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The Raven's Book Bunker, Brighton (2026)

27/12/2025

An unusual and thought-provoking read, which manages to be profound and moving whilst also in parts contrived and disappointing.
It starts with a 'miracle' - a double sunrise, as witnessed by a fighter pilot, Thomas Prosser, during WWII. But Prosser is not the protagonist of 'Staring at the Sun' - he's only an incidental character in the story of Jean Serjeant, whom we first meet as a young child guessing at riddles posed by her delightfully eccentric Uncle Leslie, and finally say goodbye to at the age of 100.
Jean's story is told in three parts. The first deals with her childhood, her WWII experiences as a very young woman still living with her parents (in whose house Pilot Prosser is billeted), and her early marriage to an uninspiring policeman. The second skips extremely hastily over her twenty years of unsatisfactory marriage and late experience of motherhood, and concentrates on Jean in her sixties, when to her grown-up son's consternation she develops a yen to travel, and an ambition to visit the Seven Wonders of the World, or at least seven wonders of her own deciding. The third skips forward to Jean approaching her centenary, living with her son Gregory who's now in his sixties, and pondering the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything (as she has in fact been doing, on and off, throughout the novel). This third section is the most disappointing, as it's set in 2020 as imagined in the novel's publication year of 1986. Barnes has a very astute stab at imagining where the computer age might lead us, and we have a nervous and depressed Gregory consulting a version of AI called the General Purposes Computer, or GPC, which claims to be able to answer questions on absolutely anything, on his own behalf as well as his mother's - but from a 2025 perspective it's all rather contrived and clunky and full of inaccurate guesswork. Writers conjure up the future at their peril, in my opinion.
Nevertheless, the overall effect of the novel is profound, with the Big Questions - what is the purpose of life? What is a 'life well lived'? What is a 'good death'? Who or what is God? Juxtaposed with the small, mundane riddles that Jean has been carrying with her since childhood: is there such a thing as a sandwich museum? Is it true that Jews don't like golf? And most especially, taken from a rather grim print entitled 'Mink Trapping' that used to hang in her childhood home, Why is the Mink excessively tenacious of life?
Jean herself is not excessively tenacious of life, nor does she lead an adventurous or heroic one, but her story is beautifully written and it sets the reader thinking, and for the privilege of being allowed to live inside Jean Serjeant's head and follow her humble but extraordinary thought processes it gets four stars from me.

21/12/2025

The thing I love about Laura Pearson's writing is that her characters are presented in such a deceptively simple way, but always go on to reveal complex hidden depths. This charming story about two women in their early sixties who meet by accident and discover that they are in fact identical twins separated soon after birth is on one level so straightforward and even predictable, and on another so psychologically insightful about family dynamics and sibling rivalry, that at points it brought tears to my eyes.
Debbie, childless, recently widowed and hoping to make new friends in the unfamiliar town where she now rents a flat, takes on a voluntary role for a bereavement charity, door-knocking and signing up new donors. Ruth, tolerating a stale and unsatisfactory marriage whilst running a cake-baking business from her kitchen, is the mother of adult twin boys, one of whom has come back home for a spell following problems both in his work and in his relationship. When Ruth opens the door to Debbie and both women find themselves staring at a mirror image, the shock and disbelief may well be imagined - for neither had any reason to believe that they'd ever had a twin.
What follows is of course the lengthy and painful process of untangling their respective histories. Debbie never knew her father, and her mother was mentally unstable, leaving her with memories of an insecure childhood and an early bereavement. Ruth grew up with a loving mother, father, and younger sister, Kate. How could this have happened? Were they both adopted, and sent to different families? Or is one of their two mothers the birth-mother of both? Debbie's mother died when she was a teenager, but Ruth's is still living, albeit in a care home and battling dementia ...
Getting to know one another, and coping with the varying reactions of Ruth's family - her husband, sons and younger sister all have different reactions to the discovery of her long-lost twin - takes a bit of time, and each has something important to learn from the other as regards attitudes to life, love and relationships, as well as regarding their different life experiences.
The truth when it's finally revealed is very sad for both twins, but in the meantime they have discovered a strong bond, a deep affection for one another, and the courage to make some very necessary changes in both their lives. A heart-warming read.

