Review of Scratched Enamel Heart by Juliette van der Molen

Here's a taster of Juliette van der Molen's generous review of my latest short story collection, Scratched Enamel Heart. You can read the full review here

Book Review: Scratched Enamel Heart by Amanda Huggins

Scratched Enamel Heart, by Amanda Huggins, is a collection of short stories that takes the reader on a physical and unforgettable emotional journey. This second collection is full of twists and turns and each story gives us the opportunity to reflect on our own travels and how they have shape human existence.

Flight Mode: The Possibility of Escape

“Mollie watched it change colour from blush to the darkest ink, and wondered if Daddy and Angel were watching the same piece of sky five states east.”

-Red, Amanda Huggins, Scratched Enamel Heart

Throughout this collection of stories we are treated to the slow build of carefully crafted characters who jump off the page and into our hearts. Mollie was one of these characters for me. In the story “Red”, Mollie and her mother are living with an abusive stepfather and surviving life on a dusty red farm called “Oakridge”.
Huggins describes the red dust as transforming into a thick paste in the rain, the kind that ‘stained your skin like henna.’ This foreshadows the trauma held deep in the centre of this story. Because abuse is often like that dust that clings to everything and stains the deepest parts of the human psyche.
Still, there is so much hope. Though the author does not get deeply into the details of abuse (this isn’t necessary and perhaps is the best way to handle it), we are told enough to read with an urgency that hopes for Mollie’s escape. What I found to be so poignant from the quote above, is that even in the midst of an ugly life, Mollie is able to look at the sky and notice the beauty in it. As someone that has experienced long term abuse, I know it was moments like these that padded the resilience of my heart and reminded me that there are better things out there. Her longing for her brother and father is especially felt in this moment and it points to her understanding of the wider world and the possibilities it could contain.

Writing Chat with Paula R C Readman

I'm over on Paula Readman's blog today, chatting about my writing. Here's a taster:

FROM PAULA'S BLOG:

Welcome to my guest page. Here, every few days, I’ll be sharing a conversation, over tea and cakes, or maybe a glass of something stronger, if they are not driving, with a friend about their work in progress, or latest book release. I’ll be talking to all sort of writers and authors at different levels of their writing careers.

It’s lovely to have you here for a chat today, Amanda. It looks as though we timed it just right as the Clubhouse Tearoom is quiet. 

Thank you for inviting me over for coffee, Paula! It’s great to see you again, and it’s always lovely to get the chance to have a chat about writing.

Let’s get started I know you’re a busy lady, so tell us a little about your latest writing project.  Is it a new idea, or one you have been mulling over for some time?

I’ve just started writing my third novella, An Unfamiliar Landscape. I’ve been mulling it over for some time, as it’s based on a previous short story of mine. It follows the life of a young woman called Sophia after she moves to Tokyo. Sophia and her husband have recently lost their child and their relationship is suffering. In an attempt to move on they relocate to Japan when her husband is offered a post there. This new location serves as a vehicle to reveal the true extent of Sophia’s grief and isolation. Left to her own devices, knowing no one in Tokyo, her sense of disconnection and loneliness is reinforced, amplified by the noise of the city and the legacy of her complicated past. Her life is examined in the context of this alien and transformative environment, where everything is slightly off-centre, unsettling, not quite as it seems. The city eventually pulls her under its skin and in the new noise she finds her silence.

When you first began your writing journey what drew you to your chosen genre? 

Travel writing was the first genre I chose, as I love exploring the world and learning about other cultures. I soon started writing short stories as well, and a strong sense of place has always been as important as character and plot in my fiction. My work is set all over the world in the cities and landscapes I have lived in and traveled around – settings as diverse as Cuba and India, mid-west America and the North Yorkshire coast, Japan and Russia, Paris and New York.

You can read the full interview here

Cover Reveal! All our Squandered Beauty

Although it's still a few months to the launch of my debut novella, All Our Squandered Beauty, I have just received the hard copies of the uncorrected proof from my publisher, Victorina Press. It's looking great - I love the cover!

I gave the designer, Triona Walsh, a couple of completely different ideas and she came up with a fabulous cover that encapsulated both of them. The sky in the final cover is actually taken from an original painting of my own, Inside the Sea, and the linocut elements are Triona's own work. Triona is lovely to work with - I first got to know her when she designed the cover for Retreat West for my short story collection, Scratched Enamel Heart, and so I suggested using her when Victorina Press's usual designer was mowed out with work.

Book Review: Inside the Beautiful Inside by Emily Bullock

Inside the Beautiful Inside is based on the astonishing true story of James Norris, an American marine who ended up chained to a metal stake in Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam) for fourteen years at the turn of the nineteenth century.

The conditions of Norris’s diminished life are grim and harrowing, yet although Bedlam steals his liberty, nobody can purloin his thoughts, dreams and memories. We are taken on a journey inside the wave of his madness, travelling on the high seas, experiencing his joys as well as his tragedies. We hear the stories of his family and friends, of the commission he didn’t take, of the one true love of his life, a shy prostitute named Ruth who betrayed him with Fletcher Christian. I found myself caring deeply for Norris, rooting for him from the very start, reading with my heart in my mouth, desperately hoping for his release even though I already knew how many years he would be chained up.

Inside the Beautiful Inside explores themes of sanity and rebellion, freedom and love, captivity and compassion in gorgeous lyrical prose. Emily Bullock is a wonderful writer, and in this superbly crafted novel she doesn’t waste a single word as she hurls us headlong through a swirling maze of madness that leads us to the very heart of James Norris.         

