And Now For Something Completely Different

One of my favourite author's just published a new book. You really should try it. Here's what I said on Amazon.

The most original writer around at the moment has done it again. When you thought that Caroline Smailes had gone as far as she could in developing new ideas with "99 Reasons Why", we now have a unique novel that is partly gritty drama, partly screenplay and wholly compelling.

In a run down seaside resort on the North Wales coast a couple of decades ago 14 year old Laurel gets an after school job in the decaying local Victorian swimming baths recently reopened as "The Oracle" by an odd trio of spiritual healers. She's a bright kid and the job is a welcome distraction from looking after her mum's ever expanding brood of kids from an ever expanding number of feckless fathers. 

In the present, sixteen year old Arthur Braxton, finds himself drawn to the same,now derelict, building as he escapes Facebook humiliation by his peers.

I don't want to spoil things for you by saying too much about what happens at The Oracle but there's a clue in the name and the novel develops into a magical mixture of myth and tragedy which I am sure is based on Greek mythology (but I have to hold my hands up to not being well read enough to know the source). In these passages the author takes us away from the grimness of the Welsh coast into a fantasy world fuelled by teen angst and filled with ghosts, spectres, ethereal music and ghastly experiences. And water - so much water.

I thought  of Meg Rosoff's surreal teenage deity in "There Is No Dog" when trying to think of a parallel to this book but Caroline Smailes' young characters inhabit a far darker, bleaker world and the novel is a powerful and chilling view of the difficulties of growing up and seeking love in deprived circumstances. 

Our local book club is reading "Gone Girl" this month. I can't think of much to say about that. Had we chosen "The Drowning Of Arthur Braxton", the discussions would go on into the small hours. It's that sort of book. Love it or hate it you won't have read anything like it.

A Couple Of Reviews

Although we've been on the road for almost a week now we've still found time to do a bit of reading and get to a film so here are a few words on what I've enjoyed recently.

It would be ridiculous for an unpublished writer like me to give this novel anything less than five stars as it is a work of literary genius that I expect to see nominated and shortlisted for countless prizes. Written in the voice of its protagonist Louise (or Lulu or any one of a number of aliases that she acquires in her extremely eventful life) Mountains Of The Moon records her troubled childhood, adolescence and young adulthood in a series of flashbacks that jump sometimes apparently at random from period to period.


The brilliance of the book is in the storyteller's exceptional use of language; turn to almost any page at random and you will find beautiful images "our legs cut through stripes of sunshine", "the corridor is dark, wooden, fitted together like a puzzle". One of my favourite authors Caroline Smailes writes with this artistic flair and Louise's use of "flip flop" to describe her walking echoes the narrator in Smailes' Like Bees To Honey and makes me wonder if I. J. Kay is also a fan.


The development of the voice from child to teenager to young woman is expertly done - the vocabulary expands, the words become more properly formed and sentences more coherent and logical as she grows up. In short I can only admire the author's skill in creating this novel.


Having said all that, I have to say that the novel did fall down for me on the story. As I said above, it is the story of a troubled life; our protagonist is from a broken home and she is hardened to life although she has a softer side and yearns to visit Africa's Mountains Of The Moon and the Masai Mara (places she has learned about from her beloved Granddad's book and recreated in her childhood on wasteland near her home). I had problems in finding certain scenes credible. I won't spoil the book for you but  these included an adolescent period in an institution, an encounter with a taxi driver and an incident with a horse. I can cope with one or two things in a book causing a raised eyebrow but I did feel that there were a few too many times that the author stretched my credulity. 


Don't let this put you off reading it though. As a piece of art it is truly a tour de force.

I like to think that I've a broad range of tastes; I'm equally at home with La Boheme as I am with an episode of X Factor and Mel Sherratt's Somewhere To Hide is Coronation St to Mountains Of The Moon's Othello. Following on from her highly successful Taunting The Dead - a police thriller set in Stoke On Trent, Somewhere To Hide has been described by the author as "Grit Lit" and I think that's a very good description.


