Monthly Archives: February 2016

Books from the Pantry: Dark Amelia by Sally O’ Reilly: reviewed by Natalie Denny

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Dark Ameila

‘Anyone who has loved two men at once knows that it’s not an abundant feeling, but mean and sweaty and undignified.’

Aemilia Bassano is an extraordinary woman in an ordinary time. Well educated and witty, possessing a sharp and brilliant mind, yet at the mercy and limitations of her gender. The story is set in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a time when men wore entitlement like a cloak, ruling their wives and mistresses with iron fists. Reared in the court environment and a favourite of the Queen, Aemilia is in a privileged position for someone of humble origins. This is courtesy of her role as mistress to Lord Hunsdon, cousin to the Queen and a married man, who has treated Aemilia favourably for six years.

Aemilia is outspoken, talented and beautiful, attributes that are rare, making her unforgettable and highly sought after. When she meets William Shakespeare, after initial resistance, a tumultuous and all-consuming love affair begins. The result of this is a pregnancy which changes everything for her. Lord Hunsdon, unable to keep Aemilia at court and under the illusion the child is his, sets Aemilia up with a gambling husband and small house to rear the child, bringing her love affair with Shakespeare to a premature end. Aemilia refuses to tell Shakespeare that Henry, her son, is his own flesh and blood and they live separate lives until fate brings them together.

The events that follow centre around a mother’s love and devotion to her son, the downfalls of desire, and also serves as a cautionary tale to the consequences of anger. There is a strong feminist narrative throughout with Aemilia constantly questioning society and her place in it. The story often referred to throughout is of Lililth, said to be Adam’s first wife, who was created equal and refused to be subservient to Adam. There are many comparisons to Aemilia and Lilith; a woman scorned but also a woman determined to do anything to get what she wants.

The language is coarse yet poetic, the imagery visceral and honest, painting a devastating picture of Tudor London and the struggles of women of that time.

This is a story of witchcraft, women’s liberation, love and loyalty. Aemilia is loosely based on a real individual whose poems were said to be the first published by a woman. It’s an interesting story with many twists and turns that you don’t see coming. If you’re a fan of historical fiction with a twist this book is for you.

http://www.myriadeditions.com/books/dark-aemilia/

https://twitter.com/sallyoreilly

 

Lyrical Craft: Inky Interview with musician Jonathan Tarplee: by Deborah Edgeley

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JT Liverpool

 

Your album Attachment Theories. Love the title. Does it set the theme, if you like, for the rest of your songs on the album? Or is your album a mixture of allsorts?

Well, both! There are songs on there about love, lust, warmongering leaders, wanting to escape from things, about nature, all kinds of things. I thought if one thing connects them all it’s the idea of Attachment; to people, nature, relationships between the powerful and their underlings and so on, but I made it plural because the album is not really a cohesive whole, conceptually. It’s as if each song has a different tone, theme or is a different ‘theory’ if you like. I’m glad you like the title, thanks!

As a songwriter, what do you care about most? What themes keep cropping up in your work?

   I think you have to write about what you care about for it to work and for you to be happy with your work in the long run, or I do anyway. I’ve sometimes tried to sort of craft a song in a more contrived way but it never really works. For me at least, it has to come from the heart and the guts, or I’m just not happy with it. Simon, the bassist in my band pointed out that water is a recurrent theme in my songs. I do love rivers, the sea, the rain. All seem full of endless bounty and mystery to me.

Could you give us a couple of examples of your own favourite lyrics?

I think that song lyrics are not really like poetry, they don’t really work on their own, they are at one with the music and don’t really make sense without it. Now that my excuse is out of the way though, I’m pretty pleased with the second verse of my song ‘Galleries’. It goes;

             Now the air is moving, as slowly as the night.

             The moonlight swims and the angels swing from star to satellite.

              Now I am a-gliding, to where the sun will rise,

             The bluebird calls, a feather falls, the hills are hypnotised.

