Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Waters

Tipping the Velvet is a novel charting one woman's realisation, awakening and acceptance of her sexuality in a society that forbids and is reviled by it. Set in the 1890s, it follows Nancy Astley's - or Nan King's - discovery of her sexuality and true personality as she goes from oyster girl to music hall star to rent 'boy' to a kept tom. Against a backdrop of a world polarised by poverty and wealth, Nancy works her way through lovers and friends before finally finding her place and a woman who loves her as she really is.

On first appearance, Nancy Astley is content with her life preparing oysters in her family's Whitstable oyster parlour. Her days monotonous and her hands constantly soaked in brine, she trudges along preparing oysters for hours on end with no pleasure to look forward to. She has a perfunctory boyfriend Freddy, who she dully refers to without feeling, and a seemingly close relationship with her sister Alice.

But these illusions begin to disappear when Nancy sees Kitty Butler on stage at the music hall. Filled with feeling and instantly drawn to her, Nancy becomes obssessed with seeing her act, travelling to the music hall every night to see her show. When she finally meets Kitty, Nancy feels drab, unworthy and embarrassed by her oyster girl hands. As the women develop a friendship - albeit an unequal one based on Nancy helping Kitty to prepare for the stage - Nancy's previous ties fall by the wayside. Freddy, the oyster parlour, her relationship with Alice and the rest of her family all get brushed aside for Kitty. This obssessiveness represents Nancy's naivety and youth. She is so in love, she shuns everything she had in her life before and starts building a new life around Kitty and her needs. This shift is consolidated with her move to London; she is finally geographically separated from the people she has cut herself off from. Her family represent everything 'normal' in Victorian society; they are a close and traditional nuclear family who work together at the safe and modest family business. They are the polar opposite from the life Kitty offers, a life of glamour, attention and fame, a life built on late nights and the lure of London.

It is in its shift to London, that the novel starts playing with sexuality. Although Nancy's attraction to Kitty is prevalent in Whitstable, it is in London, the land of dreams and possibility, that they become lovers. Away from her family and everything she knows, Nancy is able to explore her awakening sexuality. Her budding feelings for Kitty contrasts her dutiful feelings for Freddy, her obligatory beau at home. Freddy was her boyfriend for duty and convenience, a relationship formed out of expectation and convenience. Kitty is the woman she knows she cannot and should not love yet cannot help it. By setting the shift in their relationship in London, Waters gives Nancy the space and opportunity to explore these feelings, feelings which are so reviled elsewhere. Although they conduct their relationship in secret, away from Nancy's family they are given the space to explore their feelings and attraction to each other. The need for this space away from Whitstable is clear when Nancy receives a letter from her sister Alice after explaining the full nature of her relationship with Kitty. Alice is horrified and disgusted, telling Nancy to never bring it up again. This vehement rejection from her sister reinforces the stereotypical Victorian reaction to Nancy and Kitty's relationship. From then onwards Nancy realises they must continue their relationship in secret, away from family and on the fringes of acceptable society.

The relationship between gender roles and sexuality is an important theme in the novel. On stage, Kitty and Nancy are allowed to inhabit blurred gender roles by dressing as men. In the theatre, this cross-dressing is accepted as a saucy act to titellate men. Later this notion is flipped when Nancy discovers the pair were also a pin-up for 'toms', their postcard being kept in a well-known pub for lesbians. Outside of the theatre, wearing trousers is seen as an out-and-out declaration of lesbianism. Nancy's trousers cause a scandal at Diana's club and she decides they are too bold for the socialist rally. It reflects the narrow view of Victorian Britain and its rigid gender roles, which are only permitted to be broken on the stage when used for sexual appeal.

