Semper Fi Brothers by A.C. Turner + Giveaway

Join us for this tour from July 18 to August 5, 2022!

Book Details:

​Book Title:  Semper Fi Brothers: A Hero's Dangerous Journey for Redemption by A.C. Turner
Category:  Adult Fiction (18+),  150 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction / Military Action Fiction
Publisher:  Write My Wrongs LLC
Release date:  March 16, 2022
Content Rating:  PG-13 (some f-words, violence, non-explicit sex scenes)  

 

Book Description:

Yarmuck, Syria is under attack. ISIS goons under the command of ruthless Commander Abu, have infiltrated the village and are determined to purge it of its Yazidi heritage... by any means necessary.

Meanwhile, half a world away in California, tormented Shamus "Gunny" O'Malley-retired Marine and Vietnam Vet who's done nothing but drink his way through civilian life as a TV personality and bar owner-learns his young Yazidi bartender, Quassam, fears for the lives of the family left behind in Yarmuck.

When Quassam, "Q" to his friends, announces his plan to save his mother and sister from the ISIS goons, Gunny's hapless best friend (and best customer), Buzz, decides he's going to aid young Q on his journey, and does everything he can to convince Gunny to come along for the ride.

​With time running out and ISIS tightening its grip, Gunny has a decision to make. As the son of a white father and black mother, O'Malley knows from his time in the Marines that race can never break the bonds between semper fi brothers. Will he stay brash and boozy in sunny California, or will he take a leap of faith and journey to hellish, war-torn Syria to help his brothers and slay his-and Yarmuck's-demons?

 BUY THE BOOK:

Amazon ~ Amazon UK

The Book Depository

add to goodreads

Semper Fi Brothers is an action-packed war novel which begins with a young man going off to fight in the Vietnam War. The story began life as a screenplay which was later adapted into prose. This genesis shows in its snappy scene changes and dialogue-led narrative and I think this writing style could make Semper Fi Brothers a good book choice for readers who don't like getting bogged down in descriptive detail. There are emotional moments earlier on in some historical scenes, but the main thrust of O'Malley's experiences are violent wartime encounters with lots of guns blazing and gung-ho machismo.

I wasn't convinced by the plausibility of aging, drunk O'Malley being as physically capable a soldier in Syria as he had been in Vietnam so this idea did require some suspension of disbelief, but of course the Yazidi village men were grateful for the American intervention and the story progresses as a war movie should! Although I realised quite early on that I wasn't the ideal audience for Semper Fi Brothers, I did enjoy reading this story overall. I'd recommend it for fans of energetic action-adventure novels, and New Adult readers.

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

First published in German as Der Steppenwolf by S Fischer Verlag A G in Germany in 1927. English language translation by Basil Creighton published by Martin Secker in 1929.

How I got this book:

Swapped for at a book exchange

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon UK / Amazon.com / Libro.fm

The Book Depository / Waterstones / Oxfam

Harry Haller is a melancholy and lonely character, a solitary thinker who has no joy in life. He tries to reconcile his inner wild, primal wolf and intellectual man without succumbing to the bourgeois values he despises. His life is turned upside down when he meets Hermine, a careless and mysterious lady who is the polar opposite of him.

Steppenwolf, Hesse' best-known and most autobiographical work, first published in English in 1929, continues to speak to our souls as a masterpiece of modern literature, with its blend of Eastern mysticism and Western civilization.

Before starting to read Steppenwolf I did wonder if I had left this novel too late in my life to fully appreciate it - as I felt I had with Demian. So many other Steppenwolf reviews seem to be by readers who identified with Harry in their late teens or early twenties, a time when we strive to discover our true personalities and often feel alienated from society at large. I soon discovered, however, that I am actually within a very few months of Harry's age as Steppenwolf begins and, through reading Hesse's own brief introduction, that he was exploring ideas of change experienced in middle age - Steppenwolf is a midlife crisis novel!

