Tag: NetGalley

Book Review: Hold by Michael Donkor

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HoldAbout the Book

‘You have to imagine. That’s how I told myself.’
‘Imagine what?’
‘Imagine that you are the kind of girl that can cope with it, even if you are not.’

Belinda knows how to follow the rules. She has learnt the right way to polish water glasses, to wash and fold a hundred handkerchiefs, and to keep a tight lid on memories of the village she left behind when she came to Kumasi to be a housegirl.  Mary is still learning the rules. Eleven years old and irrepressible, the young housegirl-in-training is the little sister Belinda never had.

Amma has had enough of the rules. A straight-A pupil at her exclusive South-London school, she has always been the pride of her Ghanaian parents. Until now. Watching their once-confident teenager grow sullen and wayward, they decide that sensible Belinda might be just the shining example Amma needs.

So Belinda is summoned from Ghana to London, to befriend a troubled girl who shows no desire for her friendship. She encounters a city as bewildering as it is exciting, and as she tries to impose order on her unsettling new world, Belinda’s phonecalls back home to Mary become a lifeline.  As the Brixton summer turns to autumn, Belinda and Amma are surprised to discover the beginnings of an unexpected kinship. But when the cracks in their defences open up, the secrets they have both been holding tight to threaten to seep out…

Format: Audiobook, hardcover, ebook (320 pp.)    Publisher: 4th Estate Books
Published: 12th July 2018                                             Genre: Literary Fiction

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

Find Hold on Goodreads

My Review

The prologue opens at the funeral of an unidentified person, lodging a question in the back of the reader’s mind as the events of earlier that year (2002) unfold in the rest of the book.

Belinda and Mary are housegirls in the home of a wealthy Ghanaians couple who, following custom, the girls refer to as ‘Aunty’ and ‘Uncle’.  (Personally, I would have liked more background about the role and employment/legal status of housegirls in Ghanaian society to help me understand better the relationship.)   Belinda and Mary indulge in gentle, good-humoured bickering as they prepare and serve food to their exacting ‘Aunty’ and ‘Uncle’ alongside other daily household duties such as cleaning, laundry and shopping.  Mary, in particular, has a quirky sense of humour and an optimistic outlook on life while Belinda, a few years Mary’s senior, is conscious of her role as advisor and guide.

Soon, the two girls are separated when Belinda is sent to London to befriend Amma, the daughter of another rich Ghanaian couple, Mrs and Mrs Otuo.  Belinda’s arrival into the confusion of the airport is conveyed in an impressionistic way. ‘A gentle voice came down in a different language.  Then another.  And then another. […] Strip lighting overhead, black arrows on yellow, corridors with moving floors.  […] Queuing.  Strip lighting overhead, black arrows on yellow, corridors with moving floors.  […] The beeping.  The thing to do next: reach the gathering at the tracks that went in a big loop.  Stooped older women stood behind concerned men.  Bored toddlers harassed teddies’ limbs. Lots of tutting at watches, followed by sighing when suitcases came through the lazy mouth.’  Admit it; you’re there with Belinda at the purgatory that is Baggage Reclaim.

On the journey to her new home, Belinda wonders at the unfamiliar sights of London. ‘…London was one big black road with cars.  The motorway gradually thinned out into smaller roads, where there were stores selling rows of plastic bodies – some naked, some clothed – frozen in the middle of dances.’ 

The author takes the reader through the trajectory of the two girls’ relationship from Amma’s initial suspicion of Belinda’s motives, expressed through a sullen refusal to communicate – ‘…the idea of a visitor itched at her.  No privacy.  Someone watching, asking questions.  Someone else to think about.’ – to Belinda’s gradual breaking down of the emotional barriers Amma has erected, guided by Mary’s sage advice in their periodic funny, chatty phone calls.  ‘My sister, if one is a quiet, you have to find clever tricks for to stop them being as that.  Sneak into her to make her chat properly.’

In fact, soon the roles seem to be reversed as Amma becomes a support to Belinda as she struggles to cope with inner demons of her own.  These promising developments are swiftly halted when a revelation by Amma conflicts with everything Belinda has been taught about right and wrong.   Soon after, a tragic event sees Belinda return to Ghana and in the final section of the book the story picks up the narrative from the prologue.

The book is liberally sprinkled with Ghanaian dialect words that had me making frequent use of the glossary.  Conversations are rendered in a distinctive style that I’m aware some reviewers of West African heritage have criticised as inauthentic.  I’m in no position to judge but I would say that, authentic or not, it did give me a clear sense that I was reading about characters whose background and ethnicity is different to my own.  On that subject, I did enjoy learning about Ghanaian culture: clothing, hairstyles, social customs, entertainment, commerce and food.

