BOOK OF THE YEAR
2019
Remembering Shanghai
Claire Chao and Isabel Sun Chao
Category Winners
Short Story Winner
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Poetry Winner
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Children's Winner
Piccadilly and the Jolly Raindrops
Lisa Anne Novelline; pictures by Nicola Hwang
Fiction & YA Winner
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Non Fiction Winner
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Non Fiction
The Perpetual Motion Machine Brittany Ackerman
This is a memoir of a young woman, Brittany, trying to understand the source of her discontent growing up in nineties and noughties America. She comes from a loving, affluent family, and she is clever and attractive. She presents her past in a series of sketches, gradually building a narrative of memories: these feel authentic and they're more than just an exercise in self-analysis. The book is also a portrait of her brother, Skyler and a reflection on their relationship. Her trauma seems to originate with him - she calls him her “perpetual motion machine” and says “all he had to do to earn my love is spin and spin” - but he is also suicidal, and she dates the onset of her depression to “the time he told me he wanted to die”. He seems to be a symbol of flawed perfection: a good looking, athletic genius with the world at his feet, who’s impeded by frailties that neither of them can understand or resolve. This offers a lucid and compelling insight into the sometimes unfathomable reality of contemporary angst in a very spare, very sharp style. 
Remembering Shanghai Claire Chao and Isabel Sun Chao
This book relates the family history of Isabel Chao and her life growing up in Shanghai before the second world war, during Japanese occupation and the civil war. It presents a fascinating family history, which includes many colourful incidents and a whole range of intriguing characters. It was written jointly with her daughter, Claire, who provides much of the broader historical context for her mother's experiences: what emerges is a vivid portrait of decadent Shanghai, a world not familiar to many of us, and the lives of the economic and cultural elite at this point in history. The family history is well presented and constructs a sobering insight into the impact of communism, particularly the horror of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The latter becomes a source of conflict in the life of Diedie, Isabel’s father, whose love of art defines how the family perceive him and his legacy. This man is at the heart of the story, and his refinement and aesthetic sensibility offer an admirable corrective to Mao’s crackpot, anti-art ideology. Diedie is the hero of the piece, albeit a flawed, delightfully human one. It is packed with photos, delightful little sketches and illustrations, recreating a Chinese world that no longer exists, bursting with endless tiny details, a work of art in itself. Small sections explain details such as pronunciation, the origins of the expression ‘kowtow’, the symbollism of fans. It is a beautiful book, offering much subtle insight into art, driven by compelling storytelling and packed with fascinating details. 
The Butcher's Daughter Florence Grende
This is a taught, emotionally charged memoir of a Jewish American woman growing up in post war New York. The daughter of Polish Holocaust survivors, it explores her complicated and fraught relationship with her parents, and the profound, damaging legacy of their wartime experiences. It conjures vivid portraits of both father and mother, charting her own journey of understanding as she researches their history. It’s an unusual view of the holocaust and a subtle, clever exploration of how the after-effects are inevitably passed down through the generations, never being entirely erased. The narrative has momentum, offering an accumulation of significant moments from her life at home with her parents, followed by an attempt to piece together the details of their time hiding from the Nazis, struggling to survive winters deep in the frozen forests of occupied Poland. It’s a gripping, poignant story, told with candour and flair. 
To The Moon and Back Lisa Kohn
This is a memoir written by a woman who was drawn into the Unification Church (the Moonies) as a child by the involvement of her mother. She occupied a privileged position in the heart of the church, enjoying a special status amongst their people of influence, making friends with the treasured, revered children of their leader. The book paints a powerful portrait of how she become part of the organisation, a result of growing up in a dysfunctional family with no practical way of separating herself. The style is compelling and her progression from an insecure child who is desperate for attention to a rebellious teenager and finally to a woman who finds it hard to fit into a world for which she has had little preparation is utterly convincing. Kohn avoids the language of blame and revenge, even when exploring the outrageous hypocrisy of so many of the members, and in doing so, invokes genuine sympathy from the reader. 
You Were Born to Speak Richard Newman
A well informed and engaging self-help book on improving communication skills, mixing personal anecdote with relevant research. It is engaging and unusually readable, hypnotising the the reader with its chatty style. The writer draws by his own admission on ‘common sense’, but there are some very interesting insights along the way: the analysis on Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, for instance, which rings very true, demonstrates, if we needed reminding, that image too often takes precedence over common sense. The author makes useful points about audience identification in his section on storytelling too, offering classic advice on concision, the rule of three, and much besides. I think this would be a very useful book for those who want to improve their public speaking, or understand a little more about the principles of effective communication. 
