Guest review by Yvonne Coppard: THE BELOVED CHILDREN by Tina Jackson

 

"This is a book to read twice. Let the first reading sweep you into Jackson’s mesmerising real-but-not-real world. And then read it again to see how she does it: storytelling at its best."

 

Yvonne Coppard is a Writing Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and writer of fiction for children and adults. See more on her website.

In the last phase of the Second World War, three young women are brought together as ‘The Three Graces’ dancing act. Chrysanthemum is escaping the tyrannical control of her adoptive mother, who is determined to obliterate her mysterious powers. Rose comes from a loving showbiz family but longs to see the world. Orage is a mesmerising beauty whose sexual appetite has estranged her from her parents. Dolores and Janna, the eccentric wardrobe mistresses, take the Graces under their wing. Together, these women form a bond that transcends the seedy world of itinerant misfits and fugitives brought together in the dying days of variety theatre. There is secrecy and tension, often a sense of impending doom. But there is humour too, and the resilience and tenacity of this hotch-potch community shines through.

Jackson embraces the magic of theatre and circus; she plays with both in a way that recalls Angela Carter’s gift for magical realism. The five main characters are an outstanding creation, individually and in the mix. The narrator’s voice periodically cuts into the story to unsettle the narrative strand and promote the sense of mystery:

"Sometimes life alters as suddenly as scenes change in the theatre. In a sudden twist of fate, Chrysanthemum and Rose are removed from the world of flatties and ticket buyers. The curtain falls, and rises again, and here they are, in the world within the woods which is where Janna and Dolores pass their time. A world with its own ways. A world where unreal things are everyday occurrences. A world where seeing is believing."

We are also taken to the everyday drudgery of hand-to-mouth existence in oppressive lodging houses, precarious encounters that can be disruptive and dangerous. Time is a shapeshifter, and the reader must share some of the questions and unknowns that shadow the lives of the characters. Tantalising snapshots of individual histories break through and recede as real-time events mix with memories of the past. Their stories grip, entice, and unsettle. But fear not. Everything comes together in the final pages, bringing a satisfying resolution with twists and turns right to the end.

This is a book to read twice. Let the first reading sweep you into Jackson’s mesmerising real-but-not-real world. And then read it again to see how she does it: storytelling at its best.

The Beloved Children is published by Fahrenheit Press

Guest review by Claire Cox: AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE by Beryl Bainbridge

 

"It’s Bainbridge’s unrivalled ability to conjure this period of history, the scarred city of Liverpool, its social attitudes, its deeply traumatized, impoverished citizens, with such unerring detail and dark humour that makes this novel a dynamic and memorable read."

Born in Hong Kong, Claire Cox now lives and works in Oxfordshire. She has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Oxford Brookes University, where she won the Blackwell’s Prize for best student. She’s currently a part-time research student at Royal Holloway, studying poetry and disaster. Her poems have appeared in magazines, including Ink Sweat & Tears, Magma, Lighthouse and Butcher’s Dog. She’s co-founder of ignitonpress, based at Oxford Brookes University’s Poetry Centre, and is an editor there. One of three winners of Primers: Volume Five (Nine Arches Press, 2020), Claire has also won the Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize with A Book of Days (Wigtown Festival Company, 2020). She was project poet for the Clean Seas Odyssey voyage, 2018, investigating marine plastic pollution. Her article ‘Mourning the Present: Towards a Quantum Elegy’ was published in Exclamat!ion: An Interdisciplinary Journal (Volume 4, 2020).

Set in post-war Liverpool, this sharply-observed novel follows the intrigues of a down-at-heel repertory theatre company in the lead up to their Christmas production of Peter Pan. Told through the eyes of Stella, the teenage assistant stage manager, Bainbridge cleverly counterpoints Stella’s feisty naivety with the seedy sexual misconduct that’s rife within the troupe, and which unfolds with tragic consequences. Stella, brought up in a boarding house by her concerned Uncle Vernon and Aunt Lily, is finally confronted by her own troubled childhood in unexpected and devastating ways.

In a counterpoint to the plot, the whereabouts of Stella’s absent mother is intriguingly handled, as is the fraught mother-daughter relationship. Here, Bainbridge sows the seeds of an underplayed, but deeply emotional element in what is, otherwise, a searingly unsentimental portrayal of humanity’s pettinesses and vanity.

The cast of characters is extensive and deftly drawn. Banbridge has a knack of picking exactly the right telling details to describe her creations in a way that gives them substance and vibrancy. Even the incidental characters offer a richness of texture and serve to underscore the impoverished, slightly sinister mood of the novel, from the young woman wearing a man’s jacket over ‘a gaudy satin slip streaked at the hem with blood’, and the ‘boy with ringworm throwing stones at a cat on a wall’, to the chap in a duffle coat ‘who wore a monocle and flashed a sardonic smile as though he were a member of the SS’.

The description of Stella’s decision to take an impromptu bath sums up Banbridge’s thoroughness in evoking this period of history, one imbued, more likely than not, by her own experiences of post-war Liverpool: paraffin from the chandler’s shop has to be fetched for the stove, which in turn needs to be lugged up two flights of stairs to the bathroom, and a blanket nailed to the window. The view from the bathroom smacks of veritas: ‘a bombed house with the wallpaper hanging in shreds from the chimney-breast’. This description is followed, of course, by another darkly appropriate observation, as here in the back alley ‘sometimes women, no better than they ought to be, lured men into the ruined shadows.’

This acute sense of place continues elsewhere in the novel with finely drawn glimpses of the cityscape. Again, in these descriptions nothing is unsullied. Even symbols of hope or redemption become tarnished: ‘the unfinished transept of the rose-pink cathedral smudged the high white sky.’ These moments work as a backdrop, offering a distant perspective against which the busy entanglements of the protagonists play out. In this respect, Bainbridge is creating a drama within a drama; the performance is one of our foolish mistakes set against the stark scenery of a ravaged world. And the further her plot develops, the more apparent becomes the inexorability of fate, the consequences of tainted actions across the generations that are the life-blood of the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles. As with these ancient stories, the costs are inescapable and unflinchingly told.

Ultimately, though, it’s Bainbridge’s unrivalled ability to conjure this period of history, the scarred city of Liverpool, its social attitudes, its deeply traumatized, impoverished citizens, with such unerring detail and dark humour that makes this novel a dynamic and memorable read.

An Awfully Big Adventure is published by Abacus.