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Throwback Thursday: Shelter by Sarah Franklin

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme originally created by Renee at It’s Book Talk. It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago.

Today I’m revisiting a book I reviewed early on in my blogging ‘career’ – Shelter by Sarah Franklin.  First published in hardback July 2017, it was recently published in paperback with an evocative new cover. A perfect excuse to grab a copy if you haven’t already read this fabulous book!

You can read my original review below and also my interview with Sarah about Shelter here.

Shelter PBAbout the Book

Early Spring, 1944. In a clearing deep within an English forest two lost souls meet for the first time. Connie Granger has escaped the devastation of her bombed out city home. She has found work in the Women’s Timber Corps, and for her, this remote community must now serve a secret purpose. Seppe, an Italian prisoner of war, is haunted by his memories. But in the forest camp, he finds a strange kind of freedom. Their meeting signals new beginnings. In each other they find the means to imagine their own lives anew and to face that which each fears the most.

But outside their haven, the world is ravaged by war and old certainties are crumbling. Both Connie and Seppe must make a life-defining choice which threatens their fragile existence. How will they make sense of this new world, and find their place within it? What does it mean to be a woman, or a foreign man, in these days of darkness and new light? A beautiful, gentle and deeply powerful novel about finding solace in the most troubled times, about love, about hope and about renewal after devastation. It asks us to consider what makes a family, what price a woman must pay to live as she chooses, and what we’d fight to the bitter end to protect.

Format: Hardcover, ebook, paperback (432 pp.)            Publisher: Bonnier Zaffre
Published: Hardcover 27th July ‘17, Paperback 31st May ’18 Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com | Hive.co.uk (supporting local UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Shelter on Goodreads

My Review

All her life Connie’s had the urge to break away, to explore what life has to offer away from the streets and factories of Coventry. She doesn’t know what form this new life will take or how she’s going to do it. What she does know it that she’s got to do it. Spirited, determined and reckless, the Second World War brings Connie the opportunity to seek what she’s looking for but the price for that opportunity is a high one. Forced by circumstances to be totally self-reliant and desperate to leave bad memories behind, she joins the Women’s Timber Corps and finds herself posted to The Forest of Dean to train as a ‘lumberjill’.

Chance brings together Connie and Seppe, an Italian POW, who is trying to escape his own demons. Thoughtful and sensitive, Seppe is initially cowed by his traumatic relationship with his violent father whose malevolent presence seems able to reach even into the confines of the POW camp.  ‘The spikes of his father’s rancour were undimmed by the flimsy paper. A spiral of venom rose from the lines, the sheen of anger, pride and sheer vicious temper bitter in Seppe’s mouth.’

Despite being haunted by guilt and by what he witnessed during the war, Seppe gradually grows in inner strength as he finds acceptance from the local community.   For Connie and Seppe, the forest provides shelter from the outside world – quite literally at times.   However, for those born and bred in the forest, the war, and those it brings in its wake, is an unwanted incursion into their lives.  ‘Those evacuees are still out here, causing chaos in the school. And…we’ve got Yanks in the forest, whole regiments of them…The other big change is that we’ve got POWs up at Broadwell.’

The war is also a threat to the very existence of the forest itself with the constant demands for timber to support the war effort.  ‘The forest itself warned them of loss even as they chopped it down. Bloody great gaps staring at them in the very woods that had sheltered them all their lives, and people pulled from this life into a new world that swallowed them up.’

I loved the way the author made the forest another character in the story with almost human qualities: ‘Amos pushed in amongst the branches until they almost held him in an embrace.’ I thought the author struck a good balance between historical fact about wartime events and the story of Connie, Seppe and the other inhabitants of The Forest of Dean.   Sometimes events erred slightly on the side of convenience but I think we must allow an author some artistic licence and, who knows, sometimes things are just meant to be. Finally, I always admire an author who is brave enough not to spell out the conclusion of a book but to let the reader imagine it for themselves.

I thought this was an outstanding debut. Shelter has an authentic period atmosphere with wonderful characters who take you on an intense but heart-warming journey.  I received an advance reader copy courtesy of NetGalley and publishers, Bonnier Zaffre, in return for an honest review.

