Code Name Verity

I adore stories told in two parts, from different narrative viewpoints, and that is just one of many many things to love about Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. The first half is told by 'Verity', a captured female spy being interrogated by the Gestapo in a former hotel in France. She begins her story with the words, 'I am a coward,' but you don't have to read much further before you realise this simply isn't true.

Tortured, threatened and terrified, Verity proves her courage again and again. Under the cover of writing a confession for her captors, she tells the story of how she came to be a spy, how she met her best friend, Maddie ('It's like falling in love, finding your best friend') and how the pair of them came to be in France.

'We're a sensational team', Verity tells us. It's this friendship that drives the story, as we try to piece together the clues in Verity's confession - being made in extremis - to get at the exact truth of what happened to the sensational team.

Elizabeth Wein lays many excellent traps for the reader along the way; expect to have your heart in your mouth a lot of the time. Is Verity really betraying her country (Scotland, not England)? Is she going to die? Is her best friend already dead, or in terrible danger? Will the two young women ever see one another again?

Midway through, the story switches to Maddie's voice. This is the tricky point at which an author can lose a reader, especially one who's fallen in love, the way she helps us fall in love with Verity. But it only takes a couple of pages for us to love Maddie, too, and to marvel at how distinctly different her voice is to Verity's.

These women are alive. They leap off the page and grip you by the hand, and then the heart. You desperately want them to have a happy ending, but at the same time you sense it would be cheating, or lying, to arrive at this after the harrowing and entirely believable scenes which have unfolded.

To move the reader without resorting to sentiment. To arrive at an ending that is both honest and uplifting. To make you think afresh about a part of history you thought you knew. To transport you, for the time it takes to read the book, to a different time and another world, while showing you so clearly why these stories matter and how they can resonate. These are proofs positive of a gifted, compassionate and generous author.

I doubt I'll read a better book this year.

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Flash Fiction South West

Lovely to have a very tiny story of mine, Wendy the Water Buffalo, published on this rather wonderful new website for flash fiction based in the SW of England. The editor, Rachel Carter, is inviting writers across the region to submit flash pieces thoughout March for an online anthology to celebrate National Flash Fiction Day, which is coming up in May. Details of how you can enter are here, so get flashing!

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Partners in Crime

Those of you lucky enough to live in Bristol should sneak along to this event at Bristol Grammar School on March 13. Sophie Hannah (author of the novels from which ITV adapted Case Sensitive), whose short stories I reviewed here, and Erin Kelly, whose writing has been compared to Daphne du Maurier's, will be talking crime all evening. Bliss!

Bristol Grammar School and Hodder, in association with the Bristol Festival of Ideas, invite you to Partners in Crime with two high-ranking crime writers, Sophie Hannah and Erin Kelly, who will talk about their writing and the popularity of the crime genre with Carolyn Mays, Publishing Director (fiction) at Hodder.

Tickers are a steal at £7, which includes refreshments and a 40-piece orchestra to play you in. What's more, you can buy 4 tickets for the price of 3, which means you and a squad of pals can attend for a fiver each (don't quibble over the maths, please). If you're thinking of attending, join me, the editor of Reviewing the Evidence and others for pre-event drinks in the bar at Brown's. Now, what could be better than that?

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National Flash Fiction Day

The results are in! I was chuffed to be one of the judges for the excellent micro-fiction contest run by National Flash Fiction Day, which has just announced winners and commended entries. Congratulations to all. I hope you know what an amazing thing you did, subbing to a 100-word contest (tough, tough word count), and it was both an honour and a real buzz to read your stories. The winner was The Worst Head in the World by Angela Readman, an amazing flash with imagery I won't forget in a hurry. Judging was a fascinating process, reading nearly 300 short short stories in quick succession and then re-reading, and re-reading, until I could be sure of my choices for the top stories and those commended. I hope I get the chance to be a judge again, as it was a genuinely humbling and enthralling business.

