Welcome to the Outer Circles beyond Jupiter, where enterprise is free, law non-existent and mega-corporation Ragnox Inc. rules—or did. Director Jordan Pascal has lost his power base on Triton, but Commandant DeWitter intends to take it back, and more. Much more. First, however, he needs to deal with the man he replaced, Commandant Smith, who is dead… or is he? Former Commandant Smith has other plans for Ragnox. Plans that involve wiping the corporation off the map and returning the Outer Circles to those for whom it is home. But before Arkadia can be restored, the monstrous war machine that DeWitter is creating must be neutralized. Force will never be enough to defeat overwhelming military might. It requires something more powerful: words.
My Review:
By the Book is the last of the Salvage trilogy and is gripping science fiction by Thorne Moore. One aspect about all this author’s stories, whatever genre she writes in, is that they are all character led. Characters who all, to quote a well-worn cliché (though nevertheless so true here) come to life on the page. The reader follows them from the first book of the series, Inside Out (my review here: https://tinyurl.com/59k74arp), along their chosen path, a journey which takes them into a into an unknown harsh environment. A place they endure. And where some adapt and triumph more than others.
This setting, far beyond the world we know, is the background to the series, and described with such detail that it’s possible to believe such places exist. And that such places have their own codes of behaviour, their own social systems. Especially their own lawlessness. All based on the flaws, the weaknesses, and the strengths of human nature.
The plots in each novel are intricate and fascinating: tales of good versus evil throughout, a true refection of humanity that is portrayed so realistically that I was engrossed from the start and was often surprised by the twists and turns in every story. I reviewed the second book, Making Waves here: https://tinyurl.com/375f9ccs.By the Book, successfully rounds of the whole story of this world and these characters – they’ve come a long way… well, most of them anyway.
With themes of justice and corruption, love and hatred, courage and cowardness, triumph and failure, humour and tragedy threaded throughout,By the Bookbrings this trilogy to a magnificent end. I have admired all of Thorne Moore’s books, and this is no exception. I have no hesitation in recommending it to any reader who enjoys a brilliant story narrated in a wonderfully distinctive style.And with totally believable characters!
Thorne was born in Luton and graduated from Aberystwyth University (history) and from the Open University (Law). She set up a restaurant with her sister and made miniature furniture for collectors. She lives in Pembrokeshire, which forms a background for much of her writing, as does Luton.
She writes psychological mysteries, or “domestic noir,” exploring the reason for crimes and their consequences, rather than the details of the crimes themselves. and her first novel, “A Time For Silence,” was published by Honno in 2012, with its prequel, “The Covenant,” published in 2020. “Motherlove” and “The Unravelling” were also published by Honno. “Shadows,” published by Lume, is set in an old mansion in Pembrokeshire and is paired with “Long Shadows,” also published by Lume, which explains the history and mysteries of the same old house. She’s a member of Crime Cymru. Her latest crime novel, “Fatal Collision is published by Diamond Crime (2022)
She also writes Science Fiction, including “Inside Out” (2021) and “Making Waves” (2022) And now “By the Book” 2023
Epic generational saga set in America’s rural west. In 1930s Midwest America iron-willed Beattie and Irish-born Darragh give all they have to their farm, The Luck. Despite its tragic history, and the dark lakeat its heart, they pour love into the land. When their only son Conrad flies the nest, Beattie is heartbroken until her two spirited granddaughters Rose and Olive arrive, breathing new life into the farm. Olive grows into a savvy entrepreneur, but life doesn’t work out as well for Rose who mysteriously goes missing… An intricately woven tale of joy, heartbreak, betrayal and murder in this epic family saga with a gripping mystery at its heart.
My Review:
When I say this is an easy book to read I don’t mean it’s light reading. I mean it’s a story that absorbs from the first page, and takes the reader on a ride through four generations of a family who instantly come to life against a background of Midwest America in the era of the earlier twentieth century.
The Luck is not only a family saga – it is a tale that interweaves the characters and their relationships with each other over decades. And, threaded throughout, is a secret.
The characters are fully rounded; they grow and change as life and circumstances alter them. Sometime the timeline leaps forward and the reader is presented with one of the main characters as an older individual. It’s strange (a little like meeting someone in real life after years have passed), and yet it works; it’s understandable. Because, reading what has happened to some of the other characters, how life has affected them, has also changed the the main character in that section of the plot. It makes sense. Hmm… does that make sense? Perhaps it’s just simpler to say that I accepted how the author presents them, because it works.
It’s quite a while since I have been totally engrossed in a book that I read: holding it in one hand while flicking a duster around – and missing the furniture, making the bed – not easy with one hand, and necessitating the odd sitting on the bed to ‘just read the next bit’, cooking – definitely not easy, or safe!
I never give spoilers in my reviews. And usually I dissect the writing to point out the strengths and weakness of the narrative (from a subjective point of view – mine!). But, with The Luck, this feels unnecessary. The makeup of the characters, and the many layers of each that are gradually revealed, the descriptions of the settings, – giving a brilliant sense of place, the dialogue, which without fail, differentiates between every character, all added a wonderful depth to the plot and make this a fascinating read.
Not to mention the ending – ah, a tantalising hint there! There’s nothing for it, you’ll need to read this debut book from Kathy Biggs for yourself.
Yes, I am recommending The Luck. I’m recommending it to any reader who enjoys a cracking story written at a steady pace, and with a writing style that takes the phrase “ suspension of disbelief” to a whole new level. A brilliant read.
About the Author:
Kathy Biggs is originally from Yorkshire, where she trained to be a nurse. She took a summer job in Mid Wales with her husband in 1985 – and never left. They bought a derelict cottage and lived ‘off grid’ for 14 years. During this time she started a family, trained to be a homeopath and took up Samba drumming. She has lived in her current location for the last 23 years: working and raising her family. She is a keen gardener and leads a local samba band. After being made redundant in 2017 she completed several Creative Writing courses provided by Aberystwyth University and discovered a passion for writing. The Luck is her first novel.
On a winter’s night in 1892, Kate Williams, the daughter of a Baptist Minister, leaves Abergavenny and sets out for London with a wild plan: she is going to become a strongwoman.
But it is not only her ambition she is chasing. William Roberts, the leader of a music hall troupe, has captured her imagination and her heart. In London, William reinvents Kate as ‘Vulcana – Most Beautiful Woman on Earth’, and himself ‘Atlas’. Soon they are performing in Britain, France, Australia and Algiers.
But as Vulcana’s star rises, Altas’ fades, and Kate finds herself holding together a troupe of performers and a family. Kate is a woman driven by love – for William, her children, performing and for life. Can she find a way to be a voice for women and true to herself?
*
An inspirational fictional telling of Welsh Victorian Strongwoman Kate Williams Vulcana is a fictional telling of the real story of Victorian ‘strongwoman’ Kate Williams (born 1874), starting when she runs away from home at 16 to travel with the love her life, William Roberts. They perform in music halls as Atlas and Vulcana – the climax of their act is that Kate can lift William over her head. She and William present themselves to the public as brother and sister as they travel the world because William is already married, and William’s wife brings up Kate’s children with her own. Kate is driven by for William, for her children, for performing, and for life, and Rebecca’s gorgeous, immersive writing fits perfectly this brave, unconventional woman and her amazing story.
My Review:
Vulcana is a story that is fiction built on fact – at least some facts: In 1892, at the age of eighteen, Kate Williams did leave her religious family home in Abergavenny, Wales, to travel to London with the ambition of becoming a strongwoman, she was infatuated by William Roberts, the leader of a music hall troupe whose act she’d seen. And, although he was already married to Anne, and the father of several children, William and Kate did become lovers. They did form an act together as Atlas and Vulcana, and did perform in music halls all over the world.
The factual background revealed by Rebecca F John is fascinating; it is obvious, from the intricate and atmospheric details, that the author has researched both the era and the life within music halls at the time. This is one of her great strengths of writing, the ability to create a realistic and believable world that the characters move around in. The main characters, multi layered and strengthened by the dialogue, come to life on the page. (Yes I do know that’s a cliché, but when it’s true…. ) And this is so well shown, that, for me, the traits, the strength and weaknesses of both Kate and William, leave them open to subjective judgement.
Kate is a strong woman, courageous in the face of adversity, mostly indifferent to the expectations of society at that time. Her love for William and her children, though all embracing, is balanced by her determination to live her life exactly as she wishes. Sometimes, the way she is portrayed, made me hesitate in my admiration for her. I suppose, like all driven and ambitious people, the feelings of those around them, of those who like and admire – even love them – are maybe not seen, or acknowledged. This is revealed in her ability to leave her family, with barely a glance over her shoulder, and is partly revealed when the rise of Vulcan’s celebrity is to the detriment of her and William’s relationship. Though the love is still always threaded throughout, even until her death, Kate’s career always comes first. The author’s ability to equally layer the themes of love, dreams, single-mindedness, determination, is brilliant. The way each is merged is so skilful. I needed to remind myself that, though the premise of the narrative relates the life of a woman who actually lived, the story is mostly fictional.
So, is Vulcana a book I would recommend? Definitely. Though long, and a story that needs maximum concentration, it’s a great read. And will be for any reader who enjoys well written historical fiction, touched with a background of biographical writing.
About Rebecca F. John
Rebecca F. John was born in 1986 and grew up on the south Wales coast. Her short stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4Extra. In 2015, her short story ‘The Glove Maker’s Numbers’ was shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. She is the winner of the PEN International New Voices Award 2015. Her debut novel, The Haunting of Henry Twist, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. She lives in Swansea.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today I am thrilled to welcome Juliet Greenwood, a friend for many years, and a brilliant writer. Juliet is sharing her special memoriesLlyn Idwal, a lake near Snowdon in Wales.
