Guest review by Cindy Jefferies: THE MAGICIAN OF TIGER CASTLE by Louis Sachar

"I was expecting the jacket design to clearly demonstrate that this was a departure for Sacher, an important one, from children’s to adult writing ..."

First published in 2001 for children, Cindy Jefferies found success with her Fame School series with Usborne Books, obtaining 22 foreign rights deals. Latterly writing fiction for adults as Cynthia Jefferies, her first title The Outrageous Fortune of Abel Morgan was published in 2018, followed a year later by The Honourable Life of Thomas Chayne, set during the English Civil Wars, followed in 2019. Both titles are now available in paperback.

I am in a bit of a quandary with The Magician of Tiger Castle. The thing is, Writers Review doesn’t generally feature books for children. I should be in the clear, though. After all, on the back of the book it does say that it is Sacher’s first adult novel. The thing is, I don’t quite believe it.

In the distant past, when I was a school bookseller, I loved Sacher’s first book, Holes. It was quite different from anything else I’d read. It is a children’s book about a corrective institution that forced boys to dig a series of deep holes in the desert for … apparently, no reason at all. After 20 years or so it’s still in print and still popular. So, when I read in the Bookseller that his first novel for adults was due in a couple of months I got quite excited. I requested a review copy from Mountain Leopard Press, an imprint of Headline, and they kindly sent me one. It arrived a few days ago and I immediately sat down to read it.

The jacket jumped out at me as surprisingly not looking like a book for adults. Jacket designs and fashions vary of course, but I suppose I was expecting the jacket design to clearly demonstrate that this was a departure for Sacher, an important one, from children’s to adult writing. Don’t get me wrong. I like the jacket. There are a couple of cheerfully snarling tigers, a fairytale castle and at the bottom, a couple of innocent looking rats. There are daisies threaded along the top and sides and hints of magic to come with a cauldron and a couple of bottles. The illustrations are rather lovely. If my ten-year-old granddaughter saw it she would immediately pick it up and start reading. She loves a bit of magic in her fiction.

Having read the novel, I can honestly say that I did enjoy it. I like Sacher’s humour and his occasional ‘make you stop and think’ sentences. I like the way the magician starts his story in the present, having just taken a tour of the castle and then swiftly takes you back to 1523, the last time he was there. I like the fact that he tells his story in the first person. In short … read it if fairy tales are your thing. Sacher is a very good writer.

I can hear you muttering to yourselves. But … ?

But I can’t stop asking myself if this book is for children or adults. Does that matter? Well no, if you’re an adult. Possibly yes if you are an adult who doesn’t want their child to read the single swear word uttered once, S**t. Also, if you don’t want your child to read a story which hinges around a princess who is expected to consummate her marriage to a prince she doesn’t love. Perhaps, in that case, give it a miss. Though it’s all pretty saccharine stuff. There are a couple of ribald remarks that would either pass a child by or not, depending on their age and understanding. A child might ask a couple of possibly awkward questions about the bits they don’t quite understand. But there are no sex scenes, the word sex isn’t mentioned.

I can remember reading way beyond my understanding when I was a child, taking what I did get and glossing over the bits I didn’t. I think a lot of book mad young readers do that, unless their reading matter is heavily controlled.

So, I’m left trying to second-guess the publisher. It’s clear they want adults to read this charming story. Fine. It also seems clear from the jacket illustration that any child who enjoys Sacher’s work will see his name and happily pick it up and start reading. Fine? Well I’m fine with it, but that word adult is on the back of the book. Why?

I have writer friends who have crossed over from writing for children to write for adults. I’ve done it myself. I can’t remember any of our books for adults being labelled as such. Admittedly, I changed my first name when I wrote for adults, but mine really were not for 7-9 years, the age most children read my children’s books. And the adult novel jackets didn’t shout children, and the font was small. Holes is an excellent teens novel which adults might also enjoy. Personally, I would have wanted to launch this novel as that, or simply let the book find its own audience.

Perhaps Mountain Leopard Press is hoping that this will be Sacher’s breakout book, leading to many more on the adult shelves? Perhaps they will bring out a teens version, taking off the word adult from the jacket? Who knows? That has successfully been done with books for teens that are also published for the adult market.

