Tony Hogan Bought Me An Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma by Kerry Hudson
It’s very exciting and a privilege to be a part of Kerry’s blog hop in celebration of its paperback release! I read and reviewed Tony Hogan this time last year during the throes of morning sickness and luckily, her book managed to pull my mind away and immerse me in the world of Jannie Ryan. And what fun it truly was. But that is enough, I shall hand you over to the brilliant, hilarious and talented Kerry herself who tells us about her favourite London writing spots; Tony Hogan was written during a six month stint in Vietnam but before Tony Hogan there
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Literature | Review Wild by Cheryl Strayed Cheryl Strayed with “Monster” I often wonder about what compels a person to pursue a risky pastime, whether it is climbing mountains; base jumping, hang gliding or in Strayed’s case, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail on her own. Strayed, you learn rather quickly is a normal person yet rather extraordinary. Extraordinary in her outlook on life and her perseverance on the grueling task ahead, she writes “…How can a book describe the psychological factors a person must prepare for…The despair, the alienation, the anxiety and especially the pain, both physical and mental…”
Encounters On Buses On An Ordinary Day
I’ve finally left the house. It’s a messy house, far messier than before but what can you do, the baby needs a gym, a bumbo & god knows what else, but she needs them, but I’ve left the house. Everything is going well, I’ve fed her & changed her & dashed out, now all I need is a swift bus journey to visit a friend in her new beautiful home. The bus ride is like a little trip down memory lane as I pass my old secondary school where the husband and I met. We made googly eyes
Green Fingers and Motherhood
I’ve succumbed to the Green Finger disease. The one where you obsessively rifle your way through seed catalogues, gardening suppliers, Alys Fowler books and blogs and that’s not enough! I’ve been writing lists of what I want to grow, scrap it and write it out again with gardener’s haste. In a split second, I find myself ordering a plastic greenhouse, in the next, it is up with a cucumber plant rooted at it’s base with a trellis made from cane to climb. Lettuce has been laid out among rosemary, thyme, horse radish, oregano and tarragon. I won’t mention how I nearly cried when I was
Orkney by Amy Sackville
Literature | Review Orkney by Amy Sackville Writing a second novel is a grueling task, particularly when your first one was as well received as Sackville’s The Still Point. Sackville once more pulls the reader north, not the North Pole like before, but to Orkney where the stage is set for a married couple once more. Unlike the couple in The Still Point, Sackville does not use the stream of conscious technique which she mastered admirably, but instead, we have one protagonist and one set of thoughts, those of which belong to Richard. Richard is a sixty something academic who
A Life Online (Published in Avrupa)
Avrupa Times A Life Online 29th April 2013 And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings-on of life Inaudible as dreams! The desk now brandishes a muslin square, a pacifier and on my lap, a baby whose arms & legs remain contentedly animated, but wait, she is now falling asleep to the rhythm of my desk clock and the tapping of my fingers across the keyboard. How life has changed. Every single aspect of our lives has changed thanks to a beautiful twelve week
Hello Spring. Hello at last.
Life recently entails; sunshine at last and a dive into the garden with flowers planted and sun adored! Gosh, how long did we all wait for that one?! With the arrival of the sun, blossoms graced our trees, sandals made their way onto feet (not mine, I wear ,boots till June) shorts came out (the husband’s) and smiles brandished grey faces! It’s salad season as we shy away from root veg, we want greens, reds, pulses & watermelons! What else… writing at the desk with the baby on my lap, I’ve been working on an article for a week or so and
Forgotten orders make great surprises
This little gem landed through the post today, and what made its arrival even more special was the fact that I had forgotten I ordered it! I hope it’s as good as The Still Point- oh the pressure authors must endure after first time successes.So it was indeed a well deserved present on such a day in which my strength was being tested. What you can not see in this picture is my right hand which was at the time pushing the wretched buggy backward & forth, trying to settle my little one who at 6 pm hadn’t had a
Hope, excitement, creativity…..oh and soon a baby
Time draws ever closer to the baby’s arrival, and doesn’t my body know it. I sleep in a half light, a half thought, a half here and half there mind where I have no control over my thoughts and excitement- this is all mingled by the countless visits I make to the bathroom in the night as the baby fluffs up my bladder like a feather pillow, or in my case, a foot stool seeing as our little one has chosen to remain breech (is this an insight into things to come? A naughty Cranmer?). At 38 weeks; I do
Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil (published in Avrupa)
Literature | Review Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil In the typical poet behaviour, Thayil immediately churns out a prologue which goes on for 7 pages without a single full stop. There isn’t a breather in place, just a suffocating reflection of a trance-like mind that has been drug ridden and now mirrored onto the page. The novel is set in the late seventies in Bombay, depicting the drug culture and the changes within it, such as the shift from the more respectable opium to dirty heroin with a vast amount of sex and violence thrown in for good measure; they do after all
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