I have so many places in my memory that remain vivid over time. The one I have chosen has been familiar since childhood, and is one I hope to visit again very soon. Oddly enough, it’s less than six miles from my cottage in Snowdonia, but because it was just outside our five-mile range from home during the pandemic lockdowns, and since these have eased I’ve had a puppy whose joints need protecting, I haven’t been there since 2019. It’s a place that’s both private and very public, both accessible and isolated, and one that is filled with atmosphere, images and stories.
The place is Llyn Idwal, a small, beautifully clear, lake that lies a short walk up from the main A5 road between the university city of Bangor, on the coast, and Snowdon itself. During the day, and particularly in summer, it is popular with tourists from all over the world. But if, like me, you live only a few minutes away by car, it’s still possible to arrive at first light, when it’s almost completely isolated, with just the occasional serious climber heading out for a day on the surrounding peaks of Tryfan, the Glyders and Y Garn.
Being surrounded by high mountains, the light and the colours caught in the lake’s waters are constantly shifting, caught within a huge silent bowl, sometimes utterly still, with a sense of vast space and silence, at other times savage with wind and rain. At the far end is a cleft in the rock called the Devil’s Kitchen. I can remember my imagination being fired as a child by the stories that, when cloud rises up like smoke above the kitchen, you know the devil is cooking up his tea. It’s always a reminder of the uncontrolled and (if you are not careful and treat the landscape with respect) perilous wildness of the mountains, where, from the tops, you can see the train chugging away, taking visitors up Snowdon, or look down on the sea and mountains stretching out into the distance, and feel your own smallness and insignificance.
My favourite memories are of those occasional calm and cloudless mornings, when the lake itself is utterly still, with occasional ripples from the breeze. Especially in the silent clarity of first light, it has a mournful air that perfectly reflects the legend of Prince Idwal being drowned in the lake by his enemies, and the saying that no bird has since flown over its waters. There’s a feeling of being in a true wilderness there, a place to breath in clean air, clear the mind and put troubles into perspective. As a writer, it’s also the perfect place to work out particularly knotty plot lines. Not that you can concentrate on anything but watching your feet and drinking in the atmosphere, but I usually find that the mind has been quietly working underneath while the body has been doing its thing, and the solution is there once I arrive home, tired but exhilarated and desperate for toast and a strong pot of coffee.
It’s one of those place I’ve always taken for granted. The last time I went up, on a crystal clear late autumn morning in 2019, I – like everyone else I met on the way down, cheerful and friendly, and enjoying this accessible piece of wild beauty – had no idea how life was about to change. Where I walk my dog each morning nearly my house, I can see the mountains surrounding Llyn Idwal. It was a weird feeling during the pandemic to have them so close, and yet forbidden. Similarly, there was an even stranger conflict of the idyllic quiet of a landscape devoid of tourists, which now belonged only to those of us who live here, and the frightening events of the world outside.
In this vast landscape of the mountains, there was a glimpse of a world without human beings, the birds louder, the seasons quietly turning without us. When my car battery went flat (the only thing he was called out to, during lockdown, the recovery man told me wryly), I drove up the valley to recharge it, turning round as I reached the entrance to Llyn Idwal and the edges of my permitted range. I couldn’t resist stopping briefly and winding down the windows. Despite not daring to turn the engine off in case I couldn’t start it again (the mortification!), the silence and the stillness was overwhelming. Unnerving, even, like a post-apocalyptic world. For all my longing to be there after so many months, and the frustration of being so close to the lake, I hastily dashed back to the busy throng of my characters, with all their noisy troubles and conflicts.
I have so many memories of Llyn Idwal, going up as a small child, and in all weathers as an adult. It will be strange going back after the intensity of the time since I was last there. Like most of us, I’m still processing the emotions of the pandemic, and I shall have sad, as well as joyful, memories of the beloved four-legged walking companion who adored it up there, and whose time came to an end before we could go again. But I shall also have my new little walking companion, who will be deliriously discovering a new world (we’ve already had the conversation about sheep). And I’ll be remembering that, in the meantime, I’ve had another two books published, with a third completed, and now on its way to being published this May, and just how amazing that is – something you forget when you are in the middle of it all!
I know that when I so go back to Llyn Idwal, I’ll wait for one of those brilliantly magical early mornings, when I can get up there at dawn, and savour the stillness and the sense of isolation, before returning down amongst the walkers making their way up, exchanging greetings, as people (and dogs) in the mountains do, and sharing the beauty of the day and the privilege of sharing this very special place. And then I shall return to my desk and corral my Shakespeare sisters into doing what I tell them, rather than heading off on a tangent. I shall fail, of course (characters always do their own thing), which may well require another dawn adventure to the calming waters of Llyn Idwal….
Bio and Links
Juliet Greenwood is a historical novelist, whose latest novel, The Shakespeare Sisters, set near Stratford-upon-Avon during WW2, will be published in May 2023 with Storm Publishing. She has previously been published by Orion and Honno Press, with her first novel being a finalist for The People’s Book Prize and two of her books reaching the top 5 in the UK Kindle store. She has always been a bookworm and a storyteller, writing her first novel (a sweeping historical epic) at the age of ten. Juliet is fascinated both by her Celtic heritage and the history of the women in her family. She now lives in a traditional cottage in Snowdonia, North Wales, set between the mountains and the sea, with an overgrown garden (good for insects!) and a surprisingly successful grapevine.
A family massacred. A village in mourning. Can anyone sleep safely while a killer is on the loose?
Laura Percival, owner of The Stables, notices something wrong at her friend’s house when out on her morning ride. Further investigation reveals scenes she’ll never forget.
While the police are quick to accuse, Laura is less so, defending those around her as she struggles to make sense of the deaths. And all the time she wonders if she really knew her friends at all.
A chance encounter opens up a line of investigation that uncovers a secret life. One that Laura is much closer to than she ever realised.
A Killer Strikes is a gripping domestic thriller. If you like character-driven action, suspenseful storytelling and dark revelations then you’ll love this exciting novel.
My Review:
Well, I wholeheartedly agree with that last sentence of the book description above, this is what is sometimes called an unputdownable read. I loved it!
I’ve long admired Georgia Rose’s writing and really enjoyed her stories ( here’s my review for one of her earlier books: (Parallel Lives: https://tinyurl.com/9ek6hc93 ).
AKiller Strikes is a true thriller and, as I expected, it’s written in this author’s usual evenly paced writing style, with great characters and a riveting plot.
Told in first person point of view by the protagonist, Laura Percival, we are immediately thrown into her life as it begins to be revealed that all is not as she thinks, even if she doesn’t always understand the implications. We get an insight both to the way the plot is progressing and also to the subtle, inevitable changes in the protagonist.
Each character is brought too life, by the depictions of them, and by their dialogue. There are those I instantly loved, those I instantly disliked – those I wasn’t sure of; who gave me an uneasy feeling. I love character led stories, if the book also has an intriguing plot it’s a great bonus. And A Killer Strikes certainly gives both elements.
As with all of Georgia Roses’ books the descriptions of the settings give a good sense of place. In the stables I could almost hear the activity there: the snuffle of the horses – smell their coats, the straw. I could see the vaguely threatening adult club Laura finds herself in, surrounded by strangers. And I wandered through her home with her. The portrayal of the rooms shows the comfort the protagonist lives in, the place she feels most safe – (yet is she ?)
A Killer Strikesis a most satisfying read that had me empathising with the protagonist every step of the way, with a plot that kept me guessing the whole time. This is a book I thoroughly recommend.
The author:
Georgia Rose is a writer and the author of the romantic and suspenseful Grayson Trilogy books: A Single Step, Before the Dawn and Thicker than Water. Following completion of the trilogy she was asked for more and so wrote a short story, The Joker, which is based on a favourite character from the series and the eBook is available to download for free at the retailer of your choice.
Her fourth novel, Parallel Lies, encompasses crime along with Georgia’s usual blending of genre and its sequel, Loving Vengeance, has now completed The Ross Duology.
Georgia’s background in countryside living, riding, instructing and working with horses has provided the knowledge needed for some of her storylines; the others are a product of her passion for people watching and her overactive imagination.
She has also recently started running workshops and providing one-to-one support for those wishing to learn how to independently publish and you can find her, under her real name, at http://www.threeshirespublishing.com.
Following a long stint working in the law Georgia set up her own business providing administration services for other companies which she does to this day managing to entwine that work along with her writing.
Her busy life is set in a tranquil part of rural Cambridgeshire in the UK where she lives with her much neglected husband.
Jeanette is the manager of a probation hostel that houses high risk offenders released on license.
At 3am one morning, she receives a call telling her a resident has been murdered.
Her whole team, along with the eight convicted murderers, are now all suspects in a crime no one saw committed…
Don’t miss the first nerve-shredding standalone thriller from Noelle Holten, author of the Maggie Jamieson series.
My Review:
6 Ripley Avenue is the first book I’ve read by Noelle Holten, but I’d heard enough of her brilliant books, and her skilful writing from other readers, to enter the competition run by @ScotlandYardCSI for this book, and I was thrilled to win.
I was thoroughly engrossed from the first page. It’s no spoiler to say it opens with the murder of one Danny Wells, a criminal on probation at the hostel, the main setting for this book, which is so evocatively described that the reader can envisage the characters moving around and outside the building.
