Publication Day Book Review ~ Dad by Steven Manchester

 

 The Story Plant
14 September 2021

My thanks to the author for my copy of this book

Three generations of dads, playing traditional roles in each other's lives, arrive simultaneously at significant crossroads. The decisions they make and the actions they take will directly - and eternally - affect each other. After a life of hard work and raising children, Robert is enjoying his well-deserved retirement when he discovers that he has an illness he might not be able to beat. 

At 19, Jonah is sprinting across the threshold of adulthood when he learns, stunningly, that he's going to become a father. And Oliver - Robert's son and Jonah's dad - has entered middle age and is paying its demanding price. While reconciling the time and effort it has taken him to reach an unfulfilling career and an even less satisfying marriage, he realizes that it's imperative that he keep it all together for the two men who mean everything to him. 

When different perspectives lead to misunderstandings that remain unspoken - sometimes for years - it takes great strength and even more love to travel beyond the resentment. Dad: A Novel chronicles the sacred legacy of fatherhood.

Manchester intended for the novel to “pull back the curtain and reveal the inner-workings of male relationships within the family unit.” Since many men have difficulty expressing their emotions, he wanted to change the narrative. Manchester has “endeavored to chronicle the sacred legacy of fatherhood, while capturing the why for many men.”

Raymond A. Levy, founder and director of the Fatherhood Project, said “Dad: A Novel demonstrates the psychological power and importance of fatherhood and a father’s love. This is a welcome addition to the culture’s growing interest in and appreciation for fathers’ emotional engagement with their family.” USA Today bestselling author Robert Dugoni called it, “A must read for men of all ages.” And Greg Bishop, founder of Daddy Boot Camp, said “Few fathers know how important they are to their kids and Steven Manchester's, Dad: A Novel has the potential to show them. Mothers may appreciate it even more.”

My Thoughts..

In Dad we meet three generations of the Earle family, all have different attitudes, hopes and expectations but what draws these three men irrevocably together is that they have a common bond of fatherhood. A grandfather, father and son, all take their specific place in this absorbing story of just what it means to be, quite simply, a dad, and as the old adage goes, any man be a father but it takes someone special to be a dad.

Each of them have their own specific worries which impacts on the story in a meaningful way. Patriarch, Robert, now retired, is facing some distressing health worries and is caught between looking back at his life, and his hopes for the future for his son and grandson. Caught in the middle is Oliver who is at a sort of crossroads and is left worrying about the meaning of his life as a father caught up in an unsatisfactory marriage, whilst his son, Jonah, at just nineteen, with his life drifting ahead of him, discovers that, unexpectedly, he is going to be a dad for the first time. As these three very different men face up to the challenges of their lives, they each learn something important about themselves, and each other, in the process.

As always this talented author gets right into the heart of family life and brings meaning and understanding to these important cross generational dilemmas and shows how, with love and kindness, one generation can help those who are following in their footsteps. If we are honest with ourselves all family relationships are complicated and perhaps none more so than for dads who wear so many different guises through the course of their lives, and I think this story shows their vulnerability, along with their strengths.

Dad is a heartwarming, and rather poignant, multi-generational story about the poignancy of ever changing family dynamics, the bonds of fatherhood and the choice of learning from mistakes and going forward into a new understanding of what it means to be , quite simply, a dad.

About the Author

Steven Manchester is the author of the #1 bestsellers Twelve Months, The Rockin’ Chair, Pressed Pennies and Gooseberry Island; the national bestsellers, Ashes, The Changing Season and Three Shoe boxes; the multi award-winning novel, Goodnight Brian; and the beloved holiday podcast drama, The Thursday Night Club. His work has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, CBS’s The Early Show and BET’s Nightly News.

Twitter @authorSteveM

Website

@TheStoryPlant

Amazon

Blog Tour ~ How to Carry Fire by Christina Thatcher

✯ Delighted to open this Poetry Blog Tour ✯

Parthian Books
1 April 2020

My thanks to Isabelle Kenyon and the publishers for my ecopy of these poems
and  the invitation to be part of the tour

How to Carry Fire was born from the ashes of family addiction. Beginning with the burning down of her childhood home, Thatcher explores how fire can both destroy and cleanse. Her work recognises embers everywhere: in farmhouses, heroin needles, poisonous salamanders. Thatcher reveals how fire is internalised and disclosed through anxiety, addiction, passion and love. Underneath and among the flames runs the American and Welsh landscapes – locations which, like fire itself, offer up experiences which mesmerise, burn and purify. This poignant second collection reminds us of how the most dangerous and volatile fires can forge us – even long after the flames have died down.

What did I think about it..

How to Carry Fire is a very interesting collection of poetry which explores the meaning of family memories and personal anxieties in a different and thought provoking way.

In turn both stark and unforgiving the idea of ritual cleansing through fire seems to be the recurring theme which cuts like a knife, and as the poet seeks to expunge personal memories which threaten at times to engulf her, so we travel through her thoughts and, at times, rather raw feelings.

Beautifully written with an expressionism which reiterates the strength of feeling and motivation, I was quite mesmerised by the poignant simplicity of some of the poems which are nicely juxtaposed alongside the strength of  the poet's personal observations.

Poetry can either comfort  or challenge, and on reflection after reading this collection, I would be inclined to place How to Carry Fire in the latter category. Daring, stimulating but also, at the same time, inspiring,  How to Carry Fire is a thought provoking collection, from start to finish.

