Black Bread White Beer by Niven Govinden

Black Bread White Beer by Niven Govinden is something of a voyeuristic novel.  Spanning just twenty-four hours, the story follows Amal and Claud, a young married couple who are taking a trip into the country to visit Claud's parents.

Amal and Claud have been married for three years, they come from very different backgrounds, but share the same hopes and dreams.  Yesterday Claud miscarried their first child.   Today Amal is trying to come to terms with the alien-like stranger who sits alongside him in the car, who used to be his wife.

Narrated throughout by Amal, this is a short, yet stark look at modern-day marriage.  Not only do this couple have to deal with the horror of losing a baby; a baby that they'd only known about for twenty one days, they also have to deal with the clash of cultures that their marriage has brought about.  Claud's white middle-class parents try to deal with Amal's colour and Indian heritage as best they can, emphasising their terms of endearment so that nobody could ever accuse them of prejudice.

There is an underlying tension running through this story which keeps the reader on edge, almost fearful of what may happen.  Claud has decided that her parents should not know about the miscarriage and upon entering her childhood home has reverted back to a childlike state.  Doted on by her parents, allowed to dress up in her mother's cocktail gown, or bury sad memories in a Tupperware box in the garden - this is Claud's way of coping.  Amal, on the other hand is lost.  He feels left out, excluded and finds it incredibly difficult to accept the congratulations thrust upon him by the villagers.

Niven Govinden

Although narrated by Amal and heavily featuring Claud and her parents, it is Claud and Amal's marriage that takes centre stage in this novel.  Almost stripped bare by both of them in their desperate need to understand what went wrong, their relationship begins to teeter and fall, and one wonders if it will ever regain it's balance.

Although bleak, this is an excellent novel, with a flash of humour and a lot of humanity.  Niven Govinden's writing is engaging, descriptive and incredibly readable.

Black Bread White Beer was published by The Friday Project at the beginning of May.


My thanks go to The Friday Project for sending my copy for review.

A Fucked Up Life In Books

The web seems to have been overwhelmed by book bloggers recently, I'm not complaining because I'm one of them, so how could I moan?  One of the hardest things about having such a choice of reviewers is finding just the right ones to follow, finding someone who thinks along the same lines and whose reviews you can really believe and trust in.   @Bookcunt is one of my favourite bloggers.  She's controversial, she's outspoken and she's very sweary!   I've followed her reviews for ages, I've read her Tweets for ages, but it is only in the past couple of months that I've actually interacted with her.  To be truthful, I was scared of her! She's so feisty and so cool that I didn't know what to say to her, so I said nowt!    We kind of bonded over Caroline Smailes' latest novel; The Drowning of Arthur Braxton.  We both loved the book, we both love Caroline - that brought us together.  I'm not scared of her any more.

When The Friday Project offered to send me a preview copy of her book, I jumped at the chance.  I read it over last weekend.  She made me cry.

A Fucked Up Life in Books tells her story, from childhood to the present time.  Each significant episode in her life is associated with the book that she was reading at the time.  I love this concept, I love the fact that Howard's End is the only book she has read whilst having sex (I'd love it even more if her partner had been called Howard!).  That's one of the funny moments.   There are quite a few funny moments, but there are many poignant moments, and these are the moments that really resonate.  These are the moments that expose her vulnerability, her emotions and her sadness.  These are the moments that have made BC the lady she is today, the reasons why she is so sweary, and the reasons why she is quite special.

I don't know who BC is.  I know she works in publishing and she is in her late twenties.  I want to know more, and I really think that this could be just the start for her writing career.

The book is full of swearing, at times it is crude and to the point.  Anyone who thinks that they'd be shocked? Then don't read it.    However, I'd really recommend that you do read it.  It's powerful stuff.

Huge thanks to The Friday Project for my preview copy of the book which will be released as an eBook in May.    

Oh, and I've been invited to the launch party in May.  I'm going to meet her!  I really don't know what I'm going to say to her ........ I'm beginning to feel a tiny bit scared again!

The Drowning Of Arthur Braxton by Caroline Smailes

The Drowning of Arthur Braxton by Caroline Smailes is published by The Friday Project on 11 April 2013.  This is Caroline Smailes' sixth book.   I've previously read a couple of her novels; In Search of Adam and  Like Bees To Honey and although I enjoyed reading both of those, I think that The Drowning of Arthur Braxton is far and away her greatest story yet.    Caroline Smailes' writing is unique, quirky and sometimes a little bit strange, her style can take some getting used to but she really is a monster talent and if you don't mind having your head turned inside-out and left spinning like a top, then I'd really recommend that you read her work.

Arthur Braxton runs away from school. He hides out in an abandoned building, an Edwardian public baths. He finds a naked woman swimming in the pool.

 From this point on, nothing will ever be the same.

The Drowning of Arthur Braxton is an unflinching account of the pain and trauma of adolescence, of how first love can transform the most unhappy of lives into something miraculous. It is a dark and brooding modern fairy tale from one of our most gifted writers.