Perhaps I will attract criticism for not standing up well enough for children’s innocence?

I only have one real issue with the writing. It’s his choice of the word 'regent' for a servant of the king. I would perhaps have called that particular servant the king’s chancellor, or maybe enforcer. In my experience, a regent is a person who rules on the king or queen’s behalf when the monarch is unable due to ill health or young age. King Sandro is very much able to rule and certainly does! The regent is officious but definitely takes his orders from the king. Apart from that quibble, it’s a well written and enjoyable fairytale.

Now I’m off to ask my son if I can allow my granddaughter to have a look at it!

The Magician of Tiger Castle is published in hardback by Mountain Leopard Press.

Guest review by Tania Pettet: THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO BED FOR A YEAR by Sue Townsend

 

"She has always been a master of voice — from Adrian Mole to The Queen and I, she writes with a kind of democratic empathy that sees everyone’s absurdities without cruelty."

Tania Pettet is a lifelong writer and observer of people. A background in nursing honed her gift for listening, while her writing explores the emotional, historical, and sometimes fantastical threads that connect lives. She writes poetry and prose inspired by memory, landscape, and the quiet stories that shape us.

Her debut novel, 11 Warten Way - a dual-timeline family saga set between wartime Italy and postwar Britain - is rooted in the true story of her grandparents. It explores how love, loss, and resilience define who we become.

Find her on Instagram: @tpwordhug

"Sometimes doing nothing is the only thing left to do.”

I grew up reading Adrian Mole; he and I were the same age. Townsend’s wit, warmth, and eye for human folly shaped how I saw the world, and her humour became a kind of companion. When I was fourteen, a car accident left me hospitalised for weeks, and books became my refuge. I read both Sue Townsend and J.R.R. Tolkien during that time — two very different worlds, yet each offering escape and perspective in their own way. Even then, I understood that Townsend’s laughter was never cruel — it was the laughter of someone who knew how pain and absurdity often live side by side.

At first glance, The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year is a deceptively simple story. A woman, overwhelmed by her family’s chaos and her own unacknowledged needs, opts out of it all. But Townsend’s genius lies in her ability to make this small domestic rebellion into a mirror of modern life. Eva’s bed becomes both a refuge and a battleground — a place where she reclaims the boundaries that motherhood, marriage, and habit have eroded.

What’s remarkable, especially in hindsight, is that this was Townsend’s final novel before her death in 2014. It reads like a valedictory work — still funny, still irreverent, but laced with melancholy. Beneath the wit lies a weariness that feels utterly authentic. Townsend, whose own health struggles were well known, writes about collapse not as weakness but as a form of truth-telling. When Eva says no, she is not refusing the world so much as demanding to exist within it differently.

Townsend’s prose is plain but piercing. She has always been a master of voice — from Adrian Mole to The Queen and I, she writes with a kind of democratic empathy that sees everyone’s absurdities without cruelty. Here, she turns that same eye on middle age, marriage, and mental overload. Even her caricatures — the pompous husband, the self-absorbed twins, the sanctimonious neighbours — are given enough shading to feel real.

One of my favourite characters is the window cleaner, Alexander. His gentle friendship with Eva becomes a quiet thread of humanity running through the story. Their conversations are often simple, sometimes awkward, but full of kindness. In Alexander, Townsend gives us an ordinary man who listens — truly listens — and through that act, offers Eva a kind of salvation. The stillness between them, often so understated it could be missed, becomes one of the most tender elements of the novel.

What lingers most, though, is the loneliness. Eva’s retreat draws attention from journalists and strangers, yet no one truly listens. In one sense, she becomes a minor celebrity for doing nothing; in another, she becomes a ghost in her own home. Townsend captures this paradox with tenderness — how modern life can make connection look busy while feeling empty.

There’s also a strong undercurrent of social critique. Townsend skewers the cult of productivity long before it became a buzzword. The novel asks what happens when a woman stops performing usefulness — when she steps out of her designated roles as mother, wife, and domestic anchor. The result is chaos, of course, but also clarity.