Published 24h September by Everything With Words Read more here

Book Review - A Song Inside by Gill Mann

 

 

A Song Inside spills over with love, so that although Gill Mann’s memoir about her son is filled with heartbreak, denial, grief and anger, it is nevertheless imbued with inspiration and hope. The story of Sam’s brief and turbulent life is told partly through diary entries, partly as a journey into the family’s past and partly as a conversation with Sam, a young man tragically unaware of his own devastating and destructive illness. Sam burns brightly throughout, full of contradiction and colour, exasperating and captivating in equal parts.

Gill Mann’s poignant and beautifully written memoir is as much about the impact of Sam’s life as it is about the impact of his death, as much about family as it is about one young man. It overflows with enduring love and will resonate with anyone who has ever grieved.

 

A Song Inside is out on July 22nd - you can pre-order your copy here 

Just Beverley

 
Delighted to have a poem featured in the current issue of Just Beverley.

The Colm Toibin International Short Story Award

Utterly delighted to have won the 2020 Colm Toibin International Short Story Award! My story, 'Eating Unobserved' can be found here


I was also thrilled be shortlisted for the Anthony Cronin International Poetry Award.

The Wexford Literary Festival awards ceremony was on Zoom this year, but despite the restrictions it was a lovely evening.

'Tiger' and Eggs!

You can listen to Beth Parsons reading my story 'Tiger' on BBC Radio Leeds here

'Tiger' appears in my new collection, Scratched Enamel Heart, and today my lovely friend Chris brought me three eggs from her chickens as well as a beautiful egg she made to match my book cover. I love it!

 

Radio Leeds

 

My flash story, 'Tiger' will be broadcast on Radio Leeds on Monday 29th June. It will feature on Gayle Lofthouse's show sometime between 11am and noon.

You can listen live here!

Or you can catch up later on BBC Sounds.

Saboteur Trophy

 

Thrilled to receive my gorgeous Saboteur trophy! The first one I've won since the overall sports trophy at primary school when I was eleven. That was for winning the high jump, long jump, egg and spoon, sack race and 100 yard sprint. What's gone wrong since...?!

Interview on The Literary Pig

I'm delighted to feature on The Literary Pig this week, talking to Tracy Fells about writing Scratched Enamel Heart.

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AN EXCERPT:

Today I am delighted to welcome one of my favourite writers as a guest on the Blog. Amanda Huggins has kindly returned to talk about her new short story collection Scratched Enamel Heart (published by Retreat West Books). 

Amanda Huggins is the author of Scratched Enamel Heart, a new short story collection which features ‘Red’, her prize-winning story from the 2018 Costa Short Story Award. Her previous short story collection, Separated From the Sea, received a Special Mention in the 2019 Saboteur Awards. She has also published a flash fiction collection, Brightly Coloured Horses and a poetry collection, The Collective Nouns for Birds, which won the 2020 Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet.

Scratched Enamel Heart

The resilience and frailty of the human heart lie at the core of this second short story collection from award-winning author, Amanda Huggins.          

A lonely woman spends a perfect night with a stranger, yet is their connection enough to make her realise life is worth living? Maya, a refugee, wears a bracelet strung with charms that are a lifeline to her past; when the past catches up with her, she has a difficult decision to make. Rowe’s life on the Yorkshire coast is already mapped out for him, but when there is an accident at the steelworks he knows he has to flee from an intolerable future. In the Costa prize-winning ‘Red’, Mollie is desperate to leave Oakridge Farm and her abusive stepfather, to walk free with the stray dog she has named Hal.

These are stories filled with yearning and hope, the search for connection and the longing to escape. They transport the reader from India to Japan, from mid-west America to the north-east coast of England, from New York to London. Battered, bruised, jaded or jilted, the human heart somehow endures.

Animals and nature feature in so much of your writing, is this intentional? What part do animals/wildlife/nature play in your own life, do any of your fictional creatures come from your own experience of animals?

No, it isn’t intentional, however I do have a deep-rooted love of animals and the natural world, so I guess it’s inevitable. My partner and I are members of the RSPB and really enjoy birdwatching, both at nature reserves and while walking on the moors or the Northumberland coastal paths. We also have a menagerie of seven part-time cats – four semi-strays which we feed, and three others which are perfectly well looked after but have just latched onto a good thing!

I always aim to convey a strong sense of place in my stories, and rural landscapes feature regularly in my work. I’m originally from the Yorkshire coast, so the sea plays an important part in a number of my stories – such as ‘Where the Sky Starts’ and ‘Light Box’ in Scratched Enamel Heart – and it is also the all-encompassing theme of my debut novella, All Our Squandered Beauty. I find my characters are shaped by the places they inhabit, particularly in those stories set in the distinctive landscapes of India, Japan and  North America – for example, ‘A Longing for Clouds’ and ‘Red’.

The locations which feature in my stories are always inspired by real life travels – I would never set a story somewhere I hadn’t visited myself. The koi fish and the beautiful garden in ‘A Potential Husband’ were inspired by my travels in Japan, as were the fireflies in ‘Soul of a Fighter’. Nature also features heavily in my poetry, and one of my favourite poems in The Collective Nouns for Birds is ‘At the Kitchen Table’, which I wrote when snowed-in in the North Pennines.

Hal, the dog in ‘Red’, is a creature of the imagination, though I’d love to own a dog like him! Similarly, Jigsaw, in ‘Where the Sky Starts’ isn’t based on a real pony, though I loved horses and horse riding as a child and often pretended that the grey stallion which lived in a nearby field was mine! The only real life creature I have written about is my favourite cat, Duzzy – she was the inspiration for the poem ‘Not-Quite-You’ in The Collective Nouns for Birds.

You can read the full interview here