This author is certainly talented, I loved her swiftly paced writing style, and the intriguing plot she has conjured up, that twists first one way and then the other to keep the reader guessing until the denouement. And her knowledge of the criminal justice system is exemplary. Something I knew nothing about and found fascinating.
The story is written from the points of view of four of the characters. The murderer who speaks directly to the reader in an almost conversational manner, which becomes more sinister and intriguing as the story moves on. Then there is Jeanette, the overworked and dedicated Senior Probation Officer at the hostel, who is desperate to keep the place open, yet gradually begins to doubt the honesty and integrity of her staff. Her role, for much of the time, is to keep any information about the murder and all details of the residents at 6 Ripley Avenue from the young journalist, Sloane, a woman with an intriguing background who will go to any lengths to get her story. And then there is Helen, a widow in her late sixties, an unwilling neighbour to the hostel, who volunteers there, with the sole reason to infiltrate and discover anything she believes could close the place down. (And who, by the way, is the one character I found to be flawed in her portrayal – the way the author has written this character shows her as a much older woman: in both her spoken and internal dialogue, her habits, the way she moves, the way she lives. She becomes almost a caricature and, for me, this weakens her part in the story. This is my only criticism of the book, and no way detracts from the virtuosity of the plot – and is obviously my own opinion)
Despite this small negative observation, I found this to be a powerfully written thriller, woven throughout with subtle clues, suspense and danger. I loved it. And I have no qualms in recommending 6 Ripley Avenue to any reader who is a crime genre, addict.
And, as a last word, I like to say that I’d be delighted if there is another opportunity for the journalist, Sloane, to return to investigate and report on another crime in her own inimitable way. And, also by the way, for the reader to learn more about her background.
About the author:
Noelle Holten is an award-winning blogger at http://www.crimebookjunkie.co.uk. She is the PR & Social Media Manager for Bookouture, a leading digital publisher in the UK, and worked as a Senior Probation Officer for eighteen years, covering a variety of risk cases as well as working in a multi agency setting. She has three Hons BA’s – Philosophy, Sociology (Crime & Deviance) and Community Justice – and a Masters in Criminology. Noelle’s hobbies include reading, attending as many book festivals as she can afford and sharing the booklove via her blog.
Dead Inside – her debut novel with One More Chapter/Harper Collins UK is an international kindle bestseller and the start of a new series featuring DC Maggie Jamieson. 6 Ripley Avenue is her first stand-alone crime thriller.
I can’t believe it is almost five years ago since I wrote this review of Jan Newton’s brilliant crime story. Originally, I was given an ARC of Remember No More by the publishers, Honno, for a fair and honest review. I said at the time:”Believe me, this is one to look out for!!“ I wasn’t wrong. And now Honno have released Remember No Moreas an audio book: https://tinyurl.com/32cm2n8s. So now we have a choice… read, or listen – it’s brilliant.
Book Description:
Newly promoted DS Julie Kite is at a crossroads. Her husband’s new job takes her away from urban Manchester and its inner city problems to a new life in tranquil mid-Wales. It is to be a new start for them both. On her first day at Builth Wells police station, Julie is thrust unexpectedly into the centre of a murder investigation in a remote farming community. At the same time, Stephen Collins is set free from HMP Strangeways. He immediately makes his way back to mid-Wales, the scene of his heinous crime, in order to confront those who had a hand in his incarceration.
The twists and turns of the investigation into the death of solicitor Gareth Watkin force DS Kite to confront her own demons alongside those of her new community and the lengths to which we’ll go to protect our families.
My Review:
This is a plot with many twists and turns. The depths of the historic layers are slowly revealed alongside the introduction of the protagonist, Detective Sergeant Julie Kite and her struggles in both her work and home life. I loved the author’s ability to balance – and juggle – both, and to keep the reader interested throughout the story. For me the genre of crime fiction can only work if there are false leads, clues that baffle or can give a ‘eureka’ moment. Remember No More does all these.
The story is told from an omniscient point of view, weighted mostly from the protagonist’s viewpoint and this works, as I have the feeling we will be hearing more from DS Kite. But there is also an insight to the other characters and this adds depth to the them; to their struggles, their loyalties, their place in both the community and their families. The characters are well rounded and it is easy to empathise with some of them – and to recognise the weakness and malevolence in others.
The dialogue works well, differentiating the Welsh born characters and contrasting with the accent of Julie Kite and other Northern England characters. The internal dialogue gives greater perception to them all. I liked the slow internal acceptance of the protagonist’s change of life and work situation from Northern England to Wales.
I think one of the great strengths in the author’s writing is the descriptions of the settings. If I can’t picture the world the characters live in, it doesn’t work for me. Jan Newton bases her book in mid Wales. The details are authentic and give a tangible sense of place. I admired her ability to bring the sense of place alive. I was immediately drawn in by a very early description: ” the road was hemmed in either side by reeds and grasses, which had been bleached by the winter’s snow and were still untouched by the spring sunshine…”.And later, “the car rattled over a cattle grid and a vista of villages and isolated farms opened up below them as the road hair-pinned to the right, before descending along the edge of a steep valley. the tops of the hills were the pale browns of moorland, but the valley bottoms were already lush with meadows and hedges.” Good stuff!!
If I had any reservations about the story it would be about the relationship between the protagonist and her husband. But this is only because I wanted to know the background of their marriage. Maybe this is something to be revealed in the next story of DS Julie Kite.
A couple of last mentions; I love the cover, the image is wonderful, I feel it is the scene that the buzzard sees in the Prologue. Oh, I do like prologues!
This is a book I have no hesitation in recommending to any reader who enjoys a good strong crime mystery.
I enjoyed reading Remember No More, and, by the way, there’s another offering fromDS Julie Kite …
Book Description:
Newly promoted DS Julie Kite has been in sleepy mid-Wales for mere months when she’s faced with her second murder case. A man’s body has been found by school kids trekking the Monk’s Trod. The trail takes her back north to her parents in Manchester and to a housing estate in Blackpool. It’s not a simple case – a young mother has disappeared, but so has her son and her next door neighbour’s wife. And the husband of the landlady of the B&B where the girl was staying. When an ex-serviceman farmhand with PTSD attempts to take his own life the case gets more complex still.
Jan Newton grew up in Manchester and Derbyshire and spent twenty years in the Chilterns before moving to mid Wales in 2005. She has worked as a bilingual secretary, an accountant, and in the Welsh stream of Builth Wells Primary School. She plays the euphonium in Llandrindod and Knighton brass bands
Jan graduated from Swansea University in 2015 with a Masters in Creative Writing and has won the Allen Raine Short Story Competition, the WI’s Lady Denman Cup, the Lancashire and North West Magazine’s prize for humorous short stories and the Oriel Davies Gallery’s prize for nature writing. She is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association.
I have read all of Thorne Moore’s books, so far, and I can honestly say this is one author who can turn her hand to any genre.
From her days when she was published with Honno and her domestic noir stories such as: Motherlove, to being published by Lumeand the enthralling Llys y Garn books that hold a blend of gothic mystery and family drama, for example: Shadows, to her ventures into Indie Publishing and her powerful Sci Fi novels, beginning with: Inside Out, and now as an author of Diamond Press (her first book with them being Fatal Collision) this author has a talent for compelling plots and characters (to quote a well-known cliche) that leap off the page and live with the reader well after the story is finished.
Alison, Danny, Jude. Three girls bound closer than sisters. Nothing can divide them.
Until Alison falls for Simon Delaney. Handsome, successful and ambitious, what woman wouldn’t want him? He’s surely her perfect husband. So why does she commit suicide?
If it is suicide. The police say yes, except for the driven DC Rosanna Quillan. She says no, but she can only watch as Jude and Danny fight for the prize – the widower. How far would either of them go to have him?
My Review:
This is a story that grips from the start; the death of one of three women who have been friends from childhood. Initially drawn together by grief as young girls, and now, two of them again, Danny, Jude, as young women, with the apparent suicide of the other, Alison.
I say, ‘apparently’, because, thrown into the mix we have an unreliable narrator, the protagonist, Judith Granger. Brought back to England, from her work abroad by the dreadful news, her part of the story is told in first person point of view. And, to be honest, I was completely taken in by her actions. As always, I won’t give any spoilers in my review, but this is so difficult with Bethulia, because there are two plots here, but the same scenarios: one ambiguous, one explicit. And it takes the reader quite a while to get to that, “oh!” moment; that realisation of what is going on.
Because there is also an omniscient narrator, who follows the other characters, and relates their actions in a third person perspective.
And then there isSimon Delaney, the antagonist, who tells his story from his viewpoint, – a man it is easy to dislike, distrust, yetstill wonder about….
And each point of view brings conflicting emotions in the reader. And that’s about all I can say about the storyline. Suffice it to say, it’s riveting.
And, as always in Thorne Moore’s novels, every character, even the minor ones, have distinctive characteristics and dialogue that bring an instant image of them. The major players are multi-layered, well rounded, their personalities evolving; being revealed, as the book progresses. Those you learn to love, those who from the beginning reveal themselves to be … shall we say… dubious ( or worse!)Besides the three main characters,Alison, Danny, Jude, I particularly like DC Rosanna Quillan. There is a small but dramatic twist at the end of Bethulia, which makes me wonder if we will hear more of her.
A short word about the settings in Bethulia. Whether it’s the interior of police stations, churches, or the description of houses such as Jude’s memory of Alison’s childhood home, Summervale, “a forbiddingly brown house”, or the secluded converted boathouse, Bethulia, which was to become a haven for Danny, or the snow-filled streets of Oxford, and the ethereal Teifi estuary in Wales,the portrayals give an evocative sense of place.
