I have a confession. I have only just discovered The Barbellion Prize which is designed to celebrate the writings and voice of ill and disabled writers. I’m delighted to bring the work of The Barbellion Prize to your attention today.

The full longlist of books for this years’ prize can be found here, but I would like to share the shortlist with you. The prize will be awarded tomorrow, Friday 12th February 2021, and I can’t wait to read all four books. My thanks to the organisers of The Barbellion Prize and to the publishers who have sent me copies of the books.

Golem Girl by Riva Lehrer

‘A hymn to life, love, family, and spirit’ DAVID MITCHELL, author of Cloud Atlas

The vividly told, gloriously illustrated memoir of an artist born with disabilities who searches for freedom and connection in a society afraid of strange bodies.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD and THE BARBELLION PRIZE

In 1958, amongst the children born with spina bifida is Riva Lehrer. At the time, most such children are not expected to survive. Her parents and doctors are determined to ‘fix’ her, sending the message over and over again that she is broken. That she will never have a job, a romantic relationship, or an independent life. Enduring countless medical interventions, Riva tries her best to be a good girl and a good patient in the quest to be cured.

Everything changes when, as an adult, Riva is invited to join a group of artists, writers, and performers who are building Disability Culture. Their work is daring, edgy, funny, and dark-it rejects tropes that define disabled people as pathetic, frightening, or worthless. They insist that disability is an opportunity for creativity and resistance. Emboldened, Riva asks if she can paint their portraits-inventing an intimate and collaborative process that will transform the way she sees herself, others, and the world. Each portrait story begins to transform the myths she’s been told her whole life about her body, her sexuality, and other measures of normal.

Written with the vivid, cinematic prose of a visual artist, and the love and playfulness that defines all of Riva’s work, Golem Girl is an extraordinary story of tenacity and creativity. With the author’s magnificent portraits featured throughout, this memoir invites us to stretch ourselves toward a world where bodies flow between all possible forms of what it is to be human.

‘Riva Lehrer is a great artist and a great storyteller. This is a brilliant book, full of strangeness, beauty, and wonder‘ AUDREY NIFFENEGGER

Published by Virago Golam Girl is available for purchase here.

You can visit Riva Lehrer’s website for further information, and follow her on Twitter @riva_lehrer.

The Fragments of My Father by Sam Mills

A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR

In the vein of the Costa-winning Dadland, with the biographical elements of H is for Hawk, The Fragments of my Father is a powerful and poignant memoir about parents and children, freedom and responsibility, madness and creativity and what it means to be a carer.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BARBELLION PRIZE

My life had been suspended, as though I had inhaled and was still waiting to let out that gasp of breath. I set aside my dreams for a future time when life might be normal again. But that night, on my mother’s birthday, as I sat and watched the sky turn from blue to black, I wondered for the first time if it ever would …

There were holes in Sam Mills’s life when she was growing up – times when her dad was just absent, for reasons she didn’t understand. As she grew older, she began to make up stories about the periods when he wasn’t around: that he’d been abducted, spirited away and held captive by a mysterious tribe who lived at the bottom of the garden. The truth – that he suffers from a rare form of paranoid schizophrenia, and was hospitalised intermittently – slowly came into focus, and that focus became pin-sharp in 2012, when Sam’s mother died and Sam was left as his primary carer.

In this powerful, poignant memoir Sam triangulates her own experience with the stories of two other carers, one she admires and one, on some days, she fears she might become: Leonard Woolf, husband to Virginia and F Scott Fitzgerald, husband to Zelda, and a man whose personality made him ill-equipped – in a great many ways – to be a carer for his troubled wife.

A mesmerising blend of literary biography and memoir The Fragments of My Father is a compelling and moving account of what it means to be a carer.

Published by 4th Estate, The Fragments of My Father is available for purchase here.

You can find out more on Sam Mills’ website and follow her on Twitter @sammillsauthor.

Sanatorium by Abi Palmer

A young woman spends a month taking the waters at a thermal water-based rehabilitation facility in Budapest. On her return to London, she attempts to continue her recovery using an £80 inflatable blue bathtub. The tub becomes a metaphor for the intrusion of disability; a trip hazard in the middle of an unsuitable room, slowly deflating and in constant danger of falling apart. Sanatorium moves through contrasting spaces bathtub to thermal pool, land to water, day to night interlacing memoir, poetry and meditations on the body to create a mesmerising, mercurial debut.

