#lesley glaister

[learnthisphrase]

Best books of 2023

The best books I read in 2023

Knock Knock, Open Wide by Neil Sharpson (Tor Nightfire, 2023)

Imagine Tana French writing a folklore-infused horror novel, and you have Knock Knock, Open Wide. The always-thrilling plot takes in a life-changing accident, a love affair, and a sinister TV series; the storylines overlap and entwine perfectly, and there’s a lot of beautifully crafted character work. It’s a dark and eerie book, but full of life and love, too.

Black Mountain by Simon Bestwick (Independent Legions, 2021)

A mixed-media horror novel disguised as non-fiction about the many strange incidents surrounding a cursed/haunted mountain. Unputdownable and genuinely unnerving at points – I had the time of my life reading this. I’m amazed it isn’t better-known among horror fans!

The Last Language by Jennifer duBois (Milkweed Editions, 2023)

A riveting, disturbing book about a language therapist’s relationship with the autistic man she’s helping to ‘speak’ using the controversial method of facilitated communication. I read it in one fevered session, completely in the grip of the dizzying, queasy moral maze duBois creates.

Hydra by Adriane Howell (Transit Lounge, 2022)

Just when you think the ‘unhinged woman’ trend has had its day, this excellent Australian debut offers a fresh spin on the whole idea. Anja’s dry, idiosyncratic voice rings out from the page, and the plot is never far away from intimations of something dark and weird. Read if you love Ottessa Moshfegh and Tár.

My Death by Lisa Tuttle (2004, reissued by NYRB Classics 2023)

A perfect novella about a widowed writer who becomes obsessed with her latest project, a biography of a little-known artist’s muse. Astonishingly clever, convincing and absorbing, it’s a revelation and turned me into an instant fan of Tuttle’s writing.

Grasshopper by Barbara Vine (Penguin, 2000)

A beautiful and eloquent coming-of-age tale dressed up as a crime novel. The plot has so many different strands that it’s difficult to describe concisely, but this is essentially a character-focused story about identity, aspiration and love. The rare book that actually made me cry.

How Can I Help You by Laura Sims (Putnam, 2023; UK ebook out in January 2024)

Explores the tense relationship between two women with secrets (some more dangerous than others) who both work at a public library. A sharp, nuanced character study that is also utterly propulsive. If you loved Death of a Bookseller, this should be next on your wishlist.

Novel with Cocaine by M. Ageyev, translated by Michael Henry Heim (Picador, 1985)

1930s cult classic about a dissolute Russian teenager, his friendships, affairs and drug addiction. Think No Longer Human, but (in my opinion) way better. It’s philosophical, funny and stuffed with remarkable descriptive writing.

Where the Dead Wait by Ally Wilkes (Titan, January 2024)

Years after an infamous failed expedition, a captain with a sullied reputation must return to the Arctic in search of his former lieutenant. Immersive and enthralling at every level, this is a blood-soaked, frostbitten treat – I’ve been describing it as The Terror meets Heart of Darkness.

The Devil’s Playground by Craig Russell (Doubleday, 2023)

An elaborately plotted historical mystery about a legendary silent horror movie. Come for the lost film and its ghosts; stay for the well-researched portrait of old Hollywood, the world-weary heroine, and the fascinating detective story.

We Were Never Friends by Margaret Bearman (Brio Books, 2020)

A woman looks back at a strange period of her youth when her family became entangled with Kyla, a hated classmate of hers. Dazzling at the sentence level – Bearman illuminates Lotti and Kyla’s world with startling colour, vividly portraying the emotional landscape of adolescence.

Honour Thy Father by Lesley Glaister (Bloomsbury, 1991)

Four elderly – yet naive – siblings live in self-imposed imprisonment amid the squalid remains of their family home. How did they end up like this? We Have Always Lived in the Castle meets Come Join Our Disease in a dark tale that perfectly balances tender nostalgia, black humour and sinister threat.

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor (Virago, 1957)

We meet Angel as an impetuous 15-year-old convinced she will become a great novelist, and follow throughout her life as she first fails upwards, then eventually loses everything. It’s a tragic story that centres on a pathetic character, yet Taylor writes with a compassion that makes it almost romantic.

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge (Penguin, 2017)

A labyrinthine series of stories within stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft – but you definitely don’t need to like (or have read) Lovecraft to enjoy it. Deceptively complex, it excavates the lives of its characters while maintaining a subtle sense that the whole narrative is haunted.