I soon realised too that I could all too well empathise with Harry's misanthropy and his desire to avoid the outside world by submerging himself in books. I loved the descriptions of his rented room with its chaotic piles of books everywhere, and especially how this is contrasted with his idea of a peaceful temple being a neighbour's clean landing simply adorned with two neat potted plants. In Steppenwolf, Hesse frequently uses such diametrically opposed contrasts to make his points. I imagine the yin and yang concept to have been his inspiration. One particular sentence that leapt out to me was, "Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours." There is a lot of such philosophising throughout Steppenwolf and I frequently found myself pausing simply to appreciate a beautifully structured sentence which concisely expressed ideas I had struggled to clearly express myself.

It felt strange that a ninety-five year old novel could still be so completely relevant both on a personal level for myself and also on a national one. Discussions of emergent 'nationalist jingoism' eerily reflected conversations I have had in Brexit Britain. 2020s England appears uncomfortably similar to Hesse's 1920s Germany. Another sentence I loved, in relation to a newspaper article Harry had written, illustrates this, "no good could come to the country so long as such persons and such ideas were tolerated and the minds of the young turned to sentimental ideas of humanity instead of to revenge by arms on the hereditary foe". 

I'm going to keep my copy of Steppenwolf and plan to read it again, and probably again after that too. While the basic narrative of a man getting himself out of a midlife rut by going out with a young, vivacious woman isn't particularly unique, Hesse' treatment of the subject felt particularly profound. I enjoyed spending time with Hermine and appreciated her ability to voice her own ideas and opinions. In many ways she is the equal (and opposite) of Harry and Hesse recognises this. I feel that Steppenwolf is a book that will reveal more and different facets and ideas with each reading and it is just too deeply philosophical a novel to fully engage with on the first time around.

Bookishly Inspired Find!
	Hermann Hesse doll by My Best Banner Click pic to visit Etsy Shop

Search Literary Flits for more:
Books by Hermann Hesse / Contemporary fiction / Books from Germany

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

First published by Harper in America in 2012.

How I got this book:

Borrowed from a friend

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazon UK / Amazon.com / Libro.fm

The Book Depository / Waterstones

Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins is a gorgeous, glamorous novel set in 1960s Italy and a modern Hollywood studio.

The story begins in 1962. Somewhere on a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and views an apparition: a beautiful woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an American starlet, he soon learns, and she is dying.

And the story begins again today, half a world away in Hollywood, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot searching for the woman he last saw at his hotel fifty years before.

Gloriously inventive, funny, tender and constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a novel full of fabulous and yet very flawed people, all of them striving towards another sort of life, a future that is both delightful and yet, tantalizingly, seems just out of reach.

Beautiful Ruins is a sprawling saga of a novel which takes places across two timelines, mostly in present-day Hollywood and 1960s southern Italy. While billed as a 'very, very funny' 'monument to love', I found it to be a rather over-played and self-indulgent story - albeit with fabulous cover art by Kelly Anna. It is amusing in parts and kept me entertained throughout a day so hot that I little enthusiasm to do anything but read, but I was dismayed at the gap between the high praise this book has received - along with numerous reprints - and the reality of actually reading it. Perhaps I need to be more of a Hollywood fan to appreciate it as satire?

I did like the idea of exploring so many 'what if' scenarios and missed opportunities. Characters talk about time passing them by while they wait for the 'movie of their lives to begin' and that is a particular theme of the book. Unfortunately most of the characters aren't particularly likeable. The Italian people are idealised so much as to practically be caricatures and there's a strange, long section following the antics of a drunken Richard Burton. In fact, Beautiful Ruins is padded out a number of times with strange additions that did nothing to further the central story - one chapter from a character's unwritten novel, another from a second character's autobiography, a play script recapping what we had already learned in detail about a third character. I wasn't sure why we needed these diversions as they slowed down the novel considerably.

All in all, I'm not really sure what to make of Beautiful Ruins. Some scenes are inspired, others just read as filler, and Walter's attempts to get as many tear-jerking happy-ever-afters into the ending quickly became nauseating! I think I'll chalk this novel up to 'worth a try, but not my style' and pass on any more of his novels.