This is a well written story told in the usual confident and erudite writing style of this author, weaving themes and plot twists effortlessly throughout. As you may have guessed, I really enjoyed this book, and I would thoroughly recommend Bethulia to any reader who enjoys psychological and action thrillers with a strong plot and and memorable characters. You won’t be disappointed.
About Thorne Moore:
Thorne was born in Luton and graduated from Aberystwyth University (history) and from the Open University (Law). She set up a restaurant with her sister and made miniature furniture for collectors. She lives in Pembrokeshire, which forms a background for much of her writing, as does Luton.
She writes psychological mysteries, or “domestic noir,” exploring the reason for crimes and their consequences, rather than the details of the crimes themselves. and her first novel, “A Time For Silence,” was published by Honno in 2012, with its prequel, “The Covenant,” published in 2020. “Motherlove” and “The Unravelling” were also published by Honno. “Shadows,” published by Lume, is set in an old mansion in Pembrokeshire and is paired with “Long Shadows,” also published by Lume, which explains the history and mysteries of the same old house. She’s a member of Crime Cymru. Her latest crime novel, “Fatal Collision is published by Diamond Crime (2022)
She also writes Science Fiction, including “Inside Out” (2021) and “Making Waves” (2022)
Their mother, Julia Prinsep Stephen had become a widow in 1870 after her first husband, Herbert Duckworth, died of a burst abscess. She already had three children: George, Stella, and Gerald. The latter was born shortly after Herbert’s death in 1870.
Eight years later Julia married Leslie Stephen. English society in the late 1800s was built on a rigid social class system, and as a graduate of Eton and Cambridge, a respected literary critic and biographer, Leslie was seen as one of the literary aristocracy. He was also a widower and father of a girl, Laura, who had a learning disability, and who, incidentally, was the granddaughter of the Victorian novelist William Makepeace Thackeray.
Despite Leslie doting on Laura as a tiny child, by the time she was nine it was obvious that something was wrong; she was slow to talk or read, and veered from total fatigue to violent tantrums. It was a problem for both her father and Julia (although Julia, as friend of the family, had already partly taken on the role as a surrogate parent after Leslie’s wife, Minny, had died when Laura was five). But marriage and producing four children in quick succession: Vanessa in 1879, Thoby in 1880, Virginia in 1882, and Adrian in 1883, increased the difficulties for the two parents. Neither of them were equipped to deal with a child who had special needs.
Besides being agnostics, both Leslie and Julia were humanists, who advocated the rights for women to be the same as for men, to reach their own conclusions in matters of religion. Yet both believed that the home was the true basis for morality, a sanctuary free from corruption, and therefore home was the place for women. So Julia, who despaired that she was unable to discipline Laura, or train her to carry out domestic chores, apparently felt that her stepdaughter was deliberately wilful. And Leslie, who, during a time when society viewed anyone who was not seen as “normal” as undermining that society, was ashamed of her. His domineering patriarchy in in this upper-class, intellectual, and claustrophobic household would be viewed as bullying these days.
He must have been very frustrated by Laura, and it was a conflicted family: having little parental authority over one daughter, whilst succeeding in having total control over the other two.
Unlike their brother, Thoby, neither Vanessa nor Virginia were allowed to go to school. It was still not considered suitable to send girls to school, so they were educated at home by tutors.
Initially, as small children, they spent their days inventing whimsical stories about their neighbours, then progressed to writing illustrated stories and poems, and making up riddles and jokes for a family magazine they called the Hyde Park Gate News. In years to come, biographers of the two sisters were to declare this as early proof of the reciprocal nature between them that, well before any formal training, they nurtured each other’s art, acting as the other’s friend, adversary, and creative muse. And they must have decided between themselves which of them followed which creative path: Virginia the writer, Vanessa the artist. Yet each one’s individual talents led to the same ending, an endeavour to tell stories through their craft, Virginia with words, Vanessa through her paintings.
But, in the background there was always the perceived family problem of Laura. And, in 1886 at the age of sixteen, when Vanessa was seven, and Virginia was four, Laura was sent away to live with a governess. And was absent from the public family.
Four years later, despite being deprived of any early official schooling, and notwithstanding the Victorian restrictions on girls and women, Julia and Leslie decided to encourage their other daughters to pursue their talents. Over time, Vanessa studied both at the Royal Academy Schools and the Slade School of Fine Art, Virginia took classics and history in the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London.
Laura, on the other hand had been diagnosed by psychiatrists as suffering from ‘imbecility’. However I do need to point out that, despite extensive research, I could find no established medical rules of defining mental illnesses at this time. Yet in law, under such acts as the Lunacy Act of 1845 and the Idiots Act of 1886, there were precise specific and distinct legal classifications for certain conditions. These groupings fluctuated though. Laura was initially admitted to Earlswood Asylum in 1893, aged twenty-three, as an “imbecile” but in the 1901 census she was labelled a “lunatic”. which could suggest worsening symptoms
Virginia and Vanessa had battles of their own to contend with; both, as children, were sexually abused by their half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth. As an adult Virginia Woolf wrote extensively about this incestuous abuse in her diaries and letters, although there is little I can find about the abuse with either sister. Understandably, many say this was the origin of the fragility of Virginia’s psychological state. But It needs saying that it has been suggested in various papers that there were genetic connections of mental instability on the paternal side: Leslie Stephen was prone to violent mood swings, his father suffered from depression, a nephew had a bipolar disorder and was admitted into an asylum for mania. Virginia herself suffered from depression, and Vanessa is reported to have had at least one nervous breakdown.I should also add here that therefore it could follow that this family history of the Stephen family means it is likely that whatever condition Laura suffered from in her life, her genetic composition means she was more susceptible to other mental disorders.
In 1895, their mother. Julia Stephen died of heart failure, following a bout of influenza. Shortly afterwards, Virginia had her first mental breakdown.And, when their older half-sister Stella Duckworth, who in the absence of their mother had stepped in to run the household, also died two years later, and after their father died in 1904 after a long battle with stomach cancer, Virginia made her first suicide attempt.
Vanessa took charge. After dealing with all the domestic affairs, she moved the family (Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia, and Adrian) from Hyde Park Gate to the Bloomsbury district of London in 1904 to begin a new life.
Here Vanessa, Thoby, Adrian and Clive Bell started The Bloomsbury Group with friends who were writers, intellectuals, philosophers, and artists who rejected the oppressive Victorian principles of their parents’ generation, and they adopted creative freedom, sexual permissiveness, and atheism. They became known for their unconventional lifestyles and love affairs, shocking many outside their social group.
As the older sister Vanessa dealt with many of Virginia’s emotional and mental breakdowns. But she also held true to her own code of conduct; her lifestyle, her unconventional, sometimes eccentric relationships, were reflected in her art: the nude portraits of her friends and family, the use of design in her work. (both considered to be the prerogative of male artists) Yet her loving care for her sister was balanced by the long term and continuous rivalry in their separate spheres of creativity. Reading through the lines during my research I wondered whether, sometimes, this conflict was wearisome for the older sister; whether Vanessa’s marriage, in 1907, to Clive Bell was subconsciously an effort to distance herself from Virginia.
The marriage, a year after their brother Thoby’s death from typhoid, made Virginia descend again into some sort of nervous breakdown. The marriage meant that Virginia and their brother Adrian had to move out of the Bloomsbury house, thus providing a distancing between the two sisters. A distance Virginia resented, because, before long, she began to pursue Vanessa’s husband, Clive. Their love affair lasted, intermittently, over six years. And there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that reveals enough proof, I think, to believe that the underlying reason for the affair was so that Virginia was once again at the centre of her sister’s life.
In 1914 Vanessa began a life-long relationship with Duncan Grant, who was bi-sexual. Taking Vanessa’s two sons, Julian and Quentin, from her marriage to Clive, and accompanied by Duncan’s lover, the writer David Garnett, they moved to Charleston Farmhouse, Sussex. In 1918 Vanessa and Duncan had a daughter, Angelica.
Because I have concentrated on these two women as sisters, and because much has been written about their achievement by far more scholarly people than me, I have left out details of the body of work that both women produced. I was more interested in what made them ‘be’, what formed them as human beings.
I found an extensive amount of articles, journals, newspaper reviews, discussions, diary quotes, lectures etc. on Virginia that revealed much of her personality and mental health. But far less details on Vanessa’s character. Because she didn’t keep a diary as Virginia did there is little written about her personally, except for the time of her son, Julian’s death during the Spanish War, when she became extremely and understandably depressed. But, mainly, there are only facts about her place in the family, about her marriage and relationships, her part in the Bloomsbury set, and the cannon of her work. And I found almost nothing on Laura. Having left few records of her own, she’s as invisible in history as she was in her family. And yet, her small story needs to stand alongside her famous sisters, because, I think, her presence (wherever she was during her life) must have had some effect on Vanessa and Virginia. There had to be some experiences, some memories they shared, that would always have impacted on the three of them.
Troubled by mental illness throughout her life, Virginia was institutionalized several times and attempted suicide twice before drowning herself by filling her overcoat pockets with stones and walking into the River Ouse on March 28, 1941. Her ashes are buried in the National Trust garden of Monks House, Rodmell.
Vanessa died at Charleston Farmhouse, at the age of eighty-one, after a bout of bronchitis, on 7th April 1961. She was buried on 12th April, without any form of service, in Firle Parish Churchyard.
