LIZA OF LAMBETH - Book review

Somerset Maugham’s first novel Liza of Lambeth was published in 1897; my edition is 1978.

Almost all of the dialogue is in the vernacular of the period, a bold decision for a first book. Maugham uses the omniscient point of view, which was probably appropriate at the time of publication due to the story’s controversial nature. ‘That is not precisely what she said, but it is impossible always to give the exact unexpurgated words of Liza and the other personages of the story; the reader is therefore entreated with his thoughts to piece out the necessary imperfections of the dialogue’ (p10). ‘Oh, you - ! she said. Her expression was quite unprintable, nor can it be euphemized’ (p12).

Liza Kemp is a nineteen-year-old factory girl who lives with her ailing often drunk mother in fictional Vere Street in Lambeth. Her best friend is Sally, who is being courted and is eventually wed: Sally had ‘an enormous mouth, with terrible square teeth set wide apart, which looked as if they could masticate an iron bar’ (p22). The Blakeston family has just arrived in the street – Jim, his wife and five children.

 Liza is popular with everyone, especially Tom who wants to court her. She likes him, but not that much: ‘Na then, she repeated, tike yer ’and away. If yer touch me there you’ll ’ave ter marry me’ (p33). She’s quite outspoken yet ingenuous at the outset. ‘Neither modesty nor bashfulness was to be reckoned among Liza’s faults’ (p40).

On a hot day, during a jolly street outing that entailed the quaffing of much beer, they all have a good time. ‘The ladies removed their cloaks and capes, and the men, following their example, took off their coasts and sat in their shirt-sleeves. Whereupon ensued much banter of a not particularly edifying kind respecting the garments which each person would like to remove – which showed that the innuendo of French farce is not so unknown to the upright, honest Englishman as might be supposed’ (p34). It is during this outing that Jim makes a pass at Liza, which has a stirring effect upon her. ‘Her heart seemed to grow larger in her breast, and she caught her breath as she threw back her head as if to receive his lips again. A shudder ran through her from the vividness of the thought’ (p49).

There is quiet humour, ribaldry, and black humour – notably when there’s a discussion about a corpse seemingly too large for his coffin. The grimness of the life in the slums is conveyed without layering it on with a trowel. Apparently, when first published this book received a mixed reception due to its subject matter, working-class adultery and its consequences and its tragic end, and yet it sold out within three weeks and was reprinted. Maugham was a medical student by day and wrote at night, qualifying shortly after the publication of Liza. While a student he encountered the poorest working-class, ‘life in the raw’ as he put it.

Maugham’s Liza is a vividly revealed character – as is her mother (‘me with my rheumatics, an’ the neuralgy!’ (p73)). It’s a moral tale, delivered with empathy, told by a twenty-three-year-old observant writer who quit medicine and relied on his writing for the rest of his life.

Editorial comment (for the benefit of writers):

 ‘he lifted her off her feet and threw her to the ground’ (p106). Unfortunately, this happens indoors, so ‘ground’ should properly read ‘floor’.

London's Old Bailey trial on organ harvesting

This week's trial at London's Old Bailey regarding the planned illegal harvesting of a man's kidney highlights aspects of this dark trade. Inspired by similar cases over the last few years, here is: 

ORGAN SYMPHONY

Published by Rough Edges Press, Las Vegas, USA

 

Leon Cazador, half-English, half-Spanish private eye, is on FBI liaison duty in Charleston, South Carolina when a dead child is found with a kidney missing. Suspecting an old foe, he jumps into action when a convoy of trucks with kidnapped children hits a snag, and a boy escapes. But what starts out as a simple cat-and-mouse chase turns into a convoluted web of deceit involving an underground organ transplant ring that surpasses Leon’s darkest expectations.

Years later—and carrying around the weight of unresolved burdens—Leon runs into suspicious activity in Córdoba, Spain that makes his heart stop cold. Organ traffickers are running rampant, and a three-man investigating team has gone missing. Eager to put an end to this corrupt organization’s misdeeds once and for all, Leon makes finding its leader his top priority. But will he be able to take down an evil like no other?

Nik Morton lives in Blyth, Northumberland. His two earlier Leon Cazador thrillers are Rogue Prey and No Prisoners. He can be contacted at mortonnik@gmail.com His latest release from Rough Edges Press is Catalyst – Cat’s Crusade #1. 