17/12/2025

Another great recommendation from Magenta Weir!
'The Wish' is a charming story about a socially awkward computer games designer who's tasked with making a dying 15 year old's wish come true. When Alex, a nerdy loner whose childhood was spent in care and whose only close companion is his dog Max, is reluctantly sent to the local children's hospital to meet Jesse, a teenager with leukaemia who wants to make an interactive film about her life for her family to remember her by, he little knows what life-changing experiences lie in store for him. Initially daunted by the enormity of the task, he is supported by Jesse's social worker Kelly, her mother Mandy and little brother Sam, and by his work colleague Steve, whilst facing fierce opposition from Jesse's father, Dean, who refuses to believe that his daughter is dying, and constant criticism from his immediate work superior, Ian.
It all comes together in the end -Jesse gets her wish, and Alex gets a new circle of friends and an unexpected chance at love. The finale is both sad and happy in equal measure - a heart warming read.

13/12/2025

Being a washed-up writer living in Brighton myself, I really should have read this novel about a washed-up writer living in Brighton sooner ... it's been around since 2003, and it's a good laugh, in a depressing sort of way.
Following the success of his first novel, Chris Duffy has been experiencing a debilitating period of writer's block. A forty-year period, to be crushingly accurate, as 'Razzle Dazzle' was published in the 1960s when he was living in Blackpool, and nothing he's been able to come up with since has managed to convince an agent that he's worth taking on for a second round.
Now living in Brighton in a seedy lodging house, spending his time staggering from pub to pub with brief interludes in the bed of his landlady Maureen, Chris indulges in fantasies of being 'rediscovered' whilst railing internally against other, more successful writers - including Brighton writer Patrick Hamilton - who managed to hit upon the 'lucky streak' that's so far eluded him.
This year's May Festival having a literary theme, Duffy staggers along to suitable venues - the Festival Club, and Dome, the Metropole - in search of old contacts to renew, and hopefully new agents to impress. The trouble is, he doesn't have a manuscript to offer, his second novel having been rejected six times and left to rot, its whereabouts forgotten, and the Muse having deserted him years ago.
His landlady, Maureen, however, DOES claim to have an unpublished manuscript, entitled 'Palace Pier', lying about the place somewhere ... if only Duffy could locate it. When he finally does, he finds it bears the unmistakeable hallmark of 'Mister Hamilton's' writing style - and Mister Hamilton, of course, has conveniently been dead for around forty years.
What to do? Could he possibly pass off 'Palace Pier' as his own work to the third-rate agent who's offered to take him on, in the absence of anyone more promising?
The moment of self-realisation at the end, which happens, appropriately, enough on the Palace Pier, should be unbearably sad, but Keith Waterhouse's sardonic style lifts it out of the slough of self-pity and makes it something of an epiphany: 'Then it hits him, the 'Click!' inside the head, 'the sound which a noise makes when it abruptly ceases', which occurs in the opening lines of Mister Hamilton's novel 'Hangover Square' ... Duffy cannot write.' ...'Duffy remembers - no, he doesn't remember, he retains, like a fishbone in the throat, a passage from Mister James M Cain's 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' which he chanced to be reading when the postman rang once and the rejected script of 'The Golden Mile' came back for the sixth and final time ...'
Wonderful stuff that really packs a punch, and the seedy side of Brighton is depicted (in updated noughties version) every bit as vividly as it is in Mister Graham Greene's 'Brighton Rock'.
Aspiring writers living in Brighton - read, mark and inwardly digest ...

04/12/2025

Another great Walsh Family saga from Marian Keyes! This one concentrates on middle sister Rachel, an ex-addict who's had to make a complete new start in life in the wake of a still-birth that led to her marriage break-up. Bravely, Rachel has pulled her life together and now has a new relationship and a promising career as a lead therapist at an addiction clinic, helping others to achieve the recovery status that she herself has maintained ever since leaving The Cloisters herself - or has she?
The re-emergence of ex-husband Luke Costello on the scene, returning to Ireland from the States following the death of his mother, throws Rachel's life into renewed chaos, as she realises just how much unfinished business they have to discuss, and tries to process just what was going on, from Luke's perspective, following the loss of their daughter Yara. It's a great read with many ups and downs and a happy ending - what's not to like?

24/11/2025

I do love Marian Keyes' big family sagas, and this, the latest in her 'Walsh Family' series, concentrates on Anna, second youngest of the five Walsh sisters.
Struggling with Covid lockdown in New York and the enforced intimacy of living in a bubble with her obsessive New Age boyfriend, Anna decides once the pandemic is over to leave her relationship and her demanding job as Senior Executive to a major cosmetics company, and relocate back to Ireland. There, jobless, depressed and smothered by her loving but garrulous Dublin family, she nearly despairs of her rash decision, until a summons from a friend in need brings her to the small coastal town of Maumtully, to do some PR for a proposed luxury retreat that's run into local opposition.
Too late, she discovers that she'll be working alongside an old flame - Joey Armstrong, newly divorced and still smoulderingly handsome, with whom she has some excruciating, toe-curling history.
It's easy to see where all this is going, but getting there is great fun, with the backstory only disclosed piecemeal and plenty of Irish craic and 'gas characters', vividly and lovingly drawn. A perfect winter read!