The somewhere to hide of the title is both a derelict pub where the novel opens as a psycho predator instals himself waiting for a date with his destiny in August and a safe house for young women run by the matronly and amiable Cathy. She takes in teenage runaways Jess and Becky and battered wife Liz and the novel charts their experiences on the notorious Mitchell estate in an anonymous city somewhere in northern England in the time running up to the aforementioned date with destiny.


Mel Sherratt writes in good plain English which is compelling to read and she has the rare knack of making the reader want to turn the page. There's an element of chick-lit in there with the customary girly get togethers complete with pillow throwing, wine drinking and appreciating a fine pair of male buttocks. There is an underlying love story in the background as well as the story of several troubled lives as the younger girls are dragged into a seedy underworld, Liz is stalked by her battered husband and Cathy lives with a harrowing secret looming over her.


It's a very good read and certainly five star entertainment as the story builds into an explosive climax.

An Old Adult's Take On A Young Adult Novel

I read the book that I won on the excellent Caroline Smailes' blog the other day; Darren Craske's The Lantern Menace isn't aimed at old blokes like me but I have to say that I loved it. Here's the review that I posted on Amazon.


"The Lantern Menace is juvenile or young adult fiction so you may wonder what a fifty eight year old granddad is doing reviewing it. Well, I won a copy of the book on an excellent author's website and I knew that if she was promoting it there had to be something good about it.

And there's certainly more than something good. I'd describe it as great. It's great fun, has great pace and there's a great story there too. I've only read two fantasy novels before - The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings and, like those classics (and, I suspect many other fantasy books) The Lantern Menace involves a quest. Our young teenage heroes Finchley and Princess Castria set off with Rufus Lightfoot on their journey to recover a Limbo Lantern that holds pure evil (it's their fault that it's lost). They have plenty of exciting adventures along the way and the book is action packed throughout.

We usually associate the idea of fantasy with some sort of dark medieval atmosphere and, although there is an element of this - they journey by horse and cart - the language is up to date and the kids are very modern in their outlook; Castria goes for designer clothes and looks for her home decor in interior design magazines. This modernity adds a nice touch to the story and I love the way that author Darren Craske throws in plenty of jokes and clever asides (in brackets).

Although it's aimed at children, the book doesn't talk down to kids at all and uses a refreshingly advanced vocabulary - there's even a lepidopterist in there! Its written in a way that projects pictures into your head and I could see the action happening so vividly that I almost felt that I had watched a film rather than read a book (and what a good film it would make).

I know that both of my children would have loved this book and I'm absolutely sure that thousands of others will too."

Oh Happy Days. Some Funny Books At Last.

A fellow blogger and metal detecting enthusiast John Winter (you can find his excellent blog down there on the right) asked me the other day if I read mostly female authors. I can understand him thinking this as I've recently reviewed books by Caroline Smailes, Ann Weisberger, Nicola May,Talli Roland, Meg Rosoff and Rachel Joyce on this blog. But in the last twelve months my favourite books have also included Pigeon English, The White Tiger, We The Drowned, Florence And Giles and Homer And Langley all of which were written by men. And by pure coincidence, both the novels I read this week have male authors.

I've grumbled so often about the lack of funny books that I started to wonder if I had lost my sense of humour. All the "I nearly wet myself ", "tears were streaming down my face" and "I almost died laughing" quotes on the fronts and backs of novels might muster a glimmer of a smile at best. There's one author on Twitter who, almost every day, quotes that a famous comic found his book hilarious - it's a pleasant enough read but he got me to buy it under false pretences. 


Well, finally, here's one that does exactly what it says on the tin (that would get the narrator's back up).


Driving Jarvis Ham by Jim Bob opens with "Would you drink a pint of your own piss?", a brilliant line but one that might deter the more sensitive reader. But, sensitive reader - any reader,  I urge you to proceed beyond this and the increasingly gross challenges that Jarvis and our narrator are discussing in one of their "in car" games and enjoy an extremely funny tale of a childhood friendship that came about one day at school and continued for the next thirty years. Jarvis is a Princess Diana obsessive, wannabe actor, wannabe pop star, wannabe anything famous. He's got none of the attributes that might give him even a smidgeon of a chance to realise those dreams - his classmates called him "balloon head", he can't sing and he can't act but somehow, our narrator, his only friend, sticks with him and indulges him with lifts to his no hope auditions and am-dram flops. 