Caroline Smailes has layered Arthur Braxton's story very cleverly with the stories of the other two main characters; Delphina and Laurel.   She also brings the story to the reader using different techniques including first-person narrative and stage-play scripting.  The story slips back and forth in time and starts with Laurel's story.  Laurel is a teenage girl who starts to work at The Oracle - the public baths on the seafront in a small Welsh town.  Laurel is the oldest of seven children, her single-parent Mother is 'proper useless' but Laurel has dreams and ambitions and wants to go to college and train to be a teacher.

Arthur Braxton is a teenage boy who is lonely.  His Mother walked out years ago, his Dad has lost the plot completely and spends his day eating crisps and smells of pee.  Arthur is bullied constantly by a gang of yobs and the final straw comes when a photo of his cock is posted on Facebook accompanied by 'you are a gay' taunts.

Arthur takes refuge in the uninhabited building that once was The Oracle and there he meets the mysterious Delphina, and falls in love.   Arthur soon becomes obsessed with Delphina's magical world of water-healers and strange old men and spends more and more time in their world.

This is a complex story that interweaves the harsh reality and grittiness of Arthur's modern-day life with the magical, mystical world of The Oracle.  Where bullying, twagging school and parental neglect slot in perfectly with water healing, 'other' worlds, fairy-like nymphs and the peculiar history of The Oracle.

My head was spinning when I finished this story, at times I felt a little bit lost, but at others I felt as though I was there, in The Oracle, alongside Arthur, Laurel and Delphina.   I realise now that Caroline Smailes has used some classical Greek myths as her basis for this novel but I'm really not familiar with those, so I really can't comment on the comparison.

Caroline Smailes has an amazing imagination, and paints a stunning picture with her words.  The setting of the derelict public baths is amazingly real and her characters are so well-drawn that I could see every inch of them in my mind.

I have absolutely no doubt that The Drowning of Arthur Braxton is going to stay in my mind for a very long time, in fact I may re-read it at a later date, and that is something that I rarely do.

Huge thanks to all at The Friday Project for sending my copy for review.


About Caroline Smailes (from her website www.carolinesmailes.co.uk) : 

Caroline Smailes appears to make life changing decisions based on passing comments made by Richard and Judy.

Back in 2005, two weeks before she was due to start a PhD in Linguistics, Caroline watched an interview on Richard & Judy where they referred to someone as a ‘nearly woman’. Caroline identified with that label and faced her ‘now or never’ moment. She didn’t want to be someone who talked of ‘nearly’ having done something, she wanted to see if she could write novels and tell stories.

Within that same week, Caroline gave up her funding and her PhD place, enrolled on an MA in Creative Writing and over the next year she wrote In Search of Adam.

Now, six publications later, Caroline lives with her husband and three children in the North West of England.

In brief: Caroline was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, she is not represented by a literary agent, she likes cake, roller-skates and vinyl.

You can follow Caroline on Twitter here

Shoeless Joe by W P Kinsella

Shoeless Joe by W P Kinsella is the classic novel that inspired the film Field of Dreams.  Originally written and published back in 1982, Shoeless Joe is part of the backlist of Kinsella's books acquired by HarperCollins imprint The Friday Project and was published by them on 14 March 2013.

The Friday Project is to publish a new novel by W P Kinsella called the Butterfly Winter, and his eight other backlist titles will follow in 2014.

So, back to Shoeless Joe.  I have to hold up my hands to two things.  First, I've never seen the film Field of Dreams and second, I know nothing about baseball.  This is a novel about baseball, but it is also most certainly a novel of love and dreams and how a person's power of belief can make things happen.

Ray Kinsella lives on a remote farm with his wife Annie and their small daughter.  Ray is obsessed with baseball.  Most of his life events are connected in some way to the game, he remembers his father according to the baseball stories that he told him.  Most of all, Ray is obsessed with Shoeless Joe - his hero who was banned from the game after the match-fixing Black Box Scandal in 1919.   One day, when looking out across his land, Ray hears a voice

"If you build it, he will come"

So, Ray builds it, and he comes, and so do other baseball legends.  Ray then takes a trip across the country and helps the author JD Salinger overcome his pain.

W P Kinsella

This novel has a somewhat dream like feel to it, with Ray taking the leading role.  There are very few characters within the story and personally I would have loved to have known more about Ray's wife Annie.  The small glimpses of her were not enough, I wanted to know why she adored Ray so much - maybe it's because Annie wasn't that fond of baseball either that I was more interested in her.  Ray's total obsession becomes a little tedious at times.  I often struggle with magical realism in novels, it has to be done so well for me to engage with it, or has to be a subject matter that I really love.

There is no doubt however that WP Kinsella writes in an almost poetic way, with beautiful and descriptive language and despite the subject matter I found the novel quite a satisfying read.  I will most certainly look out for more by the author.

My thanks go to Sabah from The Friday Project for sending a copy for review.