Two more advance reviews!

 

Two more advance reviews for  

talk to me about when we were perfect

Thanks to Sarah Linley and Tracy Fells for their kind words. It makes it all worthwhile when readers really 'get' your writing – especially when they are talented authors like these two!

Tracy's Review:

"Talk to me about when we were perfect is a collection of poetry from the multi-talented Amanda Huggins, who seems equally skilled in writing prose, poetry and non-fiction and any new work from this author is something to get excited about. 

 

I relished every single poem in this new collection, looking forward to my daily immersion into Huggins memories and flashbacks to youth. At times these perfect snapshots felt like personal Polaroids, capturing specific moods and moments of adolescence from the author’s life, but also reflect how we all feel when searching to recapture the ache and ecstasy of what it really felt to be young. Her prose is sharp and bittersweet, vivid and visual, often capturing images with a breathless beauty that instantly transports to you a specific place and time that chimes with an experience you share. That’s why her poems are so accessible, they recreate emotions we’ve all known, the good the bad and the shameful. What it feels like to ‘have a crush’ on the older lads hanging round the fairground or outside the chippie. Foolish flirting and falling for the flash talk of strangers. Each is unique, charting the travels of the human heart from first crush to undying devotion and ultimately the pain of separation and ending. Just like the meandering complexity of memories they skip between childhood and becoming an adult, balancing the highs and lows, the joy and pain, of growing up and what it means to leave parts of us behind. I particularly love how Huggins weaves nature into these poems, reminding us that we share this beautiful world with so much more than each other.

 

It’s a rare talent that can create lines such as: “The morning is still holding its breath when I step out across the hotel lawn, and a breakfast party of startled crows complain, all tut and flap and mutter.” ('the man in room seven'), giving us poems that instantly paint a scene and can easily be enjoyed by everyone, and are truly delicious to read aloud.

 

I’ve read a number of collections recently which start with promise but soon feel repetitive and stuck in their themes, but each poem in ‘Talk to me about when we were perfect’ was distinct and memorable, I couldn’t wait to read another, then another. And I can’t wait to read it again. For me this is a collection to keep and cherish.

 

If you enjoy these poems then I highly recommend you check out Huggins’ novellas and story collections too. Her ability to capture mood, setting and emotion shines throughout everything she writes. "

 

Tracy Fells, author of Hairy on the Inside

 

 

 

 

Review of Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes

 

I absolutely loved Forbidden Notebook. I read somewhere that this ‘rediscovered’ classic was the ‘female Stoner’, which immediately piqued my interest, as Stoner is a wonderful book too. Forbidden Notebook has also been highly praised by writers such as Annie Ernaux, Jhumpa Lahiri – who wrote the foreword and who quite rightly says that the novel “blazes with significance” – and Elena Ferrante.

I have also enjoyed finding out more about the author herself. Alba de Céspedes was the granddaughter of the first President of Cuba, married at fifteen, was a mother at sixteen, and started writing after her divorce at the age of twenty. She was also jailed twice for her anti-fascist activities in the 1930s.

Forbidden Notebook was originally published in Italian as a magazine serial in 1950, and this edition is a new – and captivating – translation by Ann Goldstein.

The novel is set in post-war Rome, and the narrative is written in the form of a series of secret journal entries from the point of view of Valeria. It gives the reader a piercing insight into women’s changing roles and expectations in the post-war years, as well as exploring class distinctions, mother-daughter/mother-son relationships, and offering a compelling dissection of a 1940s marriage. This intimate novel of domestic discontent is beautifully and elegantly written, haunting, complex, evocative of time and place, and totally engaging. I read it in two sittings, anxious to find out how and if Valeria dares to make fundamental changes to her life. I am still thinking about her…

 

(Thanks to Pushkin Press for the advance review copy. Forbidden Notebook is out on March 2nd)