.

As the Women Lay Dreaming - a review for the IndieBookNetwork

 As the Women Lay Dreaming by Donald S Murray (Saraband)

After running a 5 year project during the WW1 Centenary commemorations I've not read too many books set in 1913-1919 but the offer from Bex (Ninja Book Box) to expand my reading of independent publishers with a book set at the very end of the war was too good to miss.

In the small hours of January 1st, 1919, the cruellest twist of fate changed at a stroke the lives of an entire community.

Tormod Morrison was there that terrible night. He was on board HMY Iolaire when it smashed into rocks and sank, killing some 200 servicemen on the very last leg of their long journey home from war. For Tormod – a man unlike others, with artistry in his fingertips – the disaster would mark him indelibly.

Two decades later, Alasdair and Rachel are sent to the windswept Isle of Lewis to live with Tormod in his traditional blackhouse home, a world away from theGlasgow of their earliest years. Their grandfather is kind, compassionate, but still deeply affected by the remarkable true story of the Iolaire shipwreck – by the selfless heroism and desperate tragedy he witnessed.

A deeply moving novel about passion constrained, coping with loss and a changing world, As the Women Lay Dreaming explores how a single event can so dramatically impact communities, individuals and, indeed, our very souls.

I learned about the Iolaire disaster during my centenary project, the loss of a ship bringing men home to the Western Isles from the war within sight of the harbour on New Year's Day 1919 hammered home the utter futility of that war to me.

This book is very clever as the Iolaire disaster is central to the plot, but at the same time not. Ostensibly this is the story of Alasdair remembering a short period in his life when he lived with his grandparents long after the ship went down, but every interaction Alasdair has is coloured by how the war and shipwreck impacted the community.

I found myself immersed in the book and found that I was incapable of putting it down once I'd started it. I liked learning about how life in the Western Isles remained untouched in many ways during WW1 but that the people involved were completely altered, however hard they tried to stay firm with their beliefs. It was such a feast for the senses reading this book, I really could see, hear and smell everything which helps to explain how hard it was to stop reading and return to 2020.

Surprisingly for a book that enthralled me so much I am finding it hard to articulate why, and I am now realising just how many gaps the book has left me with. 

I wanted to spend more time in the family's world and I definitely want to know about all of the female characters whose stories are tantalisingly mentioned but never completed.  There is a lot to be said for a short, beautiful book but I'd have loved this to be a big, sweeping saga and to feel like I was a part of the family rather than someone peeking through the window and listening to snippets of the family's story being told around the fire place.

I'm really pleased I've read this book, and huge thanks to Bex at the Indie Book Network and Saraband for the book, I'm now off to look for more books set in the Western Isles and about HMY Iolaire.