Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught

Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught.

Published 30th April 2020 by Bluemoose Books.
Read April 2020.

From the cover of the book: 

How would it be if four lunatics went on a tremendous adventure, reshaping their pasts and futures as they went, including killing Mussolini? 

What if one of those people were a fascinating, forgotten aristocratic assassin and the others a fellow life co-patient, James Joyce's daughter Lucia, another the first psychoanalysis patient, known to history simply as 'Anna O,' and finally 19th Century Paris's Queen of the Hysterics, Blanche Wittmann? 

That would be extraordinary, wouldn't it? How would it all be possible? Because, as the assassin Lady Violet Gibson would tell you, those who are confined have the very best imaginations.

Four women, some of the most interesting in the history of psychology, go on a fictional adventure, taking control of their own stories - stories that have been laid bare by men quick to label them as mad.

Let's ask the question... "Who is mad here?".

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Saving Lucia is a powerful and heart-rending look at the lives of four women: the aristocratic Lady Violet Gibson (1876-1956), who attempted to assassinate Mussolini; Lucia Joyce (1907-1982), dancer and daughter of author James Joyce; Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936), known as 'Anna O', the first psychanalysis patient; and Blanche Williams (1859-1913), termed 'The Queen of Hysterics' by Dr Hean-Martin Charcot.  Here, Anna Vaught connects them as 'comrades' in the most intriguing of ways, through their shared experience of being labelled as 'lunatics' by the world of psychiatry - a world shaped by the rhetoric of men - and takes them on a literary adventure.

Vaught allows these women to tell their own stories, and recreate their own histories, led by the narrative of the fascinating Lady Violet Gibson, and recorded by her institutionalised companion Lucia Joyce. 

"My life was all mapped out for me.

I was to be what the patriarchy decreed..."

The word hysteria comes, via Latin, from the Greek hustera, meaning womb, and husterikos 'of the womb'. Hysteria was thought to be a disorder specific to women, with a wide array of symptoms, such as anxiety, shortness of breath, fainting, sexual desire, insomina, and best of all, a 'tendency to cause trouble for others'. This seems absurd to our modern sensibilities, but there is nothing amusing about the treatment meted out to the women diagnosed as suffering from this condition.

Were these women really mad, or were they just deemed difficult by the patriarchal societies that shaped them, and locked away to prevent them 'causing trouble'? As Vaught takes us on a journey into their lives, weaving their stories together, this question becomes ever more pertinent, although she never asks this question directly  - and in some ways Violet, at least, does seem to take ownership of her own 'madness'. 

For me, it seems clear that defining these women as mad... hysterical... out of control... was more a way to silence rather than help them, and sometimes a vehicle to exploit them for the personal gain of those are were given the task of caring for them. Through Vaught's retelling these women are able to take back control and reshape their pasts - and we come to understand that Violet's aim is to 'save' Lucia from the fate that has become her own.

"I want to tell you: through prayer and through the imagination,

the most extraordinary things can be achieved.

I do believe that.

But do you?

Might I convince you?"

Vaught uses the theme of birds, specifically passerines, very cleverly throughout this book - inspired by Violet's habit of feeding her feathered friends in the grounds of St Andrew's Hospital where she was committed. This conjures up such a powerful image of longing for freedom from the bonds of forced incarceration, and starky represents these women as creatures to be studied, or viewed as an entertaining diversion, through the bars of a cage - and is also wonderfully redolent of the idea of Violet herself having been trapped in a gilded cage as a child.

"You know, we women.

I sense we want to sing aloud of who

and what we are.

Like the birds...."

It's fair to say that this is a meandering sort of text and one which you have to immerse yourself in completely to get the most out of Vaught's words. This is not the kind of book to pick up and put down, but rather one which is best enjoyed in big indulgent gluts, and this works particularly well with the subject matter. 

There are some difficult and affecting parts to this story in connection with the barbarous history of psychiatric treatment, particularly for women, which grip you viscerally, but this book is also fascinating, moving, and sometimes humorous. It did make me feel rather sad, especially after looking into the lives of these women myself, but there is no doubt that Vaught does a sterling job in giving voice to four incredible characters who deserve the right to tell their own complex stories. 

