Catherine Steadman: Something In The Water

Published By: Simon & Schuster UK (26 July 2018)

Buy It: here

What The Blurb Says:

Erin is a documentary filmmaker on the brink of a professional breakthrough; Mark a handsome investment banker with a bright future. They seem to have it all, until Mark loses his job and cracks start to appear in their perfect life.

But they’re determined to make it work. They book their dream honeymoon and trust that things will work out – after all, they have each other.

On the tropical island of Bora Bora Mark takes Erin scuba diving. Mark is with her – she knows he’ll keep her safe. Everything will be fine. Until they find something in the water.

Erin and Mark decide to keep their discovery a secret — after all, if no one else knows, who would be hurt? Their decision will trigger a devastating chain of events…  which will endanger everything they hold dear.

What I Say:

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster UK for an advance e-copy of Something In The Water, in advance for an honest review.

There has been so much buzz about this novel already, and at the time of reading and writing my blog, Reese Witherspoon has selected Something In The Water as her June Book Club Selection, so with credentials like that, you know that this is going to be something special!

The other issue, is that the opening chapter sets the scene for the whole novel, and without giving away any massive plot spoilers, suffice it to say, it’s one of the best first chapters I have ever read.  That unsettling start, sets the tone for the entire novel – nothing is as it seems, and everyone is out for something.

To make sure we understand how we have got to that point, we move back to the very start of the story – when Erin and Mark met and fell in love.

Erin Locke and Mark Roberts seem like the couple who have it all – she is a film maker about to make a career changing documentary, and he is an investment banker who is on a career high.  Life for the two of them is perfect – until Mark loses his job, and the reality of him not being able to find a new one suddenly starts to hit home.

They are supposed to be getting married, but both realise that the expense of a wedding, coupled with an expensive mortgage and no immediate job offer for Mark, their once Instagram Perfect life looks like it could be snatched away from them.

Erin is making a documentary about the lives of three prison inmates – Holli – a young woman who committed arson during the London Riots, Alexa – who assisted in her terminally ill mother’s suicide and Eddie – who has mob connections and a sentence for money laundering.  It also seems that Eddie appears to have numerous connections to the criminal underworld and has an intense interest in what Erin is doing – in her personal life as well as in her career..

In an attempt to try and reconnect and decide how they can move forward with Mark out of work, they decide to go on their honeymoon to Bora Bora.  After a horrendous storm, Mark and Erin go scuba diving.  On the way back, something hits the side of the boat, and they decide to bring the seemingly innocuous duffel bag on board.

After an agonising should they, shouldn’t they debate, Erin and Mark open the bag, and realise that the four packs of contents inside, have the power to change their lives forever.

From that moment on, Something In The Water shifts up another gear as Erin and Mark’s life changes irrevocably.  The seemingly stable and perhaps smug world they have inhabited is shattered, and the question that dominates the novel is – when your life is on the line, who can you really trust?

Mark and Erin are forced to make a number of decisions – some measured, many rash,  and are becoming increasingly out of their depth, in a world of silent voicemail messages and evil people. They start to question not only what they have got into,  but also the strength they have within themselves to ensure that they can survive.

Of course, I could tell you what was in the duffel bag, and what happens to Erin and Mark, but as any good book blogger knows, that is not how I operate!  So, all I can say, is you need to get a copy of this book – because I guarantee that everyone will be talking about it this Summer.

Something In The Water is a sumptuous read, packed with numerous cinematic scenes and a plot that will make your head spin.  It is brilliantly written, the characters are flawed but relatable, and it is truly ambitious in its scope and premise.  Catherine Steadman has achieved that rare thing in a novel, where you care deeply what happens to Erin, but also understand at how in times of crisis, people will do whatever it takes to protect what really matters to them – whatever the cost…

I loved it.

Katy Mahood: Entanglement

Published By: The Borough Press

Buy It: here

What The Blurb Says:

2007: at the end of a momentous day, Charlie, Stella and John cross paths under the arches of Paddington Station. As Charlie locks eyes with Stella across the platform, a brief, powerful spark of recognition flashes between them. But they are strangers … aren’t they?

Plunging back thirty years we watch as, unknown to them all, the lives of Stella and John, and Charlie and his girlfriend Beth, are pulled ever closer, an invisible thread connecting them across the decades and through London’s busy streets.

For Stella, becoming a young mother in the 1970s puts an end to her bright academic career in a way John can’t seem to understand. Meanwhile Charlie gambles all future happiness with Beth when his inner demons threaten to defeat him.