‘There is a dreamlike quality to Abi Palmer’s exquisite Sanatorium. In lucid, gorgeous prose, she tells the story of a body, of illness and of navigating the complicated wellness industry, but ultimately this is a book about what it means to be alive. A striking, experimental debut that will stay with me.’ Sinéad Gleeson

Published by Penned in the Margins, Sanatorium is available for purchase here.

You can find out more on Abi Palmer’s website and follow her on Twitter @abipalmer_bot.

Kika and Me by Amit Patel

Amit Patel is working as a trauma doctor when a rare condition causes him to lose his sight within thirty-six hours. Totally dependent on others and terrified of stepping outside with a white cane after he’s assaulted, he hits rock bottom. He refuses to leave home on his own for three months. With the support of his wife Seema he slowly adapts to his new situation, but how could life ever be the way it was? Then his guide dog Kika comes along…

But Kika’s stubbornness almost puts her guide dog training in jeopardy – could her quirky personality be a perfect match for someone? Meanwhile Amit has reservations – can he trust a dog with his safety? Paired together in 2015, they start on a journey, learning to trust each other before taking to the streets of London and beyond. The partnership not only gives Amit a renewed lease of life but a new best friend. Then, after a video of an irate commuter rudely asking Amit to step aside on an escalator goes viral, he sets out with Kika by his side to spread a message of positivity and inclusivity, showing that nothing will hold them back.

From the challenges of travelling when blind to becoming a parent for the first time, Kika & Me is the moving, heart-warming and inspirational story of Amit’s sight-loss journey and how one guide dog changed his world.

Published by Pan Macmillan, Kika and Me is available for purchase here.

You can follow Amit Patel on Twitter @BlindDad_Uk.

*

I have a feeling that I’m going to fine each of these books totally fascinating and would like to wish all four authors all the very best for tomorrow. I think they all deserve to win The Barbellion Prize.

You can find out the result by visiting The Barbellion Prize website, following them on Twitter @BarbellionPrize or Instagram. You’ll also find The Barbellion Prize on Facebook.

It gives me enormous pleasure to help Sue Moorcroft unveil her latest book, Under the Italian Sun, today. Sue is a regular here on Linda’s Book Bag and I’m honoured to be part of her street team.

Under the Italian Sun

The number one bestseller is back with an uplifting, escapist read that will brighten the gloomiest day!

A warm, sun-baked terrace.

The rustle of verdant green vines.

The sun slowly dipping behind the Umbrian mountains.

And the chink of wine glasses as the first cork of the evening is popped…

Welcome to Italy. A place that holds the answer to Zia-Lucia Costa Chalmers’ many questions. Not least, how she ended up with such a mouthful of a name.

When Zia discovers that her mother wasn’t who she thought she was, she realises the time has come to search out the Italian family she’s never known.

However, as she delves into the secrets of her past, she doesn’t bargain on having to think about her future too. But with local vineyard owner, Piero, living next door, Zia knows she has a serious distraction who may prove difficult to ignore…

This summer, join Zia as she sets out to uncover her past. But can she find the future she’s always dreamed of along the way?

Now doesn’t that sound utterly wonderful? I can’t wait to escape and find myself Under the Italian Sun and if you pop back here on 14th May you’ll be able to find out what I thought of the book!

It gives me enormous pleasure to welcome Jane Haynes to Linda’s Book Bag today. My thanks to publicist Grace Pilkington at Quartet Books for putting us in touch with one another. With life having been led vicariously, often via Zoom, for almost a year and my usually cheerful public persona sometimes belying my actual mood, I’m fascinated to see what Jane has to tell me about her latest book.

Staying in with Jane Haynes

Welcome to Linda’s Book Bag Thank you for agreeing to stay in with me. Tell me, which of your books have you brought along to share this evening and why have you chosen it?

In the Consulting Zoom: A Psychotherapist’s Journal of Lockdown I have chosen it because of its ongoing relevance to our collective COVID lives and because it is unusual. It records the daily life of a psychotherapist who, used to being sequestered in her Marylebone consulting rooms, suddenly found herself working from the chaos of a multigenerational home.

That must have been quite demanding!

