Reviews of Astral Travel and Joachim Boaz on The Birth Machine

It's the first day of February, and there are snowdrops up in the garden, a bit of hope in these dreadful times!  

Astral Travel has had a couple more nice reviews. The Mole at Our Book Reviews Online says he 'couldn't stop reading' and he 'loved this story', and calls it 'highly recommended'. (Full review here.) And an appreciative review comes from Nakisha Towers on Everybody's Reviewing, a website/blog of Leicester University's Centre for Creative Writing.

And I came belatedly across this nice review of The Birth Machine by Joachim Boaz in a blog survey he recently made of medical science fiction. It amuses me when people classify The Birth Machine as science fiction - it is actually listed in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction - since, as far as I was concerned, I was writing about social reality. The 'birth machine' of the title (which also relates to the alienation of the birthing mother through medicalisation) refers to a device for inducing labour that was actually introduced into labour wards in the early 70s, when the book is set. At one time I found the assumption that it was science fiction frustrating, as it seemed like a potential negation or at least continued overlooking of the re-life social experience of women. 

I know that Margaret Atwood has said the same about the Handmaid's Tale, that in fact nothing in that novel had not already happened to women somewhere in the world by the time she wrote the novel. The Birth Machine is not even set in a speculative future, as is The Handmaid's Tale, so would seem even less prone to being pushed into the science-fiction category. I'm more relaxed about it now, though, and think that if people want take The Birth Machine as metaphorical (as surely science fiction is), a metaphor for certain dangerous ways of thinking, then that's fine - and is better than its being taken as a simple plea for natural childbirth, which at times it has been, and which as far as I'm concerned it definitely is not.

I'm happy to say that, after a long period of being unable to write - of having no creative room in my head beside preoccupation with our strange new circumstances under coronavirus - I've begun to write again. (As I've said, I found I need to know what I'm writing into, and now I do: lockdown has become normality!) I've actually got a new novel brewing (nothing written down yet) and I've completed a new story which I realised, when it was finished, was a stepping stone towards the novel in terms of theme. It wasn't exactly a flash of lightning kind of thing as writing a story so often can be for me, and I abandoned it twice. I had a basic scenario with a compelling image which seemed to resonate deeply, but which seemed somehow too big to handle, to unpick and take further, and so the story kept going nowhere. Then one day it came to me what was wrong: the scenario with which I had begun was actually not the beginning but the end of the story, its culmination. Sometimes what seems like a complete writing block can be dispelled by a simple solution, in this case structural.

Wales Arts Review reviews Used to BE

Here's a great new review of Used to Be in the Wales Arts Review - very insightful in terms of my basic themes and preoccupations. I didn't see it for a while, as I've not been on social media much - coming to the end of a big writing project means spending any spare time catching up in the garden, cleaning the sadly neglected house and spending hours and hours fiddling about with the manuscript - I've edited it twice now, but every time I look at the damn thing I see something that needs changing, and then I have to redo it and print out the changed pages again for my beta readers, who prefer hard copy.

The review, by Frances Spurrier, comments on the way some of the stories touch on technology, which I hadn't thought of myself - I tend to think I've left behind my obsession with technology, as worked out in The Birth Machine and some of my earlier stories, having become more interested in storytelling and memory, but I guess those things are intertwined, all feeding into my underlying theme of power which I made most explicit in Balancing on the Edge of the World.

I'm pretty chuffed by Frances Spurrier's comment:

 'While it may be easy enough to have existential anxieties, to ask what is real and what is not, to question the reliability of memory – it is not at all easy to ask big questions in this most difficult of writing forms, the short story, and using such lucid and poetic prose as the author here uses.'

Off to London today, to the launch of Isobel Dixon's new poetry collection Bearings - can't wait, I love her poetry!

Anniversary prize draw results

Congratulations to the winners of my anniversary draw, to each of whom a copy of one of my Salt books will be winging its way:

Balancing on the Edge of the World: Pratibha Veronica Castle and Fran Slater

Too Many Magpies: Char March and Sarah Schofield

The Birth Machine: mrcc and Frances

Winners: please email me via my profile with your address, so that I can get your book in the post asap.

Anniversary giveaway

How can it be this warm on the 1st October? And in August in Wales I needed a scarf and gloves! It feels right, though, as 1st October will always be a special date for me - the date that my story collection, Balancing on the Edge of the World, and my novel Too Many Magpies were published, as well as the date of publication of the first edition of my novel The Birth Machine.