In rhythmic and captivating prose, Katy Mahood effortlessly interweaves the stories of these two families who increasingly come to define one another in the most vital and astounding ways. With this soaring debut, she explores the choices and encounters that make up a lifetime, reminding us just how closely we are all connected.

What I Say:

“A collision of particles, a change that lasts forever, so that even far apart they respond to one another.”

I was lucky enough to receive a proof copy of Entanglement from Harper Insider, and loved it so much I just had to write a blog post about it. However, this is not an easy novel to blog about, because it is so richly layered and complex. I was genuinely concerned about how I could possibly do it justice!

Entanglement tells the story of Charlie, Beth, Stella and John. The city of London, glorious and imposing, provides the ever present backdrop to their lives. It is throughout the book in landmarks, in street names, in the routes the characters take to different places and it is under London’s watchful eye that the novel unfolds.

However, it would be too simplistic to say that this is just a novel about the lives of four characters. Entanglement is so much more. Katy Mahood asks the question; are we really as separate as we believe? Isn’t there a chance that our lives may intersect with many more people than we realise and that our range of human interactions is far wider than we can comprehend.

The novel moves us through the lives of the four main characters. The narrative shifts between the relationship timelines of the two couples and we are party to the very different lives that they lead. Stella and John marry after Stella finds out she is pregnant. Charlie is in love with Beth, and despite being not exactly what her parents want in a future son in law, they marry too.

One of the many themes that is present throughout the novel is one which was very pertinent for me; that of the role of women in marriage and society. Stella is a creative and intelligent woman, whose academic and professional ambitions are sidelined while she at times, reluctantly fulfills the role of wife and mother. Ironically, her passion is writing about female writers whose voices need to be heard. She has to put her own hopes and dreams on hold while she supports John, a quantum physicist as his own academic career (a clever plot device that he is studying the field of entanglement) soars, culminating in him winning the coveted Fitzpatrick Medal for Physics.

Katy describes Stella’s frustrations at the limitations she faces, and deftly brings them to the surface of the novel. As a reader in 2018, I completely sympathised with the internal struggles she faces, as she longs for some sort of recognition as Stella, as oppose to a wife or mother. Unfortunately, Stella’s situation was commonplace then, and even more frustratingly, in 2018, this is still an issue which is relevant to many, many women.

Charlie meanwhile, has to deal with the aftermath of his sister’s death and his own injuries after the pub they were in is bombed. From the start of the novel, there is a charm and vulnerability to Charlie, who seems to be always working to create the stable family unit he lacked in his childhood. This is not to say he is perfect, but his mother’s alcoholism and the fact he has lost his sister, means that Charlie has experienced so much in his life already. He always seems to be just on the edge of losing his grip on the world around him. When Beth loses the baby they are both desperate for, Charlie starts to drink and stray from Beth.

As time goes on, Beth starts to correctly suspect that Charlie is having an affair. After she discovers she is finally pregnant, and gives birth to a daughter, she and Charlie decide to reconcile and try to raise Effie. Interestingly, as Charlie remains sober, Beth feels increasingly trapped in her marriage, frustrated by her teaching career and wanting to her academic potential.

Her desire to become a psychotherapist sees Charlie now in a position where he is unsure about his wife’s love and commitment to their marriage. All the time, Katy shifts the narrative focus between the characters, but it is always natural, and the dynamics flow easily between the different people, couples and world around them.

What distinguishes and makes Entanglement a must read novel, is the intricate plotting of the fleeting connections the characters make without ever truly knowing each other. Stella and John see Charlie in the aftermath of the bombing, Charlie sees Stella and John with their daughter, and in one scene, all the characters are at the same carnival. This is such a clever premise, that permeates the whole novel, but never seems staged or forced. They all interact and at points acknowledge each other, making snap judgements about the people they see in front of them, without knowing the reality of their lives.

Stella and John’s marriage is also tested, by a devastating illness that John suffers, and again we see how hard Stella works to ensure that everything stays intact, in spite of how unfulfilled she feels. For Stella, she finds her release in music, which also brings her finally emotionally back to John, as Charlie and Beth move further apart, connected only by Effie. As the novel progresses, and the characters age, we see how their lives shift and change, moving in ways that no one could have predicted.

Hope and Effie, the daughters of Stella and John and Charlie and Beth, move the novel towards its eloquent and hopeful conclusion, proving how powerful the theory of Entanglement is.

“Quantum entanglement, it turns out, is a good way in which to talk about marriage..because when two particles become entangled they remain connected even when they are far away from one another.”