Live it, Love it, Sell It: how to win at sales with the art of human conversation Jules White
This is a book about selling, written by a winner of Dragon’s Den who has thirty years of experience in sales. Her stated aim is to move away from the standard selling techniques and to learn to love selling without pushing, a worthy aim that most of us would welcome. The book is set out in an accessible way, with diagrams and exercises, which make it easy to dip in and pull out snippets of useful information. And the chatty style breezes along in a deceptively simple way. When she summarises what most of us recognise as sales techniques: Push, Convince, Targets, Persuade and Pressure, and proceeds to explain how she will debunk these myths, you can almost hear a cheer rising from the entire country. Short Stories
Amazing Things are Happening Here Jacob M Appel
Canvassing, the opening piece, is narrated by a young man who falls for a beautiful rich girl and tries to win her love by helping her canvas for a hopeless election candidate. She falls for someone else, who ostensibly ends up murdering her, although this is never entirely clear. It's a typically sharp, dark and convincing story. In Grappling, none of the characters seem able deny their nature - the sense of duty that underpins the woman's love, the idealism and self-deceit that defines her would-be suitor, or the brutish instinctiveness that drives the Grappler. We may grapple against it, but we cannot deny whatever it is that makes us what we are. The title story, Amazing Things, meanwhile, is a typically hilarious piece about a patient, Ward Durham, who disappears from a psychiatric hospital. Instead of admitting to the loss, nurses cover it up, creating elaborate excuses for Durham’s absence. As more and more people collude in this fiction, it culminates in a meeting where everyone, including the consultant, behave as if the patient exists and decide to discharge him. There is a deeper message here about belief and our inability to challenge the orthodoxy of the crowd. It ends wonderfully with the narrator missing the man he never knew. There are echoes here of another great Jewish American writer, Joseph Heller. The stories in this collection seem to hint at things deep in human nature: greed, stupidity, bloodymindedness, exposing their inevitability and, time and again, their infinite potential for comedy. A remarkable book of endless imagination, which acknowledges that there can be no easy answers. 
My Old Faithful Yang Huang
This is a collection of interrelated short stories focusing on a single Chinese family over a period of thirty years. The opening story, Pining Yellow, presents a young boy, Wei, who loses his dog and decides to replace it with a piece of dog-shaped confectionery. In order to raise the money to buy it, he steals a yellow plant that he hopes to sell to his teacher. It’s a touching piece about a child's attempts to come to terms with grief. The second story, Chimney, shifts to Wei’s father who smokes like a chimney, until his disobedient son strikes a bargain with him: Wei will behave if his father quits smoking. The Birthday Girls turns attention to the mother, who wants to give her daughter a religious momento, rather than a pair of Nikes, for her birthday: this, like many of the stories, is about desire, value, and tradition in late twentieth century China. We see the children develop over the course of the book, and the author's eye is invariably sharp, offering a poignant, often hilarious perspective on a changing culture. The book ends with the title story, where the mother, now in her fifties, is due to have a hysterectomy: the final image of her buying a peony picks up the flower imagery that began the book, and which is rich with symbolism throughout. Her final consolation is her belief that her god, Guanylin, “blesses a peony and the weeds by the roadside equally”, and thus time doesn't diminish her in the eyes of the eternal. A wonderful book that bypasses the political dilemmas of China and shines a light on the personal preoccupations of a very real family. 
Tiny Shoes Dancing Audrey Kalman
The title story is about an obsessive mother, Judy, who's living vicariously through her daughter, an aspiring ballerina. Her daughter doesn't arrive for the latest performance and what follows is a story of obsession and guilt, unpacked with fluency and effortless, inventive imagery. The second piece, Forget Me, Forget Me Not focuses on an obsessive long-distance runner in training; her running route takes her toward a meeting at an agreed spot with her partner, Paul, who is to drive her back home. Tripping on a rock in the woods, she is faced with the prospect of dying in the wilderness. Where the first story was about the obsessive demands we put on others, this explores the demands we put on ourselves. Thus obsession is quickly established as a theme in this collection, and we see how characters are blinkered by it, to the point where it consumes them: as with the anorexic protagonist in Pudding, whose obsession diminishes her literally, or the makeup artist in Appointed Time, obsessed with an underwear model, or the speaker of So She Says, obsessed with raising the child he never even knew he wanted. The author charts a course deep into the heart of our psychological preoccupations, exploring those dark places with relentless wit, lyricism and candour. A superb collection. 