To celebrate, once again I'm giving away two copies of each of the three books published by Salt. If you want a chance to win one (or more), please leave a message below, email me through this website, or message me on Facebook or Twitter before the end of next Wednesday (8th) when the names will be drawn from a hat. Please say which book(s) you'd like to be entered for - but remember, even if you've read them, those lovely Salt physical books make great Christmas presents!

Salt Spring offer- 70% off selected books!

My wonderful publisher Salt is running an amazing Spring offer - an unbelievable 70% off selected books! My own novel The Birth Machine is included, so if you haven't already got one, now's your chance! Go to the page, it's like a huge platter of jewels - even if you have Kindle editions of some of those books, my guess is you'll be tempted by their beautiful and striking covers and Salt's famously smart typesetting and design - I know I am! Among the many books on offer are the amazing stories by Carys Bray (Sweet Home), David Gaffney (More Sawn-Off Tales), Tony Williams (All the Bananas I've Never Eaten), Alison Moore's Booker shortlisted The Lighthouse and also her stories, the acclaimed Best British Short Stories edited by Nicholas Royle (2011 and 2013), poetry including Chris Emery's The Departure and all three volumes of Best British Poetry, even the much sought after Short Circuit guide to writing short stories edited by Vanessa Gebbie and much, much more. Do take a look!

Too Many Magpies and The Birth Machine now on Kindle.

From time to time people have written to me and asked whether my books are on Kindle, and I'm delighted now to announce that two of my Salt books are.

For those who don't know, Too Many Magpies is a short novel about our sense that the world is a newly dangerous place, and in which a young mother married to a scientist and putting her faith in rationality is suddenly swept off her feet by a mysterious stranger with a very different view of the world. It's a question really (in the book) of how we look at things: do we believe in magic or do we put our faith in science? It's not a simple question, of course, because although true science is based on rationality and empiricism, a lot of so-called scientific practice has been based in faith, often replacing hypothesis with untested certainty. (Funnily enough,  I came into the room last night in the middle of a TV programme John was watching, about the truly lethal character of much in the Victorian environment - including clothing, household goods and even food additives, some of them thought at the time to be health-giving, and advertised as 'pure'.)

The Birth Machine is even more directly concerned with the tendency of applied scientists to base their calculations in leaps of faith and to leave unknown factors out of the equation. The focus here is on the practice of obstetrics - the protagonist, Zelda, is about to give birth -  but also on wider issues of who owns the right to knowledge and the power of language (the language of science, the language of fairy tales etc) to shape our reality and thus our fates, and as Zelda sinks under the influence of drugs, dark secrets are dragged up from her past.

I don't know about you, but I'm finding my relationship with the electronic side of books changing all the time. To begin with, I didn't even use my Kindle very often, but I've come to find it indispensable for travelling and for when I really just can't wait two or three days to get a book - or indeed to get a book while I'm away from home without a nearby bookshop and won't be back for a while to get my post. And talking of magic: there really is nothing like suddenly wanting to read a book and simply pressing a button or two and having it right there in less than a minute!

And as for writing: as I said a few posts ago, while I've always banged on in the past about my need to write a first draft by hand, I'm now finding I'm writing more and more straight to the computer...

Results for anniversary draw of my Salt books.

 

Congratulations to the winners of the anniversary draw for signed copies of my three Salt books (all published on the same date, 1st October):

My story collection, Balancing on the Edge of the World: Paul McVeigh and Armel Dagorn.

My novel The Birth Machine:  Jessica and Hayley Jones.

My novella Too Many Magpies: Dan Powell and Sandy Ferguson.

Above is John making the draw for The Birth Machine  - being interrupted, officially, in writing his textbook on language - he did actually put his laptop aside, but I'm not sure what the Guardian is doing on his lap!

Anniversary giveaway

I emerged briefly this morning from the deep trance of an intensive writing stint to realise that today, 1st October, is the anniversary of the publication of three of my books: my story collection, Balancing on the Edge of the World, the novella Too Many Magpies, and the first edition of my novel The Birth Machine. So I'm making a quick visit here to the blog to announce that, to mark the anniversary, I'm offering two signed copies of each of the three books. If you would like to be put into a draw (to be made a week today, Monday 8th October, at 5 pm) then leave a comment below, email me via my profile or message me/comment via Twitter or Facebook. Please say which book(s) you would like to be put in for (you can be put in for one, two or all three).