In three words: Intimate, atmospheric, emotional

Try something similar…Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves by Rachel Malik (read my review here)

Sarah FranklinAbout the Author

Sarah Franklin grew up in rural Gloucestershire and now lives with her family between Oxford and London. She has written for the Guardian, Psychologies magazine, The Pool, the Sunday Express and the Seattle Times. Her creative non-fiction has been published in anthologies in the USA and appeared on radio affiliates there. Sarah is founder and host of popular Oxford literary night, Short Stories Aloud, a Senior Lecturer at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies, and a judge for the Costa Short Story Award. She was awarded a mentorship under the Jerwood/Arvon scheme to work on her debut novel, Shelter, which will be published by Bonnier Zaffre in July 2017.

Connect with Sarah

Website ǀ Twitter ǀ Goodreads

Blog Tour/Review/Q&A: The Things We Learn When We’re Dead by Charlie Laidlaw

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The Things We Learn When We're Dead Blog Tour Banner

Having really enjoyed The Things We Learn When We’re Dead when I read it earlier this year, I was delighted to receive an invitation from R&R Book Tours to join the blog tour for Charlie Laidlaw’s book.   You can read my review below but I also have a fantastic Q&A with Charlie with some serious – and not so serious – questions.

Do look out for posts by the other great book bloggers taking part in the tour for more reviews, interviews, guest posts, book extracts and giveaways.

TheThingsWeLearnWhenWereDeadAbout the Book

With elements of The Wizard of Oz, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Lovely Bones, The Things We Learn When We’re Dead shows how small decisions can have profound and unintended consequences, and how sometimes we can get a second chance.

On the way home from a dinner party, Lorna Love steps into the path of an oncoming car. When she wakes up she is in what appears to be a hospital – but a hospital in which her nurse looks like a young Sean Connery, she is served wine for supper, and everyone avoids her questions. It soon transpires that she is in Heaven, or on HVN. Because HVN is a lost, dysfunctional spaceship, and God the aging hippy captain. She seems to be there by accident… Or does God have a higher purpose after all?

At first Lorna can remember nothing. As her memories return – some good, some bad – she realises that she has decision to make and that maybe she needs to find a way home.

Format: Paperback (501 pp.)   Publisher: Accent Press
Published: 26th January 2017 Genre: Literary Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Things We Learn When We’re Dead on Goodreads

Q&A with Charlie Laidlaw, author of The Things We Learn When We’re Dead

First some serious questions…

Without giving too much away, can you tell me a bit about The Things We Learn When We’re Dead?

It’s literary fiction, and a modern fairytale.  It’s about the power of memory to shape us.  In the book, the central character is involved in a car accident and begins to remember her life in a slightly different way.  It’s a book that asks: if you could remember your life differently, would that change you as a person?

How did you get the idea for the story?

To be honest, I have no idea.  The initial idea came to me out of the blue on a train from Edinburgh to London.  I suppose it was an apt place for inspiration because Edinburgh is the only city in the world to have named its central railway station after a book.

Do you have a favourite place to write or any writing rituals?

I write in my home office, although I do always carry a notebook.  In a sense, I write everywhere because the main part of writing (apart from editing) is thinking about writing!

What’s your favourite and least favourite part of the writing process?

I enjoy the creativity, and finding the right words to describe something.  I enjoy it when a main character tells me that what I’ve written is gibberish because he/she would never say or do that.  In a way, I am always being guided by my characters.  When it’s going well, they write the book – not me.

Conversely, sometimes they don’t speak to me and it can be a bit of a struggle!

Which authors do you admire and enjoy reading?

I enjoy reading mostly contemporary literary fiction.  Joanne Harris, Kate Atkinson and Fay Weldon are authors that spring to mind, so I suppose that I like accessible fiction.

Now some silly quick-fire questions that will, I hope, raise a chuckle from those who’ve read the book and intrigue those who haven’t…

Star Trek or Star Wars?

Star Wars (except for the prequels which were rubbish).

Carpet burns or sand in your knickers?

Being Scottish, I don’t wear knickers.  My wife wears knickers, and they wouldn’t fit me.

Lamb cutlets or beef & horseradish sandwiches?

Lamb in the evening, beef sandwich at lunch.  That said, I rarely eat either.

Greek beach bar or North Berwick seaside?

I love North Berwick, because it’s home.  But, given the weather, I’d rather be in a Greek bar right at the moment.  Greece is my most favourite foreign country.

Titanic or Four Weddings and a Funeral?

Titanic I’ve seen twice, and couldn’t watch again.  Four Weddings is one of those films that I could watch again and again.