However, when working as a prostitute, Nancy breaks this rule on the street, dressing as a soldier to snare male clients. Her punters seek out and believe they are having sexual favours from a man, deriving pleasure from their homosexual encounters. In fact, this illicit encounter is a heterosexual one condoned by society, not one for which they need to stalk the shadows and streets at night. Diana joins Nancy in this facade, when she takes her as her lover. She dressed Nancy as a man, parading her in society among toms and non-toms, getting pleasure from the joke. Dressed as a man, Nancy gets admiring glances from both women and men, all of whom desire her thinking she is the gender she is not. Here Waters is playing with an exposing the rigid gender and sexual roles of late Victorian Britain. She is also drawing attention to a seedier and a more hidden element to that world, a world of prostitution, concealed sexuality and sexual exploitation.

Sexual exploitation, however, isn't limited to Nancy's punters. Her entire relationship with Diana mirrors that of a traditional Victorian woman virtually imprisoned by her husband. From the moment Nancy is entrapped in Diana's world by her wealth, her compliments and her sexual appeal. At first Nancy, a desperate 'rent boy' turning tricks to pay for food and rent, is awe-struck. She has been rescued from a life on the streets by a beautiful woman who lavishes her with gifts, attention and sex. However, this awe slowly seeps away. Diana controls Nancy, dressing her like a pet or a doll and using her to fulfil her sexual needs, but only on her terms. She forbids Nancy from leaving the house meaning Nancy is physically trapped indoors like a traditional Victorian wife. Diana's exploitation of Nancy escalates as their relationship continues. Soon, she has Nancy dressing for her other lesbian friends, posing provokatively, sometimes exposing her breasts like a living statue. When Nancy defies Diana -her 'master', her 'husband' - she is assaulted again like a Victorian wife. Diana hits Nancy in the face sending her sprawling in front of her friends and acquaintances. In the aftermath, Nancy rebels once more, seeking solace in a servant's arms. But when they are discovered, they are thrown onto the streets without a penny.

Throughout Nancy's entire relationship with Diana, Waters plays with the concept of an imprisoning Victorian marriage, a marriage based upon the husband and wife's utter financial, social and economic inequality. Here, however, gender is not the divider; it is money and social class. As a lesbian woman with no money and no ties, Nancy is at the bottom rung of Victorian society, vulnerable and friendless. As a wealthy widower, Diana has the appearance of a woman who fits in with traditional Victorian heterosexuality. This appearance, however flimsy, is her passport to power over Nancy and other vulnerable girls alongside her wealth.

A fascinating, provocative and astoundingly confident debut for Waters, Tipping the Velvet plays with, mocks and subverts the conventions of the Victorian novel to give an imagined window into the world of living as a lesbian in Victorian Britain. Moving, dark and unflinching, it evokes a very different side to late nineteenth-century Britain, a side which has been shunned, avoided and erased from history.

My next read: Stuart - Living Dolls by Natasha Walter

The People's Act of Love - James Meek

A novel set in Siberia the uncertain aftermath of the Russian revolution, The People's Act of Love charts the reclusive and seemingly simple lives of a religious sect of people living in the town of Yazyk. Under the watchful and curious eyes of Czech soldiers, the town tries to live peacefully without attracting attention. But the town and the secrets of the sect are threatened when a mysterious stranger called Samarin arrives and says he is being tracked by a cannibal called The Mohican.

The novel charts 1919 Russia's political paranoia and volatility with glimpses of brutality littered throughout the novel. From dozens of allusions to women being raped by soldiers to the fate of Samarin's beloved Katya, who was taken to the White Garden prison as a plaything to the prince, to Anna Petrova's camera being removed when she takes photos of unionists being slaughtered, the novel constantly shows and develops the sense of fear and distrust experienced by people at that time. This fear seeps through to the relationships between the soldiers. Even when they are fighting for the same side, they are constantly in fear of their psychopathic leader Matula. With no sense of morality, Matula is a leader to be feared, constantly planning and plotting the downfall of anyone he wants removed. Fearing the respect Mutz has from his soldiers, Matula plots against him, setting him up as a power-hungry soldier desperate to save himself over his colleagues. These machinations act as a microcosm for Russia's political climate at the time: paranoid, brutal, and filled with distrust.