Entanglement is one of those rare novels, which defies easy categorisation and is a fiercely intelligent and beautiful story of love, loss, the power of women, and the fleeting moments when we unwittingly connect with strangers. It is unlike anything I have ever read, and I was so entranced by it, that not only have I recommended it to everyone, I also went and bought a published copy!

I truly loved Entanglement, and hope you do too.

Polly Clark: Larchfield

Published By: riverrun

Buy It: here

What The Blurb Says:

It’s early summer when a young poet, Dora Fielding, moves to Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland and her hopes are first challenged. Newly married, pregnant, she’s excited by the prospect of a life that combines family and creativity. She thinks she knows what being a person, a wife, a mother, means. She is soon shown that she is wrong. As the battle begins for her very sense of self, Dora comes to find the realities of small town life suffocating, and, eventually, terrifying; until she finds a way to escape reality altogether.

Another poet, she discovers, lived in Helensburgh once. Wystan H. Auden, brilliant and awkward at 24, with his first book of poetry published, should be embarking on success and society in London. Instead, in 1930, fleeing a broken engagement, he takes a teaching post at Larchfield School for boys where he is mocked for his Englishness and suspected – rightly – of homosexuality. Yet in this repressed limbo Wystan will fall in love for the first time, even as he fights his deepest fears.

The need for human connection compels these two vulnerable outsiders to find each other and make a reality of their own that will save them both. Echoing the depths of Possession, the elegance of The Stranger’s Child and the ingenuity of Longbourn, Larchfield is a beautiful and haunting novel about heroism – the unusual bravery that allows unusual people to go on living; to transcend banality and suffering with the power of their imagination.

What I Say:

“There is a price to pay for hiding from the truth,

One can love, but never be loved. 

One can describe freedom, but never be free“.

Larchfield is a novel unlike any other I have read for a long time.  It is massive in its scope, ambitious in its creativity and tackles issues which would seem contrived in the hands of some authors.  It is also a novel where I read the first few pages and knew I was going to love it immediately.

This is the story of Wystan H Auden, the poet, who takes up a teaching post in Larchfield school,  Helensburgh in 1930 and Dora, who moves there with her husband Kit in the present day.  The narrative shifts between Dora and Wystan, and we uncover more about what each of them feels thinks and wants in their lives.

Dora and Kit move to a seemingly idyllic flat, with picture perfect gardens and a belief that this will be the new start they need as they prepare for the birth of their first baby.  From the outset, it is very apparent that Dora feels unnerved by the isolation and scrutiny her arrival in Helensburgh will bring.  Dora is not like other women in the village, who are entrenched in the teachings of the church and the intricacies of the tight knit community.  She is a creative and intelligent woman who wants to ensure that she forges her own identity and gains recognition for her academic work.  As she tentatively settles in to her new home, the occupants of the flat upstairs start to make it very clear that Dora is not welcome, as their son was allegedly promised the flat.

Wystan has retreated to Larchfield after a failed engagement, and is aware that his arrival at the school is preceded by his reputation as an enigmatic and mysterious poet.  He knows that his homosexuality is a facet of himself that he has to hide, and he is isolated from the world around him as he realises any admission of his sexuality could result in serious repercussions.

Dora and Wystan exist in two different decades, but are united in the loneliness and isolation they feel. Polly’s beautifully eloquent writing links these two similar souls, both poets, and at odds with the world around them.  When Dora is confined to bed after nearly losing her baby, her sense of estrangement and isolation from Kit and the world  becomes more and more resonant.   When their baby daughter is born prematurely, she is thrust into a world of motherhood she could never have envisaged.

Recognising a fellow unhappy outsider, Wystan becomes the protector of Jamie Taylor, a young boy at Larchfield who is subjected to bullying by his fellow pupils, and unwanted sexual attention from one of the teachers. Wystan is also increasingly aware of how at odds he is with the heterosexual, patriarchal ideologies and practices of the boarding school – he is expected to participate in a rugby match that causes him to comment:

“This is the space that heroes occupy, that men understand.  Why does he not feel pride?  Why does he feel so lost?”

Wystan articulates in that single statement the very essence of his battle and the source of his unhappiness.  Wystan is hiding who he truly is in order to fit in, and is allowing his identity to be shaped by what others believe a man should be, increasingly to the detriment of his happiness.  He finds solace in visiting the beach, where briefly he can be at peace, and one day he launches a bottle with a message inside into the sea, asking for contact.

Polly Clark constantly asks us to question what is identity? How is it formed and by whom? For me, the poignant issue that ran throughout this novel was whether it was better to live the life you want, or the one that society thinks you should have?