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward (Viper, 2023)

My favourite of Ward’s books since her debut Rawblood, this is a story about murder that deals with the long shadow it casts. It’s also about writing and witchcraft, unrequited love, and the death of the author, and is unexpectedly heartbreaking.

Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt (Cipher Press, 2023)

This book takes the ‘trauma as horror’ trope and eats it from the inside out. It’s full of fearless writing about fetishes, transness, transphobia, dysphoria, and what – if anything – it means to be virtuous. While often disgusting (be warned), I wanted to reread it straight away.

Where Furnaces Burn by Joel Lane (2012, reissued by Influx Press 2023)

A sprawling map of linked stories; layered, moody and strange. Not the easiest book to recommend – Lane, one of my favourite writers, invariably creates very bleak worlds – but an incredibly rewarding reading experience.

Notable reread: Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach (Picador, 2013)

A grieving, lonely young woman finds solace on an online debate forum and ends up immersed in someone else’s life. Just as fast-paced, gripping and brilliantly voice-driven as it was when I first read it a decade ago.

Honourable mentions

So many good books came out in 2023 that I have to mention a few more. The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freiman was the funniest, sharpest, most quotable novel I read this year. I loved the intriguing layers of Ben Tufnell’s The North Shore and Viola Di Grado’s poignant Blue Hunger, translated by Jamie Richards. Verity M. Holloway’s romantic, atmospheric The Others of Edenwell deserved way more attention. And this may be an unpopular opinion, but I enjoyed Elizabeth Hand’s A Haunting on the Hill more than The Haunting of Hill House.

For thought-provoking plots: Service by Sarah Gilmartin and Kids Run the Show by Delphine de Vigan, translated by Alison Anderson. For pure thrills: Nicholas Binge’s mind-bending Ascension and Jinwoo Chong’s dazzling Flux. For both, and great suspense: A Flaw in the Design by Nathan Oates.

And not forgetting the brilliant 2023 books I read as review copies last year: Nina Allan’s masterpiece Conquest, Alice Slater’s ultra-compelling Death of a Bookseller, and Maria Dong’s loveable Liar, Dreamer, Thief.

[finishinglinepress]

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Venus Anadyomene by Alyssa Lindley Sinclair

On SALE: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/venus-anadyomene-by-alyssa-lindley-sinclair/

Venus Anadyomene chronicles the trauma and change endured by a woman’s body through #pregnancy and #childbirth, while exploring the intersection of mental and physical #health. The #poems in this book consider the threat of climate change, #parenting and existing as a woman within the political landscape in Texas, and a mother’s longing for a safer and more beautiful existence for her children. These poems play with form and voice, including prose poems, word games and prayers that evoke the visceral, the spiritual, and how we exist in between.

Alyssa Lindley Sinclair completed her Master’s degree in Creative Writing at the University of St. Andrews. She grew up in the Boston area, and lives in Dallas, Texas. Her poetry and essays have been featured by Bear Review, River Teeth Magazine, Mutha Magazine, Literary Mama, and Poetry Society of New York, among others. She is the mother to three young girls.

PRAISE FOR Venus Anadyomene by Alyssa Lindley Sinclair

In this brave, passionate, sometimes tender, sometimes visceral collection, childhood memories mingle with prayers for the speaker’s own children – for all our children – as a counter to the harm being done, not only to the earth, but also to our bodies (particularly to the bodies of women) and to the “wordless garden / of myth” that nourishes the spirit. At a time when the dangers to that spirit are more insidious than ever, Venus Anadyomene is an urgent and moving call to reflection and response.

–John Burnside, Author & Poet, A Lie About my Father, Black Cat Bone, Winner of T.S. Eliot Prize, Forward Poetry Prize & David Cohen Prize

Longing, love, hope, disillusion and humour are layered in this playful and inventive collection. Various facets of maternity, from medicalised birth trauma, to the clamour of children in a hot car, via tender prayers, a word game, and allusions to Doctor Suess combine to make a moving and boldy visceral account of a mother’s experience.

