Tag: literary fiction

Book Review: The Wooden Hill by Jamie Guiney

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The Wooden HillAbout the Book

As we climb the wooden hill to bed each night we trace our life’s journey from birth, then each step toward death, the final sleep.

This collection of short stories, by Jamie Guiney, explores what it is to be human at every stage of life, from the imminence of a new birth in ‘We Knew You Before You Were Born’, through to adolescence and the camaraderie of youthful friendships as portrayed in ‘Sam Watson & The Penny World Cup’.

Ultimately, all of our lives stride towards old age and the certainty of death, as poignantly evoked in the title story, ‘The Wooden Hill’.

Format: Paperback (176 pp.)    Publisher: époque press
Published: 30th November 2018   Genre: Literary Fiction, Short Stories

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 Wooden Hill on Goodreads

My Review

Although I was drawn to some of the stories in this collection more than others (as is often the way with short story collections), I found something to admire in all of them: a thoughtful idea, a descriptive phrase, an imaginative metaphor or something that provoked a personal memory.  I also enjoyed the use of different points of view – first, second and third person – to provide variety.

If pushed to pick favourites, I’d probably go for the touching ‘We Knew You Before You Were Born’ and the deeply felt and lyrical ‘She Will Be My Joy’ – which just goes to prove what an incurable old romantic I am.  Other highlights:

  • ‘Peas’ – a Christmas Eve ritual, including Dad watching a film version of what sounds to me like A Christmas Carol (an annual favourite of mine)
  • ‘Sam Watson and the Penny World Cup’ – featuring the weekly ritual of ‘mushy tomato soup’ (it was tomato soup with baked beans in our house) followed by a visit to the local sweet shop, requiring the thoughtful allocation of pocket money worthy of a Chancellor of the Exchequer
  • ‘The Cowboy’ – in which what seems like a tall tale proves to be possibly dark reality
  • ‘Window’ – slight in length but full of impact with an unsettling atmosphere
  • ‘Ultreia’ – descriptive and reflective and which conjured up for me thoughts of The Pilgrim’s Progress
  • ‘Christmas’ – heart-warming but tinged with melancholy

I also enjoyed the imaginative use of language to describe objects, landscape and weather.   A few examples:

‘Night birthed its morning.’
‘The clothesline is dancing.  A tiny, imaginary tightrope walker is stepping amongst the pegs.’
‘Notice the awakening sky, its slow yawn into pastel blue, its broad halo of orange and yellow.’
‘It was a hot smudge of an afternoon…’
‘Winter’s raw exhale flogs his face and body.’   

Although the title of the collection evokes the childhood phrase ‘up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire’, the stories in The Wooden Hill are definitely not bedtime stories.  They explore all aspects of our lives from ‘cradle to grave’: coming to terms with confusing or unfamiliar feelings, testing boundaries, bonds of friendship and shared experiences, romantic and familial love, fear and loss.  The stories chart the steps we all take in life – tentative sometimes, requiring a firm hold of the banister on occasions or a gentle push from behind to get us to the next step.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of publishers, époque press.

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In three words: Intriguing, imaginative, thoughtful

Try something similar…Happiness is a Collage by Gita V. Reddy (read my review here)

Jamie GuineyAbout the Author

Jamie Guiney is a literary fiction writer from County Armagh, Northern Ireland. His debut short story collection The Wooden Hill is due for publication in 2018 with époque press. Jamie’s short stories have been published internationally and he has been nominated twice for the ‘The Pushcart Prize.’

Jamie is a graduate of the Faber & Faber Writing Academy and has twice been a judge for short story competition ‘The New Rose Prize.’ His work has been backed by the Northern Ireland Arts Council through several Individual Artist Awards.

Jamie favours the short story genre, believing it to be the closest written prose to the traditional art of storytelling. [Photo credit: Goodreads author page]

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Book Review: Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson

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Meet Me at the MuseumAbout the Book

In Denmark, Professor Anders Larsen, an urbane man of facts, has lost his wife and his hopes for the future. On an isolated English farm, Tina Hopgood is trapped in a life she doesn’t remember choosing. Both believe their love stories are over.

Brought together by a shared fascination with the Tollund Man, subject of Seamus Heaney’s famous poem, they begin writing letters to one another. And from their vastly different worlds, they find they have more in common than they could have imagined. As they open up to one another about their lives, an unexpected friendship blooms. But then Tina’s letters stop coming, and Anders is thrown into despair. How far are they willing to go to write a new story for themselves?

Format: Hardcover, ebook (224 pp.)    Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 17th May 2018  Genre: Literary Fiction, Contemporary 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 Meet Me at the Museum on Goodreads

My Review

In her debut novel, written in epistolary form, Anne Youngson not only gives the reader an insight into the thoughts and feelings of Tina and Anders but explores the act of letter writing itself.   What emerges from their correspondence is that the act of transforming thoughts into words can have a therapeutic, even cathartic, quality.  In one of her early letters, Tina writes, ‘Please be aware, I am writing to you to make sense of myself.’  Later she confides, ‘I don’t know where these thoughts come from except that when I sit down to write to you it seems as if all the strings holding my conscious mind together come loose and let me sub-conscious leak out.’

Both Tina and Anders seem to be  trying to make sense of things in their own mind and in this respect their letters are an unburdening and at times have a confessional quality.  For example, Anders writes at one point: ‘You have made it possible for me to talk of things I have never spoken of before, and to understand what has been hidden.’

Of course, Tina and Anders are fortunate to have found a correspondent so in tune with their own reflective, thoughtful nature.  As Anders says, ‘We have written at length and thoughtfully, and to do this, we have both had to read the letters we received in a thoughtful way.’

Tina and Anders share an explorative, questioning approach to their lives and experiences in their letters although Anders is initially more analytical and less willing to share his emotions than Tina.  However this changes in the course of their correspondence.  The way they open and sign-off their letters reflects a growing informality and affection and a sense of the mutual support, perhaps even dependence, the letters provide.  As Tina confides at one point, ‘I do not know how I would cope without your letters.’

Meet Me at the Museum is a tender story of friendship but also of regret, disappointment and the questioning we probably have all done at some time about life decisions we’ve taken – wondering about the road not travelled, so to speak.  As Tina says, ‘We have been talking to each other about where life went, and if the way we each spent it was the way we meant to have spent it or would have chosen to spend it if we had known when we made our choices  what the other choices were…’

The conclusion left this reader not disappointed but slightly sad.  However, I’d like to think that the ending I hoped for did take place in some alternative literary universe.

You can find out about the Silkeborg Museum on their website and more about The Tollund Man here.

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In three words: Intimate, reflective, moving

Try something similar…Dear Mrs. Bird by A J Pearce (read my review here)

About the Author

Anne Youngson worked for many years in senior management in the car industry before embarking on a creative career as a writer. She has supported many charities in governance roles, including Chair of the Writers in Prison Network, which provided residencies in prisons for writers. She lives in Oxfordshire and is married with two children and three grandchildren to date. Meet Me at the Museum is her debut novel, which is due to be published around the world.

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