Carol Naylor's REVIEW it...

                                                          WOLF MOUNTAIN. ALICE ROBERTS. This is a sequel to Wolf Road. Our reading group read and discussed the first book. I agreed to read the sequel and summarise it. There were a lot of loose ends in the first one so it was obvious that Alice Roberts was going to carry the story through. The publishers decided to advertise the stories as a children's book recommended for 8+ but I can assure you our group is composed of the 60s+ They enjoyed it. It touches on the Ice Age in what we now know as Eastern Europe with talos constantly on the move following the trail of reindeers during the spring and winter. The main character is Tuuli and her pet wolf, Lupa. Her quest was to head to the southern mountains where Andar had pointed, the Mountain of the Sun to find his talo and discover the reason why...

                                                               IT'S TIME.      " It's time," he said as I withdrew into my battered shell.      Is there ever a right time to go? To leave this earth?     To shuffle off this mortal coil?     To go gently into that goodnight?     To drift from this world into oblivion, to die we know not where?     Without a soul to live on. No spirit left.     Nothingness.     No trace of your existence. Just fading memories.     How sad.    When everyone deserted me, you were there,    always there,    My faithful friend, constant, offering me   unconditional love,   Well-needed companionship. A well-travelled cat,   British through and through,   Fu...

  These verses were dedicated to the three year old boy whose father punished me by applying and winning custody. He kept my house, furniture, the car basically everything, making me homeless and spiralling to a difficult time. The boy became a man and our relationship died. He sees his step-mother as a parent. My ex was having an affair with her well before we divorced. She inherited my son, my home and car. Life sucks...                                             The Lost Years? The ruffled blonde hair, Penetrating brown eyes, The strained smile as the camera Captures your innocence? Unspoken thoughts, Painful memories exist? The chasm that existed between us Worlds apart, worlds away.... I see a stranger, a school child Looking for answers, Searching for the truth, Lost and alone, abandoned. I feel your pain, your torment, I understand your silence. A bonding of love, s...

                                                  WIND Ted Hughes. Hughes uses quatrains and writes in free verse, no constraints, no rigidity. Stanza 1 opens with the shocking effects of the storm, speaking figuratively. A constant recurring motif is the landscape: woods, hills. fields and sea battling the wind, aspects of nature. In l.12 he uses onomatopoeia with "crashing" and "booming" present participles, ongoing, auditory imagery. He personifies the strength of the wind with "stampeding" like an army perhaps? Precise details. It is also highlighted with "under the window" and "floundering." "Blinding" is used metaphorically indicating an inability to challenge the wind and rain, loss of vision. Is loss of sight caused through the incessant rain? Is this Hughes' paradox? The poet uses enjambement frequently between stanzas to show continuity of destruction wi...

                                        The Garden Party. Katherine Mansfield.   Mansfield was best known for her short stories rather than her reviews, journals, letters or poems. She was regarded as a highly influential Modernist writer, experimental as well as innovative in her style of writing. "The Garden Party" is a linear story " working " on different levels, simply detailing Laura, the protagonist's account of organising the garden party to her first probable encounter with death. The story is multi-layered and leaves the reader with more questions than answers, a deliberate ploy by the writer, challenging conventions. Direct speech is used throughout and in this extract Mr Sheridan speaks metaphorically on one level of a " beastly accident " verging on anthropomorphism in comparing Mr Scott to an animal and on another level, indicating the speaker's social background usin...

  The opening chapter "  Bitter and Twisted " ( nicknames given to two of the crime specialists) gives the reader a sickening insight into illegal immigration and people smuggling. Set in Tenerife. The first victim, Rafi, bled to death. Seventeen African illegal immigrants between the ages of eighteen and thirty had just arrived on the island. Rafi was "one of our men"  and had been planted amongst the men in order to attempt to crack a major people smuggling ring from the inside. "He felt like a farm animal up for sale-or slaughter."  Dramatic irony. His knee cap is shattered, his hand cut off ( "too smooth") and stuck in his mouth as a warning to the police and guardia civil. The action moves to Los Cristianos where we meet Lieutenant Vargas and protagonist Andrew Kirby who works for CITES-Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species such as tigers, leopards, rhinos and walruses. They are carrying out surveillance of forty-four Afric...

  "Wouldn't it be a blessing to forget some of our memories forever, erased from the mind as if they'd never happened?" We begin in September 2016 when 30 year old Lizzie seems to be having a nightmare-standing alone by a dark lake feeling "helpless, aimless and without memory of what has happened."  It is atmospheric with present continuous verbs of shaking and shudder[ing], naked feet sinking into a graphic image of mud, followed by a desperate scream. A hooded giant had chased Lizzie, caught her, dropped her into the water and pushed her under. Over the course of the novella, Leuschel's first, the opening is ominous and complete with pathetic fallacy. This, in effect, is the end, the nightmare being the " remnants of confusing, unsettling years." She has survived three very difficult years being controlled, manipulated by Morag, a neighbour and a "surrogate" mother as well as a husband verging on the narcissistic who relishes hav...