The Last Day Jaroslavas Melnikas
Translated by Marija Marcinkute, this is a powerful collection of short stories by a Lithuanian writer of Ukrainian descent. The title story imagines a world in which everyone on the planet is suddenly able to discover the exact time of their own death via the so-called ‘Book of Fates’. Told from the point of view of Kolya, a family man with a wife and two children, it examines the social and psychological impact of such knowledge: in some respects it changes nothing, and people live as they had been; likewise, when the book’s prophecies begin to fail, Kolya’s joy isn't as profound as he might have thought: at least the book offered certainty, and not knowing merely reintroduces the curse of the unknown. The tale is darkly humorous, with a philosophical facet typical of the collection as a whole. Other stories include The End, a piece about a grandmother who begins to grow younger, regressing from adulthood to infancy; and On the Road, the tale of a man who one day begins to follow a series of instructions left for him by people he doesn't know, raising questions about free will, and apparently celebrating the notion of determinism, particularly perhaps the freedom from not having to make decisions. At their best the stories resemble Kafka, perhaps viewed through the hallucinatory lens of Gogal. It’s a class act. 
I Exist. Therefore I Am Shirani Rajapakse
Nine short stories set in India, all well-written stories focusing on discrimination against women in India. Drink Your Milk and go to Sleep is a harrowing tale of gender discrimination and infanticide. The speaker is forced to abort a series of female babies as their sex is detected in the womb, but one survives to full term, only to be murdered by the mother. The second, Shweta’s Journey, is about a woman who is duped by Swamiji, a bogus religious guru who appropriates her wealth and proceeds to govern her life. The third, A Room Full of Horrors, focuses on two female students’ attempts to pay their tuition fees in an institution that feels hopelessly, and some may say maliciously bureaucratic, presided over by the gratuitously unhelpful patriarch, Mr Singh. Other stories address women on death row, women experiencing existential crises, and women caught in the snare of convention and patriarchal expectation. At her best the author's style is direct and the stories have real force; they seem driven by a powerful sense of frustration and outrage. Poignant and moving, the book deals with issues that require more of a profile. 
Dazzling the Gods Tom Vowler
These are wonderfully lyrical stories, chiefly about men struggling to make sense of their blighted lives. There are men whose marriages are failing, sometimes because of illness, sometimes incompetence; bewildered brothers living in the shadow of their siblings, unable to fathom the source of their failure and guilt; there are violent men, cuckolded men, even a man whose world is literally disappearing beneath him, clinging to life in a house built on an eroding coastline. Some are more self-aware than others, but most have the measure of themselves, at least by the end of the story: like the creative writing student who accepts his comparative inadequacy alongside his scientist girlfriend, or the author who compares himself to an eviscerated gecko in the nest of a hungry jay. If the men can’t working themselves out, then women are there to illuminate them, like the narrator of The Offspring Bridge, who is talked into an abortion by her old lover. While he is now happy with children, she has been condemned to a childless life. The stories are sensitive and wise explorations of human frailty and suffering. A stunning collection. |
Fiction and YA
The Mask of Sanity Jacob M Appel
Dr. Jeremy Balint is a heart specialist who becomes the Green Ribbon Strangler. The trigger is the discovery that his wife is having an affair with his colleague, Warren Sugarman: he decides to kill Sugarman but reasons that the only way he can avoid suspicion is by making the murder look like one of many committed by a serial killer. The fact that Appel makes such an unlikely plot convincing is testimony to his remarkable talent. With its themes of infidelity and white collar murder, this book reminded me of the mature Woody Allen: the characterisation certainly bears the weight of that comparison. Balint is a wonderful creation - we are allowed to see below his so called mask of sanity, to the chilling and conflicted psyche of a man who, whilst capable of emotional engagement with his immediate family, can dehumanise at will. The humour was very strong, especially the way Appel has his hero use jokes as a block for emotions, and to stymie moral debate (particularly in the hilarious exchanges with the rabbi!). Funnier and better than American Psycho. 
