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In VOX LIT Nov 2019
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IN THE FREE BOOK LOVERS' MAG VOXLIT ON-LINE THIS MONTH:
***VOXLIT: BRINGING AUTHORS AND WRITERS TOGETHER*** This is our shorter than normal Festive Christmas edition, and it's a bit more fun and less serious than the everyday. Of course, we always try to be both informative and amusing, but this time we've let humour push our normal sense of propriety into the background a bit more than usual. On this page we offer some lighthearted comments on this year's Booker Prize awards, but we do hope the organisers don't take our criticisms too much to heart. And we also pick out some new books from our contributors that would fit perfectly into the Christmas stockings of your loved ones. We've added a bit of a festive twist to our Writers' Think Tank section too. No writers take part this time; they've each sent one of their characters instead. A bit risky, if you ask me. This month's Writer's Notes is in the form of a little quiz, instructive and diverting at the same time. Give it a try. As usual, we have some new Book Reviews, both fiction and non-fiction. Kyrian Lyndon offers us a taster from the first book of her Deadly Veils series, and Mehreen Ahmed contributes to our Literary Criticism section with a philosophical analysis of her novella Moirae. Share our site with your book-loving friends., then you and they can enjoy it quietly when the festive fun has passed and you want to read, rest and recover. |
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The big literary controversy of 2019 has to be the choice of the Booker prize-winner. I say winner, but amazingly, there were winners (plural): the celebrated and past winner Margaret Atwood (Canada) for ‘The Testaments’, her follow-up to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale, and first-time winner Bernadine Evaristo (UK) with ‘Girls, Woman, Other’. This double winner phenomenon last happened in 1992, where, oddly enough, at that time too one of the authors was Canadian and the other British. New rules were intended not to allow this to happen again, but the judging panel seemed to think ‘To hell with rules’ and did it anyway.
What makes this a big mystery is that there were five members on the judging panel. Personally, I can’t work out how they couldn’t come to a decision between the two top contenders. Was the vote two and a half to two and a half. Did one of them cut herself in two? Or could some, or maybe all, of them not make their minds up?
The panel of five, led by Hay Literary festival director Peter Florence, have come in for a fair bit of criticism for their apparent arrogance. Not universally, critic John Boyne of the Irish Times sprung to their defence, agreeing that if both books were equally worthy, they should benefit from the undoubted Booker kudos.
My own view is that fundamentally, literary competitions are a bit of a farce anyway. How can you compare the products of creativity? Is an apple better than an orange? The Booker prize is what it is: a vast publicity stunt run by mainstream publishers for mainstream publishers to boost their sales and profits. That said, I cannot deny they always choose good readable books, but not always, in my view anyway, great ones. Readers of course like what they like, and everyone’s taste is different. My personal reviews of the 2018 and 2017 winners appear in this e-zine, and while I loved ‘Milkman’ I found ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ (2017) clever but a bit tedious.
I haven’t yet had time to read this year’s choices, but I will get round to them. I wonder if I’ll be able to choose between them.
Contributed by James Gault
What makes this a big mystery is that there were five members on the judging panel. Personally, I can’t work out how they couldn’t come to a decision between the two top contenders. Was the vote two and a half to two and a half. Did one of them cut herself in two? Or could some, or maybe all, of them not make their minds up?
The panel of five, led by Hay Literary festival director Peter Florence, have come in for a fair bit of criticism for their apparent arrogance. Not universally, critic John Boyne of the Irish Times sprung to their defence, agreeing that if both books were equally worthy, they should benefit from the undoubted Booker kudos.
My own view is that fundamentally, literary competitions are a bit of a farce anyway. How can you compare the products of creativity? Is an apple better than an orange? The Booker prize is what it is: a vast publicity stunt run by mainstream publishers for mainstream publishers to boost their sales and profits. That said, I cannot deny they always choose good readable books, but not always, in my view anyway, great ones. Readers of course like what they like, and everyone’s taste is different. My personal reviews of the 2018 and 2017 winners appear in this e-zine, and while I loved ‘Milkman’ I found ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ (2017) clever but a bit tedious.
I haven’t yet had time to read this year’s choices, but I will get round to them. I wonder if I’ll be able to choose between them.
Contributed by James Gault
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Books for Christmas |
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If you want to fill the Christmas stockings of some of your loved ones, here are some recent entertaining reads from our contributing authors. Everyone loves a good read and what fits better into a Christmas stocking than a good book?
The year is 2030. The UK has left the EU, and Scotland has left the UK. As the isolated rump of Britain struggles through the deepest economic recession in living memory, an Independent Scotland begins to thrive once more. The English government glares across the border with a jealous eye. For a thousand years it has fought and schemed to get and keep the proud Scottish nation under its thumb. Will it leave her in peace this time? Chance would be a fine thing.
Scottish Finance minister Willie Kemp takes a young English journalist under his wing and persuades her to cooperate on his biography. But events overtake them, and they are soon involved in a murky world of political intrigue, lies and deception - typical Westminster politics exported to Edinburgh. A biting satire which explores the machinations, stupidity and downright lies that typify the world of politics. That lampoons those ‘great’ men and women who claim to govern us all in the interest of the people. Interests of the people? Little chance o’ that, eh? A laugh out loud novella from the author of Best Intelligence. 