                                  C RUEL SUMMER by Bernard Jan. " I'm lost in a world I do not understand and I'm trying to find myself." It's mid-August and NYC is established as the main setting to this tragic and disconcerting story about Michael Daniels a 17 year old, suffering grievously from the recent death of his mother Melanie, losing the will to live. We are plunged into a cold NYC suggesting that America is experiencing a new climatic disorder and establishing pathetic fallacy to set the scene for some shocking revelations. It is " a perfect setting for his {Michael's} gloomy feelings and depressing thoughts." "Cruel Summer" is an apt title, ominous, reflecting Michael's mind and life. Young adults will understand and appreciate the intensity, dark moods and melancholic tones. His relationship with his step-father, Hank is a brutal one. He works at RIRL-Roosevelt Island Research Institute wh...

                  Fragments of a Dream by Ruth Larrea. "If only Angelos and I could rewrite our lives on a blank page equipped with fresh wisdom and insight." Describing Larrea's debut novel as a simple love story doesn't quite do it justice. Considering the ageing population, marriages that collapse in later years and the need to be loved, it is refreshing that the protagonist is in her senior years, close to retirement. It is a romantic story of people in the third age of life rediscovering themselves and their loved ones. Rosie Burden is a survivor and the novel has a positivity about it in spite of the setbacks. "A lifetime of sacrifices" is how she described putting Harry first. No tell-tale signs that he would leave Rosie for a younger woman. There were tensions throughout their marriage which affected their offspring, Lisa and Matthew but nothing unusual compared to other families. Rosie had se...

                        The C Word.TV Drama. "Losing someone to cancer really resets your perspective. It makes me value life, cherish my loved ones and be grateful for every day I have with them."(Sheridan Smith) 4.2 million people recently tuned in to watch an outstanding and powerful performance by Sheridan Smith (recently seen in Cilla) and whose credits include the sitcom Gavin & Stacey, Two Pints of Lager & A Packet of Crisps, Quartet with Maggie Smith and Michael Gambon to more highbrow Ibsen. A versatile actress and an accomplished singer. Staring cancer in the face may be construed as a bravado act but it takes a lot of courage. Smith, affectionately known as the queen of the biopic agreed to play Lisa Lynch, a journalist, or more specifically a magazine editor. Lynch was adamant that her alter ego should be played by Smith and only Smith. ...

White Nights by Ann Cleeves. "It's the time of year. The light nights. It makes us all go a little bit mad." Sounds like Shakespeare? A Midsummer Night's Dream? This is Cleeves' second book in the Shetland series. Tourists are streaming ashore in Lerwick, mainly Americans to enjoy the beauty and tranquility of Shetland. In one breath we are told of how safe the place is then we are confronted with a clown wearing a sinister mask giving out flyers as the tourists disembark. It's midsummer when the birds sing at midnight and the sun never sets. It's a crazy time of the year when night blurs into day and nothing is quite as it seems! Jimmy Perez has his own down-to-earth style of detective work in between pursuing Fran Hunter, his love interest for the past six months. It's still early days and he is treading carefully. Bella Sinclair, described as being rather unapproachable, intimidating and rich was exhibiting her art work at Herri...

                  Marriages Are Made in Bond Street by Penrose Halson . "The men come over here, the girls are already here, they all want to get together but they never meet! Let's introduce them-let's start a marriage agency." It's spring, 1939 just before the war started. Two young women, both twenty-four, Heather Jenner and Mary Oliver decided to open a marriage bureau in Bond Street, London. The book by Halson celebrates ten years of matching couples during a difficult period in English history. Many years later, Halson found herself proprietor of the Katherine Allen Marriage and Advice Bureau (1986). In 1992 it had incorporated Heather Jenner's agency. Her source came partly from Jenner's daughter, Stella Sykes who had archived her mother's copious notes as well as three books on marriage, two by Jenner and one by Mary Oliver collaborating with Mary Benedetta. The stories are interesting...

                 The Calico Cat by Amanda James.  "Then life takes huge bites out of you, chews you up, spits you out and watches you slowly bleed to death by the wayside." I find it refreshing to come across writing that is somewhat different and far removed from the world of crime and detection, my usual genre. James indicates that this is about a journey of self-discovery, life, love and adventure mainly for the persona, Lottie Morgan, a "damaged" individual because of how her parents mismanaged an extremely "delicate" situation when their daughter was at an impressionable age. Lottie is not your average female and she is so complicated, having suffered a rejection by Jenny her mother then further betrayals from people she cared about. It got so bad for Lottie that she started to self-harm, followed by suicidal thoughts then displayed what is referred to as psychotic behaviour. We get a glimp...