Category: Blog Tour

#BlogTour #BookReview How To Save a Life by Clare Swatman

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How To Save A LifeI’m delighted to welcome you to the opening day of the blog tour for How To Save a Life by Clare Swatman which is published today. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Boldwood Books for my digital review copy via NetGalley. Do check out the posts by my tour buddies for today, Sheri at My Reading Getaway and Jo at Captured on Film.

How To Save a LifeAbout the Book

One night in December, twenty-two year old Ted Green makes his way to Waterloo Bridge determined to end his life. Lonely, despairing and utterly hopeless, it seems the only choice to make.

That same night in December, Marianne Cooper is running away from a party. Having found her boyfriend in a passionate clinch with someone else, Marianne can’t get away fast enough. But as she makes her way along London’s South Bank, a figure catches her eye on top of the bridge.

Then she sees him, a man ready to jump.

When Marianne saves Ted’s life, this night in December becomes one they’ll never forget, but as Ted watches Marianne leave in a black taxi, all he can think is he should have asked her name.

In a story spanning twenty years, join Ted and Marianne as they navigate life’s twists and turns, joys and heartbreaks, while all the time wondering – will fate ever bring them together again…

Format: Paperback (328 pages)   Publisher: Boldwood Books
Publication date: 8th June 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find How To Save A Life on Goodreads

Purchase links
Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

In How To Save a Life, the author brings the same warmth, mix of light and dark moments, and gentle exploration of human flaws as she did to her previous book, Before We Grow Old, which I read in January 2022.

The book is told in alternating chapters from the points of view of Marianne and Ted. Sometimes the reader gets to see the same event from their respective point of view, meaning some repetition is inevitable. It also means, at times, the reader can see an event coming.

Of the two characters, it was Ted who I thought had the most depth and whose story I became most invested in.  His traumatic experiences whilst on active service in Kuwait have left psychological wounds, a profound sense of guilt and a feeling that his life lacks any structure or direction. This has manifested itself in a dependence on alcohol. And, as much as Marianne’s actions on Waterloo Bridge on that fateful night saved his life, I thought the steadfastness and loyalty of his friend, Danny, did too.

Although Marianne and Ted’s initial meeting is fleeting, the significance of its circumstances provoke a change of life direction for them both: Marianne pursues a career as a counsellor and Ted studies to become a doctor. It’s significant that both roles entail helping others. Marianne and Ted both find themselves thinking about the other over the course of the years and during that time there are a number of ‘near misses’ in which their paths almost cross. Thinking of the film Casablanca, it’s not so much a case of ‘Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine’ as  ‘Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine… but I happen to have left five minutes ago’.

Despite the passing years, Ted and Marianne have become lodged so deep in each other’s mind that it becomes difficult for any other partner to displace them. I have to say I couldn’t blame those who try for eventually acting they way they do. After all, how can you compete with a fantasy? And I found it quite difficult to forgive some of Marianne’s and Ted’s actions.

Whether you consider the way the book ends the stuff of Hollywood movies, it demonstrates saving a life can occur in many ways and sometimes we don’t just get second chances but perhaps third, even fourth opportunities to get it right.

In three words: Tender, romantic, engaging

Try something similar: One Day in December by Shari Low

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Clare SwatmanAbout the Author

Clare Swatman is the author of three women’s fiction novels, published by Macmillan, which have been translated into over 20 languages. She has been a journalist for over twenty years, writing for Bella and Woman & Home amongst many other magazines. She lives in Hertfordshire.

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#BlogTour #BookReview Villager by Tom Cox

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Villager BT PosterWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Villager by Tom Cox. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Unbound for my digital review copy.

Villager Cover ImageAbout the Book

There’s so much to know. It will never end, I suspect, even when it does. So much in all these lives, so many stories, even in this small place.

Villages are full of tales: some are forgotten while others become a part of local folklore. But the fortunes of one West Country village are watched over and irreversibly etched into its history as an omniscient, somewhat crabby, presence keeps track of village life.