Bookishly Inspired Find!
	Original Cleopatra  Mounted Film Cells by FREEZEFRAMEshop Click pic to visit Etsy Shop

Search Literary Flits for more:
Books by Jess Walter / Contemporary fiction / Books from America

No Such Thing as Goodbye by Karmen Špiljak

No Such Thing as Goodbye by Karmen Špiljak

Self published on the 1st July 2022. 

How I got this book:

Received a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon UK / Amazon.com

The Book Depository / Waterstones

A spy with a criminal past. A dark family secret. Freedom at the cost of betrayal.

To escape her mobster family, Toni fakes her own death, but before she can start anew in Mexico City, she’s pulled into a world of spies and deadly secrets. Her new life crumbles when she discovers her boss is keeping secrets of his own.

When word gets around that Toni’s brother is on his way to Mexico, she fears the worst - he wants to hunt her down. Cornered and with nowhere to turn, Toni must decide: will she run once more, or will she risk her life for a chance of freedom?

‘Shortlist & Honourable mention at the Black Spring Crime Fiction Prize 2020’

Karmen Špiljak's writing impressed me when I read her 'culinary noir' short story collection, Add Cyanide To Taste, so I eagerly requested a review copy of No Such Thing As Goodbye when I saw it appear on NetGalley. This full length novel is intended to be the first in a series featuring mob escapee Antonia Moretti and, on the strength of this first book, I am already keen to explore of Antonia's story. I found her to be such an original character to spend time with, particularly within the thriller genre. She uses the expertise she gained within her crime family to great effect whilst attempting to start her new Mexican life, yet I loved how frustratingly she is tripped up by realistic incidents.

Often when reading thrillers I am distracted from the story but having to suspend my disbelief at implausible scenarios, but I don't recall this happening during No Such Thing As Goodbye. Antonia is a sympathetic character with whom to spend time and I liked her a lot, so much so that I found myself warning her against Carl as I wasn't sure he was as good a guy as he claimed. I'm still undecided! The star of No Such Thing As Goodbye, however, has to be Purrito, an abandoned kitten who steals Antonia's heart. With all of the violence happening elsewhere, his antics become all the more adorable.

Despite being a series starter, No Such Thing As Goodbye is a self contained story with a satisfying conclusion. Špiljak has left threads open to lead readers into a sequel, but there's no irritating cliffhanger for which I am grateful. I'm very keen for that sequel though!

Bookishly Inspired Find!
	Vintage Novelty  Disguise Kit by The Mad Sea Party Click pic to visit Etsy Shop

Search Literary Flits for more:
Books by Karmen Špiljak / Thrillers / Books from Slovenia

The House On The Strand by Daphne du Maurier

The House On The Strand by Daphne Du Maurier

First published by Victor Gollancz in 1969.

How I got this book:

Bought the paperback from a charity shop

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon UK / Amazon.com / Libro.fm / Oxfam

The Book Depository / Waterstones

When Dick Young's friend, Professor Magnus Lane, offers him an escape from his troubles in the form of a new drug, Dick finds himself transported to fourteenth-century Cornwall. There, in the manor of Tywardreath, the domain of Sir Henry Champerhoune, he witnesses intrigue, adultery and murder.

The more time Dick spends consumed in the past, the more he withdraws from the modern world. With each dose of the drug, his body and mind become addicted to this otherworld, and his attempts to change history bring terror to the present and put his own life in jeopardy.

Daphne du Maurier's iconic novel, Rebecca, has been one of my top five favourite books for over a decade, yet I'd not managed to bring myself to read any of her other novels until now. I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps I subconsciously thought they couldn't possibly be as good, but that hasn't put me off other authors. Let's just put it down to being one of those strange reading quirks, a quirk that I am delighted to have overcome when I spotted a copy of The House On The Strand at a charity shop recently.

Published some thirty years after Rebecca, The House On The Strand is a very different novel and a wonderfully bizarre one. I'm not sure whether to categorise it as a thriller or a mystery or even science fiction. Its timeslip premise is so brilliantly executed that I had no trouble at all in overlooking the actual impossibility of the effects that Professor Lane's drug brings on and, instead, allowed myself to be swept into Dick Young's complex reality - or realities as they soon become.