Saving Lucia is available to buy now, from your favourite book retailer.

Thank you to Bluemoose Books and Jordan Taylor-Jones for gifting me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Anna Vaught is a teacher and lives in Bradford upon Avon. This is her third novel.

About Bluemoose Books:

Bluemoose Books is an independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. Kevin and Hetha Duffy started Bluemoose in 2006 and as a ‘family’ of readers and writers we’re passionate about the written word and stories.

 Stories are transformative and as publishers we delight in finding great new talent. We don’t have the heft of a London publishing house with the millions of pounds to promote our writers but we do manage through innovative marketing to get our books into high street bookstores and reviewed in the national press.

 If you’re looking for orange headed celebrity books, you’ve probably come to the wrong place. But if you want brilliant stories that have travelled from Hebden Bridge, across the border into Lancashire, down to London across to Moscow, Sofia and Budapest and into the United States, Australia, India, Colombia and Greenland, Iceland and Bosnia Herzevogina then Bluemoose is the publisher for you.

Famished by Anna Vaught

Famished by Anna Vaught.

Publishing 10th September 2020 by Influx Press.
Read July 2020.

From the cover of the book:

In this dark and toothsome collection, Anna Vaught enters a strange world of apocryphal feasts and disturbing banquets.

 Famished explores the perils of selfish sensuality and trifle while child rearing, phantom sweetshop owners, the revolting use of sherbet in occult rituals, homicide by seaside rock, and the perversion of Thai Tapas. 

Once, that is, you've been bled dry from fluted cups by pretty incorporeals and learned about consuming pride in the hungriest of stately homes. 

Famished: eighteen stories to whet your appetite and ruin your dinner.

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This is certainly a book you can get your teeth into - or does it get its teeth into you? Intrigued? You should be!

I first came across the work of Anna Vaught in her recent book Saving Lucia (Bluemoose 2020), which I can highly recommend (See my review here), so I was really looking forward to savouring the delights of her new short story collection, Famished.

Famished is a collection of glorious fables by Anna Vaught, ostensibly on the theme of food, but delving into these surreal and often sensuous stories will take you on a voyage into some pretty terrifying depths of the ilk of the darkest of adult fairy tales.

Be prepared to meet spectral beings, ghosts and ghouls; feasts of huge proportions in which dishes both delicious and distinctly unpalatable are served, with macabre consequences; gluttonous gourmands and austere abstainers; controllers, conjurers and confectioners galore....

I guarantee you will be unable to think the same way about all manner of food stuffs after reading this book - tripe, sherbet, seaside rock, and baked goods all spring to mind - and nightmares about dreadful dolls and loathsome lampreys will surely ensue.

These tales are all completely wonderful - immersive, dreamy, nightmarish, and eerily enchanting in turn - exploring many facets of the meaning of appetite, and our author uses her choice of words to perfection throughout.

I adored the entire collection, but my absolute favourite is Shame with its compelling celebration of "chef's perks", dark theme of coercive control, and the acknowledgement that true bliss comes from the simplest of pleasures, such as being able to slob on the sofa with the one you truly love, a pack of twiglets and a jar of Hellman's.

Do yourself a favour and indulge your literary appetite by ordering a copy of this fabulous collection right now - ideally direct from Inlux Press HERE.

Thank you to Jordan Taylor-Jones for sending me a copy of this gem, in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Anna Vaught is a novelist, poet, essayist, reviewer, and editor. With a BA and MA in English, she is also a secondary English teacher, tutor and mentor to young people, mental health campaigner and advocate, volunteer and mum to a large brood.

She is the author of numerous books, including the novel Saving Lucia ( from Bluemoose). Her work has appeared in Best British Horror, Litro, The Shadow Booth, Review 31 and many more. 

You can find her on Twitter and at www.annavaughtwrites.com

The Sound Mirror by Heidi James

The Sound Mirror by Heidi James.

Published 20th August 2020 by Bluemoose Books.
Read August 2020.