Something more sinister lurks beneath Jarvis' loser existence as the novel develops through a clever combination of diaries and other mementos some discovered by his friend, some written by him. I love the friendly narrative conversational style. There are also some brilliant illustrations that alone would justify a "laugh out loud" quote on the back (although there are more than enough laughs even without them). Our narrator earns a living writing funny one-liners for Christmas crackers, fortune cookies and church posters (ruining my long held belief that the vicar at our local Methodist church must be Southport's funniest man)  and he relates the story with wonderful humour and style. Do read it - if you buy the electronic edition you even get four free songs by Jim Bob to download and enjoy. 

Having finally found one very funny book it would be too much to ask to read another in the same week wouldn't it but Michael Frayn's Skios is just that - a very funny book. Nikki is busily organising a big event for a charitable foundation on a beautiful Greek island. Fifty something Dr Norman Wilfred is flying there to make the keynote speech whilst handsome young chancer Oliver Fox is also on his way to the island to take advantage of a sexy woman in a villa he's managed to cadge for a week from friends of his wealthy not quite ex-girlfriend. All the classic characters are in place for a farce.


And what a farce develops! When Oliver discovers that his conquest has missed her plane and spots Nikki at the airport waiting for Dr Wilfred it's an opportunity he can't resist and what follows is a delightful concoction of mixed up luggage, mistaken identity and wrong bedrooms against a backdrop of sunshine, shady politicians and some other dark goings on on the hillside. It's a credit to Michael Frayn that he has managed to put together what is effectively a theatrical farce into a novel and he has pulled it off quite perfectly right down to the minor characters that no farce would be complete without - in this case brothers Spiros and Stavros from Skios Taxis and their catchphrase "thirty two euros".


So that's two very different and very funny books in a week. Whilst a lot of Driving Jarvis Ham 's humour is in the writing and Skios' laughs come from the absurd situation both are hugely enjoyable reads.


I've got The Red House by Mark Haddon (another male author please note) to read now before starting on Middlesex for Scott Pack's book club experiment later in the week (see the link to the meandmybigmouth blog over on the right) 

99 Reasons Why

There are hundreds of reasons why I eagerly awaited the launch of 99 Reasons Why. Caroline Smailes is a hugely talented author who readers can always rely upon to come up with something new and something original. Her earlier novels included poetic prose forming artistic patterns on the page, small chunks of text in sign language, a beer swilling Jesus living in Malta - she is a bit special, a one off. 

So it's little surprise that, in the world of e-publishing, she has once again come up with something original - a book with eleven different endings. No doubt, had the book been released in print, Caroline and her equally adventurous publisher Scott Pack would have included one of these origami fortune tellers to help you to choose your ending. It's a great idea and I wanted to love the book.


Unfortunately I didn't love it.  The novella is told in the voice of twenty-two year old Kate. Kate talks to the reader in an authentic North Eastern voice and I felt as if I was being told a story by Sarah Millican. So far so good. The voice is brilliant. Kate is reclusive, thinks that Princess Di was her mother and is being paid £90 every week by a shady uncle (who may or may not be her dad) to monitor the comings and goings at the Kevin Keegan day nursery opposite her house. She spends her free time buying Princess Di memorabilia on eBay. This is fascinating stuff but, whereas I could empathise with the miserable existences of characters in Caroline's Black Boxes and In Search Of Adam, I couldn't warm to Kate and her ghastly parents who would fit perfectly into the cast of Shameless - feckless work shy dad and foul mouthed lazy mum. Smailes' skill as an author presents the reader with visceral images of Kate and her bodily fluids - blood, vomit, piss and more, in situations that would have evoked my sympathy in other books but here just left my nose wrinkling and "yeuch" in my mind.


