Tag: NetGalley

#BookReview The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou by Eleni Kyriacou @HoZ_Books @AriesFiction @elenikwriter #UnspeakableActsOfZinaP

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou by Eleni Kyriacou. My thanks to Andrew at Head of Zeus for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy. Do check out the post by my tour buddy for today, Wendy at wendyreadsbooks.

About the Book

THEY HAVE TOLD SO MANY LIES ABOUT ME…

London, 1954. Zina Pavlou, a Cypriot grandmother, waits quietly in the custody of the Metropolitan police. She can’t speak their language, but she understands what their wary looks mean: she has been accused of the brutal murder of her daughter-in-law.

Eva Georgiou, Greek interpreter for the Met, knows how it feels to be voiceless as an immigrant woman. While she works as Zina’s translator, her obsession with the case deepens, and so too does her bond with the accused murderer.

Zina can’t speak for herself. She can’t clear her own name. All she can do is wait for the world to decide…

IS SHE A VICTIM? OR IS SHE A KILLER?

Format: Hardback (384 pages) Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 9th November 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime

Find The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou on Goodreads

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Hive | Amazon UK 
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My Review

The savage killing of Hedy Pavlou is an unspeakable act. The woman charged with her murder, her mother-in-law Zina Pavlou, protests her innocence but since she speaks almost no English she cannot be understood and is effectively silenced. She feels powerless but that’s a situation she’s experienced before in her life.

For Eva, the translator assigned to Zina’s case, initially the job is just some useful extra income. But increasingly she finds herself moved by Zina’s plight, abandoned by her son and her family back in Cyprus. Because Eva knows what it is to feel alone. Soon, merely translating the questions Zina is asked and Zina’s responses to them doesn’t seem enough, particularly as it becomes clear that Zina doesn’t really understand the consequences of being found guilty of the crime. Zina believes she is innocent and all the evidence to the contrary isn’t going to change her mind. So much so, that when offered a possible way out, she rejects it. Her sole wish is to be reunited with her granddaughter, Anna, the only person who has shown her any affection since she came to England.

Given Eva’s role is to speak on behalf of another, it’s ironic that her relationship with her husband, Jimmy, has descended into one in which thoughts and feelings are no longer expressed. Their long walks talking over plans for the future have fallen by the wayside and given way to meals eaten in virtual silence. Because of their different working patterns, they’ve become like ships that pass in the night with no opportunity to talk – to really talk – about the significant thing that has happened in their life. This is increasingly so as Eva becomes progressively more involved in Zina’s case. I found I became just as much invested in Eva’s and Jimmy’s story as I did in Zina’s.

The way the story unfolds means I found myself constantly revisiting the question posed in the book: is Zina a victim or a killer? Could it be possible for both to be true? When we eventually discover what happened on the night of the murder, I think I found my own answer to that question. Even when events earlier in Zina’s life are revealed, I believe you would have to possess a heart of stone not to be moved by the final chapters of the book.

Such is the gripping nature of the story, The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou is a book I could have easily devoured in a day if it weren’t for annoying things like having to eat and sleep. The fact that it’s inspired by a true story made it even more compelling, and ultimately tragic. Expect to hear a lot more about The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou because it’s been selected as one of the books to feature in the new series of BBC2’s Between the Covers.

In three words: Compelling, authentic, moving

Try something similar: The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohammed

About the Author

Credit: Jon Cartwright

Eleni Kyriacou is an award-winning editor and journalist. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, Grazia, and Red, among others. She’s the daughter of Greek Cypriot immigrant parents, and her debut novel, She Came to Stay, was published in 2020. The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou is inspired by the true-crime story of the penultimate woman to be executed in Britain.

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#BookReview Held by Anne Michaels @BloomsburyBooks

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About the Book

1917. On a battlefield near the River Aisne, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory – a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast – as the snow falls.

1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river – alive, but not still whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his ghosts whose messages he cannot understand.

So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later.

Format: eARC (240 pages) Publisher: Bloomsbury Books
Publication date: 9th November 2023 Genre: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction

Find Held on Goodreads

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Hive | Amazon UK 
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My Review

I finished reading Held nearly two weeks ago but have been struggling to write a review of this beautifully poetic but enigmatic book. I say enigmatic because characters’ thoughts often move imperceptibly between past and present. This is particularly the case in the first section of the book.

The book’s title is reflected in numerous ways: the physical act of being held, of being held in another’s memory or the force that holds two things together, such as an apple clutched in a hand. There are scenes of tenderness and intimacy, many of which are incredibly moving. One in particular, in which a woman lies in a bath cradling her dying husband, moved me to tears.

Objects, clothing or traditional customs provide connections between one generation and the next. Photography is a recurring motif. And there is subtle use of repetition with little details that bring to mind previous scenes. For example, a character remembering another person’s gestures – ‘how you held a glass, or a pen, or a fork and knife’ – or habits – ‘whether you opened and read a magazine from the front cover or the back’ – as a way of bringing them back to life, as it were. Or as evidence of intimate knowledge of another person. ‘Her small ways known only to him. That she matched her socks to her scarf even when no one could see them in her boots. That she kept beside the bed, superstitiously unfinished, the novel she had been reading the day they understood they would always be together… The boiled sweet tin she kept her foreign change in.’

Held‘s fluid narrative structure may not be to every reader’s taste but the beauty of the language (unsurprising perhaps given the author is a poet) makes it a rewarding read. Just go with the flow is my advice, as if listening to a piece of classical music that has moments of intensity interspersed with stillness.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Bloomsbury Books via NetGalley.

In three words: Lyrical, moving, intimate

Try something similar: North Woods by Daniel Mason

About the Author

Anne Michaels’ books have been translated into more than forty-five languages and have won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Lannan Award for Fiction and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas. She is the recipient of honorary degrees, the Guggenheim Fellowship and many other honours. She has been shortlisted for the Governor-General’s Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, twice shortlisted for the Giller Prize and twice longlisted for the IMPAC Award. Her novel, Fugitive Pieces, was adapted as a feature film. From 2015 to 2019, she was Toronto’s Poet Laureate. (Photo/bio: Author website)

Connect with Anne
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