08/11/2025

This is a charming tale, presumably based on the author's own experience of being 're-educated' in 1970s Communist China. 'Re-education' was a process whereby the children of disgraced intellectuals or 'bourgeois' Western-leaning parents were sent as teenagers into rural peasant communities to work, and learn the value of manual labour.
The unnamed narrator, a music lover and son of two liberal doctors, and his friend Luo, son of a dentist who had the effrontery to boast of his work on the teeth of Chairman Mao, are both in their late teens and are sent to a backward mountain village where the inhabitants have never even seen a violin, let alone heard any Western music. They are put to work in the fields by the head man, and gradually win the favour of their hosts by re-enacting films they have seen for the entertainment of the villagers. This allows them the odd day off, which they use either to visit the cinema in the nearest town or to visit their friend 'Four Eyes', stationed at a neighbouring village.
One day they discover that 'Four Eyes' has a stash of Western books hidden away in an old suitcase, given to him by his mother, a former writer and poet. These are books translated from the French, by authors such as Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, etc. 'Four Eyes' is reluctantly persuaded to lend them one, which they first devour themselves and then share with their new friend the 'Little Seamstress' - daughter of the local tailor, to whom both boys have taken a fancy.
'Little Seamstress' dreams of leaving her rural mountain and living a sophisticated city life, and as a romance develops between her and Luo, the narrator resigns himself to the role of chivalrous protector and reader of forbidden Western stories to the girl he secretly loves.
But in bringing Western literature into the life of a simple 'mountain girl', they have opened a Pandora's Box that could put them all in danger from the authorities, and scupper the boys' chances of ever returning to their families, and to civilisation.
It's beautifully written (and translated), and I learned much that I never knew about the horrors endured by young people growing up under Chairman Mao's iron grip. There's no happy ending, but we're led to assume that our heroes lived to tell the tale and hopefully enjoy happier times!

06/11/2025

What an amazing book! The eponymous 'Helm' is the only named wind in Britain - the 'Helm Wind' which blows down the slopes of Cross Fell in Cumbria into Eden Vale, and which in Sarah Hall's narrative takes on a persona of its own. Older than humanity, older even than the dinosaurs, the wind with its visible presence - a heavy bank of cloud resting on Cross Fell - observes the evolution firstly of the geography of Eden Vale and then of its animal and human inhabitants, and is in turn observed, experienced, worshipped, explained and investigated by a series of individuals: a female Neolithic shaman, matriarch of her tribe; a Papal exorcist operating during the Crusades; a Goddess-worshipping herbalist imprisoned in her room by a Christian husband; a Victorian meteorologist; a young girl incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for her wild behaviour; a storm-chasing aviator; and a present-day scientist exploring the effects of human pollution on the Earth's atmosphere.
It's an exhilarating, instructive and sobering read, beautifully and eloquently written, with Helm left wondering, along with the reader, whether the end is indeed nigh for life on this planet, at least in its present form ...

30/10/2025

A sad, tender and utterly believable story about three sisters - Esme, Phoebe and Bea - told in two parts, from the points of view of Esme and Bea and their parents, Tom and Linda. The reason for the absence of a narrative from Phoebe is that Part One opens in the aftermath of her death, aged three, when Esme is seven and Phoebe still in Linda's womb. Phoebe's death devastates the family unit, and by the ending of Part One it is irretrievably changed and broken.
But Part Two opens with Bea, now in her twenties, discovering that she is pregnant, and determined before she becomes a mother herself to find out more about the mother she doesn't remember, the sister who died before she was born, and the reason why her father and older sister have never told her the exact circumstances of Phoebe's death or shared memories of her while Bea was growing up.
It's a very feminine book (though Tom's narrative is perfectly credible), concentrating on the conflicting emotions surrounding motherhood, sisterhood, sibling rivalry and family guilt. And there's light at the end of the tunnel with a redemptive ending. A very emotional read.