N.B. Leslie and Julia visited Laura until Julia’s death in 1895. Stella visited her until her death in 1897. Her aunt Annie Thackeray Ritchie visited her until her death in 1919. Annie’s daughter Hester Ritchie brought her home for visits on occasion. Then the visits stopped. When Laura died in 1945 the asylum did not know of any living relatives, though both Vanessa and Adrian outlived her and even inherited the remainder of the legacy Leslie had left for her care
Sometimes, family members can become estranged from one another, either by choice or by circumstances. “In one of her informal reminiscences from around 1922, Virginia describes ‘Thackeray’s grand-daughter, (Laura) a vacant-eyed girl whose idiocy was becoming daily more obvious, who could hardly read, who would throw scissors into the fire, who was tongue-tied and stammered and yet had to appear at table with the rest of us.’ Virginia makes the difference between them clear: Laura was not, in fact, one of “us,”’ https://tinyurl.com/36sj5mc5
And, in a way, this is how Lisa (formerly Mandy) feels about her sister, Angie, in my next book, Sisters, when she says, “I never wanted to be in Micklethwaite ever again. Yet here I am. And meeting the one person I never wanted to see again. “
Sisters will bepublished by Honno on the 26th January 2023, It’s available to be pre-booked:
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today I’m really pleased to welcome Jane Fraser to Places in our Memories. Jane is a a Honno author like myself, I’ve known her quite a while, and know how much she loves Wales. Here she tells us how, although enjoying a wonderful holiday in… she missed her homeland… and how it brought other thoughts.
Hiraeth
Home Thoughts From Abroad
I am in the elevator going up to the condo on the 6th floor. It feels moist: a stale smell of sweat and coconut sun-oil cloying the cramped space I’m sharing with my husband and another couple. We’ve all rushed off the beach because of the squall. The sign with the palm tree on the wall tells me to have a nice day.
“Where you guys from?” asks the man with the baseball cap.
“Wales,” I say.
“Oh, part of England – we passed through it on our way to Ireland when we did Europe a couple of years ago, didn’t we Jo? he says to his wife who says: We sure did. It’s where Princess Diana was from.
I don’t bother to even try and explain but say, Bye, enjoy your day as we make our way back to our little rental overlooking the Atlantic which is now stewing, a nasty grey, with white spume peaks whipped by the wind as far out as the eye can see. I sit on our balcony, my mind’s eye can see far across this ocean, as far as the wet west coast of the home I’ve escaped this Christmas.
“You homesick?” my husband asks.
“A bit,” I say. “The weather, probably.”
“Least it’s hot rain. Won’t last. They’re not there anyway.”
He’s right. My daughter and the kids are in Australia to see the in-laws; my son is happy with his girl-friend in the north of England. My parents are sorted going to my brother’s for Christmas lunch in Cardiff and I know they’re OK as I see them all year, living just a couple of miles away. I’m guilt free. I haven’t left or abandoned anyone. No person I love. It’s just my house I see empty and forlorn; standing unlit and unloved, in the place that tugs at my insides.
“Don’t you miss our house? Our beach?” I ask my husband.
“It’s just a place, “he says. “C’mon. We’ve worked all year for this.”
I continue looking at the ocean, listen to its constant churning. It sounds the same as home. And it’s beautiful. But at 27 degrees north 80 degrees west Hutchinson Island is not 51 degrees north and 4 degrees west in Llangennith. The tide hardly budges here between high and low water, no vast expanse of sand exposed on the ebb. When my wind blows from the south west it is mild and wet, it cakes my windows with salt and browns and bends everything I try to grow in my garden. Everything here is back to front: the north-easterly brings the rain, steamy and sticky; and when the wind blows from the south-west, it’s off the land, hot, dry on the skin, giving respite from the humidity. When my sun rises it is behind me, comes up over Llanmadoc Down and when it is done at the end of the day it falls into the sea just to the left of Burry Holms. I just cannot come to terms with the sun coming up over the ocean and going down over the land.
“You’ve got no sense of home, have you?” I snipe at my husband.
“What Merthyr Tydfil? London? Gower?”
“You don’t belong anywhere, do you?”
“No. Happy in a camper van, me. Don’t need that stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Roots.”
“Running away all the time, you are.”
“Nothing to run from.”
“No place you see yourself dying? Spending your last days?”
“Jesus. We’re supposed to be on holiday.”
I see myself in my own bed at home. I am lying propped up on pillows, looking out through the sash windows at the expanse of ocean. The window is pulled up slightly at the bottom and fresh air rushes through the gap, making the silk curtains billow, and cooling my face which is warmed with the sun in my south-facing house. If I had a choice about the last thing I’d like to see in life it would be the view through this window: the bronzed burrows, the conical dunes, the limestone island of Burry Holms which when the tide is high rises like a turtle out of the sea.
But it is beautiful here in its own way. Now. The scale of the views astounds: big skies; big seas; but too much sea if there is such a thing. Sea that is not broken up or interrupted with headlands or coves or churches or castles that run down to the water’s edge. There is but one long, straight continuous ocean’s edge strung out along the rim of the pan-handle. I long for things to shrink, for the familiar littleness and quirkiness of my peculiar patch of earth.
I’m in the tropics in a flat right in the dunes and I am happy and grateful for what life has dealt me. But they are not my dunes. My dunes are golden and soft-sanded, carpeted with marram grass, sea holly and thrift and all manner of orchids and blackberries when autumn comes. Here the sand is greyer and grittier, a flat colour pitted with holes where ghost crabs burrow. Where blue and pink-bubbled Portuguese men of war with foot long tentacles lurk ready to sting at the tide’s drop line. Here everything grows quickly, too quickly; it is hard to keep things under control, to hold back the mangrove to prevent the railroad vine choking. Here the dunes sometimes cannot hold back the hurricanes. Here there are signs that say evacuation route.
My husband goes back inside the condo to the chill of the air-con, sliding the door behind him. Even though it is raining, I am covered by the popcorn roof of the balcony and shielded from the wet by the sliding concertina-folded shutters. The heat is sapping the life out of me. I consider life’s evacuation route. When and how my end will come. There have been a few near-misses to date and again, I am grateful that I’ve still got a few lives left. My mind wanders and I hope I will have what my grandmother used to call a ‘good death’. A death that is in old age, that is relatively pain-free. One where there is time to say goodbyes.
I open the sliders and go inside. The air-con confronts me like a fridge.
“Do you want to be buried or cremated?” I ask my husband. But he cannot hear as his earphones are on and he’s on the iPad catching up with latest episodes of ‘London Spy’.
“What?” he shouts, taking out one of his ear-pieces.
“When you die. Buried or cremated? We need to make our wills.”
“You need to see someone. Seriously.”
“I want to be buried. In the church. Near the wall. Gets the sun all day. And I can keep an eye on what’s happening in the pub opposite!”
“Just feed me to the birds. Or drop me overboard near Burry Holms.”
“I was thinking Burry Holms to start with too: though sprinkled like your mother. Then I changed my mind and fancied the crem. But thought, no. Production line. So it’s to be burial. But not in Llanrhidian with my mother’s lot. Too dark. Damp.”
“Long as I know.”
“Don’t you want to be buried with me, then?”
“Don’t believe in all that tosh.”
“Is it ‘cos we’ve got different names? Shall I change my name to Griffiths?”
“You do what you like. I just want to go back to nature. No fuss.”
“That’s great. Buried alone. That’ll give them something to talk about.”
“Who?”
“Villagers.”
“Well, you won’t hear them, will you?”
On Christmas Eve the sun has decided to shine again. It is in the high eighties. The checkout girl in Publix tells us the weather here is Bipolar. My husband tells me he thinks I am too.
We hit the beach again with our striped canvas chairs, turning away from the sea to follow the sun as the day progresses. We watch fisherman landing croakers and pompanos, their rods bent like arcs over the sparkling ocean along the water’s edge as far as the eyes can see. One man is sweating with the effort of reeling in a big fella that’s been taking line for over an hour as far south as Miami. Must be a shark or a stingray his friend says who stands at the ready with a rope to help him when the time comes. But the line snaps and it was the one that got away.
The sun is high even in mid-winter, searing the crown of my broad black-rimmed hat which I notice is fading so fast. I look at my watch. 3pm. Eight o’clock back home. It’ll be dark and raining and the teles will be blaring and the pubs heaving. At this precise moment I’m not missing it at all.
But at six o’clock, when the light goes yet the heat remains locked in, I’m out of kilter again. The condo looks bare even though we’ve tried out best with potted red tulips and white lilies and red and gold baubles which are too glitzy for my liking. The Christmas cards we’ve bought each other in Barnes and Noble are too schmaltzy and shmucky: like the apples and the vegetables in the supermarkets, too big and shiny and perfect that look lovely but don’t actually taste of anything.
The tele goes on but it’s all American Football and medical adverts every few seconds with lists of alarming side effects of certain medications. It’s Fixer Upper then, nothing but edition after edition of Fixer Upper and houses that are transformed in Wacko Texas for under $80,000 including land. Next is Chopped which I tell my husband is a poor imitation of Bake Off and even worse than Australian MasterChef.
I turn to my iPad for comfort and start googling Llangennith. I get the Gower Webcam from The Worms’s Head Hotel looking across Rhossili Bay. But it’s dark there, the sea hardly visible just an eerie rippling. It will restart live at sunrise tomorrow morning the message promises. Apparently it’s been a great day for surf. Overhead and light winds from the south west. I go to Wikipedia: pictures emerge of a village on the Gower peninsula near Swansea in Wales. It has an 11th century church dedicated to St Cenydd. It is the largest Church in Gower and the only one with a lych gate. I know. We were married there. I am suddenly in its nave, in its chancel, standing among the choir stalls with a bouquet of lily of the valley, taking our vows. It’s where I’ve recently told my husband I’ll be buried. I can see the unkempt grass, though not onscreen, see the weathered tombstones, tottering at all angles, see the names of generations of Taylors and Groves and Bevans and Beynons. I think I’ve made the right decision about being buried there, I say to my husband but he’s engrossed in Dallas Cowboys v Pittsburgh Steelers. I can smell home through the ether, pine and Christmas pudding.