Hold is a character-driven story about female friendship, exploring your own identity – cultural, sexual, social – and finding a direction in life.  I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, 4th Estate, and NetGalley, in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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Try something similar…Gravel Heart by Abdulrazak Gurnah (read my review here)

About the Author

Michael Donkor was born in London, to Ghanaian parents. He studied English at Wadham College, Oxford, undertook a Masters in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway and now teaches English Literature to secondary school students. Many of the issues in Hold are close to his heart, and his writing won him a place on the Writers’ Centre Norwich Inspires Scheme in 2014, where he received a year’s mentoring from Daniel Hahn.

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Book Review: The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen

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The Lost Letters of William WoolfAbout the Book

Lost letters have only one hope for survival . . .

Inside the Dead Letters Depot in East London, William Woolf is one of thirty letter detectives who spend their days solving mysteries: Missing postcodes, illegible handwriting, rain-smudged ink, lost address labels, torn packages, forgotten street names – they are all the culprits of missed birthdays, broken hearts, unheard confessions, pointless accusations, unpaid bills and unanswered prayers.

When William discovers letters addressed simply to ‘My Great Love’ his work takes on new meaning. Written by a woman to a soul mate she hasn’t met yet, the missives stir William in ways he didn’t know were possible. Soon he begins to wonder: could William be her great love?

William must follow the clues in Winter’s letters to solve his most important mystery yet: the human heart.

Format: Hardcover, ebook, audiobook (336 pp.)    Publisher: Michael Joseph
Published: 12th July 2018                                              Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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

Find The Lost Letters of William Woolf on Goodreads

My Review

‘More than kisses, letters mingle souls.’ John Donne

From the description, I was expecting this book to concentrate a lot more on the attempts of William and his fellow ‘letter detectives’ to reunite the ‘lost letters’ of the title with their intended recipients.  (The one ‘reunion’ we do get to witness, of an object with someone very significant for its previous owner, I found so touching.) Personally, I would also have liked to learn a bit more about William’s colleagues as we get only teasing insights into their own particular, idiosyncratic interests – Trevor and his philately, Marjorie with her lonely hearts, and so on.   I found myself thinking how much easier it would be today with access to the Internet but, as the book is set in 1989, the letter detectives have to rely on telephone directories, other paper-based research methods and not a little gut instinct.  Incidentally, I loved the description of the Dead Letters Depot as ‘this museum of missed messages’.

What I did enjoy was the reminder of a time when people communicated in writing and, from the evidence of some of the lost letters William deals with, weren’t afraid to express their feelings honestly and eloquently.   William himself wonders, ‘How much would be left unsaid if people were devoid of the opportunity that pen and paper offered to speak from a safe distance?’ Really this epitomises the issue at the heart of the problems William and his wife, Clare, are experiencing in their relationship.  I have to say at this point that I thought the way the author explores the ups and downs of their marriage shows great insight and is the real achievement of this book.

It’s a portrait of a marriage that has gone slightly astray between two people who, when it comes to it, still care for each other.  William and Clare have lost the ability to communicate openly and honestly about their feelings, their hopes and ambitions.   Clare recalls, ‘In the past, theirs had been a gentle love, not prone to arguments, accusations, recriminations.’   But now, ‘Their words rushed at each other like foot soldiers, focused only on their own purpose: not to listen, just to be heard.’  William and Clare have allowed the freedom and joy of their early years together – parties, madcap adventures, laughter and shared interests – to be replaced with the dull, drudgery of domestic life: whose turn is it to put out the bins, who was supposed to buy fresh milk, when is that mirror finally going to get put up on the wall?  Those who have been in a relationship for any length of time will probably recognise this (although will hopefully have found ways to overcome it).

William’s discovery of the letters addressed to ‘My Great Love’ really brings home to him the disappointing change in his relationship with Clare.  After all, wasn’t Clare once his ‘Great Love’?  But is she still?  The reader gets a sense that part of the problem may be William is still surprised even after all these years that the beautiful, talented Clare should have chosen him.  Clare’s frustration with their relationship takes her in a different direction fuelled partly by childhood experiences that haunt her, chiefly a fear (without any real evidence to support it) that she will make the same mistakes as her mother.

I loved the concept of the ‘letter detectives’ and, although I didn’t get as much of their detective work as I’d hoped for, I admired the insightful way the author explored the stresses and strains of the relationship between William and Clare.  Although I enjoyed the book, I confess to being left a little perplexed, and slightly let down, by its open-ended conclusion.   I guess it does allow the reader to write their own ending for William and Clare.  I know the one I wanted.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of publishers, Michael Joseph, and NetGalley in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Tender, insightful, emotional

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Helen CullenAbout the Author

Helen Cullen is an Irish writer living in London. She worked at RTE (Ireland’s national broadcaster) for seven years before moving to London in 2010. In the UK, Helen established a career as an events and engagement specialist before joining the Google UK marketing team in 2015.

The first draft of her debut novel The Lost Letters of William Woolf was written while completing the Guardian/UEA novel writing programme under the mentorship of Michèle Roberts. Helen holds an M.A. Theatre Studies from UCD and is currently completing an M.A. English Literature at Brunel University.

Helen is now writing full-time and working on her second novel.

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