Also, everyone has become more dependent on technology whether that is Zoom/Face Time/Skype and in the case of therapy it has changed everything. One example of this is that while the therapist opens and closes the sessions they have no idea at all where the patient/person will receive them. In the past I didn’t know anything about people’s lives except what they wanted to tell me. Since Zoom and Lockdown I have conducted therapy in people’s bedrooms, kitchens, even bathrooms and beds. I have seen what they have on their walls and sometimes what their children and dogs look like. Finally, looking back I have no idea at all how, at the end of a busy day conducting five therapy zooms, looking after children, cleaning the house, dealing with the recycling (for which you need a PhD get it right in Camden) I ever found the time to write a daily diary entry.

Crikey, neither do I! In the Consulting Zoom: A Psychotherapist’s Journal of Lockdown sounds fascinating though. What can we expect from an evening in with this book?

You will not only hear my voice, but with their permission given, you will hear excerpts of my ‘patient’s’ (I don’t like to use that word except for simplicity) lives and their fears and anxieties. You will also find an interview with my eight-year-old granddaughter talking about what COVID meant to her. You will hear about how I woke up one day in late March to find that a neighbour across the road had died of COVID and how their house was being guarded by police in full hazmat and PPE. Also you’ll read my rage with Dominic Cummings for his arrogance and how I nicknamed him Rumpelstiltskin.

I have kept my Covid related views fairly quiet Jane, but the Dominic Cummings fiasco absolutely enraged me too and I hold him responsible for many, many deaths.

Apart from various voices and your own rage, what else have you brought along and why have you brought it?

I have brought my dog Dido and my cat Zen who have helped to keep me sane throughout Lockdown and who both tell their own stories in the journal.

I think many people have needed their pets more than ever Jane.

I’m also bringing a pack of cards. I have never been someone who played games and I only recently bought a pack of cards, but learning to play bridge on line on BBQ has been another accomplishment that would not have happened without COVID as I am useless at maths.

Me too. Took me three goes to get a C in maths at O’Level although I think having 8 different teachers in a year didn’t help!

Thanks so much for staying in with me to chat about In the Consulting Zoom: A Psychotherapist’s Journal of Lockdown Jane. I think it sounds a really interesting read. 

In the Consulting Zoom: A Psychotherapist’s Journal of Lockdown

As suicide rates rocket during Lockdown all royalties from this edition are being donated to CALM: The Charity Against Living Miserably.

‘If the origin of the word ‘patient’ was linked in Greek to the word: ‘suffering’ we are all patients now, regardless of whether or not we have the virus’

After suffering from a bout of writer’s block, Jane re-read Defoe’s A Journal of a Plague Year and was inspired to write her own journal of a Covid-19 lockdown. Starting at the beginning of March, as Jane experiences symptoms, this diary captures the fear and uncertainty of Spring 2020. Unable to get tested, Jane vividly conjures the national frustration and tightness in the chest the early days of the pandemic induced. As lockdown continues, we follow Jane through previously uncharted territory; the life of a full-time psychotherapist.

In the Consulting Zoom will take you on a trip into one of psychotherapy’s most original minds. It will make you, laugh, smile and scowl at all the governmental mistakes. Interesting, informative, philosophical, political, honest and heart-warming, we watch Jane unravel the mysteries of Zoom, online bridge and innovative ways of getting food delivered, while emotionally navigating her way through the terror of the virus.

In the Consulting Zoom is available for purchase here.

About Jane Haynes

Jane Haynes is a writer and relational psychotherapist who lives and practises in London, and more recently on Zoom. Jane co-founded the Blue Door Practice in Marylebone.

In 2008 her book Who is it that can tell me who I am? (Little, Brown) was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize for literary autobiography. If I Chance to Talk a Little Wild (Quartet Books) was published to critical acclaim in 2018. As the UK is clouded by Covid-19, Jane has written articles on how to survive lockdown for Vogue and given tips on how to cope with our new reality on Times Radio and BBC London. In the Consulting Zoom is her latest work.

For more information, follow Jane on Twitter @janehaynespsych or visit her website. You’ll also find her on Instagram.

I’m so sorry I couldn’t fit in a review of This Changes Everything by Helen McGinn ready for today’s launch as I think it looks completely wonderful. Sadly, with over 900 physical books and many more again in e-book awaiting review I just couldn’t manage it. However, as I think This Changes Everything looks exactly my kind of rea, I simply had to share the details with you.