You live on a barge and recently experimented with home recording in your Boat Saloon. How important is your creative space and has it influenced your work? Do you get inspired more being surrounded by water and nature?

Yes, this is an ongoing experiment with home-recording and I’m hoping to be able to release another album of songs later this year if it goes well. I love living on my boat, and love living with the seasons and being close to nature, but I’m not sure how important it is in terms of how my music turns out. If I lived in a city-centre flat, would my music be much different? I’m not really sure. Music making, and listening, is a very internal experience for me, something often done in the middle of the night, alone. Having said that, as someone who is influenced at least as much by American music as by British music, I’ve noticed that a lot of music from the States feels much more spacious, like the country itself, compared to the often small-town, kitchen-sink stuff of say UK Indie bands, and I love both types,  but I suppose that must mean your surroundings make a difference!

Do you like poetry?

I love poetry and think it can move you on a simultaneously intellectual and spiritual way like no other art form. I really should read more though, I’m a dabbler and not knowledgeable in poetry. The last time I read a great deal of poetry was when I saw my Mum’s copy of The Rattle Bag. I borrowed it and really devoured the poetry in there and nearly all of it really inspired me, immensely. I feel a lot of the time though that life is a race against time and I must get my music out there while I’m young enough to spend many hours working on music, practicing guitar and rehearsing and writing songs, as well as travelling from stage to stage. So reading more books, poetry, watching more films and stuff are things I think I can do when I’m too told to move as much! I know I am wrong, but I am still going about my life in this way… a lot of things are on hold!

How important are lyrics in music? Are they always necessary? Does music stand alone or does the listener need a suggestion through lyrics of what the song is about?

I sometimes think the best, purest music would surely not need any words. I think music is pure emotional energy; to me it is not a thing or a product or a piece of art that represents feelings, music IS the feelings, it is spirituality, it is the voice of the Cosmos. It’s the feelings or energy of the music and words together that count. I love songs though, I love lyrics. I went to see Simon Armitage and he was asked about song lyrics, and he came up with the best answer to this I’ve heard. He said something about a lyric, it might have been from a Morrissey song or something as I remember, but the important thing he said was that the lyric on it’s own was clichéd and crass, but when listened to together with the music in that song, it created an incredible epiphany that would not have been possible without both the words and music.

Which authors inspire you and why?

 A book which really inspired me greatly is called ‘Pip Pip: A Sideways look at Time’ by Jay Griffiths. I don’t believe in the concept of ‘genius’ but if I’m wrong then Jay Griffiths is the closest thing to genius that I have come across. You really need to read it a few times and it’s hard to explain how multi-layered it is, but I suppose it’s a kind of frenzied intellectual/spiritual essay on contested ideas of time. It is deeply pro-nature and deeply feminist among other things, but so much more as well.

I’m also slightly embarrassed that I’ve got into reading all Mark Billingham’s Tom Thorne novels. I definitely never saw myself as a reader of detective books, but I was intrigued as I knew of the author, as a comedy-lover, as a stand-up comedian. The first book of his I read was free so I just read it out of curiosity because I love comedy so much! These books are very much in-genre and clichéd if you like, but his character development is superb. Thorne is a sort of broken man but one you can really identify with, he as much a victim of modern bureaucracy and business-speak as he is of the people trying to kill him. There’s also a kind of earthy repugnance to these stories too which remind me of great horror films. I really enjoy the roller-coaster ride they take you on!

When composing a new song, do you think of melody first and then lyrics, or is it vice versa? Or does it just depend?!

It just depends. Some start with a riff, a whole tune, a lyric, sometimes it all just comes out in one go and I think those tend to be the best ones.

Your band The Blue Yellows have a song called ‘No Tobacco, no Jesus’. Quirky! What are the ideas behind the title?

That goes back to Jay Griffiths again! I think it was in a travel book she wrote. She was writing about how some of the Christian missionaries would travel to remote areas and ‘convert’ the locals with the help of gifts of cigarettes and other things. One of the tribal chiefs was quoted, on being asked about whether they had really given up thousands of years of their beliefs in forest spirits and so on, saying something like ‘well put it this way, “no tobacco, no hallelujah!” . Of course, I mis-remembered the quote and turned it into a silly song!