I think I loved reading The House On The Strand as much as I did Rebecca even though the two works brought out such different reactions. The House On The Strand is such a beautiful evocation of Cornwall in the 1960s and in the 1330s and I was absolutely fascinated by the way du Maurier lays the physical landscape of the one over the other. I could clearly envisage both thanks to her lush, enthusiastic descriptions and having her characters see one landscape whilst walking through another is just inspired. The narrative itself is so tense, especially once the drug's perils are understood and Dick's clumsy attempts to keep Magnus's secrets from Vita provide the perfect contrasting relief. The stilted relationship between Dick and Vita felt painfully real so I understood his desire to hide in an alternate reality and du Maurier deftly portrays the drive of addiction. There's so much going on across multiple layers in this novel that I can imagine even after two or three reads I would still pick up on nuances that I had previously missed.

I think I love The House On The Strand almost as much as Rebecca and I am certainly not going to wait another decade to pick up more of du Maurier' s work.

Bookishly Inspired Find!
	Daphne Du Maurier  in Cornwall  portrait by Amanda White Design Click pic to visit Etsy Shop

Search Literary Flits for more:
Books by Daphne du Maurier / Thrillers / Books from England

All The Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson

All The Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson

Published by Faber and Faber in March 2018. 

How I got this book:

Borrowed the paperback from my partner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon UK / Amazon.com / Libro.fm

The Book Depository / Waterstones / Oxfam

On the eve of his college graduation, Harry is called home by his step-mother Alice, to their house on the Maine coast, following the unexpected death of his father.

But who really is Alice, his father's much younger second wife? In a brilliant split narrative, Peter Swanson teases out the stories and damage that lie in her past. And as her story entwines with Harry's in the present, things grow increasingly dark and threatening - will Harry be able to see any of it clearly through his own confused feelings?

My partner chose this novel from a second-hand bookstore and read it so swiftly and enthusiastically that, despite it not being my usual sort of read, I thought I should give it a try. To my surprise, I found All The Beautiful Lies to be very readable! Its exciting pace is aided by larger-than-normal print on each page which gives the impression of a real page-turner. I was intrigued by the characters and their relationships with each other which we get to witness over two timelines, one present-day and the other some twenty years earlier. I didn't actually like any of these people, but watching them circle each other is uncomfortably compelling.

Swanson beautifully evokes the Maine coastline on which All The Beautiful Lies is set so the natural environment becomes an important part of the foreboding atmosphere. I did wonder at a few of Harry's decision choices and there were two moments where I really struggled to believe the plausibility of pivotal plot points, especially with the benefit of hindsight, but at the time of reading I could override my misgivings to keep following the story. The constant name-dropping of classic crime authors did get wearing too. Were readers supposed to favourably compare this book with one of Bill's 'Top Ten' lists? It came across to me as trying to hard! I think All The Beautiful Lies would be a good beach or garden read. It was complex enough to keep me interested, but not so much as to be taxing.

Bookishly Inspired Find!
	Coastal Maine  Driftwood  Tea Light Holder by Lisa James Artistry Click pic to visit Etsy Shop

Search Literary Flits for more:
Books by Peter Swanson / Crime fiction / Books from America

Death on Gokumon Island by Seishi Yokomizo

Death on Gokumon Island by Seishi Yokomizo

First published in Japanese by the Kadokawa Corporation in Japan in 1947. English language translation by Louise Heale Kawai published by Pushkin Vertigo on the 6th June 2022. 

How I got this book:

Received a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazon UK / Amazon.com 

The Book Depository / Waterstones

Kosuke Kindaichi arrives on the remote Gokumon Island bearing tragic news - the son of one of the island's most important families has died, on a troop transport ship bringing him back home after the Second World War. But Kindaichi has not come merely as a messenger - with his last words, the dying man warned that his three step-sisters' lives would now be in danger. The scruffy detective is determined to get to the bottom of this mysterious prophecy, and to protect the three women if he can.