Published today, 9th February 2021, by Boldwood Books This Changes Everything is available for purchase here.

This Changes Everything

Should first love be left in the past, or is first love, forever love?

Sisters Annie and Jess are used to their mother Julia being spontaneous. But when Julia announces she’s flying off to Rome to meet her first love Patrick, whom she hasn’t seen for fifty years, it’s an adventure too far. So, her daughters decide the only way to keep Julia safe, is to go too – without actually telling their mother she has chaperones!

Julia and Patrick’s love story was everything – epic, once-in-a-lifetime, with a tragic ending and life-long consequences. First love is hard to forget, but sometimes, just sometimes, life delivers a chance to rewrite your story.

As the eternal city of Rome works its magic, old secrets, old friends and old loves become new possibilities and new dreams. And when the four travellers return home, nothing will ever be the same again.

Join Helen McGinn for a timeless, joyous, unforgettable journey through love, family, and long-forgotten dreams.  A novel to hold to your heart and treasure, perfect for fans of Elizabeth Noble, Cathy Kelly and JoJo Moyes.

Now doesn’t that sound just gorgeous? I can’t wait to read This Changes Everything.

Why not listen to an audio clip from This Changes Everything?

About Helen McGinn

Helen McGinn is a drinks expert and the author of the award-winning Knackered Mother’s Wine Club blog and book. She spent almost a decade sourcing wines around the world as a supermarket buyer and most of the next half-decade pregnant. She writes about drinks for the Daily Mail’s Femail Magazine and appears regularly on BBC1’s Saturday Kitchen and ITV’s This Morning as their wine expert. Awards for her wine blog include Fortnum & Mason’s Online Drink Writer of the Year and Red Magazine’s Best Blogger. Helen lives in the New Forest with her husband, three children and too many dogs. This Changes Everything is her debut novel.

For more information, find Helen on Instagram or visit her website. You’ll also find Helen on Facebook and Twitter @knackeredmutha.

My grateful thanks to Laura Mayer  at Bloomsbury for sending me a copy of Lightseekers by Femi Kayode in return for an honest review. I’m delighted to share that review today.

Lightseekers was published by Blomsbury imprint Raven Books on 4th February 2021 and is available for purchase through the links here.

Lightseekers

Three young students are brutally murdered in a Nigerian university town, their killings – and their killers – caught on social media. The world knows who murdered them; what no one knows is why.

As the legal trial begins, investigative psychologist Philip Taiwo is contacted by the father of one of the boys, desperate for some answers to his son’s murder. Philip is an expert in crowd behaviour and violence but travelling to the sleepy university town that bore witness to the killings, he soon feels dramatically out of his depth.

Years spent first studying, then living in the US with his wife and children mean he is unfamiliar with many Nigerian customs and no one involved in the case seems willing to speak out.

The more Philip digs, and the more people he meets with a connection to the case, the more he begins to realise that there is something very wrong concealed somewhere in this community.

My Review of Lightseekers

Philip is doing his father a favour.

Lightseekers opens in dramatic fashion and draws in the reader immediately. I actually found it quite an uncomfortable read because it is such a compelling and horrifying narrative that is far too close to the truth to be read as pure entertainment without affecting the reader. I thought it was excellent.

Lightseekers uncovers layers of corruption and racism at every level. It isn’t just the rotten state of racist or xenophobic views and actions between nations that Femi Kayode makes terrifyingly clear, but those within nations and neighbours too. This seam of discomfort runs from student cults, through so-called state institutions like the police, and right to every individual. Add in the impact of the internet, hearsay and rumour and Lightseekers has all the ingredients of a first class thriller. Femi Kayode’s professional background in psychology shines through. He writes with elegant authority that is completely convincing, making the reader terrifyingly aware that shining a light also casts some very dark shadows. There’s very much a feeling of being part of the investigation with Philip and Chika and an unnerving sense of threat and menace permeates every page. The frequently dramatic final sentences of chapters compel the reader onwards too.

Indeed, Lightseekers is a difficult read in as much as the author leaves the reader questioning where they themselves fit in a corrupt world. Philip is investigating three brutal murders and meets barriers of obstruction and corruption at every turn, and whilst he is the positive protagonist, he isn’t above dubious and underhand tactics to get to the truth. This makes Philip fascinating. His family dynamics, his sense of displacement, his desire for approval and truth all blend into a complex and intriguing person I though seemed vivid and real.