The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year may masquerade as a domestic comedy, but it’s really an elegy — for women’s unseen labour, for middle-aged dreams deferred, and perhaps for the author herself. It’s a novel that begins with exhaustion and ends with a quiet kind of freedom.

Townsend’s voice remains singular: funny, humane, and unflinchingly observant. In Eva Beaver, she created not a heroine but an everywoman — someone who, by finally doing nothing, exposes everything that’s wrong with how we live.

The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year is published by Michael Joseph (hardback) and Penguin (paperback).


Tania's 11 Warten Way is published by Terreni Press.

Guest review by Lesley Glaiser: FIRE-READY by Jane Rogers

 

"Usually when I pick up a collection of stories, I dip in at random, but with Fire-Ready, I read greedily through from beginning to end ..."

Lesley Glaister has written numerous novels, as well as short stories, drama and poetry. Alongside her writing she has worked as a tutor and mentor in Creative Writing in settings ranging from Crete to The University of St Andrews. Her most recent novel, A Particular Man, is set in the 1940s, and looks at love, marriage and sexuality in the post-war period. Find out more on her website.

Jane Rogers is a fabulous novelist. I’ve enjoyed everything she’s written to date and was excited to get hold of this latest collection of her short stories. It’s fascinating to see the variations and combinations of her usual themes of family dynamics, marriage, ageing, babies and children, and the sheer grittiness of human life, as well as visions of a dystopian future for the earth.

Usually when I pick up a collection of stories, I dip in at random, but with Fire-Ready, I read greedily through from beginning to end, then left a period of reflection to see which stories would rise most readily to the surface. Although I love the vivid title story, the one that made the most impression on me was Letting Things Go. This is a quiet tale in which we see a man who, having taken meticulous care of his wife up until her death from dementia, finds his own mind becoming strange. He begins to hear odd memory-triggering sounds, to see a radiance, a sort of resonance in the most mundane of objects, staring at items for hours on end – all to the consternation of his adult daughter, who tries to persuade him to see a doctor. What I most admire is the way it’s left ambiguous whether the man is in the early stages of dementia, or some other brain abnormality, or has simply found a source of harmless joy in the world. Such boldness is a trademark of Jane’s style.

Another stand-out story, and one that I can see as the germ of a novel (in fact I wish it would become a novel!) is The DNA of Bats. This delicately nuanced, beautifully turned tale is narrated by an unimaginative woman who considers herself a failure, a disappointment to her joyous and artistic mother – and later to her own daughter. Always wonderful at voice, Jane exactly and wickedly catches the embittered tone of this narrator. In a vivid flashback childhood scene, we witness her trauma at finding an apparently lifeless bat in the wash basin of a holiday cottage. In contrast her mother is excited and inspired by the find: ‘My father wanted to wrap it in newspaper and put it in the bin. But my mother needed to sketch it, it was so perfect, the outstretched wings especially, she could use the design for a cloak.’ Later, the narrator’s grown-up daughter, now a scientist, tells her mother that bats have been discovered to contain a possible key to immunity and anti-ageing and this theme of bio-technological advance over human frailty is a theme shared by several other stories in the collection.

Hope is such a one. Planet earth has become uninhabitable. Human survivors live aboard spaceships, while drones scan the scorched planet for signs of regeneration. Here the relationship between a husband and wife, suffering grief over a lost son, is rendered through sharp, sparky dialogue – another key feature of all Jane’s fiction. Hope is a plaintive tale, which aches with nostalgia for the natural world. This takes the form of diary extracts from the husband’s grandmother, one of the first generation of spaceship dwellers. The contrast between the sterile interior of the spaceship with the grandmother’s exquisite descriptions of aspects natural life on earth could not be more resonant. True to its title, this story leaves us with a grain of hope for the revival of the planet.

Two more future fictions rise to the surface for me: Clearances and Daytrip to Glastonbury. The former is a bleak, dystopian tale – verging on horror story – that, using the Highland Clearances as a metaphor, shows us the marginalisation of the economically null and void. These unfortunates are trapped in high rise blocks in their thousands, fed by nourri-bots, their minds constantly numbed by Virtual Reality – and plans are afoot to get rid of them. It’s a nightmare glimpse of a possible future for our planet, a frightening, tough, dystopian vision.