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Monster Books for Girls

A new review of this anthology is up at Future Fire. It raises interesting points about what makes a monster, and argues its case well. I'm grateful to be one of the authors the reviewer likes. The editor, Terry Grimwood, heroically shouldered a lot of the criticism, with excellent advice for readers feeling stung by the review: "For anyone who has not experienced this type of review before, gird your loins, polish up your self-belief, grit your teeth and in the words of that great old Victorian Baptist Preacher, Charles Hadden Spurgeon, "Suck in the honey and spit out the bees."

Another piece I enjoyed was the mysterious and evocative ‘The Spirit Level’, by Sarah Hilary. This was a flash piece that was packed with strong, precise imagery. The narrator deals with a complex desire and repulsion for her monster. It is compelling and lyrical, although somewhat confusing.

You can read The Spirit Level online, here.

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Voices, and Flash

Absolutely lovely review of the Voices anthology by Alexandra O'Toole, here, in which she's kind enough to say, 'This diverse collection of works is punctuated and tied together by two stories written by established published authors, Sarah Hilary and A.J. Ashworth. Though unique and unrelated, the plots of Hilary’s, emotive elegy, ‘After A Long Illness, Quietly At Home’ and Ashworth’s poignant tale, ‘Eggshells’, share a similar focus: a quiet concentration on the tiny, seemingly insignificant and often intangible details that have made up a life.'

You can find a recording of me reading 'After a Long Illness' over at this site, run by the Voices editor, Sarah Jane Dobbs. And you can buy the anthology here.

In other news, I'm delighted to be the SW Coordinator for National Flash Fiction Day 2012, being held on May 16. I've enjoyed judging the contest run by Calum Kerr, reading over 250 stories of 100 words or less. A treat to see so many people inspired to write flash fiction! If you missed the chance to enter that contest, why not try your hand at the Lancashire Writing Hub's competition, which is free to enter and open until April 20. Stories must be exactly 165 words, but there's no other restriction on style or content. Full details can be found here.

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Obsession and Possession

I started reading this yesterday and finished it just half an hour ago, in a cold bath (it was hot when I climbed in, but I couldn't stop reading until I'd reached the end). This slim novel is one of the first in a new series published by Hammer (of Hammer Films fame). The Hammer branding is extremely subtle; there's nothing here to recall the glory days of schlock horror. Instead, there is Dunmore's restrained prose, perfectly-pitched and incredibly powerful.

It's the winter of 1952 (the year of Dunmore's birth), and Isabel Carey is newly-arrived in Yorkshire's East Riding, with her husband Philip, a GP. Shivering one night, she discovers an old RAF greatcoat hidden in the cupboard. When she sleeps under the coat for warmth, she dreams of a life that's not her own. Soon, while her husband is out, a knock at her window brings Alec, a young RAF pilot, searching for the woman he loves.

Reviews of The Greatcoat in the popular press have struggled to describe it as 'terrifying' or 'creepily chilling'. As if the Hammer name demands a horror tag. In fact, The Greatcoat is suffused with loneliness and longing, which is a very fine tradition belonging to the best ghost stories. This isn't to say that it doesn't have chilling moments - it does. In particular when Isabel tries to free herself from the insidious power of the greatcoat. But it's more - and better - than that.

The broken seam in time that allows Alec to come to Isabel's world, and lets her into his, is described with heart-breaking delicacy. Both are lost, yearning to find their way home. The wider world, recovering from war, is filled with lost souls; the story is layered with this sense of displacement and discovery. There is clear menace in Dunmore's themes of obsession and possession, but the overriding sense is of tragedy, in a grand classic tradition. Comparisons have been drawn with The Turn of the Screw, but I'd say Dunmore's economy of style is better suited to the genre than Henry James' verbosity.

As I finished the book, I hugged it, knowing I'd found a new contender for my Favourite Book of all time. Dunmore's writing is never less than impressive. Her novels, Talking to the Dead, and Your Blue-Eyed Boy, are two of the best crime novels I've ever read (despite never being labelled as such by her publishers). The Greatcoat is a potent reminder of her power to command language, character and plot. I loved every page.

Read my interview with Helen Dunmore in Fringe magazine.

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