Remember, my publisher (of all three books) is the remarkable Salt, which means the books can't be too bad, though I say it myself!

Sorry for recent absence - once I've finished the latest project, and answered a couple of queries from people studying my stories, I hope to return to report on one or two readings etc I've attended.

  
Balancing on the Edge of the Word. 'Quite swept me off my feet.' - Dovegreyreader

Too Many Magpies. 'An appealing, bewitching read, one that feels slightly dangerous and a little bit thrilling.' - Kimbofo, Reading Matters blog

The Birth Machine. 'A damn good read. It’s a cliché to say this is a must-read, but still, I’m going to urge you all to read it. And I’m talking to you, too, boys.' - Valerie O'Riordan, Bookmunch -

Bookshops I love: Bath Waterstone's

 And here is The Birth Machine on its Fiction shelves. (See why I love it?):

I nipped over to Bath from Bristol on Friday. I'd never been there before, but ever since reading Persuasion and Mansfield Park in my teens, I've had a strong image of it in my head. And, inevitably, I suppose, it turned out to be different from my  image, the architecture much grander and more imposing. Was I influenced by the neatness and economy of Austen's prose, and her intimate human perspective, I wonder? See what happens when you view life through books?

Tomorrow I'm off to a school in north Manchester to talk to three classes about my story 'Compass and Torch' which is on the syllabus of the GCSE English exam they're about to sit. (You can find the story online or in my collection, Balancing on the Edge of the World). I'm finding it a bit strange, quite frankly, thinking about my own work in the necessary analytic terms, the whole process of writing being far more intuitive than people often guess. And, as Mark from the reading group said when I met him in the supermarket last night, I'd have a devil of a job to come anywhere near the brilliant teaching podcast about the story made by teachers Andrew Bruff and Ollie Hayne.

The life of books on the web

A great thing about the web is the way books can go on getting reviews long after publication. To my delight yesterday, four and a half years after Balancing on the Edge of the World came out, Bookersatz published a review by Claire Marriott.  She calls it 'an intense collection of stories' and finds the 'characterisations ... particularly vivid, ranging from comic to tragic but always retaining their believability'. I'm always immensely interested to find which are people's favourite stories in the collection - it's amazing how much that differs! - and this is what Claire says:

'My favourite pieces are Daniel Smith Disappears Off the Face of the Earth which contrasts one life-altering moment in the life of a teenage boy with “all the times and places in the history of the world” and Power, the haunting story of a young girl listening to her parent’s relationship fall apart.'

And of course people go on discussing books on the web on a more casual level. I was thrilled when a couple of days ago poet Steve Waling urged his Facebook friends to read The Birth Machine and called it 'really rather brilliant, deep dark and moving.' And once again it struck me how a book that was first published only for a women's market is now, on its republication by Salt, finding such favour with male readers.

Eight Cuts Interview

The energetic Dan Holloway, who was such a brilliant compere at the recent New Libertines night in Manchester which he organised, has kindly interviewed me over on the Eight Cuts blog. Among other things, he asks about the forms in which I write, my view of The Great American Novel and my reflections on the complicated publication history of The Birth Machine

Alan Beard reviews The Birth Machine

A lovely review of The Birth Machine from Alan Beard, whose good opinion is really worth having, as he's a brilliant short-story writer with collections from Picador and Tindal Street Press.

'It all comes together in a coherent and powerful way,' he says, and: 'For me what impressed most was the language ... well observed and precise.'

He ends by saying: '...although a feminist book it is not just for feminists', and it seems in fact that on Goodreads, where this review appears, the men are liking this book (first published by a feminist press) better than the women - Jim Murdoch gave it a rave review, and five stars. It kind of makes you wonder if, while many women have gone and distanced themselves from what they suspect men see as the taint of feminism, men have been busy assimilating the issues and have become pretty feminist themselves!

Catch Up

Apologies for not blogging much here lately about my comings and goings. It's been a busy  and at the same time a not-so-busy couple of months: I've been taking one of those breaks from writing that you need sometimes - those fallow periods where you let life in (rather than shut it off in order to write) - and blogging seems to have suffered along with the creative stuff.

So what have I been doing? At the end of September there was the Didsbury Arts Festival, at which I gave a reading from The Birth Machine.