In the Shadow of War Patrick M Garry
This is a superbly written novel set in 70s America against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Glen Kinsella blames himself for the death of his mentally handicapped brother, Ricky, who died in a road accident. Ricky persists as a symbolic presence in Glen's life, and a yardstick against which he measures the integrity of the people he meets. He spends the summer in the one-horse town of Corcoran, where his grandfather is buying up real estate, hoping to revive the community by persuading the wives of servicemen to live there while their husband's serve in Nam. There Glen meets Suzanne, a girl his age from Seattle, visiting Corcoran in search of her grandfather's grave. Initially Glen is suspicious - he assumes she is the kind of person who would have shunned and ridiculed Ricky - but gradually the two fall in love. Glen’s maturation is well handled, and we watch him qualify his assumptions as he comes to recognise Suzanne's humanity and vulnerability. It's a excellent portrait of a sensitive, guilt ridden man's moral and emotional struggles. The central character is multilayered, and minor characters are also well rounded - particularly Will, a disgraced Vietnam veteran, and Glen's grandfather, Eamon. The book as a whole presents an authentic world and a lovely, poignant story that is immensely enjoyable. 
Two Like me and You Chad Alan Gibbs
This Young Adult book was a breath of fresh air. After being jilted by his airhead celebrity girlfriend, Sadie, Edwin teams up with quirky redhead, Parker, to help an old man, Garland, find a lost love in France. The author makes an unlikely plot compelling and convincing, sustaining tension for the entire duration of the book; the characters are believable, and the dialogue sparkles with the kind of banter that marks Gibbs as a first rate comic writer. The parallels with Jonas Jonasson’s The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared are quite strong, and Gibbs’s novel is certainly worthy of this comparison. Garland in particular is a delight: the wise-cracking yarnspinner is a superb comic creation, and it's easy to imagine that discerning film producers will soon be knocking on his creator's door. It’s smart, funny with strong characters and a delightful narrative voice. 
The Chernobyl Privileges Alex Lockwood This tells the story of Anthony, aka Anatolii, a Ukrainian Chernobyl survivor evacuated to the UK as a child and adopted by a British couple. He grows up to become a nuclear physicist, employed at a British naval base in Scotland. Following an accident on one of the nuclear subs, Anthony finds himself at the centre of another disaster, forcing him to revisit his childhood trauma, the psychological consequences of which still dog him. The central character is completely convincing: his emotional life and moral confusion are unpacked patiently and scrupulously as the full horror of his early experiences in the USSR are gradually revealed. The focus shifts between modern Scotland and eighties/nineties Ukraine to weave a narrative that begins slowly but gradually builds into a tense, riveting tale that examines personal morality against a backdrop of environmental politics. 
Blue Fire Katherine Prairie
Alex Graham is the daughter of geologist, Brian Graham, who suspects that gems from a Brazilian mine are being used to fund terrorism. Alex is dispatched to the mine to investigate, and the story begins with an illicit mission into the mine during which one person, Benjamin, is killed and another, Mosi, is injured. It turns out that the mine is yielding tanzanite, a rare gem usually found only in Tanzania. Now Alex and the injured Mosi must escape Brazil, and the story becomes a chase narrative in which she must evade the killers, and the villains who pull their strings. The novel shifts between the perspectives of the hunter and the hunted, and the juxtaposition works well, building in tension and intrigue as the motivations of the various players are revealed. It's a tightly written, well constructed book, with an international scope. Apparently it is the second in a series of Alex Graham novels. It’s a slick, competent novel despite this, and I can imagine it having considerable appeal to thriller enthusiasts. 
Bobby Denise Is Reigning Rampant Daniel Ross
This is the story of Bobby, a Vegas variety artist jailed for thirty years for shooting his manager. He feels no remorse for this, yet grieves for his white tiger, Dusty, which he also shot after it mauled and killed a member of his audience during a show. Now in his late seventies, Bobby attempts to make a life for himself in LA, but is pursued by a journalist, Amanda Paceman (aka Pacman), who's intent on exposing him. Bobby as narrator brims with verve, nous, and wit, offering a completely convincing representation of Vegas kitsch and the various eccentrics and sad-acts populating this world. His jaded and cynical voice feels right, and his crackajack satire is relentless, hilarious, and thoroughly entertaining. The plot is compelling, driven by the mystery behind Bobby's act of violence and his apparent lack of remorse. Daniel Ross, a clearly talented writer, has a natural ability to produce prose that dazzles and sparkles. 