Dora is thrown into motherhood and is dealing with it as best as she can.  She is on her own in a new town, with an increasingly distant husband.  Dora is having to deal with scrutiny from social services who have been called in after a tip off from Mo and Terrence, her neighbours upstairs.  Like Wystan, she is feeling isolated and overwhelmed, and her identity is being slowly eroded as she is identified solely as a mother or a a wife.  This is sharply brought into focus when Dora is visited by her friends, who refer to her as RJ, which is the name she wrote under, as she is forced to confront the fact that she is no longer that person.

 “Her existence, her visibility was uncertain even to her husband”.

As the pressure of caring for a premature baby, as well as her concerns about her husband encroach on Dora’s thoughts, she starts to hear a voice saying ‘I can win this’, but has no idea what this means.  Like Wystan, she finds comfort in visiting the beach, and finds a bottle with a message inside, and a phone number.  Dora calls it, and someone at Larchfield answers.  Dora has found Wystan, and he has found her.

This is the beauty of Polly’s writing.  The interaction between Dora and Wystan feels natural and totally believable.  They co-exist in each other’s worlds and the narrative shifts again to one where as the reader, you are not sure whether this is a an actual physical connection or a depiction of Dora’s deteriorating mental state.  As the lines between fiction and reality become blurred, we see Wystan finding love with Gregory and they escape for a holiday where they can truly be happy.

After a number of events, culminating in leaving her daughter in a car for a short period of time, Dora is removed from her family and given medical help,  In a beautiful and elegiac dream like sequence, Dora and Wystan step closer to a life together, but then she makes a choice about what direction she wants her future to take.

Larchfield is an exceptional novel, that captivates the reader from the first page and does a very rare thing. Not only does it sensitively and intelligently address many themes such as motherhood, identity and societal expectations, but Polly’s writing ensures you  completely empathise with Dora and Wystan and the challenges they face.  All you wish is for Dora and Wystan to find the happiness and contentment they truly deserve.

Chloe Benjamin: The Immortalists

Published By: Tinder Press

Buy It: here

What The Blurb Says:

It’s 1969, and holed up in a grimy tenement building in New York’s Lower East Side is a travelling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the date they will die. The four Gold children, too young for what they’re about to hear, sneak out to learn their fortunes.

Such prophecies could be dismissed as trickery and nonsense, yet the Golds bury theirs deep. Over the years that follow they attempt to ignore, embrace, cheat and defy the ‘knowledge’ given to them that day – but it will shape the course of their lives forever.

What I Say:

“So this is how it started: as a secret, a challenge, a fire escape they used to dodge the hulking mass of their mother..” 

In 1969, the four Gold children, Varya, Daniel, Klara and Simon hear of a mysterious psychic woman who can tell you the date on which you will die.  Intrigued and perhaps needing some distraction from the endless summer days, they decide to seek her out.

One by one, the children are called in to hear the date on which they will die.  From that point on, we as readers watch what happens in each of their lives until the day of their death.  Chloe asks us all an important question.  If you knew the date of your death, how would you choose to live?

The four sections of The Immortalists follow each child – we live their lives with them, and see how the psychic’s revelation has impacted the decisions they make.

Simon, aware that he is expected to take over his father’s tailoring business, realises that he now has a chance to explore who he really is.  In finding the courage to move away from New York to San Francisco, he can finally embrace his sexuality and creativity.

“In New York, he would live for them, but in San Francisco, he could live for himself”.

Klara and Simon decide to leave New York together, and while Klara temps by day and practises her magic by night, Simon starts dancing professionally.  He takes classes at the San Francisco Ballet Academy, and it is there he meets Robert, another dancer, and they start a relationship and fall in love.  Acutely aware of his mortality, and that the date of his death is fast approaching, Simon becomes increasingly hedonistic and cheats on Robert numerous times.

As we know each character has been told the date of their death, I found that there was an extra dimension to the book.  We are as much in the dark as the characters as to how they will die, but we know it is going to happen. It made me turn the pages even faster, wanting to know, but not wanting to read how the Gold children pass away.

Throughout The Immortalists, Chloe cleverly weaves American history through the lives of our protagonists.  For Simon, he lives in a time of the AIDS epidemic, and eventually he falls ill and is hospitalized.  The first date the psychic has predicted comes true, and the Gold family loses their youngest son.

“Klara won’t be a woman who is sawed in half or tied in chains -nor will she be rescued or liberated.  She’ll save herself, she’ll be the saw”.

