Loose Connections by Malaika Rose Stanley. Review by Lynda Waterhouse

I tend to avoid any book that calls itself a memoir.  I associate the word with the misery memoir genre or cynical celebrity kiss and tell tales. I also tend to avoid most self-published adult fiction/ autobiography by anyone I know just in case ….

Loose Connections is the beautiful exception to all my ‘rules.’  It is an exceptional book – this ‘true story full of holes.’ It contains all the features of Malaika’s writing that stands out in her children’s fiction: clarity, warmth, the exploration of difficult issues and humour. In this book Malaika is shining a light on her own life in particular her experience as a mixed-race child growing up in a children’s home in the 1960s and her subsequent search for her birth parents.  It is not a spoiler to say that there are no happy ever after rosy reunions where everything is neatly tied up in a bow. This story is messy and inconclusive like life and all the better for it. Some questions are never answered, some people never found. Some family re-connections are problematical.

The contents page reads like a poem with its chapter headings, Tea and Sympathy, Flesh and Blood and Heart and Soul. Some of the chapters are written from the perspective of her birth mother and the way she was treated as an unmarried mother in the 1950s. She describes her own birth in all its harsh unflinching loneliness and casual cruelty.

Other chapters recount her life growing up in the children’s home. As a child who grew up in nearby Manchester at the same time I could relate with some of Malaika’s experiences at school.

This book is all about the search for connections.  When she left care and went to FE college in Moseley she made new friends from the Caribbean community, ‘They understood me….and they welcomed me into their homes and loved me up.’

Sometimes it is those loose connections of friends and carers that provide a solid foundation of love – albeit unspoken. Later on in the book Malaika revaluates the relationship with her ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ in the children’s home.

Upon the birth of her son she says,

 ‘He was the first of my blood relatives that I ever met and every time someone said, “he looks just like you”, my heart, and my head, swelled a little more.’

She also says,

‘I’ve missed having a history. I’ve missed knowing where my people come from, the place where I belong, where my toes would recognise the sand and people I don’t know would see my grandmother’s face in mine and welcome me home.’

I hope this book is picked up by a mainstream publisher and gets the wider recognition it deserves. Loose Connections is a moving and honest account of growing up in care and the search for identity.  It should be required reading for social workers, teachers and social historians.

ISBN 978 1533641533

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THE CURIOUS TALE OF THE LADY CARABOO by Catherine Johnson. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull

"Doesn't she understand her lot?" wonders young Fred Worrall, when faced with a frightened and reluctant young prostitute - before daydreaming about his own 'lot': travel, university, work as a banker - everything that's been planned for him by family and social class.

This extraordinary story of love, mystery and self-deception is based on true events. It's set in 1819 and tells how Mary Willcox, a cobbler's daughter from Devon, managed to pass herself off as a princess from the Far East, fooling not only the wealthy family who took her in, but various 'experts' who examined her.

The story begins with a brutal scene in which 17 year old Mary, alone and exhausted on the road, is raped by two men. She was on her way home to Devon from London - where the man she loved had deserted her and where her newborn baby had died. After this attack, at her lowest ebb, Mary longs to become someone else. She reinvents herself as the Princess Caraboo, speaking no English, wearing a turban, and looking everyone boldly in the eye in a way that downtrodden Mary never could. She is found and brought to Knole House, home of the Worrall family, and immediately wins over Mrs Worrall, who is an amateur student of anthropology. But not everyone is convinced by Caraboo, and before long Mary finds herself wanting to escape but caught up in a net of her own making.

The story is seen from the viewpoints of several young people: Mary herself; Cassandra, the daughter of the house; Cassandra's brother Fred; and Will, the son of the local innkeeper, who falls for the self-centred Cassandra. Young Fred Worrall is in some ways the most interesting of these characters, as he changes from playboy to someone who sees women as human beings, and in so doing frees himself.

Through these various viewpoints we see love in its pure and corrupt forms, the way society treats women, and in particular the degrading lives of poor women - but all conveyed with the lightest touch in a story that sparkles with vitality.


www.annturnbull.com






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CATS AND CURSES, by Elen Caldecott. Reviewed by Saviour Pirotta

Title: Cats and Curses [The Marsh Road Mysteries, Book 4]
Author: Elen Caldecott
Published by Bloomsbury
Format p/b and ebook
Publication date: 11th August 2016

I am a big fan of the Marsh Road Mysteries, and of Elen Caldecott's books in general, which are brilliant page turners that weld Enid Blyton and Malcolm Saville's sense of mystery with twenty first century sensibilities and values.