The plot is a corker. Quieter moments with conversations between Philip an Chika balance the more dynamic aspects so that there is even more light and shade to enjoy. A smattering of recognisable real people and cult names add to the authenticity. In fact, so convincing was Lightseekers’ narrative that I did some research into Nigerian University cults and discovered that Femi Kayode’s captivating story is more firmly rooted in factual research than I might have liked, because I didn’t want to believe some of the actions could happen. As a result, I found this story even more disturbing and intelligently written. It also made me appreciate the consummate skill of the author in blending fact and fiction in order to present an utterly captivating story.

Lightseekers is a brilliant start to a new series that I found totally compelling. I want to know more about Philip and his relationship with Folake and I’m hoping Chika will make further appearances too. If you’re looking for a thriller with a new perspective, Lightseekers has it all. Don’t miss it.

About Femi Kayode

Femi Kayode trained as a clinical psychologist in Nigeria, before starting a career in advertising. He has created and written several prime-time TV shows. He recently graduated with a distinction from the UEA Creative Writing programme and is currently a PhD candidate at Bath Spa University. Femi won the UEA/Little, Brown Award for Lightseekers when he was still writing the novel. He lives in Windhoek, Namibia with his wife and two sons.

You can follow Femi on Twitter @FemiKay_Author.

I am six.

Actually, that’s not quite true. I’ll personally be sixty in exactly two months, but today Linda’s Book Bag turns six. I find myself slightly surprised by that fact as I only began blogging very tentatively and somehow it seems to have become less of a casual hobby and more of an overwhelming obsession.

It’s hard to believe I’m heading to almost 2,500 blog posts published, with over 20,000 followers across my social media platforms. Blogging has led to so many opportunities and real life friends that I heartily recommend it to anyone wondering if it might be for them.

I am humbled and thrilled in equal measure that anyone might value a slot on Linda’s Book Bag or be remotely interested in my views on a book. It’s such a privilege to be trusted with the efforts writers have put in to their work.

By way of a small thank you to those of you who take the time to visit, read or share my blog posts, I’d like to offer a small giveaway to celebrate Linda’s Book Bag turning six.

Giveaway

For your chance to win either a £20 National Book Tokens e-voucher or a £20 Amazon e-voucher please click here. Open internationally. Giveaway closes UK midnight on Friday 12th February 2021.

Thank you for all your support and good luck x

I think it’s almost a year since a surprise copy of Shiver by Allie Reymolds arrived from Headline and I would like to thank Jennifer Doyle for sending me a limited edition proof. I’m delighted to share my review of Shiver today.

Published by Headline on 21st January 2021, Shiver is available for purchase through the links here.

Shiver

They don’t know what I did. And I intend to keep it that way.

How far would you go to win? Hyper-competitive people, mind games and a dangerous natural environment combine to make the must-read thriller of the year. Fans of Lucy Foley and Lisa Jewell will be gripped by spectacular debut novel Shiver.

When Milla is invited to a reunion in the French Alps resort that saw the peak of her snowboarding career, she drops everything to go. While she would rather forget the events of that winter, the invitation comes from Curtis, the one person she can’t seem to let go.

The five friends haven’t seen each other for ten years, since the disappearance of the beautiful and enigmatic Saskia. But when an icebreaker game turns menacing, they realise they don’t know who has really gathered them there and how far they will go to find the truth.

In a deserted lodge high up a mountain, the secrets of the past are about to come to light.

My Review of Shiver

Ten years on, Milla’s reunion might not be quite as she hopes.

I so enjoyed Shiver. It’s a fresh, modern example of a locked room mystery with plenty of menace and wonderful traditional elements, like lights suddenly going out, that readers recognise, so that they bring their own reading experience to the book and, thereby, the tension is heightened. Allie Reynolds has built on those traditions skilfully and effectively.

I’m not usually particularly taken with dual timeline narratives but here I loved the balance between the present day and ten years earlier because motives behind the present predicament are so compellingly uncovered in the past. I found myself exclaiming aloud as details were revealed and motives became clear. The short, pacy and exciting chapters meant I consumed Shiver in a couple of days as I was desperate to know how the book ended. I found it gripping.