Tamara is on the way to kill her mother, but things are not all they seem. Tamara is not the monster here, and as she looks back on her traumatic childhood and her difficult relationship with her mother, we can see how things have come to this point.

But this is not just Tamara's story. In this book, we will get to know the life stories of Claire, with her poor working class background and Italian immigrant parents, and Ada, taken from her childhood home of India and struggling to find a new place for herself in cold, grey England - both their lives marked by war, family and the expectations placed on them.

How are these women linked and how do the reverberations of the past affect the future?

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The Sound Mirror is the second book published by Bluemoose Books in 2020, as part of the year of publishing books exclusively from women writers - after the mesmerising Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught in April 2020 (see my review here).

I went into this book cold, without reading the blurb, which I am wont to do, and for me, this is definitely the best way to read this book, as it makes it the most wonderful voyage of discovery.

Here we have the story of three women:

Claire, the child of Italian immigrants, growing up as part of a poor, working class family in Kent. The course of Claire's life is laid out for her and shaped by her childhood in the 1940s/50s, in which looking after her numerous younger siblings and working hard in her father's fruit and vegetable business are the only options available until marriage. She longs to live a different life from her worn out mother, adamant that hers will be a different fate.

Ada, newly transplanted from India to an unwelcoming post-war Britain, finding it hard to adjust to ordinary life after the pampered existence she has always known, and coming to rely on the pale features inherited from her Irish grandfather and half-truths about her heritage to carve a future in this new world - one she hopes will be free of restraint.

And Tamara, a young woman of the modern age, and yet indelibly marked by a difficult relationship with her mother, and the heritage of the blood that runs in her veins.

Who are these women, and what is their relationship to one another? As the life stories of Claire and Ada play out in the present tense, and we simultaneously follow Tamara on her journey to see her dying mother whilst reminiscing on her traumatic past, it's hard to see how their lives touch. But as a reader, you get so absorbed in their separate stories and the rhythm of their lives, cutting back and forth between them throughout, that it ceases to even be a question in your mind after a while.

So, when the connection is revealed in the most delicious fait accompli by our author Heid James it hits you with shocking force, bringing everything into focus with sharp clarity as all the myriad pieces fall into place.

This books is quite simply outstanding. The writing is superb and fully transports you into the lives of all three women - their frustrations, jealousies, yearnings, shame, and their secret rebellions against the weight of the expectation forced upon them by family, class and the drudgery of ordinary life. As the echoes of the past are collected and concentrated to be bounced forward into the future, like some monstrous titular sound mirror, it somehow proves impossible for these women to break away from the haunting legacy of their blood, no matter how hard they try, and their experiences cut you to the quick.

The Sound Mirror is one of my favourite reads this year, and it is a book that begs to be read over again as soon as you have finished, so you can extract every subtlety and shade to the absolute max. This is a book you will not want to miss and it is available to buy now from your favourite book retailer, or from Bluemoose Books direct here.

Thank you to Heidi James and Bluemoose Books for providing me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

From the cover of the book:

Tamara is going to kill her mother, but she isn't the villain.

Tamara just has to finish what began at her birth and put an end to the damage encoded in her blood. Quitting her job in Communications, Tamara dresses carefully and hires a car, making the trip from London to her hometown in Kent, to visit her mother for the last time. 

Accompanied by a chorus of ancestors, Tamara is harried by voices from the past and the future that reveal the struggles, joys and secrets of these women's lives that continue to echo through and impact her own.' 

The Sound Mirror spans three familial generations from British Occupied India to Southern England, through intimately rendered characters, Heidi James has crafted a haunting and moving examination of class, war, violence, family and shame from the rich details of ordinary lives.

About the author:

Heidi James lives in London and lectures at Kingston University. Her poetry, essays and short stories have appeared in numerous publications including, Mslexia, Galley Beggar Press and Dazed & Confused.

Should We Fall Behind by Sharon Duggal

 

Should We Fall Behind by Sharon Duggal.

Published 20th October 2020 by Bluemoose Books.

From the cover of the book:

Jimmy Noone escapes his difficult life in a small town and finds himself living on the streets of a big city where he meets Betwa, who brings with her a chance of real friendship and a glimpse of new hope. Betwa disappears and Jimmy walks across the sprawling metropolis searching for her.