27/10/2025

I first read this book back in the 1980s, on the cusp of deserting the Catholic Church for Neo-Paganism, and found it very exciting and inspiring! This edition, with a new preface from 1987, was a joy to read again and doesn't disappoint. It does help if you're familiar with the doctrines and history of the Catholic Church, but it's written in a very accessible way, so even the scholarly bits aren't daunting.
Ashe starts off, after giving us an overview of Marian worship, by laying out what we know, or can claim to know, about the historical Mary. 'If Christ himself existed, Christ's mother did' - and since the existence of the historical Jesus of Nazareth is attested by contemporary sources outside the Gospels (and outside of Christianity), this is the logical and only starting point. He takes us through every mention of Mary in all four of the Gospels, and puts together a possible sequence of events in her life, and in her relationship to her Son. So far, so logical (and acceptable to Protestants as well as Catholics).
But then, as the Church grew and evolved, as Christian doctrine and beliefs were laid down and began to coalesce, as Jesus Christ was established as a unique figure, both wholly human and wholly Divine, attitudes towards his Mother were bound to evolve also.
Ashe's argument is that Christianity with its all-male Trinity failed to fill the 'Goddess-shaped hole' in humanity's perception of the Divine; and the contortions required of the later Church to assign to the Blessed Virgin Mary so many of the attributes of Goddesses such as Isis, Athene, Neith, Asherah, Cybele and many other Mother and Virgin aspects of the female Divine, whilst still insisting that she was subordinate to her Son and was not to be worshipped, are laid out in meticulous and sometimes amusing detail.
Ashe goes so far as to claim that Marian devotion, and the elevation of the Virgin Mary to almost the status of Co-Redeemer, actually saved the Church from an early death during the 4th and 5th centuries CE, at a time when Paganism still held sway in the hearts of the people and in-fighting between Eastern and Western factions threatened to implode the new religion. To many Catholics, Mary is secretly dearer than Christ himself because as a female, as a Mother, and as a human she is more accessible; and with the re-emergence of the worship of the Goddess today, the parallels with the Divine Mother whom the human soul is hard-wired to long for are all the more obvious.
If nothing else, this is a thoroughly thought-provoking read for Christians and non-Christians alike.

19/10/2025

Well, if anyone had told me that I'd be transfixed by a novel set in a 1970s American summer camp, I'd have laughed at the idea as it's so not me. But 'The God of the Woods' is so brilliantly written and skilfully crafted that it had me hooked right to the (suitably satisfactory) end.
The summer camp in question is owned by the wealthy Van Laar family, a thoroughly unpleasant lot -at least the men are - and run by a family in their employ, the Hewitts. When Barbara Van Laar, rebellious teenager and problem wild child, insists on spending her summer at the camp instead of up the hill with her family, her parents are glad to have her out of the way for a while - until she disappears without trace, something which happened to her brother Bear fourteen years ago, before Barbara was even born.
The story is told in parallel narratives from various different characters, a device that can sometimes be confusing but here is done so skilfully, switching narrators at various cliffhanger points and jumping back and forth between the present and the past, that it all adds to the tension and intrigue of the story. For example, we hear from Bear and Barbara's depressed and despised mother, Alice, from Tracey, a lonely girl she befriends at the camp, from Louise, one of the camp counsellors, and from Judyta, the female investigator (one of the first in the country!) assigned to her case. The lone male perspective comes from the employee and volunteer fire officer who comes to be suspected of Bear's murder, Carl Stoddard. All of the narrators are victims, in one way or the other, of the arrogance, narcissism and snobbery of the odious Van Laar men and their wealthy associates (who by the way are not aristocrats, but successful bankers).
As present and past collide, and the search for Barbara gathers pace, we gradually learn the truth of what happened to Bear and who is responsible - but only one narrator gets to find out where Barbara is. A brilliant read from beginning to end!

15/10/2025

This one has so many plot twists it's left me feeling quite dizzy! It all centres on three neighbours, Margot, Anna and Liv, who each have secrets to hide. The narrative starts off as dramatically as it proceeds, with Margot, bound and gagged and stuffed into the November 5th bonfire; then flashes back to the preceding December, when new neighbour Liv first arrives on the scene. Margot is a former girl-band member and disgraced Strictly contestant, married to her former dance partner and stepmother to his children; Liv is the mother of two young children and in the process of setting herself up as a wellness practitioner, with money she and handsome husband Grant have earned via some dodgy extracurricular activities. Both are ambitious, well-groomed and apparently wealthy, whereas Anna, who rents her property along with her scruffy alcoholic partner Drew, is neither, and appears at first to be the hanger-on and peacemaker of the trio.
But there's more than meets the eye to every one of these characters, and by the time we catch up with Bonfire Night we've been spun more yarns and fed more red herrings than you can shake a stick at - only to discover that we're only about three quarters of the way through the book and that there are more revelations to come!
I could actually have done with a few less twists, as it becomes a bit confusing towards the end, but it is all neatly tied up in the denouement, and it certainly kept me on the edge of my seat throughout! If you like your psychological thrillers fast-paced and twisty, this one's for you!

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