Tag: Reviews

#BlogTour #BookReview Crow Court by Andy Charman @RandomTTours @unbounders

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Crow Court PB BT PosterWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Crow Court by Andy Charman. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Unbound for my digital review copy. Do check out the posts by my tour buddies for today, Peter at Peter Turns The Pages and Lizzie at chapmanschaptersandpages.

Crow CourtAbout the Book

Spring, 1840. In the Dorset market town of Wimborne Minster, a young choirboy drowns himself. Soon after, the choirmaster – a belligerent man with a vicious reputation – is found murdered, in a discovery tainted as much by relief as it is by suspicion. The gaze of the magistrates falls on four local men, whose decisions will reverberate through the community for years to come.

So begins the chronicle of Crow Court, unravelling over fourteen delicately interwoven episodes, the town of Wimborne their backdrop: a young gentleman and his groom run off to join the army; a sleepwalking cordwainer wakes on his wife’s grave; desperate farmhands emigrate. We meet the composer with writer’s block; the smuggler; a troupe of actors down from London; and old Art Pugh, whose impoverished life has made him hard to amuse.

Meanwhile, justice waits…

Format: Paperback (336 pages)         Publisher: Unbound
Publication date: 3rd February 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Crow Court on Goodreads

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Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

A cross between a historical crime novel and a collection of short stories, Crow Court is inventive in structure and style. If, like me, you don’t get on with the first chapter which is written in the present tense using short, clipped sentences, do stick with it because, with a few exceptions, subsequent chapters are more conventional in style.

Set in the small Dorset town of Wimborne, the story unfolds over 20 years starting in 1840 with the murder of a choirmaster. If you’re looking for a conventional whodunnit, you won’t find it here. Crow Court is less about finding the solution to the murder of Matthew Ellis, Wimborne’s choirmaster, than the consequences of the event over the months and years that follow. In fact, although the reader knows that a murder has occurred, the rest of the locals don’t. They just know the choirmaster has disappeared. Since he was known locally as ‘Buggermaster’ and was thought to have caused the suicide of a choir boy, not many people are that bothered by his disappearance. However rumours are the currency of a small village and because of their actions or their connection to the choirmaster, four men come under suspicion.

What follows is a kind of 6 Degrees of Separation as various characters appear in a series of interlinked stories. Some of the connections are quite tenuous – they know someone who knew someone else who got their boots made by the village cordwainer – whilst others are more direct. It was fun spotting names that sounded familiar and then thinking, ‘Ah, I remember, he’s the brother of so-and-so’s friend’. Along the way, we learn quite a lot about Dorset life in the 1840s and 1850s, as well as about the local landscape.

One of the interesting features of the book is the way the author plays with different narrative styles. A good example is in the chapter, ‘The Third Person’. Divided into three parts, the first is written in the second person, the second in the first person and the final part – you guessed it – in the third person. And some of the stories, such as ‘Art’s Last Laugh’, feature Dorset dialect. (There’s a helpful glossary at the end of the book for those who don’t know a gawk hammer from a doughbeaked cowheart.)

Some of the stories border on digressions and could easily be read as standalone short stories. ‘The Voice O’ Strangers’ which describes the experience of a ferocious storm in the South Atlantic is one example. However there’s (just) enough of the mystery threaded through each of them, or connections with key characters, to maintain the reader’s interest and they are all carefully crafted. When the culprit is revealed I suspect I won’t be the only reader to go back and read the opening chapters again.

In three words: Inventive, engaging, characterful

Try something similar: The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey

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Andy Charman Author PicAbout the Author

Andy Charman was born in Dorset and grew up near Wimborne Minster, where Crow Court is set. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including Pangea and Cadenza. Crow Court is his first novel, which he worked on at the Arvon course at The Hurst in Shropshire in 2018. Andy lives in Surrey and is available for interview, comment and events.

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#BookReview Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson

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Mouth To MouthAbout the Book

A struggling author is stuck at the airport, his flight endlessly delayed. As he stares at the departure board and browses the shops, he bumps into a former classmate of his, Jeff, who is waiting for the same flight. The charismatic Jeff invites the narrator to drinks in the First Class lounge, and there, swearing him to secrecy, begins telling him the fascinating and disturbing story of his life, starting with a pivotal incident from his youth.

Alone on the beach, he noticed a man drowning in the rough surf, his fate resting in Jeff’s hands. Overwhelmed but ultimately determined to help, Jeff rescued and resuscitated the unconscious man. Unexpectedly traumatized by the event, Jeff develops a fixation on the man he saved, sure that they are now inextricably linked. Upon discovering that the man, Francis, is a renowned art dealer, Jeff finds a job at his gallery in hopes of connecting with Francis and processing the event. Even though Francis seems to have no recollection of the incident, he takes Jeff under his wing, and Jeff becomes increasingly involved in Francis’s life, dating his daughter and attending important art world parties. As the two grow closer, Jeff notices some of Francis’s more unsavoury characteristics – his tendency to cheat artists and carry on affairs – but, convinced that their encounter on the beach is fated, brushes his concerns aside and continues to pursue a deeper connection with Francis, even as the nature of their relationship grows darker…

Format: Hardback (192 pages)      Publisher: Atlantic Books
Publication date: 3rd March 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Mystery

Find Mouth to Mouth on Goodreads

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

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My Review

My first thought is that I’m not sure the long blurb does the book any favours – personally, I would have limited it to the first paragraph – as it discloses quite a lot of what happens although, admittedly, not the final climactic reveal. Having said that this is a novel which exudes a pervading air of menace and in which the author skilfully ratchets up the tension bit by bit.

Jeff’s perhaps natural desire to find out more about the man whose life he saved becomes more than mere curiosity but something bordering on obsession. Jeff finds himself drawn closer and closer to Francis Arsenault, an art dealer with a supposed remarkable ‘eye’ for what will sell, a skill that doesn’t seem to extend to recognising the man who saved his life.  However, as Jeff discovers, Francis is a master in the art of maintaining a double life (Francis Arsenault isn’t even his real name) and of using others for his own ends. The world of art dealing thus makes the ideal environment for him to inhabit. ‘The only reason Francis is in this business is because it’s the most easily manipulated market in the world, and he’s a master manipulator.’

The book is in essence about consequences as Jeff finds himself carried along by the train of events, events in a way he enabled by saving Francis’s life. As he confides, ‘I wanted him to be good, though, I wanted to feel that I had done a good thing not only for him but for all the people he came in contact with.’ As Jeff’s life becomes more closely intertwined with Francis’s through his relationship with Francis’s daughter, Chloe, he finds his loyalties tested and begins to wonder just what he unleashed when he saved Francis’s life. What if Francis is far from good? Is Jeff then implicated in Francis’s deceit?

But, of course, we only have Jeff’s word for all of this. The narrator begins to wonder about Jeff’s motivation for telling him the story. ‘Was it excavation, though, Jeff getting everything off his chest? Or was he painting for me a kind of self-portrait? And what is a self-portrait if not self-serving?’

Mouth to Mouth is a compulsively readable, deliciously disquieting little novel with a sting in its tail.

I received a review copy courtesy of Atlantic Books via Readers First.

In three words: Taut, compelling, dark

Try something similar: The Executioner Weeps by Frédéric Dard

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Antoine WilsonAbout the Author

Antoine Wilson is the author of the novels Panorama City and The Interloper. His work has appeared in the Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, Best New American Voices and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications, and h is a contributing editor for A Public Space.  A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and recipient of a Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin, he lives with his family in Los Angeles.

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