The Orphan Choir by Sophie Hannah

Sophie Hannah's The Orphan Choir is the latest instalment from the excellent new Hammer imprint, which has already published Helen Dunmore's The Greatcoat,  Jeanette Winterson's The Daylight Gate and Julie Myerson's The Quickening (also reviewed on RichTapestryReads). I'm happy to report that, like its Hammer stablemates, it does a sterling job of spooking the reader.

I joined in an interesting conversation with Sophie Hannah on Twitter recently on the nature of fictional ghosts and the recent trend for ambiguity as to their veracity or otherwise. I have to say that I agree with Hannah that the most satisfying spook is an unambiguously real presence, rather than a figment of a disturbed narrator's consciousness. While The Little Stranger is an honourable exception,  as I've written before on this blog, I much prefer ghosts in the style of MR James and Susan Hill.

So it is with pleasure that I report that The Orphan Choir is a satisfyingly traditional chiller which nonetheless plays with the reader's perception of its narrator. Set in Cambridge, where Hannah lives, the story follows Louise, whose only son Joseph has been selected for a prestigious choral scholarship which requires him to board. Louise misses him more than her husband feels is normal; lonely and miserable at home, she spends her time daydreaming about his return and wishing he was with her.

Louise also has a bad relationship with her neighbour in Cambridge, an anti-social individual whose loud parties seem calculated to disturb her. She complains;  the relationship sours further; she involves the council. Then, to her horror, she begins to hear the sound of a children's choir in her house and is convinced that her neighbour is tormenting her further, needling her about her son's absence. Louise in her waking and sleeping hours is edgy, exhausted and irrational. This section of the book gradually increases the reader's unease, whilst also evoking powerfully the frustration and impotence Louise feels.

Desperate to escape,  Louise sets her heart on a rural second home in an idyllic development in order to spend more time with Joseph. But the music follows her there and gradually her equilibrium is destroyed. This section is the most explicitly frightening of the book; the supposedly perfect setting contrasts chillingly with Louise's mental strain. Always on edge, she can never enjoy anything  - and the music is becoming even more real to her...

The Orphan Choir is an enjoyably creepy read with the psychological depth that Sophie Hannah is known for. Reading it late at night, I had to put the book aside during one of the most frightening sequences for fear of being too spooked to sleep - and that's exactly what I want from a ghost story.

The Orphan Choir will be published on 9 may. I am very grateful to Sophie Hannah, who arranged for me to have a review copy of this novel.

The Orphan Choir is published on 9 may 2013

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.6

Dear Thing by Julie Cohen

Claire has it all: a beautiful home, a loving husband, a fulfilling job as a music teacher.  Except one thing - a baby.

Romily is her husband's best friend from university,  a single mum working as a scientist and living in a 2 bedroom flat. So why would she offer to act as a surrogate for Claire and Ben, carrying a baby that's genetically hers and Ben's?

Answer: because she is in love with Ben,  and always has been. Partly to please him, partly to live out a long-held dream, she volunteers to do what Claire has never been able to despite years of fertility treatment: have Ben's baby.

From this intriguing concept, Julie Cohen has created a satisfying and compelling novel which follows and encourages us to empathise with both Claire and Romily. From the opening, where Claire goes through the agonising experience of thinking her IVF treatment has been successful,  through Romily's growing doubts about the wisdom of her plan,  the reader is taken inside the characters' minds and sees things from their perspective.

The novel is a page turner too; the ongoing narrative of both Romily's pregnancy and Claire's growing jealousy provides a narrative drive which will keep you turning the pages long into the night.

The title is clever, too: Romily writes letters to her unborn child, addressed to "Dear Thing". We know how much Claire wants this baby, and how much Romily wants Ben to want her. Julie Cohen has created believable, rounded characters grappling with an unusual and difficult situation. I was interested to see in the notes to the book that Cohen had researched infertility through friends and through the internet;  I was impressed by the realism with which she tackled Claire's horrible situation.

Dear Thing is high quality women's fiction, enjoyable for a range of readers. It's a thoughtful and imaginative novel which gets to the heart of the characters. You'll feel you know Claire and Romily by the end of the novel, and be rooting for them to achieve their respective redemptive endings.

I must thank Transworld publishers,  who provided me with a review copy via Net Galley.  Dear Thing was published on 11 April. 

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.6

The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

Bobby Mahon is waiting for Frank, his father, to die. Frank is grimly, resentfully hanging on to life in a dark cottage on the outskirts of a small town in Ireland. Bobby has more problems; recently laid off as foreman for a grasping local builder, it turns out that his contributions haven't been made and he isn't entitled to anything more than state unemployment. Out of work, sad and angry, Bobby stands for post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, in its despair and darkness.

Donal Ryan, like Anne Enright in The Gathering, paints a bleak portrait of a country let down by the promise of an economic boom. Outside the town a 'ghost estate' lurks, full of incomplete houses. Only two unfortunates live there, lured by the dream of a new community but lost in the reality of emptiness and unfinished homes.

Ryan's novel, more so than Enright's, captures the hopelessness of the Irish recession. His townspeople feel powerless; in one moving chapter a man known for his sunny disposition confesses to overwhelming depression,  that he dreams of walking into the local lake. Here we have victims of broken promises and futile dreams. Yet the novel contains black humour and moving glimpses of love; both the title and the last lines suggest that Ryan's interest lies in the impact of Ireland's economic woes on the bonds of kinship and love in the country's communities.

The Spinning Heart's powerful originality comes not just from the subject matter but from the mode of telling. Each chapter is from a different narrative perspective; stories thread through them, and, while no teller is returned to, characters recur in each others' stories, reflecting, I suppose, the tapestry of connections in a small town in the Irish countryside. Each teller has a distinctive voice and Ryan creates sympathy for virtually all of his creations,  even the seemingly irredeemable Frank. It is Bobby who tells the first story and seems to be the centre of all the connected tales. The Spinning Heart does have a narrative drive which propels the reader through the novel. There is a subplot about an abducted child which works less well than the main thread about Bobby;  this does, however,  add an urgency to the plot which the novel might otherwise lack.

The Spinning Heart was published in Ireland in October 2012 and won the Irish Book Of The Year award, voted for by the public. It's also been included in the 2013 Waterstone's Eleven, which I truly hope will bring it to a wide audience in the UK. Ryan's sad, lyrical, bleak and occasionally funny novel deserves these accolades and more. It's a novel which feels modern and classic at once, recalling both Roddy Doyle and WB Yeats and introducing a unique voice in contemporary fiction. I can't recommend it highly enough.

My thanks to the publishers,  who provided me with a review copy via Net Galley. The Spinning Heart will be published in the UK by Doubleday Ireland on 27 Jun 2013.

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.6