The characters are superb representations of flawed and often quite unpleasant individuals. Any one of them could be behind the situation they find themselves in and any one of them could be a murderous danger to the others. With Milla’s perspective leading both the the story and the reader, I got to the point where I was totally confused as to whom I could trust, and was kept guessing throughout. I really enjoyed the way that, through Milla, Allie Reynolds manipulated me.

Speaking of reader manipulation, I was so drawn in to the characterisation that if Saskia hadn’t been already been declared dead I’d have slipped into the pages of Shiver and murdered her myself. She made my blood boil. I think it speaks for the power of Allie Reynolds’ writing that I had no idea if Saskia had actually died or if she were currently manipulating the others, but I really wanted her to have suffered and felt as vengeful as the others towards her! You’ll need to read Shiver for yourself to see if my wishes came true as I’m not spoiling the story, but I did find my own reader response quite disturbing. The underlying exploration of how competitive people like Saskia can be so driven was an added layer of fascination too, as was the exploration of gender through her and Milla. Being female does not have to mean being weak or allowing others to take away your ambition. Indeed, the themes of Shiver make it more than an just exciting and entertaining thriller. Guilt, expectation, manipulation, relationships, secrets, ambition and various kinds of desire from sexual to family recognition, ripple through character actions making Shiver a cracking psychological read too.

With the enclosed setting of the Alpine resort, Shiver has a literal as well as metaphorical coldness to it. The possible natural dangers of avalanche and crevasse make danger ever present and I had no idea if any of the party would make it out alive. I also thoroughly enjoyed the vicarious thrill of snowboarding because of the author’s absolute authority in presenting it so vividly without patronising her reader. I found myself on the slopes with the characters.

I really, really enjoyed Shiver. I found it an assured, well written and thrilling read from Allie Reynolds. It completely held my attention at a time when I’m struggling to focus and I think that speaks volumes for the power of the narrative. Loved it!

About Allie Reynolds

Allie Reynolds is the author of the thriller Shiver, which was published on 21st January 2021.

Born and raised in Lincoln, England, she moved to Australia in 2004. She lives on the Gold Coast with her two young boys and a cat who thinks he’s a dog.

Many years ago she competed at snowboard halfpipe. She spent five winters in the mountains of France, Switzerland, Austria and Canada. These days she sticks to surfing – water doesn’t hurt as much as ice when you fall on it.

Her first ever job was a Saturday job in a bookstore, at age 14. She taught English for many years and became a full-time writer in 2018.

For more information, Follow Allie on Twitter @AuthorAllieR and find her on Instagram. You can also visit her website.

With News of the World by Paulette Jiles firmly on my TBR and a film of the book starring Tom Hanks recently released globally (the trailer for which you can view here), what better way to celebrate by giving one lucky UK reader a chance to win a paperback copy of News of the World? Thanks to Serena Stent at Harper 360, I am able to do just that. You’ll find details of how to enter below.

News of the World is published by Harper Collins and is available for purchase through these links.

News of the World

In this National Book Award finalist set in the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust

It is 1870 and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.

In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna’s parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.

Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forging a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.

Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember–strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become–in the eyes of the law–a kidnapper himself. Exquisitely rendered and morally complex, News of the World is a brilliant work of historical fiction that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.

Giveaway

For your chance to win a paperback copy of News of the World by Paulette Jiles click here. UK only. Giveaway closes at UK Midnight Wednesday 10th February 2021. The book will be sent directly from the publisher. Your details will not be retained by Linda’s Book Bag.

About Paulette Jiles

Paulette Jiles was born and raised in the Missouri Ozarks. A critically acclaimed poet, she is a past winner of the Canadian Governor General Award, Canada’s highest literary honour. She lives with her husband in San Antonio, Texas. She has written several novels of which Enemy Women is the most recent.

There’s more information on Paulette’s website and with these other bloggers:

I’m very grateful to publicist Grace Pilkington for putting me in touch with A.C.B Wilson so that Tony is staying in with me to chat about his brand new book. I have a feeling it’s going to be an unusual read.

Staying in with Tony Wilson

Welcome to Linda’s Book Bag Tony. Thank you for agreeing to stay in with me. Tell me, which of your books have you brought along to share this evening and why have you chosen it? 