It's a page turner, cleverly written in short chapters or "reasons"and it's a must read for anyone who appreciates something different. But by the time I reached the choose an ending process I wished the whole family dead. Unfortunately as I hit on a happy ending, my wish was not fulfilled. Of course I went back and found a Tarantino ending which might have been preferable first time around but there was something strange about going back to a new ending that for me didn't feel right. I tried several more endings but felt that once I'd been to an ending I was out of the loop of the story and to get the most from the process I would have to start back at page one.


So it's five stars from me for originality and exceptional writing but, as I didn't enjoy the experience, it's sadly not going to join Caroline Smailes' other books amongst my all time favourites. Well three out of four ain't bad.

Five Star Amazon Reviews

I've been reading a lot lately and most of my reading has been done on the Kindle which, being so easy to use, encourages me to read more quickly and, consequently, more full stop. My Kindle purchases have been downloaded from Amazon and several times recently I have been asked if I would mind adding a review to the site. As I love both reading and writing, this presents no problem and I am currently gathering my thoughts together on what to say and I think I've pretty much got that sorted. The problem lies in the star rating. So many books on Amazon have five star ratings (especially in the self-published category) that I feel churlish in suggesting that those I review are anything less; but to class an enjoyable romance or crime novel in the same category as, say, John Updike's  Rabbit Run, Kazuo Isiguro's  Never Let Me Go or Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger implies that if I ever find such wonderful books, they will have no better rating than the perfectly good novels I've been asked to review.


If you hold the cursor over the Amazon stars when writing a review, the following legends appear :-


***** I love it
****   I like it
***     It's OK
**       I don't like it
*         I hate it


But these descriptions don't appear alongside a book's star rating on it's home page which I feel leads potential buyers to use their own perception of five stars and for me (a big movie fan who reads the film reviews every week) that means exceptional. I will always want to see a film with four stars which I think of as very good and will be very happy to form my own opinion of three star films (a score which tallies in my mind with Amazon's "it's OK") although I would rarely bother with one that scored lower (on average across a number of critics).  


So when I write my reviews I will try and be as fair and honest as I possibly can but if I start throwing five stars around, what happens when something exceptional turns up?

Such as anything by Carolin Smailes who we went to hear speaking at Birkdale library yesterday. A full house heard Caroline talk about her Damascene moment whilst watching "Richard And Judy" (I wonder if it was one of the three or four episodes that our long suffering son appeared in); this inspired her to enroll for a writing course. She then went on to get her work noticed via the blogosphere (there's hope for me yet), suffered the pain of a publisher's liquidation but saw that pain relieved by success when her work was picked up by Harper Collins. It was good to hear somebody who clearly loves books, and language, and we were fascinated to see how her novel Like Bees To Honey (definitely five stars) and it's original cover, developed. Her books are one instance where the Kindle is not the best medium to read as she plays with fonts, layout and other innovative features which can't be reproduced on en e-reader. I'm looking forward to her next novel.


I love the iPhone. I spend far too much time on it but it's such a wonderful piece of equipment that it's hard to put it down. I hope that I'll get one of the new ones with the personal assistant Siri. I see that it's going down a storm in Scotland.

Win Win

I'm on a bit of a roll today. Firstly, I got an email this afternoon from Scott Pack (he's "Me And My Big Mouth" on my blog list recommendation over there on the right). My name came out of his hat after I left a comment on his blog to receive a copy of a book he has just published - The Evolution Of Inanimate Objects. I'm really looking to reading it. Scott's also running a project to send handwritten notes to anyone who asks for one so I've asked him to put one in with the book. It seems that there's an upsurge in reviving the art of handwriting letters at the moment and the Guardian highlighted this in an article today. Scott's project gets a mention there too so I imagine his pen will soon be smoking. I'd offer to write a personal note to any blog readers who want one if I thought anybody would be able to read it. 

