All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

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Anything I try to write about this novel will fail to do it justice.

It's a story about a blind French girl, her father, her uncle and his housekeeper; it's also a story about a German boy, his sister, and his friend; it's about miniature hand-carved houses which hold secrets, it's about snails, and it's about a blue diamond with a swirl of fire at its heart.

All The Light We Cannot See is a novel about light, and radio waves, and trying to be true to yourself and others, and keeping promises. It's also one of the most beautiful and devastating books I have ever read. I have swept all other books off my shelves and replaced them with this one.

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers - an unforgettable journey

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The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers. This book. This book. I have never taken so long to read such a short book. Not because it was one of those books not worth the time, but because this book is worth the time.

Not a page went by I didn’t take in a breath and go back and read it again, even more slowly, sometimes many times before I could move on. It is a beautifully written, mesmerising book. It is also utterly devastating. It should be essential reading for anyone responsible for starting a war, and for anyone thinking of starting one, and for everyone in between. It is about the intimate experience of war, about the failure of memory to make sense of it, and about the necessity of trying to do just that. It is a psychological journey and is also a philosophical one – about choice, about memory, about trying to live and live on, but most of all it is about the disintegration war reaps at every level.

While there may be some faces missing from the last pages which I felt should have also been present in the shadows beneath the trees or traced along the lines of a map, this book leads you on an unforgettable journey, along a path of fires burning in the dust.

The Confabulist - Steven Galloway

I've been reading a lot of fabulous books just lately, so I thought I'd pass it on... 

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The Confabulist – Steven Galloway

I’m not sure what I expected from this book having read and loved Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo a few years ago. What I got with The Confabulist is a haunting tale of memory and loss, of the impossibility of living outside of the past we tell ourselves and the future we try but fail to mould. The Confabulist is a re-telling of Houdini and the man who killed him, Martin Strauss, but it's much more than that: the tale entraps you, weaving its bonds, and even if you can see it coming this compelling novel is particularly haunting because, in the end, in the gut-punch end, you know it’s your story that Martin Strauss is telling, and your time is up. 

Which Book has Saved Your Life?

Today's The Guardian Childrens' Books is asking authors and teenagers to share the books that saved their lives for Blue Monday #Gdnbluemonday. I tweeted a quick reply - my choice being instantaneous - but it got me thinking about how a book can do that. Save your life.

We talk about the vital importance of reading, of libraries, and we know reading is absolutely vital for literacy (of course), but also for economics, for emotional and physical well-being, and so on, yet sometimes it hits home, you feel it, and you remember that reading really can save your life.

Here's why my choice is Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. 

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As a child, Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce was the first book I'd ever read which gave me a very real escape into another world: the loneliness of both Tom and Hatty, the sense that neither home nor adults were a safe or trustworthy place for either of them; the deep need for a place they were free to be themselves in, and where they could find true friendship – to the extent that time and reality itself could somehow be changed by desire, by love - were not things I could articulate at the time I first read it. But that book offered me a deep and meaningful escape into what felt on a subliminal level to be a very real and accessible place where I felt safe, where new possibilities existed, where time and space and reality could change. This book saved my life.

I continued to read it right through my teens too, and its impact on my early life not only directly influenced my lifelong avid reading but led into my urge to write too.

Which book saved your life?

~

Lytham Lives launches at last!

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Woo hoo!!!!
At last - Lytham Lives - A Community in Writing launches today at a special launch at Park View Community Centre in Lytham. 

Lytham writer Alexandra O'Toole and I have had the most unbelievable palaver with our original choice of publishers - so we gave up and did it ourselves, and I have to say the finished product is cracking! :oP

The anthology is a part of the forthcoming Lytham Festival of Stories, a project dreamed up by Alex O'Toole and developed in conjunction with Cath Powell at Park View 4U, and with fantastic support from Lancashire County Council, Fylde Borough Council, and Arts Council England.

We ran writing and conversations-in-the-community workshops in Lytham at Park View and at St. Bede's High School to get the ball rolling, and opened out the invitation to anyone connected with Lytham to submit their contributions to the anthology, and then chose the final pieces to be included.  With specially-commissioned photographs from local photographer Ruth Brooks-Carter, the finished anthology is a fantastic slice of life writing, memoir, and poetry, and a fittingly resonant slice of Lytham past, present, and future - a real festival of stories. 

You'll be able to buy your own copy of the anthology from Park View Community Centre, Plackitt and Booth bookshop on Clifton Street in Lytham from 15th July, and from Amazon by clicking on the image of the book here:

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