This is the fourth book in the series and the five members of the crime-busting gang are back for another adventure. Meet Piotr, Andrew, Flora and the beyond-cool Sylvie.  Andrew's mum is recovering from the shock of being involved in a fire and ready to go back to work, helping out at the local junk shop. But things don't go according to plan. On her first day, she takes delivery of a mysterious package - a mummified Egyptian cat. The gruesome artefact seems to have put a curse on the shop. Strange things start happening: glass objects shatter in locked cabinets, eerie shadows appear. It has an adverse effect on Andrew's mum, and her friend the junk shop owner.

The fab five suspected human intervention and they are soon uncovering clues and tailing suspects, each member of the gang bringing their own unique skill to the investigation. The climax, in a builder's yard is a fantastic mis-en-scene and the resolution truly satisfying.

It's not just the story that makes this book a joy to read, it's the sense of friendship the characters have for one another, and the celebration of family in its various guises. The scene where Andrew gives his mum a special hairdo to cheer her up is a gem. A highly recommended read.

Saviour Pirotta
My online profile: website at www.spirotta.com.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spirotta
Twitter: @spirotta



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SHE IS NOT INVISIBLE by Marcus Sedgwick

Review by Jackie Marchant 

This was shortlisted for the inaugural YA Book Award and, to be honest, I preferred it to the winner, but that’s another story.  There is so much to this book – a great plot, a mystery, a puzzle or two, a dash of thriller and a tough challenge, all bound up with excellent writing.  

It begins with Laureth trying to convince herself that she’s not abducting her seven year old brother, even though she’s at the airport with him and her mother’s credit card.  It takes a while to realise why young Ben is an essential companion as she tries to find out why her father has disappeared in New York when he’s supposed to be in Switzerland.  It’s only towards the end of the first chapter that you realise Laureth is blind.  Even then, it takes her a long time before she quietly confesses to someone.  She doesn’t want to bring attention to herself as she fears they will send her back for travelling with a seven year old. 

What chance does a blind sixteen year old girl have in finding a missing father, when her only aid is a young boy who thinks this is a planned trip to visit him?  But Laureth is resourceful and, despite what she thinks, responsible.  She manages to meet the person who contacted her father to tell him that he’d found his notebook.  As Lauren answers all her father’s fan mail, she now knows that her father is not where he’s supposed to be and, even worse, he’s lost his precious notebook.  Her father is a writer and, as one myself, I know that loss of a notebook is an absolute disaster.  But when Laureth meets up with the person who found it, they are not what they seemed and the mystery only deepens.

Then there is the content of the notebook.  To the reader, lots of quirky notes about coincidence, strange cults and suicides, but to Laureth the frightening truth that her father might be in real danger.  So she goes off to New York with her little brother to find him.  Then the trouble really starts.  But I will say no more as I don’t want to give anything away.

This is not your usual page-turner.  As well as gripping, it is original and quirky, beautifully written, with realistic characters and plausibility.  It’s described as a thriller, but it is so much more than that.

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UNDER WATER by Marisa Reichardt, reviewed by Pauline Francis

I chose this debut novel because of this sentence on the front cover: “Sometimes the safest place to be is underwater.” I was intrigued because I really don't like water at all. The hard cover on the right is even more disturbing to me, so I've shown you both.

Morgan is seventeen, lives in California and used to be a great swimmer, until a terrible event at school made her afraid to leave her apartment.

Sadly, we’ve become used to reading about school massacres, even used to reading about yet another loner who has taken revenge on his rejecting world. Reinhardt takes us in into new territory: what happens to the survivors? How do they recover from their trauma? Life can never be the same again, so how does a young person grow into a new one? Morgan is such a survivor. We know this early on. The tension lies in not knowing exactly what happened to her.

This novel skilfully and slowly takes us into Morgan’s mind as it is written in a very sparing present tense and first person, like a mental diary. Just when the reader is beginning to get the measure of her and her progress, thanks to her therapist, Brenda, a new thread of the trauma floats to the surface. The reader is constantly asking, ‘Is she going to get over this?’

