Blog Tour: Twice the Speed of Dark

Book Title: Twice the Speed of Dark

Author: Lulu Allison

Date Started: November 11th 2017

Date Completed: November 22nd 2017

Genres: Contemporary, Magical Realism, Adult
Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Four stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to Lulu for sending me her lovely book for review ◆

At the heart of Twice the Speed of Dark is the dark subject of domestic violence, but the black hole of Anna’s story is grief. How does one deal with the loss of a child? Where does the responsibility of blame get placed when that loss is the consequence of something darker? And why is justice not final to those involved?

The story of this novel goes in little circles like a cyclone as Anna goes through the transition of her grief. Again and again, she finds herself in the same place, thinking the exact same things. Personally, it circled a little bit much at the start for me; for about a week Anna sits sullenly and writes about the deaths of strangers across the globe. In fairness, it establishes the depths of trouble our protagonist is in.

Written almost like poetry, the exploration of grief reminded me a little bit of Margaret Atwood mixed with Jeanette Winterson: those long, visually-conjuring metaphors of idleness and isolation. By throwing a dash of magical realism into the mix, we go down the Claire Fuller route. (Overall, I wish there’d be more of the magical realism. I liked the way it played about with the timeline and created personas for people that weren’t in Anna’s immediate area of contact.)

The unhealthy cycle Anna is forcing herself through (and there are definitely times when our flawed protagonist makes active decisions to prolong her grief, because anything else feels like a betrayal, or impossible) is almost aesthetically around Anna. The vistas from the holiday she takes to escape the return of her daughter’s murderer are bright and sunny, but it’s like there’s a fog around Anna. While it’s definitely grief that is the focus of this story, I can’t help draw comparisons to other mental health issues.

But, ultimately, Twice the Speed of Dark isn’t just a fly-on-the-wall view of Anna’s grief; it’s also the transitional stages of it that she goes through. Almost ten years after her daughter’s death, things are finally ready to shift a little - sparked by the catalyst of the murderer’s return. While I can’t say that grief is an emotion I’ve yet to have experienced on any real scale, from an outsider’s perspective the book seemed to capture it pretty well. That stuck place where everything feels the same, the physical tension your body gets just from the reminder of circumstances - all things I’m pretty familiar with through depression. But what shifts this for Anna is a somewhat tried-and-tested solution, but a true one nonetheless.

I always like it when stories use the kindness of strangers to provide a different way of looking at things, or even just a quiet nudge outside of what a character would expect. Chance encounters are sometimes criticised in fiction for being just that - fictional. But anyone who’s even just travelled on their own knows that sometimes an unexpected connection with someone you’re unlikely to see again can make a world of difference. Without going too far into spoiling the book, Lulu uses this not so much to solve all of Anna’s problems, but to give her the anonymity from her life that she needs to come to terms with it.

I think it’s interesting that this book is coming out at the same time as the film Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri. The universe has funny little ways of drawing comparisons itself, but the two pieces almost seem to be different forks off the same road. While I haven’t seen the film, I’m aware it’s also about a mother dealing with the murder of her daughter and the injustice of the perpetrator walking around. While Lulu’s novel takes a more meditative and magical realist stance on the subject, I have a feeling the emotional but go-getting feminism in both works will compliment each other well. If you want to prepare for the film, pick up Twice the Speed of Dark - and if not, you might want to after you’ve read this.

Over the next few weeks, Twice the Speed of Dark is touring across the blogger community.

Be sure to visit the other stops on the tour!

You can buy Twice the Speed of Dark straight from Unbound or Amazon
and find Lulu on her Website, Twitter and Instagram.

Blog Tour: The Deviants by C.J. Skuse

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

Welcome to the blog tour for C.J. Skuse's new book The Deviants! This book came out on the 22nd of September, two days ago, and I'd highly recommend you pick it up.

The Deviants is a contemporary thriller meets old-fashioned adventure story for young adult readers. Inspired by The Famous Five and other classic adventure stories, Skuse takes the fun element of these traditional books and combines them with some darker elements of the 21st century.