My second bit of good news came to light when I checked the UKDetectornet Forum to find that my Roman gold clasp did top their Artifact of the year poll when it closed last week so I'm in line to receive a subscription to a detecting magazine. I'm giving a talk to a village society near one of my favourite detecting spots on 15th February so that will give me something to mention. I've done a power point presentation - never done one of those before so I hope I don't fall flat on my face. Okay so it's not exactly winning the lottery but maybe it's an omen for me to get my entry to that novel competition I mentioned the other day posted.

We're looking forward to hearing Caroline Smailes talk at Birkdale Library tomorrow. I read Black Boxes last week. After the excellent In Search Of Adam and Like Bees To Honey, I wondered what surprises Caroline had in store this time and was not disappointed. She has to be one of the most original authors writing today. Black Boxes is possibly even grimmer than In Search Of Adam but it's extremely hard to put it down. There's fascinating use of words as almost an art form on the page together with the only example of sign language in a novel that I've ever come across. It's highly recommended reading as long as you aren't feeling depressed and, as someone who once helped on a suicide helpline, I found the tone very authentic. She will be talking about Like Bees To Honey tomorrow; although it has death as a central theme, it is a walk in the park compared to Caroline's other novels.

This week's Orange Wednesday trip was The Descendants. As you might guess from the title it's all about family and the film entwines several relationship threads around the story of George Clooney's wealthy Hawaiian  lawyer Matt King whose wife is in a coma and about to be disconnected from life support. Clooney's tearaway seventeen year old daughter Alex (brilliantly played by Shailene Woodley), difficult ten year old Scottie (Amara Miller) and Alex's friend Sid (Nick Krause) make up the heart of the cast and I loved the way that the characters evolved in response to the situation the family finds itself in. The extended family is involved in a multi million dollar real estate deal involving inherited land and King as the last surviving trustee has the final say on what goes on. Throw in an affair, an alpha male father-in-law and Alzheimer's suffering mother-in-law and you've almost got a full house of relationship issues. Director Alexander Payne handles these well and Clooney gives a beautifully understated performance which I found touching. I'm surprised that the film didn't rate higher with the critics (only averaging three stars in most of the broadsheets) but perhaps it was just a bit too nice. It is classed as a "comedy drama" and, although it did have some of the audience laughing, I felt that the laughter was out of place.


And the subject of family leads me seamlessly to an opportunity to leave you today with this wonderful little family video.

Hitting The Decks

It's sadly been way too windy for us to get out on our bikes during our week here at St Andrews but we've managed to fill our days less athletically with writing, playing on the Nintendo DS and, of course, visiting the family.

To get the most out of their static caravans owners are encouraged to fit decking alongside. This provides some outdoor space for perhaps a small dining table or a sun lounger. Being unable (or too soft)  to cycle, we've spent some time walking around Craigtoun Meadows and photographing some of the existing decks in order to decide on the style we want for ours. 

There's a massive variation in quality and style and some look like they've been knocked together by somebody with as much joinery skill as me (not this one I must add)

Do we want steps at the right or steps at the left? What style of gate do we want?

Do we want the base boxed in or open? We found a couple of fitters on the internet and then went to the local timber merchant and asked his advice. We told him one of the names from the web. This elicited a sharp intake of breath with a shake of the head and we got the impression that our web selection was one of the few people in the world who knew less about screwdrivers than me. The friendly timber merchant did give us the names of some "real joiners" so now we're awaiting a couple of quotes and when we get back up here in March we hope to see the results.

The purpose behind buying the caravan was, of course, to be able to see more of Sarah, Duncan and Rose and we were delighted yesterday when we were able to bring Rose here for an hour or two on her own - a priceless element of grandparenthood that we would have missed completely without the caravan. It has to be one of our best ever buys.


I mentioned that I've spent time writing while we've been here. I have rewritten my novel completely now and have read the completed version three times. Every time I found a few mistakes and Marion is now very kindly reading it again. She has found three or four errors too so it's been very worthwhile. I spent all yesterday writing a synopsis for the book to send in with a competition. If the competition brings no luck I will try and get it published and, if still no luck, I may go down the Kindle route. I've read several self published novels on Kindle recently and the standard is fairly high although many are let down by the sort of mistakes that we are trying to eliminate.