Klara, who had been in San Francisco with Simon is distraught at his death, as she chillingly realises that the first prediction was right.  She now has to navigate her way through her life, aware that an imminent death sentence is hanging over her head.

Her passion has always been magic, and attempting to gain recognition in a heavily male dominated world takes all her energy and determination.  When she meets Raj, they go into business together, she can concentrate on refining her magic, he attempts to further her career by booking different venues and assisting her off stage.

What becomes clear even as they fall in love and have a baby called Ruby, is that Klara is frustrated by Raj’s attempts to determine her life.  Perhaps she is already aware that she has a time limit set on her existence, and she wants to be in control of the time she has left. Raj pushes Klara to work in Las Vegas, a situation she is clearly uncomfortable with, and she realises her daughter will have to live without her, and grieves all the milestones she will miss.  As the date of her death approaches, she is convinced she hears Simon trying to communicate with her.  Klara decides to remove herself from her family and again the psychic’s next prediction proves to be true.

Klara and Simon left their siblings Varya and Daniel back in New York, and they have had to change their lives in order to be around to care for their mother.  I wonder if they hadn’t visited the psychic, would this be where the remaining Gold children found themselves – tied to the family home and resentful of Klara and Simon’s freedom.

As the novel moves on, we learn that Daniel is in contact with Raj and Ruby, and that they have continued Klara’s act and are now millionaires.  Daniel struggles with his relationship with them, he does not trust Raj, and is jolted by how much Ruby reminds him of Klara.  He has been demoted at work, and as the day of his death approaches, he becomes consumed with the idea of finding the psychic who put the whole chain of events into motion.

Daniel works with Eddie O’Donoghue, a police officer known to Klara and Simon, who tells him that the woman was part of a team of con artists, but they are unable to trace her.  Feeling he has nothing to lose, Daniel decides to try to find her, to find an answer as to whether she really can predict their deaths.  If she truly is a con artist, than maybe her predictions are baseless and he has a chance to change his life and its ending.

As he searches desperately to find the woman, called Bruna, we feel his anguish and mounting exasperation as he attempts to get the answers he wants to find before his death.  Eddie and Daniel’s wife Mira find him, holding a gun to Bruna as she chants;

“Akana mukav tut le Devlesa”

“I now leave you to God”

The final Gold child, Varya, has decided that her life is going to be very different from that of her siblings.  Instead of living, Varya merely exists.  She works at the Drake Institute for Research on Ageing, which is invested in researching conditions such as Parkinsons, heart disease and cancer.  The Institute’s aim is to increase human longevity, something we recognise as very poignant for Varya, especially considering how her siblings passed away (and no I am not going to tell you..!).

Varya has sealed herself off from the world around her, only interacting with her mother.  She does not have friendships or relationships, her whole life is planned and organised with meticulous detail, her apartment is sparse and sterile, devoid of any personality.

“Fear that she had no control, that life slipped through one’s fingers no matter what”.

A young journalist called Luke arrives at The Institute and Varya finds herself inexplicably drawn to him, confiding in and talking to him about herself and her life.  As she talks, she starts to examine the choices she has made in light of the date the psychic gave her, and wonders whether she is really doing the right thing.  A devastating revelation from Luke, sends Varya completely off course, questioning everything she believed to be her safe compartmentalised reality.

Varya is responsible for a high-profile twenty year study at the Institute, which looks at the effect of dietary choices on monkeys.  Against all her professional judgement, she finds herself empathising with Frida, one of the monkeys in the controlled diet group and releases her with disastrous results.

Fired from her job, and reeling from Luke’s story, Varya now has a choice.  To retreat from her life and the family she has left, or to take a leap of faith, embrace her mortality and truly live.

Simon, Klara, Daniel and Varya are by no means perfect.  They have their faults, their foibles and their issues, but they are human.  Chloe’s skilful writing portrays a family that we can empathise with, people we can understand and a dilemma we can all relate to.

The Immortalists is a novel that picks you up from the first page and hurtles you along with the life of the Gold children.  The writing is tender, eloquent and achingly poignant. It provokes not only intense reactions to the story, but made me re-examine the way I live my life too.  It made me realise that I would rather look back on my life and know that I have given it my all, instead of wondering “what if?”.

Simon, Klara, Daniel and Varya are three-dimensional, living, loving and wonderful characters.  Every single one of them made me want to reach into the novel, bring them close and tell them that we understand the choices they have made and the lives they have lived, and that we love them for it.

The Immortalists is already one of my favourite books of 2018, and I truly loved it.