Nalia finds herself trapped in a strange and inescapable lucid dream. Danger looms ahead for her friends. Pressured out of their homes in the Lost Winds, every step threatens them with persecution and death.
Taking a daring route on a treacherous sea, they seek asylum in a new land. Will they make it to their destination? Will Nalia's dream of finding peace in Draviland become the utopia that she desperately desires, or are the dangers of this new land even worse than her home? Set in a real time, stream-of-consciousness narrative, this story takes you on a sweeping literary journey. 
1995 - A burned out American business woman is visiting her friend in rural France when their lives are turned upside down by events that happened in occupied France during 1941.
Something has changed in the endless repeating cycle of life and seasons. After many years of peaceful visits, living the French dream of fine food, perfect patisserie and wonderful wine, a chill wind is blowing from the East . Can paradise return, or has the past damaged the future beyond repair? 
January 1945. Top American physicist Remington Grove (call me Remy), has flown into Paris. She has a job to do: find and interrogate SS scientist Hans Kammler before the Russians or the Gestapo can get to him. Kammler has gone missing and with him the plans for a Nazi super-weapon. Now everyone wants to find him.
In London, linguist and intelligence agent Guy Blackwood has just been dumped from a short relationship. Now he has been seconded to the mission and sent to join Grove; he will be her interpreter and bodyguard. Working together they hunt for Kammler across war torn Europe – but there are problems. Remington Grove is her own woman, single minded and dedicated; she’s not exactly the girl next door. Emotional sparks begin to fly as Remy is torn between Blackwood and her own objectives. With the temporary rank of major, she is his commanding officer in the field. On duty she is in charge, rigidly sticking to protocol and the task. Off duty, in the bedroom, things are different - and that could prove fatal … Guy Blackwood is in for a bumpy ride. |
AD 2018
Languedoc, south-west France Madeleine Winters must live in her late mother’s old stone house in south-west France for one hear before she can claim her inheritance – and sell it! Reluctantly leaving her life in England, she begins to renovate the house. But she’s not prepared for all the discoveries… Is it her imagination when she hears a woman’s voice? Or when the ground shakes? When ancient human bones belonging to a female are found beneath the kitchen floor, the mystery deepens. How did the woman end up buried, without a sarcophagus and all alone, in that particular spot in the Cabardès hills? And why were her bones broken? 
The United States and Bangistan, a former Soviet satellite dictatorship, are edging towards nuclear conflict. At any moment, their war of words, insults and threats may escalate into an exchange of missiles and an apocalypse. In the White House, President Ronald Rump hesitates between negotiating a peace agreement and employing the full might of the American war machine, as the hawks around him advise that, rather than talk, he should wipe Bangistan off the world map. In the Presidential Palace of Petrobangorski, Great Leader Hakim Akim meanwhile ruminates on the advantages he might draw from the conflict.
The world holds its breath as a last-ditch face-to-face meeting between Rump and Akim is finally announced to resolve the crisis. Can the US President clinch the deal, denuke Bangistan, and bring in a new era of peace? Or will Rump, deaf to all advice, abandon the talks in a fit of anger and order the military to raze the Bangistan capital? The hour is grave and the risk perhaps too great to leave to a roll of the dice … A small band of diplomats, politicians and spy agencies from the US and its allied nations, aided by several unwitting French peasants, believes so, and secretly plots to make sure Rump is never put to the test. The Zucchini Conspiracy is born … 
Charlie Simpson had it all. A partner who loved him, a best friend for life, and a cushy job in the family run firm in the City of London. When he arrives home to find his partner and best friend have run off to start a new life together, Charlie's world collapses in on itself.
Now he's out to kill them both. So powerful is the murderous energy raging in his soul, it awakens Nye, a twelfth-century Scottish ghost. With Nye standing over him, Charlie embarks on a voyage into homicidal madness from which there may be no escape. Can he really be the stone cold killer he wants to be? 
The first summer of Mick Crooke and Samantha Loch's friendship begins on an evening in June 1971, under rather strange circumstances. Trouble seems to follow them as the summer progresses whether they are together or thousands of miles apart.
This is a compilation of the two books "The Summer of '71" and "Runners and Riders" 
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CLICK THIS PICTURE FOR THE VOXLIT BOOKSHOP LINKS TO ALL BOOKS BY OUR CONTRIBUTORS
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New books from our contributors
Two naïve young lovers, Hoa Le and Tim Nguyen, are drawn into a web of political intrigue with tragic consequences. They travel between Singapore, USA and London trying to their best to make the world a better place, but they have no real clue to what they are involved in, who they are involved with or what lies in wait for them.
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Whatever happened to Julie, the best friend of the young Samantha Loch while they were at school?
They had lost touch when Sam had moved away. Years had passed, but then her name popped up in conversation with Sam's new man, Mick Crooke. Mick now has a few days by himself, to fill the time he decides to find Julie. Except in doing so he accidentally stirs up the 'things he doesn't want to know about' |
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