The Bookseller to the Stars Classics Revisited Vol.1: Jeanette Winterson
I first read this in the mid 90s. It was not long after first discovering “The Ages of Lulu”. I remembered briefly seeing and not being allowed to watch “Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit” on TV. The press raged about its lesbian content and how disgusting the depictions of these ilicit relationships were. The same newspapers that had two girls fornicating on Page Three.
“I didn’t quite know what fornicating was, but I had read about it in Deutronomy, and I knew it was a sin. But why was it so noisy? Most sins you did quietly so as not to get caught.”
Age was most certainly an issue here. The character begins in the book as early as seven. I would say she turns to women not long after but thats not right because this is all about her natural progression through sexuality. Our main character Jess loves her God and begins to question openly to her devout mother about her love for a number of females. Her mother accuses her of heresy and being in league with the devil and gets the church involved. Poor Jess doesn’t see what the fuss is all about liasons of which are many. Including one witha much older woman.
“Now if I was aping men she’d have every reason to be disgusted. As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularily interesting, but quite harmless.”
The message is one of acceptance throughout the book and is definately a key “coming out” text. Its written with heart and passion and more importantly, Love from all characters, whether it be for the love of the Lord or a same sex. It’s definately provocative, its certainly political and for its day, very important. I don’t know how it made its way to TV but for all the fuss it made, it was worth it and we owe it a lot of gratitude for doing so.
"Cold Skin" by Albert Sanchez Pinol
Pinol’s “Cold Skin” is a brutal and savage little tale set on a deserted island of the coast of Antarctica. A soldier is dropped off to man a weather station for a whole year with only the company of a lighthouse keeper, seemingly ravaged by madness and a trunk full of ammunition. Darkness falls on the first night and the island is beseiged with a hideous swarm of “toad-like” monsters from the sea, who attack the cottage of the soldier and the lighthouse. The near events of the first long night bring the soldier to the lighthouse and he is greeted warmly by the double barrels of the lighthouse keeper’s shotgun. The keeper refuses the soldier solace and the safety of the lighthouse and on begins a desperate struggle for survival.
When solace and safety is given, the soldier finds that the keeper has befriended a female monster who completely dotes on his every whim and sexual desire, before abusing the creature each night.
The punishment and violence served to the female beast by both characters over the course of the text is hardhitting and will certainly raise a few eyebrows with the content. But the book is evidentally at its best within the description of the loneliness and sheer lengths the constant barrage of attacks each night drive them both to. It’s like watching two people on Big Brother being slowly tortured and sodomized in a way you cannot turn away from. But this little piece of horror is written with the beauty and candour of a Shakespeare sonnet and will certainly turn a few heads next year. Highly recommended by The Bookseller to the Stars.
Translated from the Spanish by Cheryl Leah Morgan, “Cold Skin” has already been translated into fifteen languages and won the Ojo Critico Narrativa Prize in 2003. Set to be a possible secret hit next year, this book is utterly engrossing and completely disturbing from the opening chapters.
"City of Tiny Lights" by Patrick Neate
"The England I knew was a cheek by jowl kind of place where seemingly polar opposites were wedded by nation, frustration and location, location, location: stroppy pakis to small town racists, the morally fundamental to the morally bereft, office juniors to senior management, thug-lites to petrified pensioners, suburban swingers to pregnant pubescants, coke-addled hookers to coke-addled media whores, aspirant Africans to resigned rastas, loaded gym freaks to obese benefit junkies, entrepreneurs to economic migrants, organized crime to chaotic bureaucracy, politicians to terrorists, hopeless to hopeful."
There is nothing like discovering a new voice, is there? Not that Patrick Neate is in anyway a new voice. "City of Tiny Lights" is his fifth novel. Very much a Londoner's novel, it is a fitting tribute to the city and one to the kind of London that we live in today, often not presented in media forms quite like this. A nod then to everything that is great about our capital. It's ethnic diversity, but also especially, it's shortfalls of which it has many.
But what wonderful oration and delicate flow? It is written in an earthy and harsh context and subject matter. We follow private detective Tommy Akhtar as he is hired by a local call girl to find another girl who has disappeared owing her money. Tommy sees this as easy money but finds out that there is more to this story as it seems. By finding the second girl, our man uncovers the secrets behind the murder of a local MP and the extent and danger behind the people behind it. It twists and turns and sends a prophetic message that could only have been that as the vivid events that unfold in the book ring eeirly true in this modern day capital.
Patrick tackles the issue of segregation and institutionalised racism throughout the text with grace aswell as the tricky issue of writing, first person in a different race, something which he delivers with wit and candour, never once offending and is always handled with respect.