As Kosuke Kindaichi attempts to unravel the island's secrets, a series of gruesome murders begins. He investigates, but soon finds himself in mortal danger from both the unknown killer and the clannish locals, who resent this outsider meddling in their affairs.

Loosely inspired by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, the fiendish Death on Gokumon Island is perhaps the most highly regarded of all the great Seishi Yokomizo's classic Japanese mysteries.

I was somewhat disappointed by Death On Gokumon Island. As a classic crime novel, it has all the necessary ingredients, but there was something about the way they were blended together which left me cold which was a shame as I had previously enjoyed The Inugami Curse and had hoped for more of the same. The well-crafted atmosphere from that previous book seemed missing from Death On Gokumon Island and I didn't feel as though as much care had been taken over the characterisations either. In fact, at one point, if we want to find out about an Inspector who appears on the scene, we are directed to go and read a previous novel! While the crime narrative itself is suitably complex and convoluted so the book did keep my interest, I found myself more casually reading rather than being absolutely gripped by the tale.

Pushkin Vertigo, the English language edition publisher, has Death on Gokumon Island originally published in 1971 so I wondered if it being one of the later stories in the long 77-book Kosuke Kondaichi series was the reason, but other sources put the book's first publication in 1947 which would make it almost the earliest. There are frequent references within the novel to how characters were coping with the war's end and their return to civilian life.

I will probably try another book in this series at some point in the future as, overall, Death On Gokumon Island was a good read, just not as compelling a mystery as I had hoped for.

Bookishly Inspired Find!
	Japanese Mountain  Print by Leaf House UK Click pic to visit Etsy Shop

Search Literary Flits for more:
Books by Seishi Yokomizo / Crime fiction / Books from Japan

The Beached Ones by Colleen M. Story + Giveaway

Join us for this tour from June 14 to July 11, 2022!

Book Details:

Book Title:  The Beached Ones by Colleen M. Story
Category:  Adult Fiction (18+),  354 pages
Genre: Paranormal, Literary, Ghost, Fantasy
Publisher:  CamCat Books
Release date:  June 14, 2022
Content Rating: PG-13 + M: The book does explore suicide, and there is one scene indicating potential sexual abuse (that is stopped before it starts). There is the occasional swear word, but they are not frequent.

 

Book Description:

HE CAME BACK, DETERMINED TO KEEP HIS PROMISE.

Daniel and his younger brother grew up in an abusive home. Daniel escaped. Now an established stunt rider, he intends to go back to rescue his brother. But then one jump goes horribly wrong . . .

He recovers to find himself in Iowa, unscathed, yet his life has drastically changed. His best friend won’t answer his calls. Even his girlfriend is hiding something. Increasingly terrified, he clings to the one thing he knows: He must pick up his brother in San Francisco. In five days.

​From the isolating fields of Iowa to the crowded streets of San Francisco, Daniel must fight his way through a fog of disjointed memories and supernatural encounters to face the truth and pay a debt he didn’t know he owed.

BUY THE BOOK:

Camcat Books ~ Libro.fm

Amazon.com ~ Amazon UK

B&N ~ Nook ~ IndieBound ~ Kobo

Book Depository ~ Waterstones 

The Beached Ones is the first of Colleen Story's fictional works that I have read although I have previously found her nonfiction books - Writer Get Noticed! and Your Writing Matters - interesting and well-written. The ambiguous opening chapters of The Beached Ones really captured my attention an intrigued me. Was this a magical realism novel, or a ghost story, or something else altogether? It turned out to be an ambitious and deftly crafted combination of all those aspects and I loved how Story allowed the reader's awareness to grow just in advance of Daniel's so we could share in his discoveries.

His childhood scenes were sometimes upsetting to read, especially when they veered towards neglect and abuse. Seeing this from a future where we already know something has gone haywire for Daniel gives these moments a deep sense of foreboding. I just had to keep turning the pages to find out what was going on! The dysfunctional family relationships are another aspect of The Beached Ones that give this fantastical story a solid and authentic grounding. Valerie is obviously not coping as a mother, so young Tony's insistence on clinging to the idea of her as a capable Mommy is heartbreaking, particularly when contrasted with Daniel's entrenched cynicism borne of so many more years of lived experience and a darker estrangement.