Amazon UK: https://tinyurl.com/szhr9s82 

Amazon US: https://tinyurl.com/y2hdryym

V2 - Book review

 V2

 Robert Harris

 

Bestselling author Robert Harris meticulously relates in this novel events that take place over five days at the end of November 1944, involving both British and German protagonists in the Second World War.

On the German side is rocket engineer Rudi Graf, friend and associate of Wernher von Braun, working on the new V2 rockets that can break the sound barrier and are unstoppable, unlike the earlier V1s. Like von Braun, Graf dreamed of building spaceships that could reach the moon, but the only way to finance that dream was to engage with the army. Hitler was won over by von Braun and development was well under way by November 1944. They were firing several per day at London with devastating effect.

On the British side is Kay Caton-Walsh, an officer in the WAAF, who experiences first-hand the explosive effects of a V2 when in London conducting an affair with a married senior officer. Shortly after her close shave with death, she is recruited to join a select group on a mission in Mechelen, in newly liberated Belgium. Their task is to track the parabolic course of launched V2s, aided by radar reports and information of the coordinates of the actual hit, working backwards armed with slide rules and mathematical calculations to identify the launch sites for RAF bomb attacks.

As you’d expect from an accomplished writer, you’re speedily involved in the lives of these two characters and the realistic detail and characterisation of everyone puts you there.  There is added tension as you follow the track of a deadly V2 on more than one occasion.  Also, the forced labour by prisoners is duly acknowledged; some 20,000 slave labourers died in the manufacture of V2 rockets. Yet at no point did I feel that the story was spoiled by being swamped with technical detail.

Highly recommended.

'A compelling read!'

The Bread of Tears

'I found it refreshingly different and a compelling read!'
Joy Lennick, author of My Gentle War (Memoir of an Essex Girl), Hurricane Halsey, Running Your Own Small Hotel and Jobs in Baking and Confectionery. 

Thank you, Joy.

The Bread of Tears available as a paperback and e-book here

When she was a cop, she made their life hell.

Now she’s a nun, God help them!

Before taking her vows, Sister Rose was Maggie Weaver, a Newcastle policewoman. While uncovering a serial killer, she suffered severe trauma, and after being nursed back to health she becomes a nun. In her new calling she is sent to London to run a hostel for the homeless. Here, she does good works, and also combats prejudice and crime.

            As she attempts to save a homeless woman from a local gang boss, events crystallise, taking her back to Newcastle, the scene of her nightmares, to play out the final confrontation against drug traffickers, murderers and old enemies in the police.

            She finds her spiritual self and a new identity. She is healed through faith and forgiveness. It’s also about her surviving trauma and grief – a triumph of the human spirit, of good over evil.

'One tough nun!'

A 5-star review on Amazon from a US reader of The Bread of Tears, part of which reads:

'There are several stories going on: the new murders in the hostel are connected to her past, the dead girl in the alley belongs to another murderer, and then there is the criminal empire involved in drugs and prostitution of young girls, and they will kill her if she intervenes. And add to these problems, she may be having certain feelings for one of the investigators.

'Wow, I found Maggie Weaver, aka Sister Rose, one tough Nun. The author weaves the three stories together into a neat pattern, dropping Sister Rose into traps that she must escape or suffer a horrible death, yet she holds to her Faith as she struggles against great odds. In the end she isn’t afraid to send evil to Hell a little early. ... Highly recommended.'

Thank you, Virginia!

The Bread of Tears is available as an e-book and a paperback here

A Sister Rose crime thriller When she was a cop, she made their life hell. Now she’s a nun, God help them! 

Before taking her vows, Sister Rose was Maggie Weaver, a Newcastle policewoman. While uncovering a serial killer, she suffered severe trauma, and after being nursed back to health she becomes a nun. In her new calling she is sent to London to run a hostel for the homeless. Here, she does good works, and also combats prejudice and crime. 

As she attempts to save a homeless woman from a local gang boss, events crystallise, taking her back to Newcastle, the scene of her nightmares, to play out the final confrontation against drug traffickers, murderers and old enemies in the police. 