 Share with us one of your favourite memories of performing your work.

There’s nothing that beats rocking out with your band and completely losing yourself, forgetting who you are and what you are and just being at one with the music. Some of the funniest times are at festivals though, there are often little toddlers and they will dance their little socks off. They don’t care whether you’re cool or not, they just react to the music. I remember playing a festival in the pouring rain and there was this tiny toddler sat right in front of us, cross-legged on the grass under a transparent umbrella in the streaming rain, just staring at us, enthralled and amazed at what we were doing. Hilarious!

Website: http://jonathantarplee.com

Blueyellows recordings: http://www.blueyellows.co.uk/

”Idiosyncratic yet highly articulate lyrics married with welcoming guitar melodies”, The Musician.

“Passionate, humorous, communal sounding expressions.. engaging”, Oliver Arditi.

“Mesmerizing guitar skills”, WillsImmusic Blog.

“Powerful voice”, Here Comes The Flood.

“Beautifully crafted songs with bite and edge”, Mind, Body & Boogie festival.

“Full of Melody & Honesty”, Nigel Stonier.

 

 

 

Books from the Pantry: What Remains by Tim Weaver: reviewed by Inez de Miranda

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TW What Remains Cover

I read this for the book club I recently joined. It’s not something I’d have chosen if I’d seen it in a shop or library, but neither is it the kind of thing that would make me recoil in disgust.
What Remains is the sixth novel in a series of crime novels featuring private investigator David Raker. I have never read the previous five books and it’s possible that I would have appreciated this novel more if I had.

The story is set in London and starts on 14 January 2014 when Raker meets up with ex-police officer Colm Healy, who he knows from previous adventures. Raker has been helping Healy, who is in a desperate situation after losing his job, becoming homeless and alienating his ex-wife and children. The trigger for Healy’s demise has been the unsolved case of the murder of a young, single mother (Gail) and her little twin daughters. Healy cannot let go of this case, and is more interested in talking about the murder case with Raker than in sorting out his own life. Healy drags Raker into re-investigating the case.

The main story is told in first person by David Raker, but it’s really Healy’s story. Raker seemed more like a prop than a fully developed character and I found his devotion to Healy over-the-top and implausible. Perhaps if I’d read the previous books in the series and had a little more background on their relationship I would’ve understood it better, but in What Remains it was just weird.

There is a second storyline which occasionally interrupts the main story and is conveniently printed in italics. It describes how a mysterious man lived with Gail, the murder victim, and her daughters in the flat where they died.

What Remains is written in an entertaining and accessible style, but because of its many twists and turns it’s not an uncomplicated read.

Thriller fans will enjoy its many exciting, high-tension scenes, narrow escapes and baffling mysteries. The mysteries intrigued me enough to try to ‘solve’ them while reading the book. The author skilfully guided me into thinking up a totally wrong solution. Once my error became clear, I was astonished. I couldn’t think of any other explanations than the one I’d come up with, and I wondered how the author had managed to mislead me so completely. I was duly impressed and kept reading, desperate to get to the bottom of the mystery – quite like poor old Healy.

*Spoiler alert*
The following paragraphs contains (minor) spoilers, so if you plan to read this novel you might want to skip this part of the review.


The reason I’d missed all the hints and signs that led to the true solution of the mysteries was that they weren’t there. Everything and everyone that had to do with what really happened to Gail and her daughters is only brought up in the last third or so of the book, which annoyed me. It was like reading a list of ingredients for a gooey chocolate cake, and then, when you reckon you’re finally going to read how to prepare that cake with those ingredients, you are told how to steam broccoli instead. My admiration for the author’s skill in misleading his reader evaporated and I became a lot less interested in finding out what had happened. Even more disappointing was the solution of the second mystery (Gail’s boyfriend): This was resolved with the old let-down of ‘It was all a dream’.