I recommend The Beached Ones as a powerful read for fans of family dramas and alternate reality tales.

Meet the Author:

Colleen M. Story is a novelist, freelance writer, writing coach, and speaker who loves animals, music, and the great Pacific Northwest.

Her novel, Loreena’s Gift, was a Foreword Reviews’ INDIES Book of the Year Awards winner, among others. Her next novel, The Beached Ones is forthcoming from CamCat Books on June 14, 2022.

Colleen has written three books to help writers succeed. "Your Writing Matters" helps writers overcome self-doubt and determine once and for all where writing fits in their lives.

Her previous release, Writer Get Noticed!, was a gold-medal winner in the Reader’s Favorite Book Awards and a first-place winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards. Overwhelmed Writer Rescue was named Book by Book Publicity’s Best Writing/Publishing Book in 2018 and was an Amazon best seller.

With over 20 years as a professional in the creative industry, Colleen has authored thousands of articles for publications like “Healthline” and “Women’s Health;” worked with high-profile clients like Gerber Baby Products and Kellogg’s; and ghostwritten books on back pain, nutrition, and cancer recovery. She continues to work as a full-time freelance writer, helping clients create informative and inspiring communications in a variety of media formats.

Colleen frequently serves as a workshop leader, writing coach, and motivational speaker, where she helps attendees remove mental and emotional blocks and tap into their unique creative powers.

Go to Colleen's website for free chapters of her books.

connect with the author: website ~twitter ~ goodreads ~ bookbub

 

Tour Schedule:

June 14 - Cover Lover Book Review – book spotlight / giveaway
June 14 – Viviana MacKade – book spotlight / author interview / giveaway
June 14 - Rockin' Book Reviews – book review / giveaway
June 15 – Celticlady's Reviews – book spotlight / giveaway
June 15 – Amy's Bookshelf Reviews – book review
June 15 - The Official Blog of Amy Shannon – book spotlight / author interview
June 16 –  Working Mommy Journal – book review / giveaway
June 17 - @twilight_reader – book review
June 20 – Review Thick And Thin – book review / author interview / giveaway
June 21 – Gina Rae Mitchell – book spotlight / author interview / giveaway
June 21 - Ravenz Reviewz – book review / giveaway
June 22 - Kam's Place – book review
June 23 – Book Corner News and Reviews – book review / giveaway
June 24 – Splashes of Joy – book spotlight / giveaway
June 27 – Mostly Mystery Reviews – book review / author interview / giveaway
June 27 - My Reading Getaway – book review / giveaway
June 28 – Olio by Marilyn – book review / giveaway
June 29 – The Momma Spot – book review / giveaway
June 30 – Locks, Hooks and Books – book review / giveaway
July 1 – fundinmental – book spotlight / giveaway
July 5 – My Fictional Oasis – book review
July 6 – Bigreadersite – book review / giveaway
July 7 – Deborah-Zenha Adams – book spotlight / author interview / giveaway
July 7 - From the Book Reviewer's Desk – book review / author interview
July 8 – Jazzy Book Reviews – book spotlight / author interview / giveaway
July 8 - Literary Flits – book review / giveaway
July 11 – Sadie's Spotlight – book spotlight / author interview

 

Enter the Giveaway:

Win a copy of THE BEACHED ONES, a bookmark, and a beach-themed notebook/journal and pen. (one winner)(USA only) (ends July 18)

THE BEACHED ONES Book Tour Giveaway

 

 

Click here to see all my current 

Giveaways & Free Books!

Bookishly Inspired Find!
	Pilot Whales  Enamelled Pin Set by alumandink Click pic to visit Etsy Shop

Search Literary Flits for more:
Books by Colleen M Story / Magical realism / Books from America

Seek The Singing Fish by Roma Wells

Seek The Singing Fish by Roma Wells

Published by Epoque Press on the 23rd June 2022.