About the Author

Shortlisted for the Bare Fiction Debut Poetry Collection Competition in 2015 and a winner in the Terry Hetherington Award for Young Writers in 2016, Christina Thatcher’s poetry and short stories have featured in over 40 publications including The London Magazine, Planet Magazine, And Other Poems, Acumen and The Interpreter’s House. Her first collection, More than you were, was published by Parthian Books in 2017.

Twitter @WRITETOEMPOWER #HOWTOCARRYFIRE

@PARTHIANBOOKS

Review ~ The Smallest Things : On the Enduring Power of Family by Nick Duerden

 💖💖 Happy Publication Day 💖💖

Elliot&Thompson
14 February 2019

My thanks to the publishers and to Alison Menzies PR for my copy of this book
and the kind permission to share this extract from the book.

Nick Duerden’s grandparents were always just . . . there. A mysterious yet unchanging presence, a source of dutiful visits, birthday cards and carefully preserved rituals: lunches, dinners and endless card games.

But, as he enters midlife, and his 98-year-old grandmother enters a care home, he realises that, like so many of us, he should perhaps have paid more attention to her true worth years before.

As Nick goes in search of the secrets his late mother took to the grave, he finds it can be the smallest things that keep us together when so much is left unspoken. This is a memoir of the tiny dramas that fill all our lives, and a celebration of the special ties that can bind two intimately connected strangers. Tender and poignant, it captures the richness, and also the complexity, of family life.

Extract..

How to remember us

Before you go, I want to give you something to remember us by. It’s clear to me you need some clothes, because why else would you have worn the same pair of jeans all week, with the rips at the knees? You really should have let me fix them for you. It wouldn’t have been any trouble. Anyway, your grandfather has many trousers here, and he doesn’t wear most of them. Look at these ones. Corduroys! And brown is always fashionable. No matter if they are too long and too wide, I can take them up, and in. Try them on, let me see you in them.

For consecutive birthdays, we will buy you a wallet made from real Italian leather. You may well let them pile up in a drawer at home, each unused and still in their presentation boxes, but eventually you will use every one of them. Life is long. You will always need to keep your money somewhere.

Here, take these cups. They are made from china. For coffee. Every time you have your morning espresso, think of us. No, no. I will wrap them up so they won’t break in your luggage. You can have the saucers, too. Do you have spoons in London?

For your wife, this scarf. A coat, perhaps? The collar is real fur. Or these lace doilies, beautiful for decoration. This umbrella? For the plane, some sandwiches. Four, so you won’t go hungry. Ham, cheese, tomatoes. And for the fridge at home: tortellini, ravioli. Gnocchi. Do you know gnocchi? You do? Some sweets for the plane, so your ears won’t pop.

Take the sweets. Remember us, yes? Don’t forget.

My Thoughts..

Love comes in many guises and on ♡Valentine's Day♡ it is all too easy to focus on the romantic love between couples but as this lovely book reminds us, love is all around us, and it's often the smallest things which make all the difference.

In this memoir of tiny dramas the author focuses on the strength of family, of the need to belong, and of the values instilled into us by our relationships with our significant others, and not just in a romantic way but also in a familial way. And by using the example of his grand-parents, the author takes us through the recollections he has of staying with them, and how these visits affected his upbringing and yet, what really shines throughout the book is the the love he had for his grandparents, and of the gradual realisation that they wouldn't be around forever.

This is a beautifully written memoir, which struck quite a few chords with me as my own mother is  97 and in a nursing home. Some days she doesn't know who I am or of my association with her and  this really hurts as I feel like I have lost the person she once was, and yet, there are still lovely moments when she surprises me and I can see that beneath the mask of dementia, she loves and remembers who I am and what I mean to her.

We take for granted those who mean the most to us and yet as this book so beautifully describes they really do 'hold the keys to who we really are'...♡

About the Author

Nick lives in London with his Spanish wife and children. History is repeating itself as his two daughters have a Spanish grandmother. He is an experienced broadcaster appearing on national TV and radio, and writes regularly for the national press.

Website

Twitter @Nick_Duerden


@eandtbooks


@alisonmenziespr

Khalil Gibran ~ On Marriage

Today Jaffa and I are celebrating a very special family wedding day 

with my son and his beautiful bride 

....Khalil Gibran On Marriage....

When Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?"

And he answered saying:

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Sunday WW1 Remembered...

World War 1 Silk Postcards for Valentine Sunday

Silk embroidered greetings cards first became popular in the early twentieth century when they appeared for the first time at the Great Exhibition of 1900.

However, it was during the years of the First World War that postcards sent by soldiers to their mothers, sisters and sweethearts became very popular. 

Created by the clever embroiderers of France and Belgium the cards were created from small scraps of silk and lace and used as souvenirs. Inevitably, as demand for the cards grew, manufacturing was moved to Paris factories where it is estimated that over 10 million silk embroidered postcards were produced.The postcards were cheaply made and sold for just a few francs.

The postcards, with their cheery pictures of birds and flowers were sent home to cheer the ones left behind, giving no clue to the horror that was being experienced by the soldiers on the Western Front.

©Digital Images

These photographs and silk postcard belong to our family archive.

The WW1 Silk was sent home by my husband's grandfather, Sam, when he spent time 

in  Poperinghe. 

The little card insert simply states " Best Kiss"

The colours of the silk are as vibrant as the day they were stitched and act as a poignant

 reminder that we should cherish our loved ones, wherever they may be.

My best kiss to you all on Valentine's Day

~***~