Running to Graceland John Slayton
A quintessentially American road narrative with some excellent description, involving two friends, Jack and Curtis, on the run after the latter shoots and wounds an old man. Both are Elvis fans and their various adventures on the road are interspersed with Jack's dreams of Elvis, who seems to be offering him cryptic guidance from beyond the grave. Both young men are struggling to make sense of themselves and the world, and Curtis in particular must grapple with the consequences of a toxic childhood and his own self-destructive urges. Their story develops with pace and fluency, and the development of both central characters is well drawn and powerfully convincing. The story closes with a pilgrimage to Graceland where Jack is shot and wounded by a security guard, an event that curtails their doomed odyssey. Very enjoyable with a particularly sympathetic and perceptive exploration of loyalty, friendship and the dilemmas of the modern world. The ending is well-handled: inevitable, realistic and believable. 
The Return of a Shadow Kunio Yamagishi
Eizo Osada leaves his family in Japan to work in Canada, finding himself confined in a concentration camp following the attack on Pearl Harbour. When the Japanese surrender he decides to stay in Canada where he feels best placed to provide for his family back home. He remains there for forty years despite the fact that his family stop writing to him. On his retirement he returns to Japan only to find that his wife has lost her mind and his children are emotionally distant. It appears that Eizo’s life has been governed by illusions and misplaced notions of duty. After years of cultural estrangement and loneliness, then, he remains an outsider in his home country and returns to Canada to live out his final years governed by a philosophy of acceptance. It's an absorbing tale of a kind, likeable man that in parts has an hallucinatory quality typical of some Japanese fiction. It has tension too, and Eizo’s plight is poignant and morally complex. Kunio Yamagishi Eizo Osada leaves his family in Japan to work in Canada, finding himself confined in a concentration camp following the attack on Pearl Harbour. When the Japanese surrender he decides to stay in Canada where he feels best placed to provide for his family back home. He remains there for forty years despite the fact that his family stop writing to him. On his retirement he returns to Japan only to find that his wife has lost her mind and his children are emotionally distant. It appears that Eizo’s life has been governed by illusions and misplaced notions of duty. After years of cultural estrangement and loneliness, then, he remains an outsider in his home country and returns to Canada to live out his final years governed by a philosophy of acceptance. It's an absorbing tale of a kind, likeable man that in parts has an hallucinatory quality typical of some Japanese fiction. It has tension too, and Eizo’s plight is poignant and morally complex. Children's and Picture Books
The Ring of Gilly Wood Ruth Banister
A great queen loses a ring. Hundreds of years later the ring slips onto the paw of a young mole. The mole grows to be a wise and trusted leader of Gilly Wood and all the animals that live there. But a great threat is coming. Can one small mole save a whole valley? Mole sets out to do just that with friends he makes along the way and the strange thing on his paw. When human development threatens the wood's future, the mole teams up with a little girl, Elizabeth, owner of a number of coins that accompanied the ring stolen from the Queen. Ultimately Elizabeth is able to uncover a royal association for the area, saving the wood from developers. This is a charming book with a strong narrative drive and themes of the environment/wildlife/history. 
The Shadow of the Tudor Rose Wendy Leighton -Porter
This, the latest instalment in a series of time travel Shadow books, takes twins Jemima and Joe, their friend Charlie, and Jemima’s cat Max (who's working on the sly for The Guardians of Time), back to Tudor England. Luckily for us they encounter just about every famous Elizabethan you can imagine, including Chris Marlowe, Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth the First (“What do you mean, ‘the first’? There's only been one!” is among the many gags). It’s packed with historical information of educational value for kids and it’s nice that a lesser known figure like Marlowe is given a fair crack of the whip in plot. It has humour, energy, and worthwhile historical grounding. 
Piccadilly and the Jolly Raindrops Lisa Anne Novelline; pictures by Nicola Hwang
A girl, Piccadilly, goes out to play in the rain, imagining, instead of negativity, positivity. Beautifully presented, gorgeous illustrations, this is a sweet story for very young children, succinct and uplifting. The narrative has energy and sparkle, and the book has a nice feel to it. 
Blue Broccoli and Nanobots Bryony Mathew
The introduction sums up the purpose of this book : ‘…the world needs more women in STEM. This book will open their eyes to a whole new world of opportunities.’ The book goes through a variety of careers and there are many lovely illustrations of girls in those roles. The text is written clearly and simply, with an easy to follow pattern. It’s aimed at children before they need to make decisions about careers, but would provide a valuable service in opening their eyes to opportunities they might never otherwise think of. 