Daytrip to Glastonbury is another excursion into the future – perhaps not so very far ahead – where, due to climate change, the sea level has risen and the familiar landscapes of Britain have been transformed by water, with most citizens sheltering behind the flood defences of cities. From Bristol, a young couple take a trip to Glastonbury Tor by coach and then by boat, the only means of transport. The story is illuminated by vivid details of the natural world threatened by the rising water. I found this precise, unsentimental description particularly moving: ‘On this side overgrown bushes were dotted with swollen rosehips; a couple of small brown birds scuffled in the dirt beneath them, as if it were ordinary.’

The phrase, ‘As if it were ordinary,’ makes an interesting lens through which to view the collection. Many of the stories are fuelled by righteous anger and concern about climate change and the state of the planet, but most are also shot through with light, with hope, with a loving appreciation of nature, and the wonder of birth and regeneration.

In Weeping Beech, an old man chains himself to a tree in the hope of preventing the felling of the tree. During the long, cold vigil of the night he tilts back his head to enjoy the stars, and a line from a Leonard Cohen song comes to him: ‘There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.’ And despite the bleakness of some of these stories, reading the marvellously eclectic collection from beginning to end left me with the overwhelming impression that yes, that is exactly what there is.

Fire-Ready is published by Comma Press.

Lesley Glaister answers questions about her latest novel, A Particular Man, here.

Jane Rogers answers questions about Fire-Ready here.

SPECIAL FEATURE: Q&A with Sheena Wilkinson about her new novel MISS McVEY TAKES CHARGE

"I’m always keen to be historically accurate but of course Felicity, and to a lesser extent April, represent the more forward-thinking people of their time ..."

Miss McVey Takes Charge: Yorkshire,1936. April McVey is in charge of True Minds Marriage Bureau, trying to find happy futures for the lovelorn of Easterbridge, while the menace of fascism marches through the country.

After two years of matchmaking, she thinks she has seen it all. But when an old friend arrives from Ireland, with a broken heart that’s well beyond April’s experience, and then a young nun asks her to find a match for her lonely brother, the consequences are shattering.

And as political turmoil reaches their own community, will April have the courage to take charge and do the right thing?

Sheena answers questions from Linda Newbery.

Linda: First, congratulations! It's lovely to see this in print, with such an enticing cover. It'll be a treat for readers of Mrs Hart's Marriage Bureau, while for those who haven't yet read that, it'll surely send them to it. Did you already have a sequel in mind while you were finishing the first book?

Sheena: Yes and no! I wrote Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau as a standalone, but the acquiring editor at HarperCollins Ireland was very enthusiastic about its obvious series potential. Which got me thinking… So in my final edit I did drop in a few details I could pick up on for the sequel.

As it turned out, as is the way in publishing, that editor moved on and HarperCollins didn’t offer for the sequel next book because of what they termed ‘disappointing sales’ of Mrs Hart. But by then, encouraged by hundreds of reader reviews which asked for another story, I had written it! I couldn’t bear those readers not to get their sequel, and by then I had put a year’s hard work into it.

I had considered self-publishing but to be honest I was stalling, overwhelmed by what seemed the scariness of it, when Writers Review Publishing invited me on board. I was so thrilled! I was lucky enough to work with Michelle Griffin, the freelance editor who’d worked on Mrs Hart and so knew – and loved – the world, and with Niall McCormack, the illustrator who had designed four of my previous covers. He has a gorgeous style and a real understanding of the aesthetics of the period, and I adore what he’s done.

Linda: I like the way you show April and Felicity adjusting to their lives together - managing domestic and practical details as well as, in April's case, questioning Felicity's commitment. Did you find it tricky to strike the right balance between acceptance of same-sex relationships and giving a realistic impression of attitudes at that time?

