Author: whatcathyreadnext

#SixonSaturday My Gardening Week – 8th July 2023

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Garden AllotmentSix on Saturday is a weekly meme originally hosted by The Propagator but now in the tender care of Jim at Garden Ruminations. If you can find the time, check out the posts of other participants by following the links in the comments section of Jim’s post – or share your own six.

The continuing dry spell means no sooner have our six water butts collected a meagre amount of rainwater than they’re empty again. Anyway, enough grumbling, here’s my six:

One – (Below, left) The chocolate coloured flowers of sunflower ‘Rouge’ which have grown taller than the ‘Giant’ variety planted at the same time.

Two – (Below, top right) Japanese anemones have made themselves at home in our garden and pop up all over the place.

Three – (Below, bottom right) This year was my first attempt at creating a wildflower patch. Although it was just from a fairly cheap box of annual seed mixture, I’m pretty pleased with it and the number of pollinators it’s attracting. It’s in an area of the garden that had been used to grow vegetables, then to grow weeds and then covered with ground cover for a year so we didn’t have to look at the weeds.

Four – (Below, left) – This is looking like the year we might actually get some pears from two trees being grown as cordons. The varieties are Doyenné du Comice and Buerre Hardy, although the photo makes them look bigger than they actually are yet! If we do it will make up for the total wipeout of cherries as a result of a combination of hungry pigeons and rampant cherry aphid.

Five – (Below, top right) – One of the new raised beds we put in this year containing carrots, beetroot and sweetcorn.

Six – (Below, bottom right) – The Achillea ‘Cerise Queen’ grown from tiny plugs are finally flowering.

#BookReview In Defence of the Act by Effie Black @Epoque_Press

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About the Book

Are we more like a coffee bean, a carrot or an egg? What happens to us when we are boiled in the trials and tribulations of life?

Jessica Miller is fascinated by the somewhat perplexing tendency of humans to end their own lives, but she secretly believes such acts may not be that bad after all. Or at least, she did.

Jessica is coming to terms with her own relationships, and reflecting on what it means to be queer, when a single event throws everything she once believed into doubt. Can she still defend the act?

Format: eARC (192 pages) Publisher: époque press
Publication date: 13th July 2023 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find In Defence of the Act on Goodreads

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My Review

Exploring the question of whether it can ever be right for a person to take their own life is not necessarily an obvious hook for a work of fiction. However, although the book starts with Jessica’s listing of examples from nature of what you might term altruistic self-murder, it soon becomes clear that this is a much more personal question for her, one which has involved people she has loved. In fact, the dilemma also Jessica grapples with is when is it right to stop someone taking their own life.

This may all sound rather depressing and indeed some of Jessica’s experiences are distressing to read about. However Jessica makes for a delightfully spirited narrator but one whose wit is often a mask for underlying feelings of self-doubt and guilt. She constantly questions her own actions and motivations. This is unsurprising as we gradually learn more about the violence that was a feature of her childhood. The sections in which Jessica recalls what it was like to grow up in an abusive household are positively chilling such as her comment that ‘fear didn’t keep regular hours’ in her family’ but could appear at any moment, even at night. I also found her frequent attempts to downplay what she has been through heart-rending. Among many moving moments is one in which twelve-year-old Jessica is surprised when a classmate suggests they hang out together, and even more surprised that it really is going to happen because of her experience of family trips being regularly cancelled, curtailed or disrupted.

In an example of the way the book deals with issues in a nuanced way, we witness Jessica’s conflicted feelings for the now diminished state of the perpetrator of that abuse. ‘It’s like seeing a once terrifying dog – a dog that was formerly all muscle and teeth and rage, a dog that used to mercilessly maul rabbits for fun – on its last legs. I can’t help but grieve the lost power, and pity what now stands in its place.’

One clever element of the book is that every now and again sections entitled ‘A Black Day’ interrupt Jessica recalling of events in her life. It’s fairly clear what the occasion being described is but we don’t find out exactly who it involves until the end of the book. If that sounds rather oblique, it’s deliberate as I don’t want to give anything away.

By the end of the book, I was really invested in Jessica’s life, was left feeling hopeful for her future and convinced she was in no need of the session on resilience that opens the book. An impressive debut.

My thanks to Seán at époque press for my digital review copy.

In three words: Thought-provoking, poignant, powerful

About the Author

Effie Black is a London-based writer with a background in science. She enjoys writing from a queer perspective and she likes bringing a spot of science into her fiction too. Effie’s short stories have appeared in Litro and the époque press é-zine. In Defence of the Act is Effie’s debut novel. (Photo: Publisher author page)

Connect with Effie
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