He arrives on Shifnal Road on the other side of the river where people from all over the world live side by side yet some inhabitants are so isolated they seem to have disappeared altogether. Jimmy becomes the catalyst for their lives colliding.

Journeys to the street and to the city are retraced, so too are stories abundant with lost dreams, unrivalled friendship, profound love and stifling grief, each underpinned with the subtle threads of commonality which intersect them all.

Should We Fall Behind is about the passing of time, and the intricate weaves of joy and suffering, love and loss which shape human life along the way. It is about the people who have somehow become invisible, and how their stories make them visible once more.

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Should We Fall Behind is the third book being published by Bluemoose Books as part of their year of publishing only women authors - following on from the gorgeous Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught and the compelling The Sound Mirror by Heidi James. 

Like the two wonderful books before it, Should We Fall Behind is captivating and beautifully character led, making it another winner from Bluemoose!

From the very first page, when we meet Jimmy Noone, as he forms his friendship with the grief stricken Betwa, you know you are in for the kind of story that is going to tug mercilessly at your heartstrings, but both the journey and the destination make this book an absolute pleasure to read.

When Jimmy loses track of Betwa on the streets, his search for his only friend takes us into the heart of the small community of Shifnal Road, which is populated with some beautifully drawn characters - the pensioner Rayya with her terminally ill husband; the feisty single mother Ebele and her lonely daughter Tuli; and the widowed landlord and shopkeeper Nikos - not forgetting the all round good guy and knight in shining armour, Daban. Each of these characters lives an isolated existence, keeping their history and secret sorrows hidden deep, even though they live and work cheek-by-jowl with each other.

Although, on the surface, they seem very different to each other, and the homeless man Jimmy who is sleeping rough in their neighbourhood, there are threads and similarities that connect each of their stories. As the novel progresses, Sharon Duggal lets us experience life from their different points of view, cleverly steering us through the happy and traumatic moments that have brought them to where they are, and showing us the reality of the lives they now live. 

Their lives touch, in such superficial ways, and I found myself yearning for the moment where their bubbles would merge meaningfully and their relationships could develop into something more  - but they are unable to break out of the prisons they have created for themselves without a catalyst, and this proves, most unexpectedly, to be Jimmy.

Jimmy's presence evokes some pretty strong reactions in out little cast of characters - from bringing out Rayya's long supressed motherly feelings;  feeding into Ebele's fear and suspicion;  inspiring Tuli's imagination and longing for a friend; provoking Nikos' sorrowful anger; and spurring the lovely Daban on a quest to do good for everyone - and when a moment of crisis brings them together it sparks real change for them all.

This is a beautiful book that delves into the lives of people suffering deep seated sorrows and loneliness, who have fallen through the cracks and been left behind by the endless rat-race of modern life - and sometimes the people they love.  It is also one which shows us how important it is to look beneath the surface to the person below, and the magic that can happen when love. kindness and understanding are allowed to triumph over fear, discrimination and hatred. I loved it!

Should We Fall Behind is available to buy from Bluemoose Books HERE, or from your favourite book retailer, from 20th October 2020.

Thank you to Sharon Duggal and Bluemoose Books for providing me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Sharon Duggal was born and raised in Handsworth, Birmingham. She now lives in Brighton & Hove. The Handsworth Times is her debut novel.

The Zebra And Lord Jones by Anna Vaught

 

The Zebra and Lord Jones by Anna Vaught.

Published 27th September 2023 by Renard Press.

From the cover of the book:

A listless aristocrat, Lord Jones, finds himself in London during the Blitz, attending to insurance matters. A zebra and her foal, having escaped from the London Zoo during a bombing, cross his path, and he decides to take them back to his estate in Pembrokeshire. 

Little loved by his fascist-sympathiser parents, something in Lord Jones softens, and he realises he is lost, just like these zebras. The arrival of the zebras sparks a new lease of life on the Pembrokeshire estate, and it is not only Lord Jones but the families his dynasty has displaced that benefit from the transformation. 