How I got this book:

Received a review copy from the publisher 

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon UK / Waterstones

Growing up in the lagoon town of Batticaloa, a young girl with an unquenchable curiosity and love of the natural world, is entangled in the trauma and turmoil of the Sri Lankan civil war. Uprooted from everything she holds dear, tragedy and betrayal set in motion an unforgettable odyssey. Torn from east to west, struggling with what it means to belong, she desperately seeks a way home to the land of the singing fish.

Seek The Singing Fish is such an amazing novel. I'm struggling to know how to start this review without just breathlessly fangirling which wouldn't really suit this book's themes. It is a deep exploration of how Sri Lanka's civil war completely devastated so many families, and also a portrait of a young nature-obsessed girl, Artemila, growing up amidst the carnage. It illustrates the horror that is human trafficking, and shows how incredibly resilient people can be when they can still just about cling to a sliver of hope. I loved spending hours in Artemila' company as she chats directly to the reader, alternating between dropping amazing nuggets of information about animals and birds around the world, then describing scenes of chilling violence and inhumanity taking place right before her eyes. The contrasts are what particularly made this novel stand out for me. Artemila has great reserves of inner strength, inspired by the strong relationship she had with her father, but even she must occasionally turn from the page, not narrating a particular scene to us readers, and those moments were the grimmest of all.

Thinking back over Seek The Singing Fish now, there is so much darkness in this story, yet I didn't actually find it a depressing book to read. Saddening at times, certainly, but Artemila's memories of happier times and the sporadic kindnesses from some people she encounters give us light, plus she can always divert herself - and us - with a relevant nature factlet, setting human behaviours against those of the animal kingdom. (We humans don't bear these comparisons well.) Seek The Singing Fish shows so clearly how wars don't end with the ceasefire. The mental and physical damage lasts for lifetimes. Ultimately, there is hope and the promise of finding some kind of reconciliation, a return to some form of home even with so much lost. This novel is an intense emotional rollercoaster yet is also very readable. It's very likely to be my Book of the Month and might just make my Book of the Year too.

Bookishly Inspired Find!
	Natural Wonders  Postcard Set by Neckahneck Click pic to visit Etsy Shop

Search Literary Flits for more:
Books by Roma Wells / War fiction / Books from Sri Lanka

The Book of Queens by Joumana Haddad

The Book of Queens by Joumana Haddad
Published by Interlink on the 5th July 2022.

How I got this book:

Received a review copy from the publisher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon UK

The Book Depository / Waterstones

THE BOOK OF QUEENS is a family saga that spans four generations of women caught up in the tragic whirlwind of turf wars and suffering in the Middle East - from the Armenian genocide and the Israeli occupation of Palestine to modern-day civil wars and the struggles between Christians and Muslims in Lebanon and Syria. Four queens of a deck of cards dealt a bad hand by fate - Qayah, Qana, Qadar and Qamar - form the branches of the same family tree rooted in the land of their origins despite the forceful winds that repeatedly try to carry them away. A line of red-haired women united by the ties of blood that runs through their veins - which violence has spread through the ages - each with a deep story and all with one thing in common: unwavering power and resilience in the face of adversities of being a woman in a war-torn region. With the perfect mastery of finely chiselled writing, Joumana Haddad manages to construct a novel of extraordinary intensity, without ever sinking into pathos or grandiloquence. She also challenges the systematic abuse of political and religious power and authority that continues to cloud the lives of a culturally diverse and progressive youth until the present day.

I suppose the first thing I must say about The Book Of Queens is that I found it to be a particularly grim read. A saga set across four generations of the same family, a family which finds itself repeatedly hounded from their home for being 'other' - the wrong religion or the wrong ancestry for the times in which they find themselves. Each generation flees, usually as refugees leaving almost everything they own behind, and somehow finds the inner strength to build their lives again from scratch, only to see their children forced to repeat the same journeying. The Book Of Queens is all the more harrowing for having been inspired by Haddad's own family history. 