–Lesley Glaister, Author, Honour Thy Father, Easy Peasy, Little Egypt, Winner, Somerset Maugham Award, Betty Trask Award, Jerwood Uncovered Fiction Award

In these lush, honest, sometimes brutal poems, Sinclair stares unflinchingly into both the beauty of mother/womanhood and what it takes to endure it. Where “legs become a basket” to care for one child, “[t]he floor tilts”, “the hospital room is an airplane climbing” while another comes into the world; Sinclair holds it all in balance. “Tall angel, please,” she writes. “Drip honey off your fingertips into the mouths of / My children, and deliver them … into something / more alive.” That’s exactly what these poems do.

–Sarah Carson, author and poet, Buick City, Poems in Which You Die, How to Baptize a Child in Flint, Michigan

Please share/please repost #flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry #chapbook #read #poems

[reading-with-emily-blog]

Digging to Australia by Lesley Glaister (written in 1992) is a fantasticly ambiguous tale that will leave you frustrated and feeling restless.

Like in Alice in Wonderland, Jennifer, led by a stray cat, was lured to her version of Wonderland- a forgotten cemetery and dilapidated playground. She finds refuge from her eccentric family in her secret garden.

After family secrets come out from the woodworks, Jennifer can feel herself getting lost in lies and unknown truths. After the startling news of Jenny’s real birthday being in November instead of June she finds the truth about her mother: Jacqueline.

After giving birth at 18 Jacqueline gives Jennifer up to be raised by her parents; then gone without a word. Except a letter to be opened on Jenny’s 13th birthday.

As Jennifer enters her new life as an adolescent; three new people enter her life: the idea of an absent mother, Bronwyn, the new girl at school and th enigmatic Johnny. Jennifer’s social standing jumps as the new girl Bronwyn arrives. No longer on the bottom she is still stuck with at the bottom with the new girl. Slower than the other girls and much larger in body development and height, Bronwyn stands out and clings to Jennifer. Their friendship is built on the foundations of starving off loneliness; stumbling through Jenny is always on the look out for something better.

One day Bronwyn tells Jennifer that she is a nymphomanic and her rich father was murdered by gangsters in America. Jenny pities Bronwyn and her mother and stays friends.

When Jenny meets the mysterious and kooky Johnny in an abandoned and unholy church, she gains the feeling of maturity when in his presence. Johnny tells her of his dreams of flying with his handmade wings. Not sure what to think of Johnny and his delusions, she keeps coming back.

As the months go by Jennifer’s life is shaped by these three people, representing different trials and changes in her life. However, when the truths come out, ugly and demanding Jenny is lost and confused.

But when a terrible and evil event happens...

Is Jennifer to blame?

When reading Digging to Australia at the beginning I was wondering where the hell the story was going. I found that reading it for the second time (or third) I was able to pick more of the story; also coming up with more questions. The ending is definitely worth getting through the start as you will be left wondering... I even made my mum read it for the twist.

I’ve even send the author an email (not expecting a response) as I NEED to know!

I’d recommend this book for anyone in the mood for a short story (214pgs) and lovers of never ending questions. Suitable for ages 15 up.

3/5

SPOILERS: Triggers: death.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to chat!

[beingfictional]

As Far As You Can Go review #AsFarAsYouCanGo #LesleyGlaister #books #reading #Australia #Australianoutback #thrillers I'm really not sure how this little known book came on my radar. It only has 300 or so reviews on Goodreads.

[papapiusxiii]

50 Great Thrillers by Women, as recommended by 10 of the UK’s female crime writers

Sophie Hannah:

Summertime by Liz Rigbey. Follows a woman who loses her baby and whose father unexpectedly drowns. When her husband and sister close ranks against her, she begins to suspect they are lying to her.

The Spider’s House by Sarah Diamond. Also published as In the Spider’s House. When Anna Howell discovers that a 1960s child murderess was the previous resident of her old cottage, her marriage, sanity and life come under threat.

Hidden by Katy Gardner. When a young mother’s seven-year-old daughter disappears, she finds herself questioning everything in her life. Then a police officer starts asking about the murder of a woman 14 months earlier …

A Shred of Evidence by Jill McGown. DI Judy Hill and DCI Lloyd investigate the murder of a 15-year-old girl on a patch of open parkland in the centre of town.

Searching for Shona by Margaret Jean Anderson

The wealthy Marjorie Malcolm-Scott trades suitcases, destinations and identities with orphan Shona McInnes, as children are evacuated from Edinburgh at the start of the second world war.

Val McDermid:

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey. A teenage war orphan accuses two women of kidnap and abuse, but something about her story doesn’t add up.

Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer. The Booker-longlisted author of Snap follows it up with the tale of a medical student with Asperger’s who attempts to solve a murder.

The Field of Blood by Denise Mina. The first in the Paddy Meehan series sees the reporter looking into the disappearance of a child from his Glasgow home, with evidence pointing the police towards two young boys.

A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine. Writing under her pen name, Ruth Rendell tells of the discovery of a woman and child in the animal cemetery at Wyvis Hall, 10 years after a group of young people spent the summer there.

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. In the third Jackson Brodie book, a man is released from prison 30 years after he butchered the mother and siblings of a six-year-old girl in the Devon countryside.

Ann Cleeves:

Little Deaths by Emma Flint. Inspired by the real case of Alice Crimmins, this tells of a woman whose two children go missing from her apartment in Queens.

The Dry by Jane Harper. During Australia’s worst drought in a century, three members of one family in a small country town are murdered, with the father believed to have killed his wife and son before committing suicide.

Devices and Desires by PD James. Adam Dalgliesh takes on a serial killer terrorising a remote Norfolk community.

The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina. Heavily pregnant DS Alex Morrow investigates the violent death of a wealthy woman in Glasgow.

Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky. The inimitable VI Warshawski takes over coaching duties of the girls’ basketball team at her former high school, and investigates the explosion of the flag manufacturing plant where one of the girl’s mothers works.

Sharon Bolton:

Gone by Mo Hayder. In Hayder’s fifth thriller featuring Bristol DI Jack Caffrey, he goes after a car-jacker who is taking vehicles with children in them.

Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris. A murderous revenge is being plotted against the boys’ grammar school in the north of England where eccentric Latin master Roy Straitley is contemplating retirement.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. A time-travelling, murderous war veteran steps through the decades to murder extraordinary women – his “shining girls” – in Chicago, in this high-concept thriller.

The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood. Two women who were sentenced for murdering a six-year-old when they were children meet again as adults, when one discovers the body of a teenager.

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty. Married scientist Yvonne, who is drawn into a passionate affair with a stranger, is on trial for murder.

Sarah Ward:

A Place of Execution by Val McDermid. Journalist Catherine Heathcote investigates the disappearance of a 13-year-old girl in the Peak District village of Scarsdale in 1963.

The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths. Forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway investigates the discovery of a child’s bones near the site of a prehistoric henge on the north Norfolk salt marshes.

The Ice House by Minette Walters. A decade after Phoebe Maybury’s husband inexplicably vanished, a corpse is found and the police become determined to charge her with murder.

The Liar’s Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard. When a body is found in Dublin’s Grand Canal, police turn to the notorious Canal Killer for help. But the imprisoned murderer will only talk to the woman he was dating when he committed his crimes.

This Night’s Foul Work by Fred Vargas (translated by Sian Reynolds). Commissaire Adamsberg investigates whether there is a connection between the escape of a murderous 75-year-old nurse from prison, and the discovery of two men with their throats cut on the outskirts of Paris.

Elly Griffiths: 

R in the Month by Nancy Spain. Sadly out of print, this is an atmospheric story set in a down-at-heel hotel in a postwar seaside town. The period detail is perfect and jokes and murders abound. This is the fourth book featuring the fantastic Miriam Birdseye, actress and rather slapdash sleuth.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. A gripping crime novel in which the detective never gets out of bed and the murder happened over 500 years ago. Griffith says: “I read this book as a child and was hooked – on Tey, crime fiction and Richard the Third.”

The Detective’s Daughter by Lesley Thomson. Cleaner Stella Darnell finds herself tidying up her detective father’s final, unfinished case, after he dies. It is the first in a series featuring Stella and her sidekick Jack, an underground train driver who can sense murder.

A Place of Execution by Val McDermid. Griffiths says: “I could have chosen any of Val’s novels, but this book, about a journalist revisiting a shocking 1960s murder, is probably my favourite because of its wonderful sense of time and place. It’s also pitch perfect about journalism, police investigation and life in a small community.”

He Said, She Said by Erin Kelly. An account of a rape trial at which nothing is quite as it seems. Griffiths says: “The story centres around a lunar eclipse, which also works wonderfully as a metaphor and image.”

Dreda Say Mitchell: 

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. The Gone Girl author’s debut follows journalist Camille’s investigation into the abduction and murder of two girls in her Missouri home town.

Dangerous Lady by Martina Cole. Cole’s first novel sees 17-year-old Maura Ryan taking on the men of London’s gangland.