Full of heart and mischief, The Zebra and Lord Jones is a hopeful exploration of class, wealth and privilege, grief, colonialism, the landscape, the wars that men make, the families we find for ourselves, and why one lonely man stole a zebra in September 1940 – or perhaps why she stole him.

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Autumn, 1940. Lord Robert Ashburn, hereafter referred to as Lord Jones, is in London attending to the property affairs of his aristocratic family. As the Blitz rains death all around, he finds himself confronted with the sight of a zebra and her foal on the streets of Knightsbridge, who have escaped from their damaged enclosure at London Zoo. An unfathomable moment of connection sparks between the zebra, Mother, and Lord Jones, and in an uncharacteristic act of rebellion be decides to steal her and her foal, Sweetie, and take them to his family's estate in Pembrokeshire.

The arrival of these exotic animals at Cresswell Manor in rural Wales sparks a transformation in the lives of those who live there, and Lord Jones is consumed with a sense of purpose that he has never felt before. As he distances himself from the cold family that treat him with disdain, he finds himself growing closer to Cresswell's fierce, independent housekeeper Anwen Llewelyn - while the wise and magical zebra look on...

Like all of Anna Vaught's spellbinding fictional novels and short story collections, The Zebra and Lord Jones is one that is difficult to do justice to in a short review, as the beauty of her writing really has to be experienced to be fully appreciated. In simple terms, this is a boy-meets-girl story by way of a fateful episode with two zebras amidst the streets of a London on fire, but in the telling it brings in so much more. 

Vaught takes the factual escape of a zebra in London during the Blitz, and family tales from her own past, using them as the inspiration to embroider a story which encapsulates love, loss and the golden threads of hope into the lives of a cast of characters who you come to hold dear, while touching on an ambitious array of subjects. At the centre of the story is Lord Jones, a downtrodden and sickly heir of Fascist sympathiser parents, who represent the very worst of the British aristocracy at this period in history. Lord Jones is desperately unhappy with this life, despite the privileges he enjoys, but the very fact that he is love-starved by the parents he despairs of opens him up to a host of wondrous possibilities when two very special equids cross his path. 

As the threads of Lord Jones' tale unfurl, the warp and weft of the tapestry Vaught began stitching in London fills in with other characters in need of hope in their lives. Anwen the majestic housekeeper is the most interesting of the bunch, with her refusal to bow to authority and her keen sense of what is right; but there are a host of others like Ernest the evacuee; Mr Talbot the zookeeper and his colleagues in Dresden and Lisbon: the lovely community around Cresswell; a surprise appearance by Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia; and too many animals to mention, advocated for by the wise and all-seeing zebra.

Everything combines in a delicious mix of historical fiction and magical realism redolent with themes of family, class, human frailty, and the terrible toll of war, packed with humour and heart. There is an ebb and flow to the novel that catches you up in a slow-burn fever, tying you irrevocably to the fate of the characters. I loved Vaught's little asides throughout the book, and the delightfully comic back and forth of Operation Zebra, both of which really reminded me of the work of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The way she shines a light on the treatment of animals during World War II too is particularly heart-wrenching and thought provoking in equal measure.

This is a book for those of you that enjoy giving yourselves over to a character led piece which blurs the boundaries between hard-edge story and the seductive pull of a fairy tale. It is everything I adore about Vaught's writing. If you have yet to discover her magic for yourself, then you are in for a treat, and this is a fabulous place to start.

The Zebra and Lord Jones is available to by now in paperback. You can support indie publishing by buying direct from Renard Press HERE.

Thank you to Renard Press for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author: 

Anna Vaught is an English teacher, Creative Writing teacher, mentor, editor and author of several books, including Saving Lucia, Famished, Ravished and These Envoys of Beauty. 

Her short creative works and features have been widely published, and she has written for the national press and has had a column with The Bookseller and Mslexia. In 2022 Anna launched The Curae, a new literary prize for carers. Anna is also a guest university lecturer, a tutor for Jericho Writers, and volunteers with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

She is the mother of three sons, comes from a large Welsh family and lives in Wiltshire. The Zebra and Lord Jones is her third novel and seventh book.