I was quite nervous at the start (which I think the above pic shows!) as there was a doctor present, the husband of playwright Debbie Freeman: I was afraid he would think I was attacking the medical profession per se. But he was wonderful, and understood exactly what the book was saying about communication and power, and agreed wholeheartedly. I was also afraid I wouldn't get an audience, as we were in competition with the launch of Nick Royle's Murmurations anthology (I was also sorry not be able to go to that), but the room above the health food shop Healthy Spirit was nicely full. We had an excellent discussion.

If I'd known beforehand that two of the people there were midwives, I might have been nervous about that too, but they were wonderfully supportive and engaged. And every person but one bought a copy of the book - far better sales than I've had at some bigger gatherings! Someone said that the book should be required reading on Obstetric and Midwifery courses - I think I couldn't have had a better compliment. Among other DAF events I managed to get to were the great outdoor theatre and music events outside the library, a spooky reading by Nick Royle under the atmospheric yew trees in the pet cemetery of Parsonage Gardens (both reported on here), a reading by poet Jeffrey Wainwright (always thought-provoking), another by poet Sue Stern accompanied by jazz, and a gig by jazz group Jazzworks.

After that I went back to Wales for a few days, as novelist Jean Mead had kindly invited me to take part on the Saturday in a book fair she had organised at the Quay Hotel in Deganwy. The fair took place in a suite with a wonderful view of the water, and I had a whole table to myself for my display, and once again I sold more books than I feel I could have expected!

Next it was the Manchester Literature Festival. I attended the gala event for the Manchester Fiction Prize, a very interesting debate about prize culture, which I reported on here, a tribute to innovative novelist B S Johnson which sadly dented my admiring view of him with some early films I couldn't help finding adolescent, two excellent Comma Press events - an evening with European short story writers and an afternoon reading by Jane Rogers from their Litmus anthology (stories from science) with a discussion with scientist Martyn Amos - and a very moving tribute to poet Linda Chase who sadly died in April.

I attended Jeanette Winterson's event at The Royal Exchange and reported my impressions here. What else? I went to the cinema and saw We Need to Talk About Kevin, the book of which I have always found hard to get into. I decided it was a hotchpotch of conflicting and half-baked psychological theories - cold mothers create monster children, or maybe they don't, monster children are born like that; macho fathers create monster children, or maybe etc... maybe autism was involved, or maybe not (the doc's test for autism was laughably mistaken, child psych John tells me) - and far too heavy on the blood symbolism which I found as horrifying as the violence they made a point of not showing. I guess I should really read the book now in case the film didn't do it justice.

I went to see C P Taylor's Good at the Royal Exchange, an adaptation of his novel and a tale of how a good man with good motives gets inadvertently involved with Hitler and his henchmen. To begin with I and my companions were entranced: the production seemed wonderful, with music and song and a brilliant use of the stage to create time-slippages that you don't often see in our generally over-literalist theatre. But by the second half we were feeling that the frantic pace was preventing us from concentrating on the moral problem at the heart of the play and the way the transition took place. From what I could tell, that transition was very disappointing: I was expecting a real revelation about the way that apparently moral precepts can be twisted to immoral ends (which I believe they can) but all that seemed to happen was that from the start the protagonist couldn't help acting out of selfish motives that belied his sense of himself as good, and the outcome was thus hardly a surprise. This didn't however seem to worry the rest of the audience, who consisted a great deal of schoolchildren and who went wild with applause.

Meanwhile I have been sinking myself in books, reading in the immersive way I used to as a child, and can't often do when there's too much pressing, especially in terms of my own writing. Among the books I've read are two for the reading group: Helen Garner's The Spare Room (report here) and E L Doctorow's Homer and Langley which I'll report on after we've met to discuss it. I'm a good deal of the way through a re-read of David Copperfield, and I've written here about the particular immersion of that experience, but since then I've been rather pulled out of it by getting to the part where Copperfield meets 'little Dora': such a cypher! I'm also reading Tom McCarthy's C.

Finally, last week I attended a lovely launch for The Coward's Tale (Bloomsbury) the debut novel by my good friend and colleague, Vanessa Gebbie. A smashing way to end a period of relaxation, before I turn my nose in earnest to the writing desk again...

One year to the day and a giveaway

Today is exactly one year since the reissue, in a new edition, of my novel The Birth Machine, and I'm celebrating with a giveaway of 5 signed copies of the book, plus two each of my other two Salt titles, the novel Too Many Magpies and the story collection, Balancing on the Edge of the World. If you'd like one, just leave your name in the comments below, saying which book or books you'd like to be put in the draw for. Deadline Saturday.

