Tag: NetGalley

#BookReview Byron and Shelley by Glenn Haybittle

whatcathyreadnext

About the Book

The characters in Glenn Haybittle’s first collection of short stories are all caught in moments of life that bring about a revelation of identity.

A young woman who, after the war, catches sight of the guard who knocked to the ground her blind grandfather on the platform at Auschwitz. The backstory of the man accused of murdering Martin Luther King. The experience of a young girl on Kristallnacht and the subsequent tragic upheavals in her life. A dance teacher accused of sexually abusing one of his young students. A man constrained to return to his mother and look after her while she goes through dementia. A CIA operative grooming a patsy to take the blame for an assassination.

Format: eARC (285 pages) Publisher: Cheyne Walk
Publication date: 16th October 2023 Genre: Short Stories

Find Byron and Shelley on Goodreads

Purchase links 
Hive | Amazon UK 
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

The stories in this collection vary in subject matter and location, and, in particular, in length. Initially I found it hard to detect in all of them the underlying theme of identity described in the blurb. However, gradually I did start to see the connections, some of them obvious (but not necessarily apparent at the time of reading an individual story), some more subtle and others just the odd mention of a name or place. An example of the first is the stories entitled ‘The Patsy’ and ‘Raoul’ whose sinister mood only increases when you read the second story.

There were two standout stories for me. The first was the very moving ‘Mother Love’ in which a son who is caring for his mother suffering with dementia, who has become ‘like a puzzling anagram of herself’, struggles to come to terms with the change in his role, the intimacy of the tasks he has to carry out and the difficult decisions he faces.

The second was ‘The Girls of his Youth’ in which the reader witnesses the chaotic thoughts of a man, possibly also suffering from dementia. Written in a style akin to stream of consciousness, he continually harks back to his past punctuated by a refrain that occurs over and over again. ‘The girls of his youth. The girls of youth break his heart. The girls of his youth make his heart whole again.’

I also enjoyed the first story in the collection, ‘Archaeology’, in which a recently widowed man has to deal with feelings of guilt about his wife’s death and his acute sense of loss. ‘Bereavement is sometimes like wading across a succession of snowfields with no landmark in sight. You are a lone small figure in a vast barren landscape. Other times it’s like a Ferris wheel ride. Like being strapped into a swinging spinning bucket. The dizzying dislocation from familiar grounded reality. The brain regrouping, re-coding, re-evaluating, adjusting itself to a bewildering change in the engrained mental landscape.’ He is also coming to terms with the change in his role, that ‘he’s no longer a husband, just a father’, and gradually realising his limitations as a sole parent to his two young daughters.

The story that gives the collection its title is the longest in the book. Subtitled ‘Brits abroad’ it might just as well have be entitled ‘Brits behaving badly’. Jake arrives in Italy and meets Felix, an actor who has recently played Byron in a film and Ivan, who is writing a biography of Shelley. Alongside their drink and drug fuelled escapades they attempt to discover the whereabouts of a young woman who has mysteriously disappeared. The story’s conclusion is a clever echo of events in the lives of the poets of its title.

The book contains some wonderful descriptive writing and imaginative metaphors. ‘The waves embroider the shingled beach with a ragged silvered stitching; the percussive assent they make as they break and the lamentation as they withdraw over the pebbles seems to come from a distance in time as well as space.’

Byron and Shelley is an interesting and varied collection of stories, with a few misses but also with several that would repay rereading.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Cheyne Walk via NetGalley.

In three words: Intriguing, insightful, diverse

Try something similar: The Wooden Hill by Jamie Guiney

About the Author

Glenn Haybittle is a translator and freelance writer from London who lives in Florence. He currently translates academic books for the Florence University and Italian history books for a Florentine publisher. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Glenn
Goodreads

#BookReview Adama by Lavie Tidhar @HoZ_Books

whatcathyreadnext2 Comments

About the Book

Front cover of book Adama by Lavie Tidhar

There is no land without blood , and I water this land with the blood of my men.

Ruth’s family were in Budapest when the Nazis came.

Now Ruth is in Palestine, amid the bare hills inland from Haifa, breaking the rocky soil of an unyielding land before it breaks her.

With her comrades, her fellow kibbutzniks, she will build a better world. There will be green grass, orange trees and pomegranates, a land that is their own and no one else’s.

So they till their fields, dig their wells, build their homes and forge a new way of living, fiercely proud of their shared pursuit of a dream.

But as one generation begets another, the dream unravels, twisted into a dark tapestry of secrets and lies; sacrificed for revenge, forbidden love and murder.

Format: Hardback (400 pages) Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 14th September 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Adama on Goodreads

Purchase links 
Bookshop.org 
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK 
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

Until I read other reviews of the book, I didn’t realise Adama was the second in a trilogy, the follow-up to Maror. However, I don’t think it’s essential to have read the earlier book although it would probably be helpful to fill in any gaps in your knowledge about the foundation of the state of Israel. Big gaps, in my case.

Having read the chapter that opens part one of the book, you might be forgiven for thinking – as I did – that Adama was a thriller not a work of historical fiction. In fact, you’d be partially right because throughout the book there is intrigue, betrayal and drama as well as a moving story charting the experiences of generations of one family. It made it a page-turner for me.

Following the death of her mother, Hanna finds a box containing old photographs and documents that sees her embark on a search for information about Esther’s past and her family history. It also provides a distraction from the recent breakdown of a relationship. Thereafter the book moves back and forth over the decades recounting events in the life of Ruth, her family, her lovers and other members of her kibbutz with the full picture only gradually emerging.

At times, Ruth’s utter commitment to preserving the kibbutz seems to border on obsession, especially as it becomes clear what she has been prepared to do to in order to protect it. She’s courageous but also single-minded, even ruthless. For her, the end justifies the means. At one point Ruth says, ‘I gave up everything for this land… I sacrificed’. But others’ sacrifice is giving up their lives. Their stories are dramatic, powerful and sometimes harrowing.

The book depicts Israel’s often violent struggle for survival including the brutality of British occupation during which refugees attempting to cross to Palestine from Europe in small boats were intercepted and sent to camps in Cyprus. (Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.)

I had a vague concept of what a kibbutz was but had no idea of the extent of their collective nature when they were first established. ‘They believed in sharing – land, crops, property and love. The kibbutz was going to be a new way of life… No more jealousy and no more ownership of things, but somewhere where things could be finally different.’ One example of that difference is that children lived separately from their parents (who had no financial responsibility for them) and were raised and educated communally. The book explores the conflict between the natural instincts of motherhood and commitment to the principles of the kibbutz. Ruth’s sister, Shosana, provides a counterpoint to Ruth’s unwavering beliefs. Initially a place of refuge for Shosana after her experiences during the Second World War, the kibbutz becomes a source of savagery.

By the end of the book, Hanna may not have learned everything she hoped but author leaves the reader with a striking image of the characters they have come to know.

The publisher’s description of Adama as a ‘sweeping historical epic’ is spot on. At the moment, it looks a dead cert to be among my books of the year and it has made me keen to explore the author’s backlist, including reading Maror.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley.

In three words: Powerful, gripping, moving

About the Author

Lavie Tidhar was born just ten miles from Armageddon and grew up on a kibbutz in northern Israel. He has since made his home in London, where he is currently a Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence at Richmond University. He won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize for Best British Fiction, was twice longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger Award and the Rome Prize. He co-wrote Art and War: Poetry, Pulp and Politics in Israeli Fiction, and is a columnist for the Washington Post. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Lavie
Website | Twitter