“You umbelicalled to that thing?” he shouts from the sofa.
I’m on Google Earth now, I’ve keyed in my postcode SA3 1JE and I’m being taken from the beginning of Cock Street following a white arrow like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs, past Gill and Paul’s at Bullen’s Well – I can see the spout from the well, taste the spring water I always taste in cupped hands when I’m finishing up my daily walk. The camera takes me on along the single track lane – there’s Cock Street Farm with the gate with the two horses’ heads and the Land Rover parked in the yard. Must have been taken a few years ago as Joe Grove has changed it now for an Isuzu Trouper. And it must have been early summer too as the gorse is out, a blaze of yellow and the ferns at the lane’s edge are hip-high. I press the arrow with a compulsion, I’m at Long Offing now, and then the old barn in the field next to mine – Steve Taylor’s Fiesta is parked outside the gate – probably watering the plants in his polytunnel. And then there’s my gate. From 5,000 miles away right in front of me is my five barred farm gate and my drive with the car parked in it. CF13 MFU – all my personal things there for me to see, but not to touch. I can hardly bear it. I zoom on to the front of the house. It’s white and lime washed and perfectly symmetrical. Surrounded by newly ploughed brown-earthed fields it looks like it’s growing there, like it belongs there, like it’s been there for all time.
It looks sad without us there. The windows at the front look as though they are crying. The wooden loungers are in place on the patio, perfectly positioned to take in the views of the ocean and the full sun. But they are empty. The stone pots of lavender are in full bloom but there is no one to smell them or water them. The seeds I must have planted back then are sprouting in the raised beds and the olive trees standing tall in the terracotta pots on the plum stoned driveway. They say all roads lead home at Christmas, I tell my husband. But he doesn’t reply.
About Jane:
Jane Fraser is an award-winning fiction writer, based in the Gower peninsula, south Wales. Her debut novel, Advent, was published by Honno, the UK’s longest-standing, independent women’s press, in January 2021. It was Book of the Month at Books Council of Wales in February 2021 and in June 2022 was announced as winner of the Society of Authors’ Awards – The Paul Torday Memorial Prize for a debut novel in English. Her first collection of short fiction, The South Westerlies, was published by Salt, the UK’s foremost independent publisher of literary fiction, in 2019 and her second short fiction collection, Connective Tissue, in October 2022, and also published by Salt.
She has been widely published in anthologies and reviews including New Welsh Review, The Lonely Crowd, Fish Publishing, TSS and The London Magazine. Her fiction has figured highly in major international competitions: in 2017 she was a finalist in the Manchester Fiction Prize (and has also been highly commended eight times), and in 2018 was a prize winner in the Fish Memoir Prize. She has also long and shortlisted in the Cambridge Short Story Prize, the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Prize, the Rhys Davies Short Story Competition and Retreat West Short Story Competition. She is winner of both the British Haiku Society and Genjuan International Prize for haibun. Her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as part of its ‘Short Works’ series.
She is a Hay Festival Writer at Work, a prestigious creative development award for emerging writers. She has a B.Ed as a first degree, and an MA (distinction 2013) and PhD in Creative Writing from Swansea University.
Jane Fraser is proud to be represented by Gaia Banks, Literary Agent at Sheil Land Associates Ltd. http://www.sheilland.com
When she is not writing, Jane Fraser is Co-Director of NB:Design a brand and digital agency along with her husband Philip Griffiths, a designer and photographer. When she is not working or writing, she walks her home patch of Gower and tries to be a good grandmother to Megan (13), Florence (11) and Alice (8).
If you want to destroy someone’s reputation, social media provides the perfect tool.
Emmie Hobson, children’s author and TV presenter, is riding high on a wave of popularity when an unscrupulous newspaper editor, desperate for a scoop, brings Emmie’s world crashing down.
Social media picks up the baton and a terrifying backlash of hate and abuse is unleashed. Threats are made and there are those, inflamed by the rhetoric, prepared to take the law into their own hands.
My Review:
I’ve read previous books by Alex Craigie and thoroughly enjoyed them all, my latest review, that of Means to Deceive, is here: https://tinyurl.com/5y98ak9e
The Bubble Reputation is a story with a chilling message, but it’s not overtly didactic; as usual with this author’s work, this is a steady unveiling of the plot; the revelation of how evil social media can become when driven with the intent of ruining someone’s life.
The character of the protagonist, Emmie Hobson, is well rounded and it’s easy to emphasise with her. And when her optimism and confidence, the enjoyment in her life, is gradually reduced to despair and uncertainty, it’s heartbreaking. This is a book where the reader can see what is happening and wonder how far her jealous antagonist will go, and what Emma can do to stop the malice.
And with a cast of realistic and credible minor characters, some of whom are spreading the spite and others who seem incapable of stopping it, it becomes frustratingly impossible to see who will finally win in this struggle.
The dialogue carries every character’s personality, leaving no doubt who is speaking. But, sometimes, that spoken dialogue becomes unreliable, and leaves the reader to question the words when they don’t match the inner dialogue and actions of of a particular character. The narrative is often the only disclosure of the reasons behind the actions. It’s a clever ploy by the author.
And, as I’ve said in the past, Alex Craigie has a talent for writing descriptions which give a great sense of place. So it is with The Bubble Reputation. But, equally fascinating for me, is the way she has brought the world of social media to life with all the possibility of the inherently manipulative and dangerous behaviour within it. Social media becomes a character in its own right and intrinsically carries the warning that is the main theme threaded throughout the story.
Above all else, this is a tale that is well written, with strong narrative, convincing characters and a plot that progressively moves onwards, taking the reader with it towards an accomplished ending.
I enjoyed The Bubble Reputation and have no hesitation in recommending Alex Craigie’s latest offering to anyone who enjoys a slow-burning psychological drama.
About Alex Craigie
Alex Craigie is the pen name of Trish Power.
Trish was ten when her first play was performed at school. It was in rhyming couplets and written in pencil in a book with imperial weights and measures printed on the back.
When her children were young, she wrote short stories for magazines before returning to the teaching job that she loved.
Trish has had three books published under the pen name of Alex Craigie. The first two books cross genre boundaries and feature elements of romance, thriller and suspense against a backdrop of social issues. Someone Close to Home highlights the problems affecting care homes while Acts of Convenience has issues concerning the health service at its heart. Her third book. Means to Deceive, is a psychological thriller.
Someone Close to Home has won a Chill with a Book award and a Chill with the Book of the Month award. In 2019 it was one of the top ten bestsellers in its category on Amazon.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today I’m welcoming Darlene Foster, a friend I’ve known online for quite a while, and had the great pleasure in meeting and getting to know her in real life at Barb Taub’s writing retreat on Arran, a few weeks ago.
Darlene is here to tell us about the time her baby brother was born during the blizzards at her near Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada.
I remember when my brother, Timothy, was born. It had been a typical cold and snowy prairie winter. Blizzards created impassable road conditions. Mom expected the third member of our family to arrive in early February. Dad was concerned that when the time came, the inclement weather might stop him from getting her to the hospital some sixty miles away. Well before her due date, he took mom and my younger brother, Lorne, to stay with our grandparents in the city. Since I had school, I stayed with my great-aunt and great-uncle in the small town near our farm.
Baby Timmy With his Aunties
I was excited about this as I loved Aunt Elsie and Uncle Ed. They treated me well. Aunt Elsie was a great cook, and I could walk to school with my older, and therefore much cooler, second cousins.
In their living room stood a cabinet full of amazing books. I would sit in front of it and stare at the titles: Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, A Tale of Two Cities, Robinson Crusoe and other classics. I so wanted to read those books behind the glass doors. I still remember the day when Aunt Elsie said that if I was very careful, I could read one of them. Believe me, I was extremely careful. Eventually over the years, I read every one of those books in that cabinet.
The baby took longer to come than Mom thought. Finally, on February 10th, she delivered a chubby little boy. Dad drove into the city to see her and reported back that mommy and baby were doing great. She even wrote me a letter and sent it back with Dad. Apparently, my other brother was being spoiled by Grandma and Grandpa. We expected Mom, my brother and the new baby to be home in a week.
Darlene and her two brothers on her12th birthday.
But, as luck would have it, the day she was released from the hospital, another terrible blizzard blew up. The road to the city was closed to traffic. Grandpa picked Mom and baby Timmy up from the hospital and took them back to their place. I was disappointed because Lorne got to see the new baby before I did.
The weather stayed nasty for another week and vehicles were not getting through. Mom had been gone for a month now and I missed her. Even though I enjoyed staying in town with my aunt, uncle and cousins. In the city, Mom grew homesick, missing me and Dad.
When I returned from school one cold but sunny day, Aunt Elsie told me to keep my coat on and watch for a surprise. Not much later, an old-fashioned, covered sleigh pulled by two large draft horses that plodded down the road through the glistening snow.
Dad shouted, “Whoa!”
The horses stopped in front of my aunt and uncle’s house. Dad let go of the reins, jumped down from the seat in front, and with a wide grin, opened the door to the sleigh. Inside sat my mother in a hooded red woollen coat, trimmed in white rabbit fur, smiling from ear to ear. In her arms, she held a baby bundled up in many blankets.