Secret and Spies: A Scottish Wartime Mystery Mary Rosambeau
A children's war story, well-written in a clear, understandable style, set in a small Scottish coastal town with a good sense of place. Rory and his friend Paul become embroiled in a spy plot and an attempt to blow up an important professor who's working on behalf of the allies. It's a readable piece with compelling mysteries driving it. It has a nice moral dimension too with a good hearted protagonist, who has concern for others, even the dodgy ones. It’s a good read - most of the war references are convincing, and we get a good sense of place and period (Alice's Scottish language is particularly enjoyable). The story stays focused too, with good timing and structure. A good read. 
The Gad Nail Anthony Spaeth
This is the story, written in rhyme, of a potter who makes a little boy (a zig), who gets himself into trouble with some weird little creatures, the Fenodores, and their queen. This works well, and while it’s a bit gruesome in places, it proceeds towards a tight and meaningful ending. The verse moves the narrative along effectively, producing an appropriate tone for the piece. The illustrations are beautiful and it reads like a fable. Poetry
The Cynic in Extremis Jacob M Appel
Appel’s signature mark is wit, and it’s here in abundance in these poems. Appel’s language is generally direct and informal. His speakers are, as the title suggests, cynical. He writes from the point of view of estranged school kids, for instance, in the opening poems, or as a detached and annoyed tour guide in Touring Greenwich Village: here he satires the ‘Spouses of dentists’ who gawp at him as he works, representative of a world beyond rescue. There are some extraordinary analogies here – in Infidelity, it’s a stolen kiss on a fire escape, while for his aunt it was a posted suicide note. Extremely enjoyable. 
Learning to Have Lost Oz Hardwick
A sharp, often dark collection of prose poems, sometimes like flash fiction, which comes across as intelligent, intense prose. Some are about memory and the things we use to define our experience: in Graduation a man discovers a long abandoned schoolbag where his old school books have grown back into trees; here the preoccupations of youth are expressed in selected memories and images: like "the smell of fireworks, subtle indentations in a sloping lawn". Memories are sometimes vivid, sometimes elusive, and uncertainty can fracture any clear sense of the past, or the self. In this sense the past is something we must learn to lose. Excellent. 
Cosmocartography Ciaran Hodgers
There is thought behind this collection, with the author grouping poems together according to a 'constellation' of themes: family, friends, nature, love, the self, and solidarity. The poems mostly have the expansive feel of performance pieces, exploring themes with an informal tone. They have some focus, though, and an original, innovative feel, even when dealing with subjects steeped in stereotype and cliché - his long reflection on How to Be an Irish Emigrant, for instance, is a lovely example of his ability to interrogate tropes in ways that illuminate rather than emulate, underpinned by the kind of intelligence and authenticity that pervades the collection. 
The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-life Crisis Luisa A. Igloria
As the title suggests these poems have a spiritual theme, and are to be read through the lens of Buddhism. The author often brings a good deal of wit and irreverence to this, however, as in the poem, 'You seem to be carrying a lot of guilt', where a therapist consults the Buddha, and he gives her a stress ball; or in 'The Buddha goes on the Internet', where the Buddha is shown to have issues of his own, reminding us that sometimes we have to accept the "ideal as less/than ideal". I like the wit and invention with which she brings Buddhism down to earth, and which helps her avoid the potential pitfalls of didacticism. 
Rossetti's Wombat Joe Neal
Poems about Pre-Raphaelite wombats rub shoulders with poems about Aberfan, Richard III, jazz, tiger moths, Chernobyl, and the Belfast blitz in this eclectic and accomplished collection. Neal isn't one for traditional rhyme schemes, but his ear for sound patterns is strong, and a fondness for internal rhyme and assonance characterises his writing. This is particularly effective in his poems about place: the mountains and coastlines of Wales feature often, and he renders it with an arresting, musical flair. 
Close Emma Purshouse
This book is a breath of fresh air, charged with a kind of comic verve, heavily grounded in Black Country culture. It collects pieces that work brilliantly on the page, and which brim with surrealism, wit, and an assured grasp of the vernacular. There are mermaids on buses, conversations between canals, lazy cats, and nosey neighbours, in a collection that is often laugh out loud funny. But for all the comedy, there is also a deep understanding of the region, and the emotional life that exists beneath the banter, witnessed brilliantly in poems like The Flamingos at Dudley Zoo, where the birds clipped wings become a metaphor for the constraints imposed on youth, or the Budgie Man at 8a, sharpening his beak on the "cuttlefish of his day". |