Tag: advance review copy

#BookReview Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris

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Black ButterfliesAbout the Book

Sarajevo, Spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the residents – whether Muslim, Croat or Serb – push the makeshift barriers aside.

When violence finally spills over, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. Reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a handful of weeks, she stays behind while the city falls under siege.

As the assault deepens and everything they love is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops, Zora and her friends are forced to rebuild themselves, over and over. Theirs is a breathtaking story of disintegration, resilience and hope.

Format: Hardback (288 pages)   Publisher: Duckworth
Publication date: 5th May 2022 Genre: Literary Fiction

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My Review

In its story of a diverse, peaceful community transformed by nationalism into a place of fear, death and destruction, it’s impossible to read Black Butterflies without thinking of the current war in Ukraine and, in particular, the siege of Mariupol. Through the experiences of Zora and others like her who remain in the city – increasingly not by inclination but due to the impossibility of doing anything else – the reader witnesses what it was like to live (although ‘exist’ might be a better world) through what became known as the siege of Sarajevo. Cut off from the outside world and at the mercy of snipers and enemy shelling, food shortages, lack of power and fresh water turn a once civilised thriving city into a virtual wasteland. And when winter comes, bringing with it sub-zero tempratures, every day becomes a battle of survival.

For Zora, being deprived of her ability to make art is almost as bad; being an artist is part of her very identity. It’s why the obliteration of cultural sites within the city and along with it the destruction of books, works of art and Zora’s studio has such a devastating effect on her. Gradually, however, the making of art becomes something akin to an act of resistance, of cultural defiance and an example of a determination to ‘carry on’. For Zora, it also provides a distraction from day-to-day concerns and the increasing privations. Indeed, her experiences bring about a change in her art, transforming her style into something more experimental than the landscapes she produced before. Out of necessity she incorporates the detritus of war into her art, producing bold collages.

Amongst the horror and deprivation, there are snatched moments of happiness: a shared meal assembled from scraps of food, the telling of stories around a makeshift fire, a ‘bring your own art’ exhibition, the warmth of another body next to yours.  The possibility of making a perilous escape from the city brings Zora hope that she might be reunited with her family but also a feeling of guilt for others left behind.

Based on the experiences of those who lived through the Bosnian war, including the author’s own family, Black Butterflies demonstrates the strength of the human spirit, the power of art but also, as the people of Ukraine have discovered, that the peace and security we enjoy can vanish in a moment.  To quote from John Buchan’s The Power-House, ‘You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass.’ Black Butterflies is an impressive debut novel.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Duckworth via NetGalley.

In three words: Powerful, moving, thought-provoking

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Priscilla MorrisAbout the Author

Priscilla Morris was born in Cambridge to a Yugoslav mother and a Cornish father. She grew up mostly in London and read Spanish, Italian and Social Anthropology at Cambridge University. After working briefly as a journalist and teaching English in Spain and Brazil during her twenties and early thirties, she received an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing and a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of East Anglia. She now lives between Ireland and Spain and lectures in Creative Writing at University College Dublin. (Photo: Amazon author page)

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#BookReview The Martins by David Foenkinos

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The MartinsAbout the Book

‘Go out into the street and the first person you see will be the subject of your next book.’

This is the challenge a struggling Parisian writer sets himself, imagining his next heroine might be the mysterious young woman who often stands smoking near his apartment … instead it’s octogenarian Madeleine. She’s happy to become the subject of his book – but first she needs to put away her shopping.

Is it really true, the writer wonders, that every life is the stuff of novels, or is his story doomed to be hopelessly banal? As he gets to know Madeleine and her family, he’ll be privy to their secrets: lost loves, marital problems and workplace worries. And he’ll soon realise he is not the impartial bystander he intended to be, but a catalyst for major changes in the lives of his characters.

Format: Paperback (256 pages)    Publisher: Gallic Books
Publication date: 16th June 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

The Martins, translated from the French by Sam Taylor, is a gloriously playful book in which the author, in his role as narrator, takes plenty of self-deprecating swipes at himself and fellow writers. At one point he concedes that the comparison of a writer to a conman is pretty fair and later likens an author to a vampire in their thirst for the tragic elements of a story, observing ‘Let’s be honest, nobody is interested in happiness’.

Initially our narrator intends the subject of his book to be Madeleine, the elderly woman pulling a purple shopping trolley who invites him back for tea. When her daughter, Valerie, assures him (wrongly, as it turns out) that her mother’s memory is fading he becomes quite excited about the ways he could represent this in literary form, such as leaving blank pages or writing contradictory chapters.  Soon, however, he finds the scope of the book expanding to include not only Valerie but her husband Patrick, and their two children, Lola and Jérémie. He also begins to be drawn into the daily domestic life of the family, something he’s not entirely happy about, wondering if he’s ended up with the kind of ‘hackneyed’ characters he could have invented himself or that readers will find the book boring. He needn’t have worried because before long all sorts of events affect the family, in many cases provoked by his introduction into their life. (My favourite was Patrick and the curtains.) The narrator also finds attention turned on his own life.

The book is full of self referential humour. For example, the narrator constantly reminds himself he’s documenting the family’s lives not writing fiction and therefore mustn’t indulge in invention (two Poles says he does). I especially enjoyed the occasional footnotes containing witty asides, memos to himself (‘need to think about that phrase later’), notes recording ‘What I Know About My Characters’, and supplementary information (such as the definition of an aptronym). There’s also a list detailing possible reasons for the actions of one of the characters, the reader being invited to guess which will turn out to be correct. (I was wrong.)

The Martins is charming, funny and thoroughly entertaining.

My thanks to Isabelle at Gallic Books for my advance reading copy.

In three words: Witty, playful, engaging

Try something similar: Red Is My Heart by Antoine Laurain

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David FoenkinosAbout the Author

David Foenkinos was born in Paris in 1974. At the age of sixteen he spent several months in hospital due to a heart condition, and there discovered his love of reading.

He is the author of eighteen novels, which have been translated into more than forty languages. In 2009, sales of his novel Delicacy exceeded one million copies in France; Foenkinos and his brother directed the film adaptation, with Audrey Tautou playing the lead. Charlotte, his fictionalised biography of the young Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon, who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1943, was a finalist for the Prix Goncourt and won the Prix Reandout and the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens; it too sold over one million copies. His novel The Mystery of Henri Pick was adapted for the screen in France in 2018, with Fabrice Luchini and Camille Cottin in the lead roles.

Prior to becoming a writer, he studied jazz, and for a while taught guitar. He has two children, Alice and Victor, and lives in Paris. (Photo: Publisher author page)

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