Finished this morning over a cup of tea.

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Currently reading... Brandenberg - Henry Porter

I read this months ago (one of the benefits of working for a publisher), so forgive me if my memory is a bit inaccurate.

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Meet At The Gate - A site for the culturally curious

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I was away when the Canongate offer was on so I hadn't picked this up. But on Thursday I was in Waterstones in Edinburgh and this really caught my eye. The cover is light, bright and the blurb really tempted me.

Imagine my surprise - then - to find later that day that I have inherited a copy from the Canongate offer. This will be my new read and I'm really looking forward to it. Hope to offer feedback sometime over Easter.

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Book List 2009 Book List 2010

I've just finished this book and I'm struggling to find words that don't sound like a bad cover quote - stunning, monumentous, moving, shocking, powerful... You see my problem.

Without the Canongate offer, I probably wouldn't have read this book, certainly not in hardback. The subject matter is harsh, even brutal and the story has few (if any) lighter moments. The reason I rate it so highly, it seems so credible, so well set in it's place and time, so understanding of society and class.

The pace of the novel is also impressive,

The children are teenagers in the third part of the book, set in 1989, a time when I was out and about clubbing and embracing the same music as Vincent. I could relate to him, enjoying being cool and desirable after his years of being bullied.

And the end...

The two previous posts have spoilered their reviews, but I can tell you that both of them are also positive, so if you've been delaying reading your copy, bump it up the pile a bit, but be prepared for an emotional ride.

I've just finished this novel and I'm absolutely shell-shocked. I'll do a proper review tomorrow, but it has been a very intense (and very well spent) few days.

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Book List 2009 Book List 2010

Spoilers Throughout

Once Upon a Time in England - where to start? The initial ingredients are: the 1970s, the north of England, and a mixed marriage. You know something bad is going to happen.

Robbie is a carrot headed man of Irish heritage, living in Warrington. He sings with showbands and goes down a storm. Susheela is a Malay Indian from Kuala Lumpur who came to England to train as a nurse and find a husband. She found Robbie. Helen Walsh visits the family at three significant times - 1975, 1981 and 1989. In the first installment, Robbie and Susheela are in love; they have a young son Vincent and Susheela is expecting a second. But there are already tensions. The couple already seem to be divided on the question of exotic spice - whether in food (Susheela would like some, Robbie wouldn’t) or in life in general. Robbie finds himself ostracized for his mixed marriage and he seems to find escape in his singing. Meanwhile, Susheela is threatened, and before long is raped in her own home by a gang of skinheads as part of a racial assault. Susheela tries to play it down - she decides to tell neither the police nor Robbie what really happened, but in truth she has lost her confidence for ever. By way of escape, she aims to integrate herself into white suburbia, surrounding herself with symbols of bland safety. And from this unpromising start, the family’s lives start to unravel over the course of the next fourteen years.

The success of the novel is the enormity of what it takes on. It addresses a whole heap of social issues - race, mixed marriage, rape, homosexuality, queer bashing, drugs, social class, adultery, ambition, and the list goes on. Yet the skill is that it never feels as though it is ticking issues off on a list. Susheela is not a token Asian; Vincent is not a token gay; Ellen is not a token teenage rebel. Nobody is there to play a part, rather the story unravels around people who are, simply, themselves. That results in a work that is very engaging, very credible and very intense. The depth of the problems and issues makes for a very rich experience.

It’s also striking that Helen Walsh avoided the trap of creating one-dimensional victims. To a great extent, the characters do not help themselves. There is the feeling that, for example, Vincent is not bullied because he is black, but because he is weak. There is wrong choice after wrong choice. Moving to Thelwall; not reporting the rape; choosing the wrong school bag; buying the wrong car; going to the wrong school; ... It is a catalogue of distasters, some of which might even be funny if they were not so tragic. This is lightened by the occasional glimmer of hope - Ellie’s scholarship to the private school; Vincent’s writing prize; Robbie’s affair; Susheela’s friendship with (horrors) Robbie’s boss’s wife. But each hope proves to be a false dawn.