“In you get,” said Dad. “We’re all going home.”
Dad had borrowed the sleigh from a neighbour in order to get his wife back home.
It was a magical moment for a little girl to see her mom and baby brother delivered in a horse-drawn sleigh. Straight from a storybook. It’s one of my fondest memories.
Timmy
About Darlene:
Growing up on a ranch near Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, Darlene Foster dreamt of writing, traveling the world, and meeting interesting people. She also believed in making her dreams come true. It’s no surprise she’s now the award-winning author of Amanda Travels, a children’s adventure series featuring a spunky twelve-year-old who loves to travel to unique places. Readers of all ages enjoy following Amanda as she unravels one mystery after another. When not traveling herself, Darlene divides her time between the west coast of Canada and the Costa Blanca, Spain with her husband and entertaining rescue dogs, Dot and Lia.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today’s memories are from Alex Craigie, a dear friend I’ve known both in ‘real’ life and online for many years.
So many thanks to Judith for inviting me to take part in this series. Everyone has had a different take on the prompt and I’ve loved the diverse and fascinating contributions.
My first memories are of this house that was my home until I was ten.
This one is of me and my brother at Easter. We’re with my mother, rolling hardboiled eggs on the driveway.
It’s a large house. Those pictures are of the side; the front is broader and stretches deep into the photograph.
My mother, a nurse, met my father, a doctor, in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. When the window cleaner crashed through the glass-topped verandah he was fortunate (!) to have people on hand equipped to deal with a medical emergency. (I see it’s been removed now.)
The entrance hall was a cavernous space bordered by a beautiful fireplace on the left and a staircase on the right. A long and creepy cloakroom dwelt under the staircase, dwindling to dark nothingness as it followed the line above it. The ceiling of the hall soared two staircases to the landing of the first floor bedrooms and the hard, smooth flooring was a great surface for playing jacks. One Christmas, I tottered around for ages on that floor in a pair of sparkly Cinderella shoes, aping the sound that my mother made in her stilettos.
Nowadays, I struggle to remember what I had to eat for lunch, but I can still recall the number of the phone on the camphor chest by the stairs: ECC (Eccles) 2048.
There were four rooms off the hall. The drawing room (with the French doors under the verandah) was light and sunny. I wrote my first story there at the bureau when I was six. When my mother read the bit where one of the characters was dismissed, she laughed at my use of the term “you’re fired”. It stung.
One evening I was sent to the drawing room to fetch something. A man with straggly hair was at the French doors, his face pressed up grotesquely against the full-length window. He started shouting and screaming and banging on the glass. I was terrified. My father explained later that the man wasn’t well. Since then, I close the curtains before it’s properly dark.
The other rooms off the hall comprised a lounge, dining room and breakfast room. The breakfast room led to the kitchen and pantry and there was also a door to the expansive cellars where things like coal were kept. For a timid child, the cellars held all the charm of Madame Tussaud’s dungeons. (I was that timid child.)
I have fond memories of Rory, our dog, stealing the brass hearthbrush, racing to the top of the hall staircase, releasing it and then chasing after it. I dropped a glass down them in similar vein –minus the intent– tumbling after it. Again, it was good to have a health professional on hand. A puckered scar is my memento.
These stairs led up to a landing. A corridor to the left, with built-in cupboards, ended in another cloakroom. In the middle was a minstrel gallery backed by a block of tall windows. At night, they threw menacing shadows of trees, and during thunderstorms these windows terrified me almost as much as the incident in the drawing room.
To the right of the gallery was a flight of stairs up to four of the bedrooms. I slept in the third room for a while, but there was a patch of wallpaper opposite the bed in which I could see a clown’s face. When I looked at it, the smile on the face seemed to grow in a sinister way that led to nightmares. I was relocated to the fourth room.
My brother’s cot was moved into this room with me and one morning, returning from the loo, I found him leaning over the bars and staring at his teddy bear melting on the small electric bar heater. There were full-length net curtains at the window. I can still picture the tiny felt circles that were dotted over them. As I took in the scene, the curtain nearest the cot flared up. I yelled for help, dragged Ian over the bars and hauled him onto the landing. When all the excitement was over, all that remained to show for it was an acrid smell, a blackened wall and ceiling, and a large tarry patch on the linoleum. My parents’ appreciation extended to a trip to Woolworths to buy a treat; well worth the momentary panic.
Up another small staircase was the family bathroom –an unlovely room in monochrome with a bath that had a green stain under one of the taps, a discoloured plastic beaker that held our toothbrushes, and greying towels that made great exfoliators. It was a cold room even in the summer.
One final staircase led to the last three bedrooms. The first of these was for the Au Pair girls who stayed with us to learn English and earned their keep by helping out. The second was sometimes occupied by Anne, a live-in servant who came and went according to her tempestuous lovelife.
The third room became my playroom. It’s that window in the pictures at the very top of the house. I could only see out of it if I stacked up my toys and balanced on them. After a visit to the circus, I taught myself to stand on my head in there. I was expected to stay in this room, out of the way. I resented, later, being cooped in there with my brothers, but it was an escape from my parents’ disintegrating marriage. And I had my books.
My free time was mainly spent in the playroom, garden, or with my friend Jane.
Here I am in the back garden with my grandfather. Rory is in the foreground.
Looking back, I realise that I had no concept of my privileged existence. My life seemed very ordinary compared with my immediate surroundings. Jane’s house, round the corner from us, was much grander than ours. It had two impressive staircases and several live-in servants. Backing on to our garden was another palatial house used by the family of someone high up in the USAF. Cheryl was my age and had a massive, carpeted bedroom and exquisite princess and fairy costumes. In the winter, her father sprayed water over the lawn for her to skate on.
My parents divorced when I was ten. My father got the house; my mother got us. We moved to a basement maisonette in Bramhall, Cheshire. I’m in front of it here, on the right, next to my mother, two brothers and a (solemn) friend:
Behind the two windows at the bottom left, were a spacious kitchen and cramped bathroom. Those windows were beyond our reach and daylight was filtered out by the overhanging greenery and architecture. The two rooms above were, in contrast, full of light, but half the size because of the maisonette abutting them. A bijou sitting room and main bedroom were separated by a glass partition. I slept in the remaining tiny room with the older of my brothers. My mother and I repeatedly asserted how cosy it was. We knew we were lying.
Itchy bites turned out to be bedbugs and we had to leave temporarily whilst the place was fumigated. A lecherous landlord proved to be another problem (a divorced woman was often seen as desperate for attention and fair game), and noise seeped freely into the flat from the surrounding ones. We did have a phone, though. BRA (Bramhall) 3969…
That winter, 1962/1963, was one of the coldest on record in the UK. We returned one day to discover the water tank in the flat above us had burst and there were magnificently long icicles adorning our staircase. In the kitchen, I had a skating rink to rival Cheryl’s.
There were financial constraints in this new life, but I had a freedom that I’d lacked before. At the local school, I made friends and played outside with them. I taught the whole class how to stand on their heads. I left before the end of the year but was given a handmade book of poems put together by the teacher and signed by my classmates – most of them ‘with love’. It mattered. I still have it.
The loss of status had a traumatic effect on my mother who spent the rest of her days trying to fashion a residence as impressive as Kingston Lodge. She was a genuinely talented pianist and had a comfortable life but her appreciation for what she did have was overshadowed by what she’d lost.
I loved the old house, but there were other things I loved more.
Her loss was, sadly, my gain.
About Alex:
Alex Craigie is the pen name of Trish Power.
Trish was ten when her first play was performed at school. It was in rhyming couplets and written in pencil in a book with imperial weights and measures printed on the back.
When her children were young, she wrote short stories for magazines before returning to the teaching job that she loved.
Trish has had three books published under the pen name of Alex Craigie. The first two books cross genre boundaries and feature elements of romance, thriller and suspense against a backdrop of social issues. Someone Close to Home highlights the problems affecting care homes while Acts of Convenience has issues concerning the health service at its heart. Her third book. Means to Deceive, is a psychological thriller.
Someone Close to Home has won a Chill with a Book award and a Chill with the Book of the Month award. In 2019 it was one of the top ten bestsellers in its category on Amazon.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today I’m welcoming Terry Tyler, a friend I’ve known online for many years, and had the great pleasure in meeting and getting to know her in real life at Barb Taub’s writing retreat on Arran, a few weeks ago…
First, thank you to Judith for inviting me to this nostalgia-fest on her blog!
When told about the feature, I immediately wanted to write about the place we used to go on holiday when I was a child. It was a holiday rental bungalow called Barn Piece in Eccles-on-Sea, Norfolk, complete with a genuine gypsy caravan in the garden, which we loved. We went there from about 1966 to 1976.
Behind us are you can see the dunes, leading to the beach.
The ancient village of Eccles-juxta-Mare, as it was once called, vanished into the sea over a hundred years ago, and by the time we started going on holiday there, in the late 1960s, the only indication of its existence on the map was the location of Eccles beach. In the 1960s it consisted of a few private houses down overgrown lanes; they fascinated me, and I loved to peer through the untended foliage and wonder who lived in them. The Pyghtle and Smee Cottage; they were the two I remember.
Then there was a sandy track past shabby chalets to a grocery shop where Julia, Eddie and I would go to buy sweets, buckets and spades, postcards and other stuff that children used to spend their holiday money on in those days; I always spent all mine within a couple of days, whereas Julia made hers last.
