You The Story: A Writer's Guide to Craft Through Memory by Ruta Sepetys
"Life is story in motion. Each day, you add to your story, revise it, and view it from a different angle. A day is a story. A year is a story. A life is a story. You are the story."
This is a non-fiction craft book for writers but also much more than that with its anecdotes, practice writing activities and prompts for research topics connected with Ruta Sepetys' stories within the text. It's an engaging read since each chapter includes memoir-style episodes which exemplify the element of story presented.
I love the way Sepetys encourages the excavation of memories and the exploration of authentic voices from your life experiences. Sepetys' life is a fascinating one and she is honest in sharing events she has experienced but also brave in revealing her reactions to others and what others have said, which she realises may have been misjudged.
I was lucky to be able to listen to Ruta Sepetys earlier this year during the Deep Dive Workshop Series arranged by @biancamarais_author, @carlywatters and @cece_lyra_agent. She was great and I bought the book immediately! Now that I've got to reading it properly, I know it will be one I return to for exercises, advice, prompts and inspiration many times. Thanks @rutasepetysauthor
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
How to read novels like a professor: A jaunty exploration of the world's favorite literary form by Thomas C. Foster
As an English Lit graduate and secondary English teacher, this compact collection of insights to the history and nature of the novel has been an enjoyable reminder of the literary form we all love!
I studied at an English university so I also found the American literary professor perspective and introduction to additional American authors alongside the ones I had studied from a UK perspective most interesting! I have managed to extract a whole healthy reading list of books to seek out at my local US library once I’m back stateside.
Chapters lead the reader or student through topics of narrators, voices, character, plot, story, ideas and so much more! It’s written in a humorous lighthearted manner too, which is engaging and fun! Foster has lots to say about Dickens, Twain, Joyce, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Iris Murdoch, Fay Weldon, Niffenegger, Morrison, O’ Brien and even Rowling, to name a random few!
Really worth a read, if like me you’re in the middle of rewriting/editing what might become a complete novel but need some reminders about what you’re trying to complete! Incidentally, I’m so happy I studied English at uni. Love it! 🫶🏻❤️📚😅
I studied at an English university so I also found the American literary professor perspective and introduction to additional American authors alongside the ones I had studied from a UK perspective most interesting! I have managed to extract a whole healthy reading list of books to seek out at my local US library once I’m back stateside.
Chapters lead the reader or student through topics of narrators, voices, character, plot, story, ideas and so much more! It’s written in a humorous lighthearted manner too, which is engaging and fun! Foster has lots to say about Dickens, Twain, Joyce, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Iris Murdoch, Fay Weldon, Niffenegger, Morrison, O’ Brien and even Rowling, to name a random few!
Really worth a read, if like me you’re in the middle of rewriting/editing what might become a complete novel but need some reminders about what you’re trying to complete! Incidentally, I’m so happy I studied English at uni. Love it! 🫶🏻❤️📚😅
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
Within Arm's Reach by Ann Napolitano
Goodreads Review
'Within Arm's Reach', THE debut novel by the wonderful Ann Napolitano is my favourite of them all! I've read all of Napolitano's novels now (except 'A Good Hard Look') and this book is the one I love the most. Multigenerational tales and exposure to the intricacies of relationships that exist within them will always be special and a magnet for me. This collection of entwined family experiences is absorbing and 'spellbinding'.
I loved all six of the characters and their personal perspectives on their own family saga which we are invited to join in this novel. I love that Napolitano gave us a family tree, showing the central matriarchal protagonist of Catharine McLaughlin and husband Patrick with their children and grandchildren. First, we hear from Gracie, the daughter of Catharine's second-born daughter, followed by the voices of Catharine, later called Gram, Louis, Lila, Kelly and finally Noreen Ballen. Gracie has the most say in the story and we hear from her frequently in relation to the other characters and their evolving reactions to her news that she is pregnant which we learn in the opening chapter.
Three generations of a large Irish-Catholic family enable this heavily character-driven novel to develop like a jigsaw puzzle of emotions, shared experiences, opinions and decisions, all commented on and guided by each other's own thoughts and family-learned approaches to dealing with life. Napolitano's writing here sums up what I think is significant in this wonderful genre of writing, which is that the plot of life will always be important but the people who inhabit and occupy those plots, even in quiet, undemanding or crazy, incomprehensible ways are what really matter.
