The Tell-Tale Heart - Jill Dawson

'I'd like to go back to my old self, to my old life, but I have a curious, powerful certainty: my old self won't have me.'

A clever and interesting tale about a heart transplant, giving us an insight into the lives of both the donor Drew and the recipient Patrick, plus a third, historical voice, Willie, further back down the lineage of Drew’s family. It's fascinating to consider whether the recipient does indeed take on some sense of the donor in these instances, the idea of the heart carrying some sort of memory with it I suppose.

When I first started reading, it took me a little while to warm to the story and I did put the book aside for a few days and come back to it. When I persevered a little futher, I found I really became drawn into the story much more, and I enjoyed it more and more from about a third of a way through onwards.

I loved the setting, the Fens; I do enjoy a novel where there is a strong sense of place, and I also liked the symbolism of the owl. I liked the insight into both lives that the author gave us. Patrick, as was the author’s intention, is not a particularly likeable character, he's a womaniser, he barely seems to know his son, but it is fascinating to observe the changes in him over the course of the story. I was drawn more to Drew’s character, his youthful energy and lust and his painful experiences. 

I really enjoyed seeing Jill Dawson discuss this novel at the Cambridge Literature Festival and I’ll definitely be reading more of her back catalogue as well as looking out for future novels.

Thanks to Amazon Vine for the review copy.

Ninepins - Rosy Thornton

‘Didn’t every kid deserve a chance?’

Ninepins is the old tollhouse where Laura lives with her 12-year-old daughter Beth. Laura often rents out the pumphouse next to her house to students, but the newest resident is to be someone different, a 17-year-old girl named Willow, who has been in care, and has been recommended for the accommodation by her social worker, Vince.

Laura has reservations and Willow coming to live at the pumphouse, and is nervous as to how the new arrangement will work, and what sort of influence Willow may be on Beth. Beth herself is bringing more than her share of worries into Laura’s life too, having started secondary school and making new friends who Laura knows little about, but what she does know doesn’t please her and makes her anxious about Beth. For Beth, there is the struggle to find her place amongst the teenage girls at school, to fit in and develop friendships with all the accompanying pressures amongst girls at that age.

I loved this novel. I liked the immediacy with which we were drawn straight into the story and the setting. I felt I was immersed in the wildlife and landscape of the Cambridgeshire fens, very nearby to where I live; they are vividly brought to life as the backdrop of this story; the author illustrates both the beauty and the dangers of the place. I found the characters intriguing and believable, and the dialogue equally convincing and apt.

I felt that Rosy Thornton portrayed the love, the difficulties and confrontations between Laura and Beth very realistically, and depicted the strong, yet at times fraught, relationships between mothers and daughters very successfully. The author contrasts the loving, caring and concerned nature of Laura’s parenting of Beth, with her always having provided the necessities for a safe, warm welcoming home, even as a single-parent, with the at times ‘wonderful, magical, intoxicating’ behaviour of Willow’s mother, who nonetheless left Willow feeling that ‘She’d never just felt safe.’

There were poignant moments, in particular between Willow and Laura, as Laura discovers more about Willow’s younger years, and how unsettled life was for her with her mother, Marianne. There are so many times when we, as a reader, identify with elements of a novel, and this struck a chord with me, and I was moved by some of the passages, as Laura realised what life must have been like for Willow:

‘If Willow at times seemed older than her years, this might be the reason. If the mother could not be a mother, how should the child be a child?’

As both Laura and the reader learn more about Willow’s mother and her past, the tension and sense of foreboding builds.

It’s an absorbing story that I enjoyed returning to every time I picked the book up again, more than anything I think because of how much I was immersed in the setting of the novel and intrigued and convinced by the characters and the development of the relationships between them, whether it was those between parent and child, adult and young adult, or the elements of gentle romance and attraction between adults. This is the first novel I have read by this author, and it has certainly encouraged me to want to go back and dip into her earlier works. This is assured storytelling and a satisfying read. 

Reviewed by Lindsay Healy

Published by Sandstone Press

Thank you very much to the author for kindly sending me a copy of her novel to read and review.

You can visit the author's website here.