Sheena: It was something to think very carefully about, but this is my seventh historical novel, albeit only my second for adults, so treading that line has become very natural. I’m always keen to be historically accurate but of course Felicity, and to a lesser extent April, represent the more forward-thinking people of their time. Because I have a range of characters it was easy enough to show a convincing spread of attitudes, not only about sexuality but about, for example, greyhound racing, which was a hugely-popular sport at the time, with some characters enjoying it without questioning the ethics, and others voicing the opinion that it’s cruel, which is more in keeping with modern sensibilities (and, I know, yours).

Linda: It's just as much Evelyn's story as April's, and this enables you to set some of the scenes in Lisnacashan, the town in northern Ireland where April grew up. When talking about the first book, you said that you'd chosen to set it in Yorkshire, rather than Ireland, to avoid some of the religious divisions that would hamper things in the marriage bureau, but did you immediately see a way to use those here?

Sheena: It's funny, but I never really thought about that until this question! The answer is that when you set anything in Northern Ireland, especially in the past, you simply can’t get away from engaging with religion. It’s just there in the ether and so it found its way into the book. It’s ironic, perhaps, that Protestant Irish Evelyn falls in love with a Catholic Englishman … I come from a mixed background myself which I think informs my outlook on life and my work and helps me to see things in a balanced way.

Linda: You've described the first book as 'feelgood feminism' which is just as apt here - romantic elements and will-they-won't-they combined with awareness of the growing threat of Fascism, which comes close to home in the form of meetings in Easterbridge, a march in nearby Leeds and violence towards some of your characters. There are phrases here that are all too relevant to the worrying surge of the far right in today's public life and politics, and in fact the current situation has worsened during the time you were writing and editing the book. Did you adapt what you were writing in the light of that?

Sheena: The book was a long time in the making, and it rested for a full year before the final edit in the spring of 2025. Even in that year, as you say, things grew much worse for women and other marginalised groups and we’ve seen a surge in far-right attitudes across the world. When Martha comments on the ‘nastiness’ in the atmosphere, I felt very sad that she could be commenting on Britain and other countries today. The best historical fiction should show us ourselves as well as our ancestors: I wish that Miss McVey Takes Charge wasn’t quite so relevant to today’s struggles, but I was grateful for the chance to explore the tension between the political and the personal, and the frustration of feeling up against what feels like an overwhelming tide of bigotry and hatred, in the relatively cosy world of Easterbridge.

Everyone knows about the Battle of Cable Street, which is mentioned at the end of the novel, but the Battle of Holbeck Moor in Leeds on 27th September 1936 is less famous. There was no way Felicity wouldn’t have attended that anti-fascist rally, so I always knew it would form an important part of the narrative. I’ve often written about real-life events but this is the first time I’ve put my fictional characters right in the thick of the action.

Linda: The story ends at a time when the threat of war in Europe is looming. Do you have any plans to continue the story of April and Felicity farther into the 30s or even into the war years?

Sheena: At present I don’t have any such plans. I’ve a novel nearly ready for submission which is set among the staff of a Belfast girls’ school in the 1920s, and my work in progress is a dual timeline set between 2024 and World War 2. So there are no immediate plans to go back to Easterbridge. Having said that, I love April and her friends and if I felt that there was a new story to tell – and, crucially, readers wanting it —I’d love to go back and tell it. And yes, Easterbridge at war would be the ideal focus. I can imagine the Colonel opening up his home to evacuees and the Mill running first aid classes.

As for the structure, I will always highlight the female perspective, but I like giving the men their say too. I love the challenge of writing from a male point of view, and both Fabian (in Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau) and Charlie (in Miss McVey Takes Charge) are the closest I have come to writing romantic heroes. I have to admit I fell in love with Charlie a bit so I hope readers do too!

Linda: The novel is cleverly plotted and moves on at quite a pace. Are you a detailed planner - did you plot each episode before you started writing? Were there any that grew out of the telling, and surprised you? Did any of the characters develop in ways you hadn't quite planned?

Sheena: I do plan, yes, and because of having three viewpoint characters I have to think about who’s best placed to carry the narrative at any given point. But that generally happens as the story unfolds rather than in advance. I always have a big notebook full of notes and planning but I don’t over-plan and I love to be surprised.