The Birth Machine. 'A damn good read. It’s a cliché to say this is a must-read, but still, I’m going to urge you all to read it. And I’m talking to you, too, boys.' - Valerie O'Riordan, Bookmunch -

Too Many Magpies. 'An appealing, bewitching read, one that feels slightly dangerous and a little bit thrilling.' - Kimbofo, Reading Matters blog

  
 







Balancing on the Edge of the Word. 'Quite swept me off my feet.' - Dovegreyreader

Disbury Arts Festival Reading

Didsbury Arts Festival kicked off on Saturday. Yesterday morning I was moved to tears by the sight of these little boys playing with the Third Davyhulme Scout and Guide Marching Band outside the library. The little drummer was amazing - he did a solo, and the whole forecourt went wild.

 

In the afternoon the sun came out and I moseyed down to Parsonage Gardens to hear Nick Royle read two spooky bird stories in an amazingly apt setting: under the yew trees in the pet cemetery where one-time tenant Fletcher Moss buried several of his pets including his horse. The parsonage itself, which has been shut up for some years now and is said to be haunted - Fletcher Moss himself vowed it was haunted - has been saved and is to be opened once more by the Civic Society, so maybe next year there can be spooky stories inside!

My own event is at 7.30 tonight upstairs in the health food shop, Healthy Spirit (37 Barlow Moor Road), 7.30. I'll be talking about The Birth Machine. There will be wine, and discount copies on sale. I've bought the wine already...

Goggle Festival: reading of second extract

The clip of my reading of the second extract from The Birth Machine is up on the Goggle Festival website:

Goggle Festival Review of The Birth Machine

Review now up at Goggle Festival site: 'This is a book that should be read and reread.'

Goggle Festival features The Birth Machine

Today I'm the featured writer on the Goggle Festival run by writer and teacher Andrew Oldham. Up now is this video clip of me reading the first of two extracts from The Birth Machine. At intervals today another extract and a review of the book will go up on the site.

Rob Burdock reviews The Birth Machine

I am very grateful to Robert Burdock for devoting a fantastic amount of attention to The Birth Machine on his excellent blog, RobAroundBooks. He does have some reservations about the book, mainly to do with his squeamishness over hospitals, which he describes in his 'Forethoughts', although on the whole he's very nice about it. These 'Forethoughts' are a great idea: for each book he reviews, before reading he writes about his attitude to the book and his expectations of it, and his 'Afterthoughts' consist of his reviews and assessments of how far his expectations were fulfilled or thwarted. Both the Forethought and Afterthought on The Birth Machine are very full, and he is generous enough to quote someone who disagrees with him, ie Jim Murdoch's statement that this is a book not just for women, but one that men really ought to read.

Back in the swing

Greetings from your blogger deprived of decent internet for several weeks and now back to the wonders of broadband! I hope you've all had a great summer (for those in the UK, in spite of the weather!). I've spent several weeks in my beloved homeland of Wales, and this year the internet via the dongle has been worse than ever up the mountain, I don't know why - the weather hasn't been bad ALL the time, but the connection certainly has: maybe the signal strength is the same as it was but more people on those lovely heather-covered  mountains are trying to use it at the same time.

Anyway, I'm back just in time for the Goggle Festival which I was therefore unable to tell you about before, and in which I'm delighted to be featured along with some great writer colleagues. It's run by writer and teacher Andrew Oldham and begins today.  Over seven days seven writers, Carys Bray, Ailsa Cox, Graham Mort, Robert Sheppard, David Morley, Chris Beckett and I, will be featured reading from our work. Our books will also be reviewed on the site and there is the chance to enter a competition and win signed copies.

Carys Bray, winner of  the 2010 Edge Hill student prize, kicks the whole thing off today with a reading from her story 'My Burglar'. My own day is Friday 2nd September, when I shall be reading two extracts from The Birth Machine. That day I shall be travelling back from London after an event I'm very much looking forward to: the Art of Wiring Pamphlet Party at which six poets including Christopher Reid, Isobel Dixon and Simon Barraclough will read.

It's good to be back in the swing of things. I'm looking forward also to the Didsbury Arts Festival which starts at the end of the month. The brochure is now online. I shall be doing an event, Doctors and Witches, in the evening on Monday 26th September when I'll read from The Birth Machine and talk about its themes of natural versus hi-tech medicine. The event will be held, appropriately, in Didsbury's health food shop, Healthy Spirit.