The bungalow had such a ‘we’re on holiday’ feeling about it, a home from home as we went there for many years. By the beginning of the second week, I always felt as though my real life was there, not back at home. Barn Piece was large and light and shabby and a bit musty-smelling, and we loved it. This photo was taken by Dad back then; the gypsy caravan was just to the right of the washing line
Our dog was called Susie; she was with us for ten years and remembered the place whenever we arrived there, too. She would hurtle up the sandy slope to the beach without being told where to go.
Eddie said to me the other day that he can still remember how the gypsy caravan smelled—I can, as well.
Here’s a picture of Julia and me cleaning it out! Why we chose to do this on such a brilliant, sunny afternoon, I have no idea!
The last time I went there on holiday was in 1976, when I was nearly seventeen, and my best friend Ruth was invited to come with us so that I didn’t kick up about going on holiday with my parents and twelve-year-old brother! The one of me (right) is two photos exposed together, but I’ve always liked its ghostly feel …
… which brings me to the eerie bells of the lost church, a victim of the coastal erosion so prevalent in that area. I’ve found a couple of articles about it, which give more information than I can put here, or this post would be far too long!
Now and again we’ve gone back there to take a look—my parents went there in the winter of 1990, when the ruins of the church had become visible once more.
This photo on the dunes (that’s Mum in the grass! – Barn Piece down to the left), taken the same day, shows how wild the place feels—and you can see Happisburgh (pronounced Hays-borough) lighthouse in the distance. Happisburgh is fast becoming a lost village, too. In 2005 I spent a weekend at a beer festival there—just a few years later, the field in which we camped had crumbled into the sea.
From 2000-2009 I lived in Cromer, further up the coast; around 2001, when my parents visited, we made the pilgrimage to Barn Piece.
I went back in 2007, too, but it had changed so much. Smart holiday cottages and chalets were everywhere, and the new sea defences meant that I didn’t recognise the beach. The sandy slope up the dunes that we used to run up as children, excited about our first glimpse of the sea, has gone; the dunes themselves had flattened into little more than a small hump. Barn Piece, though, was still there. Fifteen years on, I don’t know whether it is or not; I’ve googled it, but have come up with no results. I’ve googled Eccles-on-Sea, too, and all those empty fields appear to have been built on.
Happy days. Mostly, I’m so glad that my mother was like me, forever taking photographs—thank you, Mum, for all these memories!
The Author:
Terry Tyler writes post-apocalyptic, dystopian and dark psychological fiction, available on Amazon. She loves quiet, wild places, and still gets as excited about going to the seaside as she did when she was a child. Aside from writing, she enjoys reading, telly binges, long walks, and wasting time on Twitter. She lives with her husband in North East England.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today I’m so pleased to welcome Sally Cronin, who has agreed to share her memories with us.
Sally
Thank you Judith for inviting me to take part in this lovely series and I decided to go back as far as I could with my memories.
Scientists have more or less established humans can remember back to at least 3 years old, but it can be 6 months earlier for many.
I know I have very strong memories of Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka, where we lived from 1954 to 1956. I was 18 months old when we arrived, and the memories of those two years are a little bit like a kaleidoscope, creating colourful if slightly distorted patterns. They are also enhanced by the particular aromas, and the sounds associated with living in a land of spices, and on the edge of a jungle.
My father had been in based there in late 1944. Initially he was in a holding camp called Mayina in the jungle, until being transferred to HMS Woolwich in Trincomalee.
He had been based in Scotland prior to this so it must have been quite a change. There he had been part of repair team getting submarines back to sea following damage in the Atlantic. Now he was working on destroyers from the Pacific fleet using Sri Lanka as their home base.
The war in the Far East continued through 1945. Following VJ Day, my father continued working on destroyers needing to be refitted before sailing back to the UK. He was in Trincomalee until June 1946 and then returned home to the family in Hampshire
He was honoured to receive a “Card for Good Service” presented by Lord Mountbatten the Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command in November 1945, in recognition of his valuable service keeping his destroyers at sea.
Earl Mountbatten inspects my father’s base in Sri Lanka @Eric Coleman
Our return to Sri Lanka
My father was posted back to Trincomalee as base radio officer in 1954. After a few weeks he was ordered to take over the RN Transmitting Station Kotogoda, fifteen miles outside of Colombo on a temporary basis. There was a lovely house for the station commander so my father arranged for my mother and the three of us to join him from England.
After a few months my father was then transferred back to Trincomalee. Having been entertained frequently at my parent’s renowned curry lunches, useful contacts had been made amongst the RAF officers at the nearby air base. A DC- 3 was appropriated and they kindly flew the family, all our worldly goods, and wonderful family cook who insisted on coming with us, back to Trincomalee. It must have been so thrilling and I do wish I had been a little bit older to be able to recall the experience.
Photograph
The Coleman family 1955
We settled in a house my father rented near the base. In addition to our cook, we had a house boy to work in the garden and an amah was employed to look after me. I was clearly getting to the active toddler stage and needed watching all the time. Being on the edge of a jungle meant that there was plenty of slithering and snarling wildlife that was fascinating for a child…she had her work cut out for her I am afraid!
We moved a couple of times more until we eventually occupied the lower half of a large house which had been the WRNS Officers mess during the war. The garden was on the edge of the water this time and it is where my first memories really kick in.
Three sisters Sonia, Diana and Sally
I have two older sisters and whilst during the day I was in the constant care of my amah, when my sisters came home from school, I followed them everywhere, and this included into the water. They were already amazing swimmers and divers and I would be in my rubber ring desperately trying to keep up.
Things I remember vividly.
Our house came with trees and monkeys, small ones who were fascinated by glittering things and food. Their constant chittering filled the days and if a door was left open, they were in the house in a flash. Food was clearly the first priority, especially with our cook’s curries filling the air with tantalising aromas.
However, they discovered a treasure in my parent’s bedroom where the dressing table was adorned with beads, earrings and other trinkets. One night my parents came home from a party to find a troop of small thieves dressing up and admiring themselves in the mirror.
Sonia, Sally and her amah
On the subject of monkeys, a very large one found its way on to our wrap around balcony and discovered a cigarette box. He was not in a great mood and ate all the cigarettes, threatening anyone who approached. They are very dangerous, and I do remember clearly being dragged upstairs to our neighbours by my amah out of harm’s way. Probably wise as I had a tendency to be consider creatures great and small as potential pets.
I remember getting measles when I was 3years old. I had been too young to be vaccinated before we left the UK and a wave of measles hit the island and I caught it. The only treatment was to be kept isolated in a darkened room to prevent eye damage and kept cool and hydrated. I remember being in my cot with a fan above me in the dark for what seemed endless days, with my mother and amah applying cool flannels and chamomile lotion.
Sally aged 3 years old in smocked dress
I was soon back to mischief and particularly at my parent’s weekly Sunday Curry parties. It was open house for fellow officers and their wives, and also those on ships in the harbour at the time.
I do recall the laughter and the attention I used to get as I was passed from guest to guest. My eldest sister was, and still is an accomplished needlewoman, and made me smocked dresses which were always much admired. She also made me underpinnings from the same material. I developed the rather indelicate habit when complimented on the dress, of lifting it waist high and announcing ‘and I have knickers to match’. Thankfully something I grew out of sometime in my 30s.
I was rarely out of the water, but the one activity I couldn’t share with my sisters was their high board diving. One day my eldest sister was competing in a school event and completed a stunning manoeuvre off the highest board. She surfaced to what she hoped was a good score and lots of applause. Instead there was silence except from an audible gasp from the crowd.
I had followed her up the ladder and toddled down the diving board and jumped in after her. Apparently I bobbed up and shouted ‘Again’.
We were due to return to the UK in July 1956 and were leaving on a troop ship on the 30th. However on the 23rd of July, during my parent’s farewell party, his Captain arrived with the news that my grandmother and aunt had been tragically killed in a car crash in England.
My father was flown home immediately whilst my mother and the three of us left by ship on the 30th as planned. I was too young to understand the enormity of this family loss, and being one of the few children on board, was spoilt rotten. I do remember one instance in particular during a fancy dress party organised to keep us amused.
My sister Sonia made me a beautiful Little Po Peep outfit from crepe paper in lovely colours. I am sure there were knickers to match, but unfortunately it became rather too exciting and things got a little damp… Let’s just say crepe paper is rather unforgiving and absorbent….
The voyage was even longer than anticipated, as two days out of Colombo, it was announced the ship would be going via the Cape as the Suez was closed due to the war in the Middle East. This added another week to the passage and my mother became unwell.
Nothing serious as we were to discover after a couple of months as it turned out she was pregnant with my younger brother at the age of nearly 40. The village doctor initially put her symptoms down to dyspepsia but on a follow up visit she informed him that dyspepsia had just kicked her!
Today the smell of a spicy homemade curry, chamomile lotion, reminiscing with my sisters and spending time with these photographs brings back those long lost memories. We would live in Malta and South Africa over the next ten years, and those memories are obviously more clearly defined, but those earlier years are the most precious to me.
About Sally Cronin
Sally Cronin is the author of fifteen books including her memoir Size Matters: Especially when you weigh 330lb first published in 2001. This has been followed by another fourteen books both fiction and non-fiction including multi-genre collections of short stories and poetry.
Her latest release, Life is Like a Mosaic: Random fragments in harmony is a collection of 50 + images and poems on life, nature, love and a touch of humour.
As an author she understands how important it is to have support in marketing books and offers a number of FREE promotional opportunities in the Café and Bookstore on her blog and across her social media.
After leading a nomadic existence exploring the world, she now lives with her husband on the coast of Southern Ireland enjoying the seasonal fluctuations in the temperature of the rain.
Judith Barrow 