The first scene came to me in Shropshire in autumn 2023. I was walking in the woods and playing out the conversation between April and Margaret, who enlists the bureau’s help to find a wife for her brother, Charlie. I saw her as a handsome, but very plainly-dressed young girl, and then I thought, Good lord, she wants to be a nun! And that ushered in Charlie’s background and his faith – I hadn’t actually sat down and planned that, which seems odd now as it’s absolutely fundamental to the conflicts of the story. I love being open to that kind of thing; it makes the writing much more exciting.

Linda: Besides reading, are there other things you do to immerse yourself thoroughly in the social life of the 1930s - fashion, food, manners, idioms, etc?

Sheena: Oh yes! I have always been a geek about history and especially the kind that’s not too long ago. I read a lot of 1930s fiction, from Noel Streatfeild to Dorothy Whipple, and l love reading about the minutiae of daily life. I can get lost for hours on websites full of 1930s dress patterns and the like, and I love nothing better than a day at a museum, especially the kind with reconstructed houses, etc.

I was always very close to my granny, who was born in 1908 and lived until she was 96, and I loved hearing her stories about ‘the olden days’. She would have been a contemporary of the main characters and I’ve given April, Felicity and Evelyn some of her frocks, based on old photos of Gran and Aunt Annie and their chums on church outings and the like. Of course the snaps are all in black and white so I’ve had to guess at the colours. Isn’t that an ideal metaphor for what historical novelists try to do?

Linda: It absolutely is! Thanks, Sheena - I hope Miss McVey will continue to win the hearts of readers.

Miss McVey Takes Charge is published by Writers Review Publishing.

See also: Q&A with Sheena about Mrs Hart's Marriage Bureau

Also from Writers Review Publishing:

The Poet's Wife by Judith Allnatt

David: the Unauthorised Autobiography by Mary Hoffman

The One True Thing by Linda Newbery

DEATH OF AN ORDINARY MAN by Sarah Perry, reviewed by Adèle Geras

"The writing throughout is spare but not impoverished, elegant and dignified but also full of tiny touches of humour."

Sarah Perry is the author of four novels, including The Essex Serpent, which was adapted for television in 2022. She is the Chancellor of Essex University. Her work has been translated into 22 languages.

Adèle Geras (pictured) is one of the hosts of Writers Review. She has published more than 100 books for readers of all ages. Her latest novel, Dangerous Women, appeared under her pseudonym, Hope Adams. A second Hope Adams book will come out in 2026 from Penguin Michael Joseph. She lives in a suburb of Cambridge and her website is www. adelegerasbooks.com

Back in May, I read an advance proof copy of Sarah Perry’s memoir. Disclosure: Sarah is a very close friend of one of my daughters and I've met her several times.

I’m also a fan of her novels, especially The Essex Serpent. She’s a wonderful writer, whose work reminds me of one of her glorious coats: rich, brocaded, unafraid of display and always beautiful. Some aspects of her work echo Mae West’s dictum (with which I also agree) “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!”

Because Sarah is often interviewed, many people know about her Strict Baptist upbringing and other aspects of her life. She’s written frankly and brilliantly about her health, her childlessness and her travels.

In this short book she has turned her gaze on Death. I’ve used a capital D because it is an important and meaningful word; one that stops us in our tracks and should be given proper respect.

I was knocked sideways when I read this book. There’s no other way of putting it. I have often thought about it since I first read it and I agree completely with the rave reviews it has received. It tells the story of the days between her beloved father in law’s diagnosis of cancer and his death only nine days later. The writing throughout is spare but not impoverished, elegant and dignified but also full of tiny touches of humour.

You might think that such a story would depress you, or upset you, but to the contrary I found great comfort in it. This is, I think, because the narrative conveys powerfully the love that seemed to infuse all the days while Sarah and Rob were taking care of David Perry as he was dying. Even with the pain, the complications attendant on dealing with the NHS and the pure sadness of a huge loss waiting to appear, we become aware that we are witnessing a process which is a part of life and bound up with being born, with existing in time. A line from T S Eliot came into my mind: In my end is my beginning. David Perry had a good life and a good death and now a book has been written which will endure and ensure he is forever remembered. May his memory be for a blessing.

Death of an Ordinary Man is published by Vintage.

Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent is reviewed here by Linda Newbery.

