Book reviews: A writer's opinion about other people's writing

 NOVEL

A Tidy Ending by Joanna Cannon

In Cannon's best-selling novel, Linda is a lonely, socially-awkward woman, married but childless, who probably suffers from Aspergers’ syndrome. Her marriage seems dull and loveless – she and her husband appear to live parallel lives, barely aware of what each other is doing. She works in a charity shop, lives on a run-down estate in a house not far from her previous home, and one day an upmarket magazine drops through her letter-box, addressed to the house’s previous occupant. This triggers an obsession with the woman who lived there before, which leads to Linda tracking her down. Meanwhile, a series of murders of young women take place in the town, causing panic and an increasing atmosphere of danger.

It is difficult to discuss this novel without spoilers as the plot is engagingly twisty. I read the whole thing very quickly and it was certainly a page-turner. Narrated by Linda herself, the story is actually frequently funny with a humour that seems even darker once you reach the end. Linda’s flat, straightforward voice makes her a weirdly compelling unreliable narrator. The story is implausible but gripping, and if you enjoy dark humour and reading between the lines, you’ll enjoy this.

 Rating:  **** [recommended]

POETRY COLLECTION

The Leaping Hare and the Moon Daisy 

by Jill Stanton-Huxton 

This is a beautifully-produced collection of poems about nature, which I know Jill worked very hard on. As an object in itself, it is deeply appealing – slim, with a stunning night-blue cover and delightful illustrations throughout. It would make a lovely Christmas present for poetry-loving friends.

The poems themselves are likely to appeal to both poetry-lovers and readers who don’t normally read poetry, as they are highly accessible, charming and show a close observation of nature in an unpretentious way. This is a recognizable natural world, familiar to most of us, a place where a hedgehog ‘trundles along/like a clockwork toy’, where rooks ‘litter… the sky, in a fizzing frenzy’, and a moorhen has ‘green stockinged feet’.

There is a large variety of different styles of poetry here - some written in the first person, some directly addressing aspects of the natural world, some composed by an omniscient observer – and the rhyme-scheme and forms are diverse and interesting. Jill makes excellent use of onomatopoeia and personification, telling a dandelion ‘your pride [is] tucked behind you’, describing a storm ‘snapping and ripping’ or, when describing hares, depicting the ‘thumping feet/of the fighters, dew hoppers,/skidaddlers’. The language combines simplicity with originality: daisies with ‘yellow yolk smiles’, a ‘charcoal marbled sky’. She doesn’t simply describe a nostalgic, ‘Enid-Blyton’ countryside we think we remember from childhood – these are closely observed poems written by a woman who lives in the midst of the world she portrays. Though mostly the poems are affectionate, cheerful and positive, she doesn’t shy away from highlighting the less ‘pretty’ side of the natural world and human impact upon it: ‘blinkered trains crash through the sterile landscape’.

What I like most about this collection is the vividness of the images: ‘When night flipped on its side/and pulled the sunrise/out of the horizon’, starlings ‘squeezed glue-tight’, or making a daisy chain by ‘threading you together with needled fingers’.

This is a lovely collection of poems, combining the effortlessness of traditional children’s poetry with moments of striking imagery, and I would recommend it highly.

Rating:  ***** [highly recommended]