📖 Book Review ~ Winchelsea by Alex Preston

Canongate
3 February 2022

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book

The year is 1742. Goody Brown, saved from drowning and adopted when just a babe, has grown up happily in the smuggling town of Winchelsea. Then, when Goody turns sixteen, her father is murdered in the night by men he thought were friends.

To find justice in a lawless land, Goody must enter the cut-throat world of her father’s killers. With her beloved brother Francis, she joins a rival gang of smugglers. Facing high seas and desperate villains, she also discovers something else: an existence without constraints or expectations, a taste for danger that makes her blood run fast.

Goody was never born to be a gentlewoman. But what will she become instead?

📖 My Review ...

When sixteen year old Goody Brown witnesses her father's smuggler friends turn on him to wreck revenge for past misdemeanors it fires in her the need to avenge her father's murder. With the help of her brother, Francis, Goody must step into the lawless world of rival smugglers whose moral compass is equally questionable, and soon they are both caught in a world of danger and high adventure.

Reminiscent of so many smuggler's tales, Winchelsea, is a rollicking romp through the hidden caverns and swirling seas of the seventeenth century when lives were lost and promises broken but throughout all the danger Goody shows great resilience as she makes her way in a male dominated world.

Authentically written, and with a fine eye for even the smallest detail, time and place come alive and with more than a nod towards J Meade Falkner's, Moonfleet, Winchelsea is a more grown up version of this classic adventure.  Add together the dastardly nature of smugglers, the lure of the promise of the Jacobite King Across The Water, the adventurous nature of a young woman caught between two worlds, and you have all the ingredients for a rollicking good historical mystery.

Best read with.. a swig of grog and a bite or two of pie

About the author

Alex Preston is an award-winning author of three novels: This Bleeding City, The Revelations and In Love and War, as well as a book of non-fiction As Kingfishers Catch Fire. He writes regularly for the Telegraph, the Economist and Harper’s Bazaar. He reviews books for the Observer’s New Review, Financial Times and Spectator. Alex is co-founder of the Corfu Literary Festival and Patron of Oxford Literary Festival.

Twitter @ahmpreston #Winchelsea

@canongatebooks

Canons ~ #TheMyths

 I am delighted to be able to feature this collection of lovely novellas in a bold retelling of legendary tales by the world's best contemporary writers

Published in August 2018

The six most popular myths have been beautifully packaged in a stunning series redesign.

In A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong holds up the mirror of mythology to show us the history of ourselves, and embarks on a journey that begins at a Neanderthal graveside and ends buried in the heart of the modern novel.

My thoughts:

This is a good introduction to the concept of myth and how the history of our people has evolved through the myths and legends of our past. The author writes well and explains how myths carry us forward into our future whilst recognising the power of the past. 

Condemned to shoulder the world forever by the gods he dared defy, freedom seems unattainable to Atlas. But then he receives an unexpected visit from Heracles, the one man strong enough to share the burden.

My thoughts:

The story of Atlas and Heracles is re-told in this imaginative interpretation by Jeanette Winterson. Interesting and thought-provoking, Weight is a new slant on an old, old story. 

Penelope. Immortalised in legend and myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and weaving again as she waits for her husband’s return. Now Penelope wanders the underworld, spinning a different kind of thread: her own side of the story - a tale of lust, greed and murder.

My thoughts:

The deft hand of Margaret Attwood is very much in evidence in this version of the story of Penelope and Odysseus. It is not a story I was very familiar with, and so to have this very readable version was a very good introduction to this ancient story of lust, greed and murder.

This is the story of two brothers. One is impassioned and one reserved. One is destined to go down in history and the other to be forgotten.

In Pullman’s hands, this sacred tale is reborn as one of the most enchanting, thrilling and visionary stories of recent years.

My Thoughts:

In this modern retelling of the life of Jesus, Philip Pullman adds a new twist to the old story. Cleverly constructed, and with a style of writing that has universal appeal, this book has a resonance that remains long after the last page is turned.

In exhilarating and lucid prose, Grossman gives us a provocative new take on the story of Samson: his battle with the lion, the three hundred burning foxes, the women he bedded, the one he loved and who betrayed him and the destruction of the temple. It reveals the journey of a lonely and tortured soul, whose search for a true home echoes our own private struggles.

My thoughts:

The Myth of Samson and Delilah so much the subject of books and films, is such an iconic story that it is to the author's credit that he has brought something new to the table. I thoroughly enjoyed this interpretation of the struggles of Samson.

Girl meets boy. It’s a story as old as time. But what happens when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances? Ali Smith’s remix of Ovid’s most joyful metamorphosis is a story about the kind of fluidity that can’t be bottled and sold. It is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, a story of puns and doubles, reversals and revelations.