Guest review by Graeme Fife: THE MIGHTY DEAD - WHY HOMER MATTERS by Adam Nicolson

 

"Nicolson, in this enthralling book, introduces Homer in a way entirely apt to the invention and broad sweep of the original."

Graeme Fife is a regular reviewer here. He has written many plays, stories, features and talks for radio, stage plays and articles for newspapers and magazines, and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent. He's the author of a string of books - children's stories, biography, works of history and fiction. His novel of the French Revolution, No Common Assassin, tells the story of Charlotte Corday. His new novel, Memory's Ransom, a compelling wartime story, is published by Conrad Press.

*

ēmos d’ērigeneia phanē rhododaktulos eōs ... When rosy-fingered dawn, child of the morning, appeared in the east…

This, one of a number of lines repeated in the epic poems of Homer, resting places for the oral composer of the stories, I had by heart even before I read the Greek. In those poems I discovered a world recognised from childhood, peopled with heroes, monsters, deadly adventures, last-gasp escape from peril, in a strange landscape replete with all those elements which fired my burgeoning imagination, the signposts of curiosity which linger still.

Nicolson, in this enthralling book, introduces Homer in a way entirely apt to the invention and broad sweep of the original. Goethe, he says, ‘thought that had Europe considered Homer and not the books of the Bible as its holy scripture, the whole of history would have been different, and better’. The ancient Greeks would have agreed for Homer formed the guiding agency of their own moral nurture. Concur or not, this book will help you decide and it’s an issue worth pondering.

Here Nicolson explores the all-important context of the composition of the poems, not written down and thereby, to a degree, fixed for centuries after their appearance as stories embellished, changed, developed, passed on, in the same way as the Gaelic bards and those of the Balkans told their own sagas as a way of charging the imagination of their audience, giving them souvenir of a way of life and action long gone, which they might emulate and by which be inspired. A modern audience will protest, perhaps that this is an androcentric world where women pay a secondary role and the charge is valid. However, Homer’s women present a side of the female spirit which, albeit not of apparent influence on the central landscape of the poems, the battlefield, save in the guise of the goddesses who intervene on human affairs and failings, their heroic exploits, their brutal death, nevertheless underpins all they do and contend for.

Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, remains in the kingdom of Ithaca in the lord’s absence, in the Trojan expedition and thus obliged to preserve the kingdom against his eventual return. Beset by a mob of brawling suitors eager to bed her and claim lordship, she outwits them by guile and, in Nicolson’s emphasis, displays what Homer calls her euēgēsia ‘good command’, nicely glossed by Nicolson as ‘the inner citadel of virtue and value’. I needn’t rehearse the story of her tapestry, woven by day, unpicked by night, her redoubtable patience in the task imposed on her. One example, only, in Homer’s exploration of the indomitable strength of the so-called weaker sex: the wiles of the sorceress Circe, mellifluous Calypso, the cave-bound monster Scylla, and Charybdis, the whirlpool into which a boat may be sucked. Sirens, uttering their seductive calls to give up, surrender, and we see, through Homer’s rich invention, the contrarieties of the sexual balance of power, between men who wield sword and spear in the forum of blood and women who control by subtler means. The female of the species more deadly than the male…? What upset that has caused in the virile heart and mind. So listen up, you men. Homer speaks.

There is much in this book to entice and inform not only in how Homer weaves his magic but in the way that fiction, stories told at bedtime to children or grown-ups later, plant the nurture of our own discovery of how life veers, its vicissitudes; the courage to outface, the spirit to persist, as Odysseus, time and again, puts his hand to the tiller and sails on after yet another confrontation with what had seemed insuperable odds. Invoking ‘the ability to regard all aspects of human life’ and from that understanding keep on, never yielding.