*End of spoiler*

I wasn’t incredibly impressed with What Remains but it did keep me moderately entertained throughout.

It reads a bit like an action film, so I think it will appeal to people who like a lot of action and courageous characters who work their way out of various predicaments – and judging from the glowing reviews this novel gets on Amazon and in various newspapers, there are plenty of people like that.

Books from the Pantry: The Boy Who Drew The Future by Rhian Ivory: reviewed by Kev Milsom

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Rhian ivory

‘They pushed us onto the street. Maman said they’d called her a “sorcière”, a witch, told her they’d heard the rumours in the village. The fat one pointed at the road to Halstead.

“Look for a tall building with gates and ask to see the Guardians, maybe they’ll believe you when you write ‘widow’! Or maybe they’ll put you in a yellow jacket along with all the other sinners,” he shouted at us, laughing.

They said more things about my father that I didn’t understand, harsh-sounding words Maman wouldn’t let me ask about. She waved my questions away, muttering curses under her breath as we stood outside wondering where to go.’

It’s 1865 and Blaze Ambroise, a mysterious boy of teenage years and French descent – along with his canine companion, suitably named ‘Dog’ – are squatting in an old manor house in Essex, England. Recently orphaned and impoverished, the boy is shunned by the locals, except on rare occasions when they require assistance via his deft skills in herbalism and healing. On other occasions, his unique talent at prophecy comes to light whenever he is given a pencil and a piece of paper. At such times, Blaze and Dog are given food and aid and hounded for psychic answers to the personal problems of the selfish town populace, before once more being shunned by those he has assisted and left alone.

Over a century later, a teenage boy named Noah Saunders is moving around the United Kingdom and enrolling in many new schools, due to his father’s work as a photographer. His one desire in life is to find a sense of routine normality and now, having just moved to Essex, he is hoping to put a troubled past behind him…although a ‘normal’ life always seems to escape his clutches. Could this be due to his mysterious propensity for intense empathy with others, as well as the ability to draw unusual drawings that appear to foretell the future of other people?

And so we are introduced to the two compelling, main characters in Rhian Ivory’s novel, The Boy Who Drew the Future, each sharing similar, eerie qualities and coincidences that bind them quickly into memory.

The style of the book is refreshingly simple, with two sets of first-person narratives being told one at a time. Therefore the reader gets a chapter of modern-day Noah, before switching back to the 1860s with Blaze and Dog in the next chapter, and so on. This structure allows the reader plenty of time to adapt to the similarities and differences between the two characters and their personal accounts; but what really hits home from the very first page is the brilliant standard of writing being demonstrated on the pages.

Simply put, Rhian Ivory’s descriptions are masterful. From describing locations and objects, down to her vivid portrayal of people, Rhian excels at inviting the reader into every scene and using her skill as a wordsmith to alight our imagination. Most importantly, for us student writers who dream one day of attaining success and aplomb within our writing careers, this book is a true masterclass in how to get it precisely right – how to lay out simple words and sentences into truly compelling literature and draw the reader effortlessly into the story with an easy, delightful flow.

‘The inside of the circle was dull and worn with time as if it had rested on many different fingers over the years. I wondered who had worn it last and who would wear it next. I could sense it wasn’t new. It felt weighty as it sat heavy in my hand, full of history. I clutched it, my fingers closing around it like a secret. I imagined the green glowing through my skin, lighting me up, like an emerald fire that could burn, marking me out as a thief.’

As readers, we are effortlessly transported between centuries, alternately following the very real, life-threatening dangers faced by Blaze, before swinging back to the modern day, where Noah’s tensions lie more within school, with new friends and ground-shaking emotions to deal with. As the book unfolds, we are kept wondering on the mysterious connection between the two, young individuals. In achieving this balance, Rhian Ivory doesn’t waste a single line of writing in holding us tightly to her fascinating story.

An absolute gem of a book.

http://www.fireflypress.co.uk/node/162

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Boy-Who-Drew-Future/dp/1910080268

https://twitter.com/rhian_ivory