I’ve chosen The Wheels of Society: Its Assembly, Performance and Emotion.

Why? It’s an idea which may help us to stop polluting and warming up the earth, and destroying wild-life habitats. Of course these are huge questions. The only way forward I suggest, has to be to go right back to first principles; to how human society actually does work. These principles are the subject of my book.

And I understand today is publication day Tony so congratulations. What can we expect from an evening in with The Wheels of Society: Its Assembly, Performance and Emotion?

It’s full of stuff which we already know about ourselves but which has never been put together in this way. So even if it’s excitingly controversial at times it uses arguments which are already familiar. My assembly and performance thinking is entirely original.

Oh. Tell me more.

Here it is in brief: Assembly and performance thinking starts by making a clear distinction between the way we selfish individuals are able to assemble into a cooperating group, and the systems by which these groups perform. It then focuses on this performance in all animal cooperation; good examples include honey-bees and wolves. This performance conforms to a universal ‘rule of three’. Briefly; ‘plan it as a group, do it as a group, review it as a group, and repeat’. Performance carries out the purpose for which the group was assembled in the first place.

I have a feeling this concept might be more important now than ever Tony.

This way of thinking works for all social creatures, from ants to humans. It even applies to certain cooperating microbes; thus enhancing its scientific credentials. It may be new but actually it is quite simple. It is essentially an extension of Darwin’s natural selection.

The accepted thinking has always been that humans are in a superior category. Hubris is a brain-fogging disease of the corporate mind. Stretching way back into pre-history; our self-importance has been built up into a colossal mound of fairy-stories and intellectual detritus. The argument here is that hubris is what has prevented us from recognising the relatively simple mechanisms of all animal social behaviour; not just our own; thoughtless, destructive and dangerous as it so often is.

Oh yes! We humans do have that arrogance that rarely considers our real impact on the world. Hopefully that view is changing slightly.

Professional sociologists will notice the claim I am making here; that thinking in terms of assembly and performance provides a truly scientific approach to the workings of society. This is the elusive holy grail they have been searching for ever since 1650 when Isaac Newton used gravity to explain the workings of the solar system. If human society can at last be brought under the scientific microscope we might be able to avoid the frightening consequences of our corporate greed.

I hope you’re right Tony.

So Linda, while this book isn’t sexy or full of laughs it is jam-packed full of writing to enthral the thoughtful reader.

The Wheels of Society: Its Assembly, Performance and Emotion sounds absolutely fascinating.

What else have you brought along and why have you brought it?

Well, it says on the cover of the book that I “paint, write and make beer”. My excellent editor David Elliott wrote those words but it’s true, and I find painting a terrific way to blast away writers‘ block.

So I’ve brought along three fresh watercolours, I did them in the last fortnight. The point here is to keep another activity on the go to ward off the ghastly block.

Those are wonderful Tony. I love the fluidity of style you employ. 

And there’s something more here which I can’t quote put my finger on, and don’t actually want to. It’s about the very tip of the brush on canvas, the very point of the nib on paper, and the Keyboard finger-tip touch. It’s what happens the moment of the act. There are poetic treasures inside us all but often they can only be released at the tip and moment of the act. When stuck I often say to myself; “Just get on with it Anthony; you never know what’s in there till you let it out.”

What a brilliant philosophy.

I’ve also brought along today’s photo of my brewing cupboard because though I only brew twice a year I just happen to be halfway through this brew; this very day.

Next time you’ll have to bring some of the product with you too! Thanks so much for staying in with me today, Tony, to tell me about The Wheels of Society: Its Assembly, Performance and Emotion. I’ve really enjoyed hearing about it.

The Wheels of Society: Its Assembly, Performance and Emotion

Written with verve and a mordant wit, The Wheels of Society is a vivid, cogent, ground-breaking proposal for us to re-think ourselves in order to steer civilisation back to safety.

As a species we seem to cling on to the power and influence of ‘the old normal’. Forests and valleys are decimated so that businessmen can be in Manchester 30 minutes faster; thousands of airline seats are sold for the price of a free-range chicken so that hundreds of short-haul planes can devastate the atmosphere and enable drunken escapades in Barcelona rather than Soho; the rich get even richer and the poor get Covid 19. Bankers conspire in the fraudulent abuse of people’s savings, yet can keep their loot, saved by governments supposed to protect their citizens but who fail to hold a single perpetrator to account.