The very allure of Nicolson’s account of what Homer means to us, as he has meant to those generations which, in Keats’s phrase, ‘have trod’, is underlined by the fact that he has sailed treacherous waters in a small boat and knows, dry-mouthed, the conflict of tide and current, of wind and squall, the danger of the ‘unharvested sea’, that briny desert where survival rests always on a gunwale’s edge. He has sat in a grove on Ithaca at night, reading the account of the return of Odysseus to his home - the Odyssey is one of a number of nostoi, voyages home, whence our ‘nostalgia’ - and the ensuing bloodbath of vengeance on those who would have raped his queen and usurped his place as king, sat there even as the nightingale sang its tearful – oiktista - song. Read how Nicolson brings to vivid colour the evening when Keats read the vibrant translation of Chapman. ‘Here at last…was the moment, when, cresting a rise, a new and deeper, ineffably broad landscape had opened in front of him.’

Horace referred to Homer when he speaks of the difficulties of writing, the challenges sometimes beyond us to surmount in words, despite the poems which Nicolson with penetrating insight investigates and honours. Horace wrote:

et idem

indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus

[Ars Poetica 358-9]

‘And yet, I mustn’t be hard on myself when even good Homer nods off’.

I’ve made furniture and was thrilled by Nicolson’s loving account of how Odysseus fashioned the raft which might carry him to safety, every peg and joint, every shaping and fitting.

The Mighty Dead is published by William Collins

Guest review by Susan Elkin: DRAYTON AND MACKENZIE by Alexander Starritt

"Intelligent and compelling without ever resorting to shallow literary pretentiousness. I loved it – and wondered why on earth it wasn't on the Booker Prize longlist."

Susan Elkin taught English in secondary schools for 36 years, latterly developing a parallel career as a writer. Since 1990 she has written over 5000 articles for newspapers and magazines, English text books, how-to books for teachers, a book about careers in theatre and latterly four volumes of memoir: Please Miss We’re Boys (2019), The Alzheimer’s Diaries (2022), All Booked Up (2024) and This Writing Business (2025). Her first foray into fiction - Unheard Voices: Tales from the Margins of Literature -  is out now. Susan lives in South London.

It’s unusual to read a book which explores and celebrates male friendship with all its affectionate joshing, trust and respect. We’re so used to reading about male/female liaison in its many forms and/or about gay love that pure, loving friendship between two men is a refreshing change.

Alexander Starritt’s new novel, which is both moving and absorbing, gives us James Drayton and Roland Mackenzie who meet at Oxford and are very different. James is a focused, super-bright, high achiever who doesn’t always relate comfortably to other people. Roland has people skills, enjoys a good time and messes up his degree. So they hardly notice each other. Later they meet again, find a bond and start an innovative energy company – it has potential, perhaps, but of course investment is an issue and there are many setbacks. Some of the stumbling blocks are driven by phases of differing commitment and loyalty as the novel inches, via its dated sections, towards the Covid years. The complementary relationship between the two of them is like a love affair as they bicker, fall out and rediscover each other repeatedly. Rarely have I read a novel with stronger characterisation.

The minor characters are wonderful too. James’s long-suffering parents, with whom he lives most of the time, are a delight. Both are academics. They take in Roland as a quasi family member and Arthur’s therapeutic, culinary hobby saves the day on more than one occasion. Then there’s Eleni, a rich successful Greek they knew at university who can always be relied on for sensible advice. Alice goes out with James for a while but Roland is easier to be with and, somehow, the two men come round to accommodating the change in dynamic. Some of the characters are real too. It must have been fun to write Drayton and Mackenzie’s meeting with Elon Musk.

Is there a future in tidal energy or hydrolisers? I’m no scientist but Starritt, who has clearly researched it all pretty scrupulously, convinces me that there probably is although there are many heart-in-mouth moments at the beginning, not least when the diver descends to attach the first cable. Starritt is very good at tension and brilliant at naturalistic dialogue. He also excels at the agony of loss because, of course, life is messy – in novels as in reality.

The novel’s epilogue pitches us forward twenty years so we do actually find out how successful it eventually all was. And I cried. Drayton and Mackenzie – the book’s title is, of course, the name of the company – got under my skin in a way that no recent novel has done for a while. It’s intelligent and compelling without ever resorting to shallow literary pretentiousness. I loved it – and wondered why on earth it wasn't on the 2025 Booker Prize longlist.

Drayton and Mackenzie is published by Swift Press.

See also our Q&A with Susan about her reading memoir, All Booked Up.