The story is told in four sections, each dedicated to one of the four 'queens' - Qayah, Qana, Qadar and Qamar. While reading, I did find the similarity of their names confusing and often struggled to remember which woman was the mother, grandmother, daughter or granddaughter in that particular era. After finishing the book however, it occurred to me that, in many ways, it didn't matter whose life we focused upon. Each woman faced chillingly similar choices and hardships as their current nation home shifted its religious or cultural ideology, leaving them isolated again. I was reminded of similar intolerances across the Balkans as in Nadia Mujagic's memoir, Ten Thousand Shells And Counting. The Book Of Queens is very real historical fiction. It does encompass brief moments of joy and hope, but mostly left me feeling so grateful that my life does not reflect those of Qayah, Qana, Qadar or Qamar. I don't think I could find their strength.

Bookishly Inspired Find!
	Playing Card  Queens earrings by Candy Goblins Click pic to visit Etsy Shop

Search Literary Flits for more:
Books by Joumana Haddad / Historical fiction / Books from Lebanon

Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi

Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi

First published in Arabic in Oman in 2016. English language translation by Marilyn Booth published by Catapult on the 10th May 2022.

A Book with a Vegan Character

How I got this book:

Received a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon UK / Amazon.com / Libro.fm

The Book Depository / Waterstones

Zuhour, an Omani student at a British university, is caught between the past and the present. As she attempts to form friendships and assimilate in Britain, she can’t help but ruminate on the relationships that have been central to her life. Most prominent is her strong emotional bond with Bint Aamir, a woman she always thought of as her grandmother, who passed away just after Zuhour left the Arabian Peninsula.

 

As the historical narrative of Bint Aamir’s challenged circumstances unfurls in captivating fragments, so too does Zuhour’s isolated and unfulfilled present, one narrative segueing into another as time slips, and dreams mingle with memories.

 

The eagerly awaited new novel by the winner of the Man Booker International Prize, Bitter Orange Tree is a profound exploration of social status, wealth, desire, and female agency. It presents a mosaic portrait of one young woman’s attempt to understand the roots she has grown from, and to envisage an adulthood in which her own power and happiness might find the freedom necessary to bear fruit and flourish.

Having appreciated Jokha Alharthi's previous Man Booker International Prize-winning novel, Celestial Bodies, I leapt at the chance to read Bitter Orange Tree and was delighted to find I enjoyed this tale ever more. Bitter Orange Tree is narrated by a younger woman, Zuhour, looking back across memories of her childhood, particularly remembering her grandmother, Bint Aamir, a frail, disabled woman by the time Zuhour is leaving for university. The generation gap between them is a strong theme of the novel - the opportunities available to Zuhour being unimaginable in her grandmother's time while Bint Aamir's own poignantly unfulfilled dream of a little land of her own to grow fruit trees could not be further from Zuhour's own ambitions.

Alharthi's gorgeous prose makes Bitter Orange Tree essential reading for anyone who, like me, just loves to lose themselves in the beauty of language and special praise must go to Marilyn Booth for rendering the original Arabic so deftly into English. I never felt as though I were reading a translation. The dual narratives interweave so, while it was always obvious to me at any time whose story I was reading, there are frequent overlapping moments which I felt really added to the depth of the story. I loved how Alharthi slips effortlessly between present day and historic Oman, illustrating their differences, but also the similarities. I was convinced by the familial relationship between Zuhour and Bint Aamir and, while I never actually found myself pitying the older woman as her character isn't one that invites that reaction, I did feel strongly for her as she is ultimately left isolated by the family to whom she dedicated her life.

Bitter Orange Tree is a wonderful novel of female lives and female friendships. I was engrossed from start to finish and loved the experience. While Alharthi keeps to the idiosyncratic structural style of Celestial Bodies which isn't always easy for a Western reader to follow, I thought that this absolutely works for Bitter Orange Tree. I would say that if, like me, you liked Celestial Bodies then you will love Bitter Orange Tree. It is not the happiest of novels but I found reading this book to be deeply rewarding.

Bookishly Inspired Find!
	Bitter Orange Peel by You Herbit Click pic to visit Etsy Shop

Search Literary Flits for more:
Books by Jokha Alharthi / Contemporary fiction / Books from Oman