Is this how we are supposed to be?

The biology of society becomes visible when hubris is side-stepped. First, natural selfishness must be overcome before individuals can assemble altruistically into a working group – a rather wonderful achievement. Our cooperating groups, which make up the hierarchy of society, are living things in their own right. Then, once assembled, the group must perform trial-and-error cycles to do life’s vital functions. Wilson’s ‘assembly-and-performance thinking’ combines these two mechanisms into a simple scientific theory of society which applies, with variations, to all cooperating creatures – not just to humans.

The Wheels of Society: Its Assembly, Performance and Emotion is published today, 4th February 2021, by Quartet Books and is available for purchase here. and directly from the publisher here.

About Tony Wilson

Tony Wilson was born in Dublin in 1931 and studied economics at Trinity College before qualifying as a chartered accountant. After six years in Paris with Price Waterhouse he went to England working as financial controller in the Avon Rubber Company, GKN, and British Oxygen.

Tony lives near Bath where he paints, writes and makes beer. He has had five one-man exhibitions and has shown in the RA Summer Exhibition.

My grateful thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for inviting me to participate in this blog tour for Gold Light Shining by Bebe Ashley. I’m delighted to share my review today.

Gold Light Shining is published by Banshee and is available for purchase here.

Gold Light Shining

Within five minutes, I knew
I loved the stranger in my head.

In her debut collection of poetry, Bebe Ashley spins gold from the detritus of the internet. A landscape often depicted as a wasteland is illuminated in poems that explore celebrity, obsession, sexuality, coming of age, and that charismatic enigma, Harry Styles.

Inspired by sources as diverse as Styles’s track listings, Scandi webseries Skam, and One Direction newsletters, Ashley spins us across continents on a tour of the surreal highs and absurd lows of celebrity culture. These are poems of youth and yearning, yet they’re suffused with the hard-won wisdom that the communities we build can be as meaningful as the families we’re born into.

Perceptive, witty, and exuberant, Gold Light Shining introduces an essential new voice; one that captures how pop culture’s Technicolor joy disrupts our greyscale world.

My Review of Gold Light Shining

A collection of poems exploring modern life and culture.

I have to be completely honest and say that, had I read the blurb before reading Gold Light Shining, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to investigate this collection. I have no interest in celebrity culture and am barely aware of Harry Styles’ existence so that I’d actively have turned away from reading these poems. And that would have been a mistake. In Gold Light Shining Bebe Ashley has illuminated a world I knew little about and, vicariously, has introduced me to writing I found fascinating and to music I hadn’t previously heard but now enjoy!

There’s considerable complexity in this collection. Bebe Ashley takes her reader on a journey through time and place so that I actually found much that resonated with me. References to popular culture and fashion from my past evoked long forgotten memories so that reading these poems reignited my own past for me. There’s both a visual and auditory quality to the writing and I really enjoyed the variety of physical structure on the page, the use of white space for emphasis, the compound words of swirling colour and the references to more prosaic aspects like food, that somehow made the poems simultaneously mysterious and completely knowable. At times it felt as if I were reading through a kind of prism so that I could bring my own meanings to the writing as much as those meanings Bebe Ashley may have intended. I thoroughly enjoyed this aspect of my reading.

The themes Bebe Ashley explores in Gold Light Shining give much for the reader to ponder. From art to drugs culture, sexuality to love, there are many layers to uncover in this slim volume. With both first and third person voices singing across the pages I think there is something for any reader to identify with too. I especially enjoyed ‘the boy who’ poems in the Fanfic section because there’s an underlying wistfulness that I found quite emotional.

From wondering what I’d let myself in for in reading Bebe Ashley’s Gold Light Shining and thinking I may have chosen a text that wouldn’t suit me at all, I discovered an eclectic mix of styles (and Harry Styles), images, themes and references that I found extremely interesting and very much enjoyed reading.

About Bebe Ashley

Bebe Ashley lives in Belfast. She is an AHRC-funded PhD candidate at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. Her work can be found in Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry Jukebox and The Tangerine.

When procrastinating from her PhD, she takes British Sign Language and Braille classes and writes pop culture articles for United by Pop, specialising in Harry Styles.

There’s more information on Bebe’s website and you can follow her on Twitter @bebeashley95.

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