We've also been reading a lot and I read In Search Of Adam by Caroline Smailes yesterday. I loved her third novel Like Bees To Honey when I read it last year and have now downloaded all of Caroline's books. So much has already been written about this, her first novel, that it would be difficult to add anything of any worth. It's as hard hitting a book as I can ever remember reading - poetical, lyrical and at times devastatingly graphic. It's beautifully written, a million miles from my escapist whimsy, and left me quite shattered when I finally put it down. Caroline is speaking at Birkdale library next Thursday at 2.15pm and Marion and I are looking forward to hearing her.

NHS Hip Replacement. Getting Discharged.

It's Wednesday. About forty eight hours ago I was on the operating table but now I am walking back to the ward from the bathroom having washed and shaved myself. I say walking but it is really a case of dragging myself along on crutches. As I enter the main ward I meet my fellow patients properly for the first time. Graham who has worked outdoors all his life looks slim, tanned and healthy, Bob less so. The three of us look like triplets with our one elephantine and one normal leg. Bob and Graham have had knees done. We congratulate each other on our fine progress to date and I return to my single room. It's been pleasant having company for a few minutes but I want to recuperate in silence - and then there's the problem.

I haven't mentioned "the problem" on previous blogs as it's a little delicate and not something one normally shouts to the world. But the aim of this record is to give those who are going to have a hip replacement on the NHS an idea of what to expect and so I better give you the full story. Since I arrived back from theatre on Monday I have been creating enough gas to fire a small condensing boiler. Totally uncontrollable, the gas surfaces regularly throughout the day and forty eight hours on there's no sign of it blowing over. I believe that it's the result of painkillers causing constipation and constipation causing flatulence and I'm on some sort of windy merry go round until either the painkillers or the constipation die down.

Charlie the physio has given me some exercises to do in bed to speed recovery. One of these, the buttock clench, leaves me giving involuntary renditions of Colonel Bogey - and I'm supposed to repeat this hourly. I knew that private room would have its benefits and this is certainly one of them.

I fill in my time by starting to read nother novel. Like Bees To Honey by Caroline Smailes hails from the same The Friday Project stable as the excellent Confessions of a GP that I flew through yesterday. This is a wonderful and extremely original book. The author uses an interesting repetitive writing style combined with some highly innovative type setting to produce a unique reading experience. The book's theme is coming to terms with loss but this is done in such a different way to other rites of passage novels and when I tell you that it involves a beer swilling Jesus with scarlet toenails residing in Malta and competing for popularity with John Lennon you will appreciate that it is no everyday book. I can't put it down. I love it.

I don't flake out after Marion's visit this time and watch Arsenal play their Champions League match whilst reading The Guardian at the same time as the match is pretty dull. The nurses hint that I am making good enough progress to be sent home tomorrow. My spirits lift.

It's Thursday and potentially discharge day. I follow all of yesterday's lessons exactly and have myself washed and shaved in no time. I'm quite chuffed with my progress but Mr Ali arrives in the room and tells me that my walking is rubbish and I should be bending my leg more. It's not that easy after eighteen months of stiff legged limping, even more so with a leg that's ballooned to double its normal size. Anyway, he's happy with his handiwork. He tells me that my hip was a mess and he has cut off several chunks of arthritic growths of bone known as ossification (I think). He gives me a copy of my x ray as a souvenir and tells me that once I have walked up some stairs I am free to go.

Charlie wheels me to the hospital stairwell, It's freezing after the warmth of the ward and my teeth are chattering. But I want to master this and secure my release. He gives me a simple mnemonic "The Good The Bad And The Ugly" great for a film buff like me. I make a comment about Sergio Leone but it misses its target. I'm up the steps and down again in ten minutes. I feel like waving my crutches in the air in celebration. It's painful but it has  allowed me the chance to return home and at around 3pm, just over three days since admission Marion will be able to drive me back to Southport.