Tinman, Scarecrow or Lion?

They’re all in my book for readers who want to seek them out.  I would have to say Lion because I have hopes for Lorna in that direction…

Transition or stasis?

I quite welcome change because, frankly, change happens.  Staying still isn’t much of an option unless you’re a goldfish.

Lorna, Suzie, Irene – Snog, Marry, Avoid?

The only character I could possibly snog is Irene, because she might be persuaded to be anyone I wanted her to be.

My Review

As Lorna adapts to her new surroundings on the spaceship, random objects she sees – M&S underwear, lamb cutlets, even a hamster – trigger memories from her past life.  At first these are fragmented, incomplete and often confusing.  Some are pleasant memories: childhood holidays, family picnics, games with friends, the first stirrings of interest in the opposite sex.  Others are reminders of loss and grief.

Many of Lorna’s memories revolve around exploits with her stylish friend, Suzie, and Lorna’s relationships with men that, it has to be said, have not been entirely successful.   I confess to feeling a pang of sympathy for poor sweet, stolid Austin (described at one point as ‘a rather dull dog with very few tricks’).  As the book progresses, the reader sees that actions do indeed have consequences, even if unintended, and may set in motion a chain of events that can end tragically.

In the book blurb, the publisher describes The Things We Learn When We’re Dead as having ‘elements of The Wizard of Oz, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Lovely Bones’. Personally, if looking for cultural references, I would say the depiction of the stranded HVN spaceship draws more from Star Trek than anything else with its transporters, holographs and replicators.  I enjoyed Lorna’s pleasure at the small, surprising miracles on the spaceship, like the ability of a chilled glass of wine to stay chilled even when drunk in the bath.

When it comes to The Wizard of Oz, certainly there are characters described as lacking courage (the Cowardly Lion) and not having much of a brain (the Scarecrow).   However, I think someone reading this book in the expectation of it being a strict retelling of The Wizard of Oz may be disappointed.  What they won’t be disappointed in is the quality of the writing, the quirky humour and the authenticity with which Lorna’s childhood and young adult experiences are described.

I really enjoyed The Things We Learn When We’re Dead.  As someone who reads very little fantasy and reads science fiction only occasionally (and then more of the dystopian variety), I wasn’t that disappointed that the extra-terrestrial element takes more of a back seat as the book progresses.  The ending didn’t particularly surprise me but I found myself wishing Lorna well in the future choices she makes.

I received a personally inscribed review copy courtesy of the author in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Quirky, engaging, fun

Try something similar… for more space-based fantasy, Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar (click here to read my review)

Charlie LaidlawAbout the Author

Charlie Laidlaw is the author of two novels, The Herbal Detective (Ringwood Publishing) and The Things We Learn When We’re Dead (Accent Press).

Charlie writes: ‘I was born in Paisley, central Scotland, which wasn’t my fault. That week, Eddie Calvert with Norrie Paramor and his Orchestra were Top of the Pops, with Oh, Mein Papa, as sung by a young German woman remembering her once-famous clown father. That gives a clue to my age, not my musical taste.  I was brought up in the west of Scotland (quite near Paisley, but thankfully not too close) and graduated from the University of Edinburgh. I still have the scroll, but it’s in Latin, so it could say anything.

I then worked briefly as a street actor, baby photographer, puppeteer and restaurant dogsbody before becoming a journalist. I started in Glasgow and ended up in London, covering news, features and politics. I interviewed motorbike ace Barry Sheene, Noel Edmonds threatened me with legal action and, because of a bureaucratic muddle, I was ordered out of Greece.  I then took a year to travel round the world, visiting 19 countries. Highlights included being threatened by a man with a gun in Dubai, being given an armed bodyguard by the PLO in Beirut (not the same person with a gun), and visiting Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave in Samoa. What I did for the rest of the year I can’t quite remember.

Surprisingly, I was approached by a government agency to work in intelligence, which just shows how shoddy government recruitment was back then. However, it turned out to be very boring and I don’t like vodka martini.  Craving excitement and adventure, I ended up as a PR consultant, which is the fate of all journalists who haven’t won a Pulitzer Prize, and I’ve still to listen to Oh, Mein Papa.

I am married with two grown-up children and live in East Lothian.’

Connect with Charlie

Website ǀ  Twitter  ǀ  Facebook ǀ Goodreads