She finds her spiritual self and a new identity. She is healed through faith and forgiveness. It’s also about her surviving trauma and grief – a triumph of the human spirit, of good over evil. 

'All the characters and horrific events in this crime thriller are extremely visual and well-drawn, making this a riveting read. It would make a brilliant TV series!' – Jan Warburton, author of The Secret, A Face to Die For

Hampshire authors

Before we moved to Spain, we lived for several decades in Hampshire, England. The county is not unique in boasting of several famous authors. For example, Hertfordshire has connections with the following: Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Ken Follett, Frederick Forsyth, Victoria Glendinning, Graham Greene, John Le Carré, George Orwell and Anthony Trollope.

                                                            Jane Austen portrait 1873 - Wiki commons

 

Jane Austen was born in the village of Steventon, near Alton, in 1775. She lived much of her life in Chawton and died in 1817, being buried in Winchester Cathedral. Hampshire locales, as well as Bath, figure prominently in her novels. She was educated at home and acquired a good knowledge of English literature. Two of her brothers rose high in the Navy and she learned much about the society in which they moved. She has been described as overly respectable, calculating and puritan. Yet in her works she displays a great sense of fun, a telling appreciation of the comic in character, a precise observation of behaviour, and an ability to dissect real snobbery. She created some great comic characters, notably Mr Collins and Mr Bates.

                                                                                                              Dickens - Wikipedia commons

Charles Dickens was born, in 1812, in 393 Old Commercial Road, Portsmouth that is now a museum dedicated to him. He lived here until 1817. He lived in several other homes, uprooting family and chattels, mainly in London until his final move in 1856 to God’s Hill Place, Higham, near Rochester in Kent, where he died in 1870. He cared for justice and his pen-portraits of cruel and stupid despots, and his satire of bureaucracy, had an effect on society. Much loved, he could move the hearts and minds of those who had previously been indifferent to cruelty and stupidity. He too created memorable characters and he has lent his name to the English language – Dickensian.

 

Olivia Manning, 1930s - Wikipedia commons                                                              

Novelist and journalist Olivia Manning was born in Portsmouth (I’ve seen three dates of birth for her, 1908, 1911 and 1914 in different sources!) and she died a ferry ride away in Ryde, Isle of Wight, in 1980. She is best known for her Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy, collectively known as Fortunes of War, which were televised with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. These books were based on her experiences in WWII (I read and enjoyed these six books in the 1980s). A photographic portraitt of her is in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

FFB - Maisie Dobbs

Maisie Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear, was published in 2003. It is the first of a series of detective mysteries set in England between the two world wars and certainly promised to garner a strong following of crime readers and indeed anyone who likes period novels. It won the prestigious Agatha Award and the Macavity Award, both for Best First Novel. Seems fitting to mention it in this 100^th anniversary year of the beginning of WWI.

The story begins in the spring of 1929 and we’re immediately introduced to Maisie who is setting up her own private investigation agency in London. But she is not quite what she seems. Gradually, we get to know her until we’re drawn into a flashback – 1910 to 1917 - that amounts to over half the book, in which her humble beginnings are revealed and her strong and endearing character is developed.

Previously, Maisie had worked on investigation cases with her mentor, Maurice, but he’d now retired and she wanted to continue alone.  Apart from using observation, Maisie has developed an interesting psychological methodology, one aspect of which is to mimic the stance of an individual to glean how they’re feeling, and this comes across convincingly. She was also instructed by the mysterious Mr Khan on ways to remain calm and to organise her mental faculties. She engages the help of Billy Beale, an ex-soldier, as her assistant and office manager.

When her first case walked through her door, it seemed a straight-forward if rather boring infidelity issue. The man feared his wife was having an affair. While she agrees to take on the case, Maisie asks the aggrieved husband what value he places on understanding, compassion and forgiveness. This is indeed an unusual private investigator. She will ferret out the truth, but she also feels a responsibility regarding how the truth is dealt with by her clients too. The suspected wife leads Maisie down pathways that she’d mentally closed for many years so that besides uncovering something sinister, she also peels back the shroud covering a part of her dead past.

Told with compassion and never maudlin, the story is primarily about the walking wounded from the war. The writing style is excellent. Well-researched yet never noticeably so, the book captures the time and the people precisely.