In the late sixties a Californian musician blows through Underhill where he writes a set of haunting folk songs that will earn him a group of obsessive fans and a cult following. Two decades later, a couple of teenagers disturb a body on the local golf course. In 2019, a pair of lodgers discover a one-eyed rag doll hidden in the walls of their crumbling and neglected home. Connections are forged and broken across generations, but only the landscape itself can link them together. A landscape threatened by property development and superfast train corridors and speckled by the pylons whose feet have been buried across the moor.

Format: Hardcover (448 pages) Publisher: Unbound
Publication date: 28 April 2022 Genre: Literary Fiction

Find Villager on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

This is the first book I’ve read by Tom Cox so, unlike some other reviewers, I’m not familiar with his nonfiction writing and as I usually scroll past images of dogs or cats on Instagram or Twitter I’ve not come across him on social media either. Therefore I didn’t know quite what to expect, a sensation that remained throughout the time I was reading the book.

Villager is a book which almost defies description due to its idiosyncratic style and non-linear structure. The novel ranges over a vast period from the dawn of time to the end of this century. It’s a cocktail of different narratives, in a variety of styles, all of which are connected to the village of Underhill and to an American musician, RJ McKendree who visited the area in the late 1960s and composed music inspired by local folksongs. Some meet him, others inhabit places he did, observe the same views as him or are inspired by his music.

One of the most inventive elements of the book is that Underhill and the surrounding area is presided over by an omniscient narrator, referred to as ‘Me’, whom I took to be the landscape itself. (Have a peek at the cover and you might spot ‘Me’.) ‘Me’ observes the goings-on of the inhabitants, knows all their secrets and reflects on the changes that have been wrought on the landscape by mankind, changes which have often caused it something akin to physical pain. ‘The countryside looks on, bemused at the way it’s been outgrown, bludgeoned, smoothed over, suppressed, raped, waiting for the revenge it will surely enjoy when we are gone.’ At times the landscape fights back. For example, the final nine holes of the golf course that has reduced many a player to swearing at sheep or hurling their golf clubs in the river.  It works the other way as well. As ‘Me’ ruefully observes, ‘I don’t feel great today, and my not-greatness influences those around me. I made a buddleia visibly ill at ease this morning’.

An appreciation of nature and concern for the environment flow through the book. There are wonderful descriptions of the local landscape and wildlife. ‘The last purple streaks of the sun toasted the hilltops and owls made lewd suggestions to one another down in the woods by the river.’  On the subject of flowing, I especially enjoyed the way the author gives the rivers a personality, at times rebellious – ‘One is being a thug out back of the Coop, hissing and swearing at the locals’ – at other times, placid – ‘Today, though, the river was a pussycat. It purred around the boulders beneath his feet’.

The author employs a number of different narrative formats including journals, interactions with a search engine which has developed an unnerving ability to empathise and, most memorably for me, a community message board. The latter allows the author to give full rein to his wicked sense of humour in the often inconsequential chatter of the locals, the acerbic comments of one resident or the contributions of the mysterious Megan Beaker.

My favourite section was the one entitled ‘Papps Wedge’ which features couple, Sally and Bob (not Bob and Sally) whom we first in middle-age and then much later in 2043. It provides a glimpse of a future in which profit and human convenience is prioritised over environmental protection so a new train line ‘smashes through ancient woodland, f**ks over a couple of Elizabethan farmhouses, rapes and pillages the homesteads of hares, otters, stoats and badgers’.  In addition, immersive technology has replaced direct experience for many people. Only Bob and a few like-minded people have rejected its use leaving them isolated in some ways but more in touch with the natural environment.

I’ll confess I found some parts of the book more challenging than others. For instance, many of the musical references in the section ‘Report of Debris’ went over my head. Alternatively if they were pure invention, I couldn’t tell.

Villager is endlessly inventive and jam-packed with thought-provoking ideas. I think it’s the kind of book that would repay re-reading.

In three words: Lyrical, original, stimulating

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Tom Cox Author PicAbout the Author

Tom Cox lives in Devon. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling The Good, the Bad and the Furry and the William Hill Sports Book longlisted Bring Me the Head of Sergio Garcia. 21st-Century Yokel was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize, and the titular story of Help the Witch won a Shirley Jackson Award.

He is also the man behind the enormously popular Why My Cat Is Sad account.

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