The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid. Clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill is asked to profile a serial killer when four men are found mutilated and tortured.

Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky. A client tells VI Warshawski he is a prominent banker looking for his son’s missing girlfriend. But VI soon discovers he’s lying, and that the real banker’s son is dead.

The St Cyr series by CS Harris. Mitchell has nominated the whole of this historical mystery series about Sebastian St Cyr, Viscount Devlin – master of disguises, heir to an earldom, and disillusioned army officer. It’s a bit of a cheat but we’ll let her have it.

Erin Kelly:

No Night Is Too Long by Barbara Vine. Tim Cornish thinks he has gotten away with killing his lover in Alaska. But then the letters start to arrive …

Broken Harbour by Tana French. The fourth in French’s sublime Dublin Murder Squad series, this takes place in a ghost estate outside Dublin, where a father and his two children have been found dead, with the mother on her way to intensive care.

Chosen by Lesley Glaister. When Dodie’s mother hangs herself, she has to leave her baby at home and go to bring her brother Jake back from the mysterious Soul Life Centre in New York.

A Savage Hunger by Claire McGowan. Forensic psychologist Paula Maguire investigates the disappearance of a girl, and a holy relic, from a remote religious shrine in the fictional Irish town of Ballyterrin.

The Cry by Helen Fitzgerald. Parents Joanna and Alistair start to turn against each other after their baby goes missing from a remote roadside in Australia.

Sarah Hilary:

The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin. A sleep-deprived young mother tries to stay sane while her fears grow about the family’s new lodger, in this 1950s lost classic.

Cruel Acts by Jane Casey. Leo Stone, sentenced to life in prison for the murder of two women, is now free and claims he is innocent. DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwen want to put him back in jail, but Maeve begins doubting his guilt – until another woman disappears.

Sex Crimes by Jenefer Shute. A lawyer’s New Year’s Eve pick-up spirals into an erotic obsession which leads to graphic cruelty.

Skin Deep by Liz Nugent. Nugent, whom Ian Rankin has compared to Patricia Highsmith, tells the story of a woman who has been passing herself off as an English socialite on the Riviera for 25 years – until the arrival of someone who knows her from her former life prompts an act of violence.

Cuckoo by Julia Crouch. Rose’s home and family start to fall apart when her best friend Polly comes to stay.

Louise Candlish:

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Christie’s classic – with a legendary twist. The best Hercule Poirot?

The Two Faces of January by Patricia Highsmith. A conman on the run with his wife meets a young American who becomes drawn into the crime they commit.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. The author of The Handmaid’s Tale imagines the life of the real 19th-century Canadian killer Grace Marks.

Little Face by Sophie Hannah. Hannah’s thriller debut is about a young mother who becomes convinced that, after spending two hours away from her baby, the infant is not hers.

Alys, Always by Harriet Lane. Newspaper subeditor Frances is drawn into the lives of the Kyte family when she hears the last words of the victim of a car crash, Alys Kyte.

[whattoreadnext]

Art for Whose Sake?

(painters; fakers; patrons, art-enthusiasts)

Margery Allingham, Death of a Ghost

Michael Ayrton, The Mazemaker

Joyce Cary, The Horse's Mouth

Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

Mary Flanagan, Trust

Michael Frayn, Headlong

Lesley Glaister , Sheer Blue Bliss

Alan Hollinghurst, The Folding Star

Wyndham Lewis, Tarr

Shena Mackay , The Artist’s Widow

W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

Arturo Pérez-Reverte, he Flanders Panel

Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy

[littlefoible]

2538 - Lesley Glaister https://www.instagram.com/p/ByEgPB-nPfe/?igshid=1f3ogzelima6n

[shinynewbooks2]

The Squeeze by Lesley Glaister

The Squeeze by Lesley Glaister

Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Admitted, to say that the world has shrunk into a village has shrunk into a cliché itself. But the cliché is painfully accurate, and Lesley Glaister’s The Squeeze plays out the global village in its most brutal sense. Glaister squeezes Europe into an Edinburgh brothel, where global human rights violations and personal issues become – quite literally – bed mates. One…

[tabby007]

An Interview with the wonderful Lesley Glaister.

An Interview with the wonderful Lesley Glaister.