Some characters and stories ‘write themselves’. That doesn’t mean they aren’t hard work to write. It’s just that the character seems to live and breathe for the author and won’t let go. When it happens, it’s a marvellous feeling. Jacqueline Winspear was an expat English journalist working in California when she was driving to work and stopped at some traffic lights. And while waiting, she saw in her mind’s eye a woman coming up through Warren Street Station turnstile and indeed essentially the entire first chapter of what was to be her first novel. And the more she wrote, the more the characters revealed themselves to her. Before long it was obvious that scenes and events not pertinent to the first book were appearing before her mind’s eye, so she realised she had a series in her head wanting to get out.

Her first book is dedicated to her grandfather Jack, who was severely wounded and suffered shell-shock in the Somme, and her grandmother Clara, who was partially blinded at Woolwich Arsenal during an explosion that killed several girls working alongside her. Inevitably, she developed an interest in the ‘war to end all wars’ even as a child. While the mysteries are not war novels as such, they reflect the after-effects of that devastating period when so many young men never came home.

 
Coming of age at a time when the First World War and its aftermath began altering society, many women like Maisie remained unmarried because quite simply there was a shortage of men to wed. Besides being a well-researched book of the period, it has an emotional depth and a cast of interesting individual characters.
 
I’m reluctant to say more about the plot in Maisie Dobbs, save that there are a couple of quite moving revelations at the end. Without doubt, this is a book with heart.

There are ten books in the Maisie Dobbs series:

Maisie Dobbs (2003)
Birds of a Feather (2004)
Pardonable Lies (2005)
Messenger of Truth (2006)

An Incomplete Revenge (2008)
Among the Mad (2009)

The Mapping of Love and Death (2010)

A Lesson in Secrets (2011)

Elegy for Eddie (2012)

Leaving Everything Most Loved (2013)

 

 

 

Blog guest - Michela O'Brien - a strong sense of place

Today, my guest is Michela O’Brien. She is the author of Playing on Cotton Clouds (2012) and A Summer of Love (2013), both published by Crooked Cat Publishing.

Michela was born in Milan, Italy, in... well, let's say some time in the last third of the 20th century. In Milan she grew up, studied, worked as a teacher, made friends and wrote, commending thoughts to page, imagining plots and characters, recording events in her life, noting observations about the world: stories, diaries, letters... In an era before personal computers, Internet, blogs and social networks, it was pen and paper and she still carries a notebook and a pencil with her to sketch ideas on the spot. She moved to England in 1994 and lives at the edge of the beautiful National Park of the New Forest with her husband and two sons.

Her greatest inspirations are ordinary people and real life stories, and her novels and short stories centre on themes of friendship, love, coming of age and self-discovery, human emotions and experiences everyone can relate to. Michela is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

Playing on Cotton Clouds

When arty Livy falls for her sister's boyfriend, she knows her dreams are unlikely to come true... Sensitive Seth thinks he has hit the jackpot when the girl of his dreams finally looks his way... While laidback Aidan is every girl's hero.

Fast forward twenty-five years as carefree youth turns into adulthood responsibilities, relationships begin and end, music and fashion change, and life moves on with its successes, failures and heartaches. As the friends grow up, they discover life rarely turns out the way you imagined it at fifteen. The rites of passage through years are eerily familiar to every 1980s teenager in this moving, heartfelt novel.

 

A Summer of Love

Successful artist Jonah Briggs is a man who has made mistakes. Aged just eighteen, he was sent to prison for two years, leaving his family shattered and his first love, Sally, to wait for his return. But at eighteen, two years seem like a lifetime, and some promises are hard to keep. 

When Jonah reappears in her life, Sally finds herself torn between him and Ewan, the young Cornish farmer she has married, divided between loyalty and passion, duty and love. 

Over the course of almost two decades, through meetings and partings, secrets and revelations, and two momentous summers, Jonah will have to confront his past and heal old wounds, while Sally will face the consequences of her choices – whether to follow her conscience or her heart.

My review of Playing on Cotton Clouds

In this superb book about friendship and relationship, we travel with the main characters from 1983 through to 2008, with a poignant flashback to 1980. What's interesting is that the author was born and lived in Italy until 1994, when she moved to England; yet she captures the period prior to her arrival very well indeed.