This theme of deception, distrust and lies is woven throughout the novel's plot and characters. From Anna's father, the painter who paints portraits of people as they want to appear, not as they actually appear, to the 'widow' Anna, who is actually married to the castrate Bashalov, to the mysterious Samarin, who turns out to be the monster depicted in his own stories. Upon his arrival, Samarin is given the benefit of the doubt; he is given a chance to explain his story and weaves a number of the townspeople and the soliders under his spell. He tells them he is an escaped political prisoner detained in a the White Garden, a prison in the north which descended into chaos and cannibalism when its supplies were cut off. He tells them he was only saved after being taken under the wing of a cannibal called The Mohican, who fed him and fattened him in order to eventually kill him. Samarin tells them he knew The Mohican's plans and managed to flee from him after they escaped from the prison. He tells the townspeople that The Mohican is tracking him and will arrive in their town.

After securing their trust enough to be released into the care of Anna Petrova, he sleeps with her. But the next morning, he takes her son Alyosha to a train as bait in order to steal it. It is in this time that Anna and the town realise that Samarin is The Mohican, the cannibal prisoner intent on causing a revolution. It is the most dramatic depiction of deception and storytelling in the novel. His stories created a man the town feared more than anything, a man so evil he will mercilessly murder and turn to cannibalism for his own gains, a man he fears more than anyone. In fact, he is that very man, using his ability to conceal parts of his personality, to shift and change, to work achieve his revolutionary gains.

Aside from deception, sex and sexuality is another key theme to the novel. Politically, sex becomes a weapon as the soldiers rape countless women throughout the revolution and its aftermath. That is the fate of political prisoner Katya, who is given to the prince and his friends to be used as punishment for her disloyalty to the state. In Yazyk women who want foo, clothes and to protect themselves become the sexual partners of the soldiers, using sex as self-preservation. On the other extreme, is Bashalov and his religious sect of followers. As a soldier, he had never partaken in the attacks on women and as Anna's husband he had enjoyed the pleasure of sex and even fathered Alyosha. But following his experience at war, he is so repulsed by his male sexuality and convinced of its path to evil, that he is castrated. He believes that castration will make him an angel and bring him closer to God. In the process, he becomes asexual, unable to have sex, to father more children, to physically express his sexuality. Further than this, he then brings this belief to Yazyk and becomes the castrator, spreading the belief that it will bring men closer to God. In the process, he wipes out the town's future as the men are unable to have children. After experiencing the ugliest use of sex by his comrades in war, he embraces the other extreme, wiping out the town's ability to procreate.

On the other end of the spectrum is the novel's depiction of female sexuality, which is represented solely in Anna. Anna is a wife who is sexually widowed by her husband's castration; they can no longer have sex and they can no longer have children. As part of the castration, Bashalov and Anna agree that she should live as a widow and that their marriage should be kept a secret in Yazyk. As a result, Anna lives on the outskirts of the town as a widow, a woman free to be with other men. Her sexuality is portrayed as voracious. After the castration, she literally tries to make Bashalov have sex with her until she finds the castrated gap. After that, she has an affair with Mutz. But her desire goes into overdrive when she sees Samarin and hears his story. She agrees to take him home and seduces him, a seduction which ultimately nearly leads to her son's death. Through its portrayal of Anna, the novel reinforces traditional views of female sexuality; Anna is irrational, hysterical and driven by her desire. Her desire exposes her son, the most important thing in her world, to grave danger and nearly leads to a devastating act of terrorism. This unease about female sexuality is unfortunatley never reconciled in the novel.

An unique, disturbing and graphic depiction of the lengths people go to in times of war, revolution and political unrest, The People's Act of Love is a fascinating insight into how deeply people deceive and can be deceived. Dark and grotesque in parts, it exposes how people can create fictions about their personality and even religion and the devastating results these lies can achieve.

My next read - Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

The Lady and the Unicorn - Tracy Chevalier

A tale surrounding the creation of innovative tapestries for an advisor to the king in 15th century Paris and Brussels, The Lady and The Unicorn exposes the gender, social and sexual politics that govern the lives of the people who commission and create the tapestries. From the initial idea to the tapestries' unveiling, the novel charts a world governed by rules which people are desperate to break.