The end of the novel is very tragic. Vinnie is set upon by the skinheads - a clear parallel to Susheela’s rape. But it is unclear whether he was set upon for being black, being gay, or both. And again, in a parallel to Susheela’s situation, Vinnie chooses to keep the details to himself and to spurn love when it is offered. Like Susheela, he is ruined by the attack. But, perhaps unlike Susheela, he recognizes it. And as the sole witness to Susheela’s attack, perhaps he has been primed to deal with the aftermath. The result, as Vinnie meets his maker on a wave of heroin rush, is both squalid and noble.

The novel is not without fault. There are a couple of glaring anachronisms. And more worryingly, the first thirty or forty pages felt like wading through a thick fog of alliteration and flowery language that obscured all meaning. Perhaps this died back after the opening chapters or perhaps the rape had an immediacy that broke through the over-writing. But once the first tension has been built, and seen through to a horrific denouement, there is nothing more to distract - just pure, raw, deep emotion.

Once Upon a Time in England is a valuable testament to the times and places it describes. 1970s and 1980s England was a hard place to grow up. Young people had to make conscious decisions about whether to take a path of racism and bigotry, or whether to take a more liberal view. Many felt enormous social pressure to swing to the right. This is an unsentimental depiction of the effect that such decisions, such pressure had on fellow man.

Once Upon a Time in England is an excellent antidote to 70s and 80s nostalgia. They were not glory days, they were hard times.

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Book List 2009 Book List 2010

Hmmmm...did no one else read their free copies? I'm not sure if it's fair to blag a copy, read it and then not comment. Not really playing the game, what?

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Why not sign up as a 'friend' of BGO on Facebook? - go here.

I wonder if some of the people who read the book are concerned about posting negatively about it if they didn't like it?

I can understand that since you received the book free so it may feel churlish to write a critical review. However, I shouldn't think there is a book anywhere that hasn't had a bad word said about it - at the moment some negative views are being aired about Antony and Cleopatra elsewhere in the site and you can't get a writer of much greater reputation than Shakespeare!

I think Canongate would understand that healthy debate about a book - including negative comments - is actually much healthier than a series of Amazon-style friends' comments that all say the book is brilliant. (No suggestion, of course, that this is what has happened here - just an illustrative example! ).

There were aspects of The Poison that Fascinates that I didn't like and I certainly thought carefully about how I wanted to say that, but I still think it's important that honest views are shared.

So, if that's why some of you are holding back, please don't worry about it.

Alternatively, it may simply be that people haven't got around to it yet, so don't forget to post your thoughts when you've finished!

I was a little concerned about posting negatively, especially since I only read the first thirty pages before finding the particular language style of the author was very much not to my taste.

So I passed my copy on to MrHobgoblin, who's reviewed it above. That's one of the free copies answered for, and he enjoyed it far more than me

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2009 reading list

Can't say fairer than that!

I'm afraid I've not got round to reading it yet.

Will be starting this later on this evening.

I am 3/4 way through and am completely hooked on it. I really didn't think I was going to like it but has turned out to be one of the best books I've read this year. Will post my thoughts when I have finished it.

Blimey - glowing reviews all round, I am beginning to think I should have put my hand up for this! I'll wait for the paperback though!

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Current Read(s): Peace like a River, Leif Enger
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Finished this last night and it was an amazing book. I wasn't really sure whether I was going to enjoy this one but by the end of the second page I was mesmerised. The characters and setting were so well described that I found I didn't have to imagine them at all, they were there in my head instantly. Even though there were no edge of your seat moments it held me spellbound to the end, for once I held back finishing it as I honestly didn't want it to end. The story and characters were so real, you could almost being living next door to them. Thankyou Canongate for this book, if I had seen it in the bookshop and read the blurb on the back I never would have bought it. I will definately be recommending this to friends and other book groups I belong to.