There are three teenage friends, Aidan, Livy (Olivia) and Seth who meet up at the bridge that crossed the town's river. Even when they move away into the big wide world, the bridge has significance, sometimes in their memories, sometimes when they visit the town again. It links them, it seems. Added to the mix is Livy's sister, Tara. First fumbling with sex and alcohol are depicted, inevitably, with humour and a core of truth. Indeed, truth shines through this book - we believe these people lived, we live with them for the duration of the novel, getting anxious in moments of crisis, becoming pleased in moments of happiness. Life isn't tidy, there are false paths to take, wrong turns to make, and they drift apart, yet return after years, an invisible thread connecting them. `Can you fall in love at thirteen, one rainy afternoon, in an old faded café, and find yourself at twenty-nine, sitting in the fragrant summer sun, feeling as you did then?' The answer, of course, is `yes'. That's the human condition.

Aidan isn't too bright, but he's attractive to women, which is his downfall, yet as one conquest says, `People can't stop loving you, even when they think they have.'

Seth is a little self-centred, wrapped up in his writing, early on suffering from depression (`... in the small hours of the morning, when he felt himself slowly falling and darkness seemed to chase him with cold, invisible fingers'), but with the help of his friends he defeats the Black Dog, though he's always going to be a `half-empty pint' kind of man: `I wasn't interested in collecting stamps, so I went for rejection letters. Fascinating. Some can be perversely creative.' (I have to agree with his praise for Philip K. Dick).

Livy is in love with Seth, but (fool that he is) he's infatuated with her sister, Tara. `Carefully tucked away feelings were scattered around Livy's mind, leaving her with the painful task of picking them up and hiding them again... contemplating old memories as they lay on the floor of her recollection.'

The narrative is from the perspective of these three, and at every stage there's a depth of character and an emotional resonance that rings true. Emotion in a relationship novel has to be felt by the reader, not simply observed - show, not tell, and Michela O'Brien does that brilliantly: she could have written `Livy felt hurt by him' or something similar; instead, she gives us `Her heart had taken a dive into her stomach and she briefly held her breath to fish it out and put it back in its place.' There are several clever allusions, to springs in beds and Jack-in-the-box and feelings like thorns, imbedded in the body, making themselves felt after time, which `he could not tear out without maiming himself.'

There is a birth and a death, both handled with exquisite restraint and all the more powerful and moving for that. This debut novel is excellent, the writing controlled and a delight.

Q&A

Michela, your debut novel has picked up an enviable number of high-scoring reviews on Amazon. How does that feel?

It feels great! I’m still taken aback by the praises the book received. I’m especially moved when people say they loved the characters and that they felt like “real people” and “friends”.

What was the initial inspiration for the book?

The initial idea was to write about a male friendship. I started out with Seth and Aidan and their relationship. It was interesting to explore, as I was doing it from a female perspective, obviously. I then added another element with a male-female friendship between Seth and Livy, another theme that interests me.

Do you find that your characters – say, Livy, Aidan and Seth - have become real people, that you remember them as such? Or are they brief acquaintances who’ve drifted apart since you’ve moved on to meet new characters?

They are definitely very real to me. I feel like they are friends I have come to know well. Both my books span several years and I got to see the characters grow and change from youth into adulthood. I sometimes think it would be nice to revisit them and find out what they’ve been up to. I might very well do so, in the future.

Most debut novels take a long time to gestate. How long did you work on Playing on Cotton Clouds?

If we are talking about the actual writing, it didn’t take very long. About six months. If we are talking about “gestation” and how the story came together… well, I subliminally wrote this novel since I was 19 – and that’s a long time ago! I love choral stories, with different threads and subplots, and wanted to write about a group of friends, how they start together as a unit, and how then life splits their paths. Sometimes they run parallel, sometimes they meet and part and meet again. I actually started this novel many times and never finished it. Finally, I managed to get to the end.

In many ways, second novels are easier, because you’ve learned a lot from the first. (Some feel cursed by the expectations implicit in a second novel after a successful first one). At what stage did you begin A Summer of Love?