 You have had 13 books published by major houses, which, for most of us reading, is the ultimate dream.   How do you view writing?  As a job or a compulsion. Both. It is certainly a compulsion as it would be a bonkers career to embark on without that inner impulse. But it’s also a job. Writing a novel means sitting down and putting in the hours …   2.   Do you enjoy the writing process?  Do you…

[shandymediaclub]

SMC Review: Little Egypt by @lesleyglaister from @saltpublishing

As part of my resolution to try new things, write new things and read new things in 2014, I took the big plunge this year and got both feet stuck into Twitter. It's fast becoming a place I pay more attention to than facebook, as I've stuffed my feed to the brim with publishers, authors, poets, writers, journalists, small printing presses, journals and literary magazines. It's lovely. Everytime I check in I find about new opportunities for submitting, literary debates raging, people getting cross about things which actually matter, books coming out and being reviewed and publicised and the chance to get involve in lovely arty campaigns. I should have been here years ago, but I was terrified of getting sucked in to vacuous celebrity gossip shit. If I'd known it was this easy to pick and choose, I'd have been here years ago. Never mind. Better fashionably late to the party than forever lurking outside the door.

One of the presses I started following were Salt Modern Fiction. Their big recommendation for reading in the run up to Easter was Little Egypt by Lesley Glaister. I didn't know the author, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for but for that reason I decided to feel the fear and do it anyway, and downloaded the Kindle copy. I do sometimes find it scary reading new books. Not least because my disposable income is not especially large, but even I could find 99p for a new and recommended book.

I'm glad I did, because I was immediately engrossed. The premise was different to almost anything else I'd encountered, (except perhaps for The Pitchfork Disney) . Little Egypt tells the story of twin sister and brother, born to obsessive Egyptologist parents, who spend the vast majority of their children's adolescence chasing archaeological discovery in Egypt during the 1920s, leaving them at home to be raised in England in genteel poverty. The obsession with Ancient Egypt is shared by the one of the twins, Osiris, who has becoming engrossed in the death culture of Egypt as a child. Isis, however, rejects the family passion and is on a permanent quest for love and affection, something which is in startlingly short supply in her life.

The narrative flows back and forth between Isis and Osiris surviving their dysfunctional childhood, raised by a housekeeper called Mary with occasional visits from their uncle Victor, who is still traumatised by the first world war, and Isis's experience of life as an elderly woman, which resembles nothing more than a dry tapestry of existence, from which she wrings every drop of possible joy. The determination of Isis to look on the bright side of her confusing and disjointed life, always hungry for any scraps of love and affection, makes her an appealing and engaging character.

Her friendship with dumpster-diver Spike leads to some modern light and air finally penetrating the boundaries of 'Little Egypt', the house she has spent her entire life in, guarding a terrible secret which threatens both her and her increasingly odd and distant brother Osiris, who has lived in the upstairs rooms and hasn't been seen even by Isis for many years. As the story unfolds, switching between Isis's first person accounts and third person descriptions of the events which lead to her becoming trapped at Little Egypt, the full scope of the horrors experienced by Osiris and Isis grip the reader and drag them into the novel faster than quicksand. 

As I followed Isis growing up and saw her longing to break free, as her life became twisted and shattered, I felt gripped with the same compulsion of watching an inevitable and unavoidable train wreck. It's been years since I set my alarm clock early so that I could get up and read the final chunk of this book before going to work one morning, but this book demanded that I finish it. Glaister engages all of the senses with her portrayal of two very different deserts, both the lonely house of Little Egypt and the vast deserts of 1920s Egypt, which for Isis are both filled with extremes of temperature, confusion, isolation, loneliness and boredom, not to mention her own anger, abandonment issues and insatiable longing for love and affection.   

This was my first experience of reading Lesley Glaister, I am certain it will not be my last.

Purchase Little Egypt from Amazon

[slightly-saner]

I HAVE SOME BOOK RECOMENDATIONS FOR YOU PEOPLE!!!

If you're into dark stuff then I whole heartedly prompt you to pick up some of Lesley Glaister's works. Her novel Now You See Me is one of my favorite books of all time and it is soon going to be made in to a movie called Stay With Me and it will star Kaya Scodelario and Tom Hughes. 

If you want something a little lighter then get yourself one of Laura Buzo's books. I especially recommend Good Oil. It is so funny and heartwarming and it's the type of book that has something for people of all ages to relate to.

These are both kind of obscure authors, but I promise if you just give them a go you will not be disappointed!