What impressed me personally in The Deviants was the inclusion of a lot of tough issues in our modern era that had echoing consequences for the characters throughout the entire book. It often feels like we're ticking boxes for diversity or mature subjects these days, but then trailing off their actual impact on people and the world - Skuse takes these darker themes and doesn't back away from the full reality of their effect in the world.

And all at the same time, the lovable cast of characters and Skuse's comforting light-hearted moments in times of darkness means that The Deviants is actually a very enjoyable read, despite its subject matter. It might not be summer anymore, but as autumn comes in it's the perfect read to snuggle up with for some excitement and mystery.

You can read my full review here - thedaisydeer.blogspot.co.uk/thedeviants

C.J. Skuse was born in 1980 in Weston-super-Mare, England. She has First Class degrees in Creative Writing and Writing or Children and, aside from writing novels, works as a freelance children's fiction consultant and lectures in Writing for Children at Bath Spa University. C.J. loves Masterchef, Gummy Bears and murder sites. Before she dies, she would like to go to Japan, try clay-pigeon shooting and have Ryan Gosling present her with the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Find C.J. on Twitter - @CeejaytheAuthor

Buy The Deviants from Amazon.

Please check out the other stops on The Deviants blog tour!

Today's other stop:

teapartyprincess.blogspot.co.uk

Tomorrow's stops:

charlottereads26.wordpress.com

ziliinthesky.com

Blog Tour: Red Rose, White Rose, by Joanna Hickson

Hi guys,

I was lucky enough to be offered a copy of Joanna Hickson's
Red Rose White Rose by the wonderful HarperFiction.

And now (even more lucky) I'm part of the blog tour
celebrating the release of the book.

Exciting stuff.

You can read my review of Red Rose White Rose here.

You can follow/chat/keep up to date with Joanna here:

@JoannaHickson on Twitter

Joanna Hickson on Facebook

Here's my Q&A with the lovely Joanna about the novel, and other book-related things:

1. What are you currently reading and what do you think of it?

At the moment I'm reading a really good book called Red Rose White Rose!  Oh I know I wrote it myself but when I receive my first 'proper' book-shaped copy of a novel I have written, all I want to do is delve into it and see how it reads when bound and in print.  Of course I often read on my Kindle and appreciate its advantages but I don't believe the real book will ever be completely supplanted by the virtual version.  By the way, so far I'm rather enjoying it!

However the book I finished just before RRWR arrived was Philippa Gregory's The King's Curse, which is right up my street because it covers the period immediately after my own historical 'home' in the 15th century.  It follows the ups and downs of Margaret Pole, one of the last Yorkist Plantagenets living after the Battle of Bosworth has removed their dynasty from the throne of England and replaced it with the Tudors. She is a granddaughter of Cicely Neville, so it is fascinating for me to see another author's take on one of my heroine's descendants.  Philippa Gregory has Margaret telling her own story and a very long and eventful life she led, filled with dramatic turns of the Wheel of Fortune.  I enjoyed it very much, although history does not give her much light relief!

2.  What was your favourite childhood book?  

When I was very young I lived in Australia and my parents used to read to me from a book called Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs.  The eponymous characters are 'gumnut babies', based on the fruits of the ubiquitous gum trees which cover the Australian countryside and the stories follow their adventures amongst the flora and fauna of the bushland where the author grew up, much as I did myself.  The villains of these adventures are called Banksia Men and I was both fascinated and terrified by them.  The illustrations make them look like the extraordinary 'cones' which appear on native Banksia bushes - ugly and hairy-looking with fat-lipped seed-pods - great objects on which to base creepy characters.  Children love to be a bit frightened when they're being read to while sitting on a safe lap don't they?  For one of my landmark birthdays my artist daughter, who lives in Australia, painted me a 'portrait' of two Banksia Men, which I love.

Just before I came back to live in England at age thirteen I read a time-slip novel called The Gauntlet by Ronald Welch which is set at Carreg Cennan castle in Wales and is about a modern boy who finds a knight's gauntlet lying on the ground, tries it on and is immediately transported back to medieval times and life as a page in the castle.  It was that book that first inspired my love of medieval history and when I visited the same castle later it was a great thrill to wander among its ruined walls and experience first-hand the allure of such an ancient and inspirational building.