He homes in on his self destructive but warming relationships with his former soceity squeeze and painter of a father and his envious, cab driving, short tempered brother with dexterity and wonderful sarcasm as they all mourn in their own way over the loss of Mina, the family's mother figure.
The prose is quick and sardonic but never confusing and always inviting. All day, I looked forward to the next five minutes I could catch to dive into the book once again and I never left it not wanting to stay and read more. I am dying to tell you what happens and it's killing me, but I can't.
For me, Patrick is a new voice and a great one at that, making me want to instantly rush out and buy the backlist, serious.
Highly Recommended Reading. September 2005
"Husbands" by Adele Parks
I can honestly say that, without conviction, that Adele Parks is the only writer I am emphatically unable to put down in quite this obsessive way. Over the last few days, she and her new book "Husbands" have been singlehandedly responsible for my near death whilst crossing the Harrow Road not too mention the long periods of hunger and sleep deprivation.
Consumer warning: It's exhausting but it's just insatiable reading.
Fot the Adele fans, there is a lot of similarities to the last book, a group getaway... revelation of hidden secrets etc, but "Husbands" is by far superior to the last work. It is written with so much heartwarming clarity and readable prose. The shorter narratives of each the characters that form each chapter are excrutiatingly page turning. Adele has always created these loveable rougeish bitches. My favourite being the character, Cas in the book "Game Over".
In this book, Bella goes AWOL on her marriage to her childhood sweetheart, bailing on him whilst her performs at an Elvis impersonator contest. She moves to London and befriends two girls, one of those girls 10 years down the line meets and falls for an Elvis impersonator. Guess which one?
The resulting comedy of amusing errors and revelations unfolds into pain, anguish, desire and passion as Bella herself has gotten herself remarried. The issue of bigamy is not an easy one to tackle and to make it humourous aswell is really a detriment to how great a writer Adele is.
The way the book is written is different to her others. It is by far the best style she has approached. Each of the short chapters in the first person form tells a concurrent story from each viewpoint which I found truly engrossing. The wonder of the character description of this book is that we find so much about the characters from the others in the book. This is entertaining and fascinating.
The book is peppered with fantastic one liners: "I am not the sort of woman who stops traffic (unless I'm stood at a zebra crossing)" and "I like aussie girls, they can throw frisbees" were just two of my favourites.
Aswell as the bounding humour, the serious messages and heartfelt moments really touched me. I especially related to the views of contentment from the character, Stevie.
"I'm happy when I am content with what I have and not longing for something I don't have or I've lost or never had."
I thought I had found my fiction book of the year already, now theres competition. This is going to be a tough call. A huge recommendation and it is a delight to be in a position to spread the word to people about this book.
Illegal marriages, fantastic content and a whole lot of Vegas, baby. June 2005
"The Bitch Goddess Notebook" by Martha O' Connor
We all went to one of those schools, didn’t we? The popular kids, the cliques, the bullying, the tears, the torment. I know I did and so, I suspect did Martha O’Connor.
Chick-Lit. Now there’s a topic. I can almost feel the nervous twitching of the buttholes of the large publishing houses at just the mere frightful whisper of the term. The book world, fickle and tormented in it’s own self, ragged in its urine stained winter clothes and pushing an old shopping trolley laiden with old rubbish and a traffic cone, crawls out from under it’s rock after every Christmas, mumbling,
“Agenda, agenda. Summer promotional title to sell millions? Desperate for Richard and Judy’s acceptance... Must see sales... Must see sales...”
So many female authors seem to have distanced themselves and their precious baggage from the tag these days, in fear to be associated with the Bridget Jones adaptations that have put Chick-Lit firmly and squarely into the stratosphere that is popular culture, giving it the long awaited iconic staus and tip of the glass of chardonnay it yearned for on screen. By the second of the films of course, it looks like Chick-Lit feels right at home in Hollywood, cosy with it’s slippers on and a nice cup of tea. Everything seems rosy for now but to gain mass acceptance and to avoid the droning cynicism of the broadsheet reviewers back home, you must now submit like the slut you are to the slave names, ‘genre fiction’ and ‘general fiction.’ Lick my boots...
Then a book comes along that changes everything. It sets a whole new benchmark for “sassy” women writers and runs to a completely new ballplate, knocking over pathetic female characters in its way with its passion, attitude and clarity. The book that will do that and stick an icy finger up the ass of every unsuspecting and curious reader this year is “The Bitch Goddess Notebook”
Of all the publishers who have suited and booted for this year’s assault on the Summer, Orion have a secret weapon up their sleeves and have truly hit the nail on the head.
The Bitch Goddesses are not Chick-Lit.