I listened to Ann Napolitano speak about this debut writing of hers in her presentation at Blue Willow Books in Houston back in May and I had two copies signed, one for me and one for my mother. I'm pleased I did since I'm certain my mum is going to love the ending, as much as I did.
Let me know what you think of the novel. I'd love to hear.
Off to find a copy of 'A Good Hard Look'!
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris
Goodreads Review
Incredible novel. Reminiscent of The Siege by Helen Dunmore. Harrowing description and reality of the Bosnian War of the '90s and the Siege of Sarajevo. Told in a simple style as if Priscilla Morris is gently unravelling the hidden misconceptions and misunderstandings about the crisis and all that its victims suffered during these sad years of cruelty, this novel makes the reader part of the experiences from the inside.
The novel's narrative is told in 3rd person through the perspective of Zora, who remains in Sarajevo after helping her mother and husband to evacuate early in the war. Structured in seasons, the hunger, cold and devastation of the cosmopolitan city of Sarajevo around Zora and her neighbours is heart-rending.
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2023. Well-deserved. It is a novel that everyone should read.
I loved the artistic layers of the novel, in terms of the main character Zora's abandoned art studio and projects with war detritus and shrapnell with her students, her own determination to paint Goat's Bridge, the way this character captures images of scenes with beautiful depth and the colourful sensory depictions of her surroundings.
I've seen this book described as 'beautiful but brutal' which is is in terms of its historical truth. The title is perfect and it's. ajolt to the heart when you realise what the words truly mean in the context of this novel.
review by
Christina Francis-Gilbert
Christina Francis-Gilbert
Leaving by Roxana Robinson
The perspectives of this novel have intertwined to present such an interesting presentation of the institution of marriage and what we promise to do in our connections with our partner. It’s a 3rd person limited narrative offering an almost omniscient overview of two families. The main protagonists are Sarah and Warren who knew each other at college but did not pursue a life together after Sarah misinterpreted an invitation from Warren to travel to Bucharest, considered to be a dangerous Communist country at the time. The opening scene is fantastic and gripping, showing them bumping into each other momentarily at an Opera evening. This chance meeting after many years triggers a renewed attraction between the two of them and Warren spends the night with Sarah in spite of being married. We are then drawn to learn more of these two, their backgrounds and relationships that ground them in lives that have grown and evolved around them to secure them in separate lives.
We continue to see more of Sarah, a mother of two, who divorced her husband Rob years ago and lives alone with her dog Bella in Boston. She seems an isolated lady, desperate to be seen and needed by her daughter Meg, son-in-law Jeff and grandchildren Busby and Nate. Instead, she feels like she’s not included in their lives and therefore distanced from their emotions. As a daughter, now mother, I saw myself in Sarah’s daughter Meg as a busy parent, not able to keep the role of daughter running as smoothly as it should do because of all of the duties and responsibilities required for being a mother. I understood Sarah’s upset and sadness in knowing that she was no longer the most important person in her daughter’s life and that it was just as much her job as her daughter’s to keep the connection and family relations running in close contact.
Warren is married to Janet and father to Kat. He sees the meeting and affair with Sarah as a catalyst for him to tell his wife that he wants to separate and that they have not been happy in their marriage. This is a sad, sad part of the novel since I feel such pity and sorrow for Janet and the references to her life as mother and wife in a household that has not appreciated that input. Undeniably she does come across as a little monotone and unexciting in her character, perhaps tired and uninspired, yet to be told, out of the blue, by your husband of many years that you have not been happy as a family seems so frustratingly unfair. The narrative gives us happy memories from Warren and recollections of his normal, functioning family. Yet, he’s no longer happy with it. I’m not sure this was the intended feeling for the reader and in my recent bookclub discussion, the character of Janet was not seen as a likeable character or one to sympathise.
Warren’s daughter was also discussed as being a terrible person, with nasty commands over her father. However, the way I read the novel was seeing Warren as the one who valued his own role as father and the relationship with his daughter and by connection his commitment to family and his wife as worthy of his appropriate actions. He is a character unable to accept that he is guilty, having committed adultery on his wife, but unable to fully break away from his role as father and wife and the need to protecting, supporting and present a role model for his daughter.
Ultimately this is a novel about an affair that probably should not have happened. There is a great deal about how the children perceive the act of adultery and divorce and all that it entails and means for a family. I saw another reviewer note carefully that it’s about: “the everyday unspoken strength it takes to wake up everyday next to the same person and be “happy”” There’s also a lot about parent-child relationships, which I found fascinating and highly interesting.
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