My thoughts:

I think of this set of Myths, this one has to be my favourite. The retelling of Ovid's story of Iphis and Ianthe seemed to have a very modern feel to it and the variability of gender, of girls who are like boys, and boys who are like girls, seems particularly apt for a modern readership.

Find out more at Canongate The Myths

Twitter @CanongateBooks #TheMyths

My thanks to Canongate for my review copies of the Myths

Blog Tour ~ The Fortunate Brother by Donna Morrissey

I am delighted to host today's stop on the  The Fortunate Brother Blog Tour

With the Author - Donna Morrissey

A warm welcome to you, Donna and thank you for spending time with us today. Tell us a little about yourself and how you started writing?

I was a high school drop-out, traveled around the country wearing beads and head bands for several years, had a “love-child,” married and then had another. A family tragedy sent me back to Newfoundland and it was then, during a horrible illness of my own, that I started back to schoo. A divorce and a university degree later, I started writing.

How did you get started as a fiction-writer?

I met this eccentric, knowledgeable a woman who prompted me to start writing, arguing it’s one’s duty to bring tragedy to the realm of myth. To give it meaning and a place of honour. The tragedies I’d suffered took me to that place where pain can be felt as holy. And holy can be felt as sublime. I picked up the pen and was instantly addicted. I've been writing every single solitary day since. And I wouldn't recommend it to anybody for it imprisons you for life.

What can you tell us about The Fortunate Brother without giving too much away?

The Fortunate Brother is the story of Kyle who is mourning the loss of his elder brother. He is caught between a mother who is attempting to sweep her house of grief, and a father who drinks to dull his pain. The family’s trauma is escalated when a local bully is murdered and his blood is found on Kyle’s doorstep.

What do you consider to be the strongest elements of the book?

The dichotomy between despair and hope. Between judgement and understanding. The hero, Kyle wrestles with all of those concepts as he works through his grief and anger re the death of his brother, his mother’s illness, and the involvement of both savory and unsavory characters from the community that are impinging on his life.

How do you plan your writing, are you a plotter, or a see where it goes kind of writer?

I sit in the muck and struggle for firm footing, day after day, minute after minute. Everything comes in a big smudge and nothing is ever defined. So, yeah, the later…no plotter here.

What do you hope that readers will take away from the story?

A sense of, ‘Wow, that was great. I want to go there.’

What has been one of your most rewarding experiences as an author?

Having a reader approach me, holding my book in one hand, and his other covering his heart and tears in his eyes. And I knew that he suffered grief and our hearts connected. May God bless all of us.

Out of all the books you've written, do you have a favourite?

Yes. The one you are about to read…..eh eh….okay, now I’m being clever. Why, this one, of course. Ok, ok…..it’s….well….To quote someone: Every artists feels their greatest work is ‘just about to happen.’ That’s why we live so uncomplainingly in the discomfort of poverty….hope that each one will be greater still!!

About the Author

Donna Morrissey is the award winning author of five novels. |She grew up in The Beaches, a small fishing outport in Newfoundland, and now lives in Halifax, Canada.

Goodreads

Follow on Twitter #thefortunatebrother 

**The Fortunate Brother is published today**

Canongate
20 April 2017

What's it all about...

The Fortunate Brother is a dark, atmospheric and compelling novel about the aftermath of a murder in a claustrophobic rural community in Newfoundland. When a body is found in the lake suspicion falls on the troubled Now family. As the mystery unfolds other, far deeper, secrets are revealed.

What did I think about the book...

This dark, and somewhat brooding story, is set in a small coastal community in Newfoundland and focuses on the petty indifference of a small town at odds with itself.  Sylvanus Now, his wife, Addie and son, Kyle, have had their share of family tragedy which has left an indelible mark, not just in the relationships between themselves, but also in the way the community reacts to their misfortune.

Told through considerate dialogue, a story emerges of a brutal sort of truth, which lays bare the thoughts and feelings of a family in complete disarray. When tragedy, once again, strikes at the heart of the Now family, they each deal with the fall out in their own inimitable style.

Considerately written, The Fortunate Brother is one of those stories which make you want to take your time over reading. It is the third book in a trilogy which started with Sylvanus Now and continued in What They Wanted, and whilst it possible to read and enjoy The Fortunate Brother as a standalone book, I do think that it is better to have read the series from the start in order to have a more rounded view of the Now family, of their past tragedies, and also of their place in this small town environment.

Whilst this is not a fast action, all guns blazing sort of story, there is no doubt that the book works well, both as a character driven drama, and also as an emotionally complex human story, which looks at the complicated layers between grief and loss, misfortune and tragedy, and which then brings the whole together in a story of hope over adversity.

Best Read with ...Line caught fish and a mug of sweet tea.

My thanks to Becca at Canongate for her help facilitating this interview

 and for sending my review copy of The Fortunate Brother.

Canongate20 April 2017

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