Funnily enough, I wrote A Summer of Love first. I sent it out to a few agents and publishers with no joy, so I shelved it and moved to another project, what became Playing on Cotton Clouds. After the latter had been published, I got back to the first novel and edited it, cutting a big bulk of the first draft and rewriting entire sections, until it was in the current form, which led to it being published too.

Excellent approach, to rewrite and rewrite, rather than just send out the MS! Now that you’ve got your second book published, are you writing another novel at present – and if so, can you tell us a little about it?

Yes, the third novel is almost finished and ready for editing. It has the working title of “Finding Paige” and it’s another story focusing on relationships, with an exploration of “timing”, meeting the right person at the wrong time and making what could be the wrong choice.

When you’ve finished your books, do you feel you’d like to see where the characters go next, or do you leave them alone to get on with their lives without your input?

Normally when I reach the end, I’m satisfied with the journey my characters have taken and happy to leave them where they have arrived. So, yes, I tend to let them “get on” on their own. Plus, I’m always thinking about a new project, a new idea. But you never know, one day I might like to revisit some of my characters and take them on a new journey.

How long have you been writing? 

Forever! I started writing stories as soon as I was able to, at about six. More seriously, though, with a look at being published, about 12 years.

What influenced you to start writing?

As I said, it was something I started doing very early on. I just love stories. Hearing stories, reading stories, watching stories… so I started to create my own.

You obviously know Italy well. Do you bring in other foreign places into your fiction?

Yes, I have done. In Playing On Cotton Clouds the actions move between the UK, Italy, Amsterdam and New York. A Summer of Love is based in the UK, switching between London and Cornwall, a county I know well and love. My new novel moves between London, Devon, the South of France and Northern Italy. Some settings like Cornwall, London and Italy, are very familiar to me, others I make up – for example the Midlands town the characters in Playing on Cotton Clouds come from, or the Cornish village to which Jonah belongs in A Summer of Love, are fictitious amalgams of similar towns and villages – and others I get to explore through research using the internet and even Street View! I did that when describing places in New York, a city I never visited.

New York is like you describe in Clouds, like being in a film, it's so familiar! I believe that a sense of place is important in fiction; how do you achieve that?

I share in your belief and as a reader I love books that have a strong sense of place. I treat the settings almost as another character, describing not just its appearance, but the feel it conveys and the influence it has on the characters. Roots and belonging versus a sense of adventure is a recurrent theme in my stories.

How do your family/friends feel about your writing?

They are very proud of what I have achieved, though writing takes a big chunk of my time and that is not always easy on family life.

Do you intend to stick with the personal relationship genre or switch to other genres?

Writing about relationships and emotions is what I like best and I will probably continue in this genre. But I have a few ideas for more “topical” stories and I’d love to dab into historical fiction as well.

A tall order, I know, but what is your favourite book? And why?

That is a hard question to answer! The first novel that made a huge impression on me was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, which I read when I was about 13. It encapsulates everything my writing is about: relationships, families, everyday life against big political and social changes, ordinary people dealing with small and big issues. Jo March was more than a heroine, she became a role model. An independent woman, aspiring to be a writer, who also happened to become a teacher – which I am too. I don’t know if it’s my “favourite” book, but it certainly occupies a special place in my affections.

Other books that made a big impact on me were Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith and Rosso di Sera by Brunella Gasperini, an Italian writer, journalist and feminist that shaped a great deal of the way I write and view the world.

Where do you hope to be in 5 years?

Mainly alive and in good health! I’d like to take my writing career forward and hopefully have my books in more homes!

You’re generous with giving space and time to other authors on your blog. Can you tell us how this came about?

To be honest, they do me a favour writing for my blog as I’m always stuck for ideas! And I’ve had some truly interesting and fascinating entries. How it came about? I just asked “would you like to write a piece for my blog?”

Where can readers find you?

I’m on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Michela-Sacchi-OBrien/16450121895

Twitter https://twitter.com/michela_obrien

Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5822651.Michela_O_Brien

and, as you mentioned, on my blog  http://words-in-a-jar.blogspot.co.uk

My books can be found on Amazon

Playing on Cotton Clouds http://www.amazon.co.uk/Playing-on-Cotton-Clouds-ebook/dp/B007WFK3B2

A Summer of Love http://www.amazon.co.uk/A-Summer-of-Love-ebook/dp/B00B3MKEQ4