The Bitch Goddesses are not Genre Fiction.
The Bitch Goddesses are not General Fiction, brothers and sisters, but yet in so many ways, they are all of the above.
A walking contradiction that will comfort you and make you respect the writer for what is an amazing debut.
The heart and almost anti-relationship between the characters echoes of the hard schooling of our upbringing and has a sense of the dyke pulp fiction of the 50’s and the Anne Bannon’s of this world. Truly great contemporary feminism writing that spins subtle arias and tales of bobby socked beauty school dropouts, the pantyless Beebo Brinkers. It’s storytelling that resonantes some Machavellian sense that this book will be a great modern classic in years to come, even if it means myself alone having to sell every copy to the hapless droning, promotion hunters that are so easily led,
“Here, have a taste of this sweet candy...”
“From which tree hast this befallen to my worn, rock scraped hands?”
Part intertwined friendship drama and part coming of age thriller, Martha’s rock n’ roll soundtrack followed me around for days as she namechecked and referenced the likes of The Sisters of Mercy, The Smiths and They Might Be Giants. Add a little touch of Degrassi Junior High and Mark’s in nostalgia heaven. He’s a happy man. Ah, the eighties....
If this was a movie it would rock albeit a fairly difficult one to watch in it’s current format. The three main characters are featured in both 1988 and 2003, each of them as their younger and older selves, so in essence this is 6 stories, but it’s gripping in it’s reading and surprisingly easy to follow. Never has a book had me so eager to sneak forward and find out what has happened to each person. But, you cant as all the stories are beautifully intense. I read it and had to read it again straight away.
It’s just so refreshing to see something come out with balls and spirit. From the very first page, I was like, “Fuck, this is good.”
I really hope that this has a first class campaign behind it with some energy that the book deserves because with all the marketable dross and biographies about nobodies that came out last summer, it really stagnated the industry. If I get to see “The Bitch Goddess Notebook” in the window of our vast bookstore next to the next Dan Brown and Michael Palin, I will have not have lost my faith in bookselling after all, thus dying a little happier. As for the book, I’m not telling you what happens, hell, you can find out for yourselves.
“If you want something simple, you’re in the wrong place. This is about revealing secrets, not tits and ass. Say it aloud: screw fairy tales and chick-lit and all forms of lying.”
Stuck up middle finger punk fiction. March 2005
'Vince and Joy' by Lisa Jewell
Vince and Joy is a story about fate, love and how the world isn't quite small enough in the end.
Vince and Joy will make you laugh. It's witty and satirical relationship quips will make you shout, 'That's so true!'
Sure, this is not the greatest piece of literary fiction, but the author doesnt try to be. This genre and adore readership do not require this from Lisa. But where other authors fail, 'Vince and Joy' is written with as much heart as Garcia Marquez.
The story sees the young couple meet on a caravan site and through their parents selfish actions, they lose contact with each other when Joys family abruptly depart in the middle of the night. Joy leaves a note outside the caravan but it rains and Vinces hopes are dashed.
After hapless and brief, agonising meetings throughout time and with the aid of a mischevious homing cat injected with cupids arrow and a horoscope obsessed patchouli stink flatmate, Vince sets out to find the love which he missed out on as this extraordinary tale unfolds. Lets hope love is not unrequited...
If you are in love, 'Vince and Joy' will urge you to put the book to one side and appreciate your partner for a second before it drags you back in with page turning loyalty.
It filled me with a new found hope even while participating in the twisted London dating scene.
If you are not in love, 'Vince and Joy' will inspire you to find love and would melt the coldest soul, enabling it to twitch with warmth, delving into this joyous work of hope and clarity.
19th January 2005
"Heathcliff's Tale" by Emma Tennant
Heathcliff's Tale is a delightful conspiracy and satirical edge of the "Wuthering Heights" legend. This is a rounded and well written piece through the eyes of one Henry Newby, dispatched to collect Emily Bronte's posthumous novel for publication in London from the safe countryside surroundings of Hawthorne Parsonage and is haunted by the ghost of the vile Heathcliff and the spirit of the novel begins to disturb and tease the mind of Henry.
He questions the true identity of the author which tortures and excites him throughout his stay and the depositions that he writes to his uncle. Emma has written a glorious and edgy take on the events that will astound thee, continuing her tradition of alternative reworking and bastardising of the oh so pure classic stories gathering dusk on our bookshelf, breathing a new heart and vigour into them each time.
The book will be available through Tartaus Press of my native North Yorkshire and will be presented in a strictly limited signed edition of 500 copies at 25 of your english pounds and a more tube passenger friendly paperback of £8.99 and is released on April 14th