3. When did you first become interested in history and writing?

I think I have just answered the history part of this question but as far as writing is concerned that came much earlier.  I can hardly remember a time when I wasn't either reading a novel or writing a story myself, first of all in little hand-made folded-paper books and then, when I got hold of a battered old typewriter, in smudged print on carbon-copies with many crossings-out.  At first they were quite short stories but as time went on I yearned to write a whole novel and I cannot count the number I started and never finished.  Probably every writer recognises that scenario.  However, obviously I eventually managed to complete them and I'd love to say that there are scores tucked away in bottom drawers but I'm not a great hoarder so they've all hit the bin – except those that have been published of course!

4. What were the biggest literary influences on Red Rose, White Rose and your other books?

 I don't think I'm unusual in my literary influences.  At an early age I loved the novels of Charles Dickens and then later came the Brontes, Jane Austen, Henry Fielding and Thomas Hardy.  Of course I also read more contemporary novels, particularly historical fiction.  A strong influence was Anya Seton's novel Katherine (I have a very battered first edition and an equally battered paperback copy, which have both been read many times) and also the Georgian novels of Georgette Heyer.  I always wanted to emulate Heyer's amazing ability to recreate the language of her particular period but I long ago realised that it was a talent unique to her.  Daphne du Maurier was another influence, particularly The House on the Strand – a rather dark time-slip novel which gripped me intensely.  I wrote a time-slip novel once myself (unpublished), but I now prefer to leave that to the experts like Barbara Erskine and wallow uninterrupted in my preferred period of the 15^th century.

5.  Were you ever tempted to add a bit more fiction or more hard facts at certain points in the novel?

By definition historical fiction is what it is – a story set in a selected period and based on the historical record.  But records are patchy and unreliable and I leave it to the historians to search and interpret them as they see fit.  I am happy to consult the records myself, read historians' interpretations and then employ my imagination to fill in the (sometimes extensive) gaps.  How much fiction and fact the story requires depends on the necessity of creating a narrative that will grip the reader.  There is no point in writing a novel which uses only the history if the reader becomes bored a few pages in.  So yes, I use fiction extensively, especially when it comes to creating character and dialogue but it always follows the historical timeline and is inspired by what I have gleaned from historical sources.

6. Which historical figure of Cicely's world most interested you and how did you go about adapting them for the book?

This is a difficult question to answer because I can't actually write a character that doesn't interest me!  Obviously Cicely was the one who initially grabbed my attention and made me want to write her story and I think it was because she was the youngest child of her father's extensive family – twenty two children!  Digging into the Neville family tree threw up so many fascinating life-stories that I had real trouble restricting the number of her family members that I could include in the narrative without confusing the reader.  In Red Rose White Rose, as I confess in the Author's Notes at the back, I have invented one very important character by giving Cicely a half-brother called Cuthbert who acts as a second narrator to Cicely herself.  On the Neville family tree there is a son called Cuthbert who died in infancy but I have resurrected him and made him an illegitimate son of Cicely's father, the Earl of Westmorland, who is reared in the household and becomes a champion knight and Cicely's bodyguard.  Through his eyes we are able to go onto the battlefields of the Wars of the Roses which would be impossible if Cicely carried all of the narration.

7. If you could enter the novel's world as any character and go through their story, who would it be and why?        

I think it would be the character mentioned above, Cicely's half-brother Cuthbert.  You'll have to read the book to see why but I will just say that because he has a farmer's daughter for a mother and an Earl for a father he looks at life from a more balanced viewpoint than his noble relatives.  He has to fight for what he achieves and overcome injustice and prejudice along the way and I like the man he becomes as a result! 

8. Have you got any exciting plans for your next book and can you tell us anything about it?

Yes, I have very exciting plans for my next book, which will cover the second half of the fifteenth century, further exploring the Wars of the Roses and involving characters I have already used in my previous three books, as well as introducing other major and minor figures from the period.  I wish I could tell you more but things are at a delicate stage of negotiation...Watch my Facebook Page (Joanna Hickson) and Twitter feed @joannahickson for further revelations!

Be sure to check out www.femalefirst.co.uk on the 12th,

and have a look at the previous blogs if you haven't already!

Image Sources: HarperFiction

Thanks to Jaime Frost.