All Our Squandered Beauty by Amanda Huggins

 

All Our Squandered Beauty by Amanda Huggins.

Publishing 31st January 2021 by Victorina Press.

From the cover of the book:

Kara's father died at sea - or did he? She has spent her teenage years struggling with grief and searching for answers. 

When she accepts her art tutor's offer to attend a summer school on a Greek island, she discovers once again that everything is not what it seems, and on her return, she faces several uncomfortable truths. 

Could Jake, a local trawlerman, be the key to uncovering the past, and will Kara embrace the possibilities her future offers, or turn back to the sea?

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I am a huge Amanda Huggins fan so was overjoyed when she asked me if I would like to review her latest publication, All Our Squandered Beauty, which will be hitting the shelves in January 2021.

In these pages, we get a glimpse into the life of a young girl haunted by the loss of her beloved father - a man who drowned at sea while out on his fishing boat, but rumoured to have run off with his lover and abandoned his wife and child. For Kara, something has gone missing from her life along with her father, but she knows that he was planning to return home to her, despite what people say - if she could only find him in the waves and bring him home, and so make herself whole again.

This is the most wonderful coming of age story, set in the heady summer of 1978, and it sings with the promise of what Kara's life could be if she can break away from this small community and pull of the sea that holds the echoes of her father. She knows she wants more than life here can offer and longs for the bright lights of London.

"The snow cranes are ready to fly south again with all our squandered beauty 

stowed beneath their wings."

 Amanda Huggins writes the part of Kara so beautifully. Her portrayal is full of the angst and confused emotions of youth, rich with  palpable longing for adventure away from the stifling small town community in which she lives, for a life of glamour with sophisticated companions, and yet unable to quite throw off the lure of security that home guarantees. It's so evocative for anyone who grew up in a small seaside town, like myself, that I found myself pulled right back in time - the people, the environment and the feelings all came rolling back!

Of course, coping with the loss of her father makes this more than your usual coming of age tale and it allows Amanda Huggins to fully explore Kara's relationship with the sea in all its wild and rugged glory - bringing in a riot of colour, sound and the symbolism of mysterious folk lore magic that draws us in and lets the waves of the text wash over us.

For a novella of only 122 pages All Our Squandered Beauty  takes you on the kind of emotional journey that only an accomplished author can. I loved the way Amanda uses the locations of home and Greece as a way to contrast between Kara's experiences of people and environment - again using the sea almost as an extra character in the story - it was so cleverly done.

I also adored the little nod Amanda makes to her own incredible poetry anthology, The Collective Nouns For Birds, when Kara reminisces about her father. This made me smile big time, Amanda!

This book is beautiful and I promise you it will take you through a whole gamut of emotions, with plenty of tears along the way, but both the journey and the destination will make it all worthwhile.

All Our Squandered Beauty will be available to buy from your favourite book retailer in paperback format from 31st January 2021.

Thank you to Amanda Huggins and Victorina Press for gifting me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Amanda Huggins is the author of three collections of short fiction - Brightly Coloured Horses, Separated From the Sea and Scratched Enamel Heart. She has also published a poetry collection, The Collective Nouns for Birds, which won the 2020 Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet. 

She has been placed and listed in numerous competitions including Fish, Bridport, Bath, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Award and the Colm Toibin International Short Story Award. 

In 2018 her story Red was a finalist in the Costa Short Story Award. Her travel writing has also won several prizes, notably the BGTW New Travel Writer of the Year in 2014, and she has twice been a finalist in the Bradt Guides New Travel Writer Award. 

Amanda grew up on the North Yorkshire coast, moved to London in the 1990s, and now lives in West Yorkshire.