Morgan begins her recovery when a new boy moves in next door. But this isn’t a love-cures-all novel. It’s much more subtle than that. The boy, Evan, connects Morgan to the world outside that she misses and wants to return to. And Reinhardt takes pains to point out that Morgan has to do the hard work every day, reading the mantra stuck onto the kitchen wall:  

1. Breathe 2. You’re are OK. 3. You’re not dying.

Nobody can get better for her.

“’Are you proud of yourself? Brenda asks.

‘I guess.’

‘I want you to own it, Morgan.’

‘Yes.’”

I very much liked the introduction of Morgan’s car, a classic (1957) matador-red Bel Air, left to her by her grandfather. It’s a strong character and adds a dark twist to the day of the massacre, to Morgan’s final revelation.

I did find Morgan’s family situation depressing: her father suffers from war-related mental health problems; some might say it is unnecessary, as are Evan’s own family issues. But as forgiveness and acceptance are at the heart of this novel, Morgan has to forgive her father as well as the loner who carries out the massacre.

This is an honest and gutsy novel that I would recommend far and wide – to anybody suffering the trauma of physical and mental abuse - and to their teachers, parents, carers and counsellors.

Pauline Francis www.paulinefrancis.co.uk

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A LIBRARY OF LEMONS by JO COTTERILL. Reviewed by John Dougherty

I should start with a declaration of interest: Jo Cotterill is one of my best and dearest friends, and so this review is likely to be a little bit biased. For an accurate rating, I suggest you take the figure I’ll award the book at the end of the review, and half it.

That said, I’d have loved this book no matter who had written it. I warn you, though: when you read it you might need to keep a hanky handy. It’s a very powerful and emotional story, and I found myself shedding proper tears several times.

Calypso, the protagonist, is a strong and likeable character, but there are a lot of things that she doesn’t realise about herself. She’s lonely. She’s a carer. She’s being neglected - both physically and emotionally - by her dad, who is still grief-stricken following the death of her mum five years previously. But things change when unwillingly, accidentally, Calypso makes a friend. Mae is everything that Calypso’s dad is not - warm, in touch with her feelings, genuinely spontaneous, and emotionally present - and as contact with Mae and the rest of her family grows, the protective shell which Calypso has, all unknowingly, built around herself begins to crumble. But still Calypso doesn’t realise how wrong her life has become, until she makes a discovery…

The range of issues covered in the book is enormous - young carers; mental health; emotional disconnection; friendship; bereavement; the list goes on - and in the hands of a less able writer, this could provide us with a catalogue of clichés. But A Library of Lemons is not an ‘issue’ book; it’s a story, a good one, which happens to deal with these issues, but which deals with them so deftly that all we really care about is Calypso’s unfolding: how she uncovers the reality of her broken life, and learns to connect with others, and discovers that the ‘inner strength’ her dad keeps telling her about only matters if you learn to share it.

A Library of Lemons is a brilliant book, heartily recommended for anyone who’s ever felt lonely, or who thinks they may have been, or who has the capacity to empathise with those who have. And for that matter, heartily recommended for everyone else as well.

Oh, and that rating? I give it twelve out of five.

John Dougherty.

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The Cat and the King, written and illustrated by Nick Sharratt, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

This handsome hardback chapter book has a gold foil front cover, and every single page inside is illustrated in black and red and pink toned artwork that makes every page accessible to even non-reading children.  It's a lovely object, and a treat to open and read.  What you find inside is Nick Sharratt's first published novel, and its great fun.

This story of an innocent but proud king and his clever cat, displaced from the palace and learning to live in the more ordinary world, is charming; funny and poignant.  I love the family next door with the sulky dad who is determined not to be impressed by a king, and the children who earn medals from the king for their artwork and recorder playing.  There's are entertaining sub-plots  where we can spot which of the dozen palace servants who lost their palace jobs turn up in ordinary life as bus drivers,  shop staff, and more.  And what, exactly, will the King and the Cat use that wheelbarrow and feather boa for which were amongst their car boot sale purchases?  The story is a simple one, seasoned with jokes and with odd moments of danger to thrill.  In spite of being about a moustachioed king and a cat, it is actually about anybody displaced from their familiar home surroundings and assumptions, and having to adapt and find new friends in a new life.  We see the King in tears before he settles happily into his new life.  All that is very pertinent to today's global world, but also to the immediate lives of young children starting in new classes in school or moving house.

The story is aimed at children of perhaps three to sevenish, but there is plenty of humour for the adult who is likely to be reading the text out loud.  What a handsome Christmas present it would be to unwrap ... if its not too early to make a remark like that!

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