The novel begins with nobleman Jean Le Viste's commission of the tapestries by painter Nicolas des Innocents. An aloof, proud and patriarchal man, Le Viste wants a scene of battle and bloodshed, enforcing his masculinity and power. Le Viste's obssession with status is quickly revealed by his demands for the family coat of arms to be prevalent on the soldiers' shields throughout the imagined scene. But Nicolas' encounter with Le Viste's wife Genevive sets the tapestries on an entirely different course: she wants them to tell the tale of a lady and a unicorn. By lying to La Viste and preying on his obssession with status, Nicolas convinces him to change the tapestries' theme.

This beginning establishes a number of key themes in the novel. Instantly the reader is shown that Le Viste believes only his ideas stand when in fact he is being influenced by his wife from afar. Like a puppeteer, she is manipulating him from behind the scenes. This is a central strand to the novel. Women are consistently marginalised, feminised and underestimated by men who do not realise their worth. Although they formally have no way of expressing their voice, feelings and opinions, their influence finds its way through and dupes men. Nicolas believes Marie-Celeste, the Le Viste family maid who lost her job after he made her pregnant, wants to sleep with him again and follows her to her new household; in fact it is a trap and he is beaten to a pulp by her friend. Jean Le Viste believes he has sent his daughter Claude to the convent to mark her impending marriage; in fact it is her mother's plot to keep her away from the man she truly loves. In Brussels, weaver Georges de la Chapelle believes his daughter Ailenor has been made pregnant by Phillipe; in fact she fell pregnant to Nicolas, her plot to save herself from a marriage to Jacques Le Bouef, a man she despises. The novel shows that while women may not appear to have power socially and in their households, they are able to use men as pawns carrying out the plots they aren't allowed to master.

From the novel's outset, the nobility are set up as the people everyone aspires to be. They have power, status, respect, money and time at their leisure. In fact, that couldn't be further from the truth, especially for the women. Jean Le Viste's every decision is in fact influenced by his advisor Leon Le Vieux. And when his wife Genevive asks for the tapestries' themes to be changed, the reader is given a glimmer of lack of respect for the Le Viste family. She explains to Nicolas that a battle scene would enrage the soldiers who fought in the battle and their relatives as her husband had been holed up away from the battlefield. Here we see that Jean's appearance of power and authority may just be an illusion.

For noblewomen, their plight is all the more miserable. Genevive is desperately alone and unhappy, a woman who has failed her husband by not producing a male heir. Sexually rejected by her husband and jealous of her eldest daughter Claude's blooming sexuality, she wants to embrace the antithesis of a sexualised woman: she wants to become a nun. She tries to convince her priest to ask her husband's permission for her to go, knowing he will refuse if she puts in the request herself. When he refuses, she is trapped. She cannot have the one thing she so desperately desires. This fate also befalls her daughter Claude. Infactuated with Nicolas from the moment she meets him, she is desperate to consummate their relationship. When Genevive learns of her daughter's wishes - and the threat this would pose to her "valuable maidenhead" - she does everything in her power to ensure it can never happen. She surrounds Claude with maids, ordering them to never leave her side, and later sends her to the convent she herself is so desperate to join, banishing Claude from male contact until she marries the man chosen for her. Her cruel treatment of her daughter, and sexual jealousy, is complete when she invites Nicolas to the announcement of Claude's engagement, proof that she has won and snatched away her daughter's chance of happiness.

The mother/daughter relationship is similarly marred by betrayal between weaver's wife Christine and her daughter Ailenor in Brussels. As Ailenor is blind, Christine and her husband George have only one suitor offering to marry her - smelly, repulsive wood-dyer Jacques Le Bouef. Ailenor despises Le Bouef, recoiling at the sheer smell of him and hiding from him at every opportunity. Despite Ailenor's disgust, Christine secretly plots her marriage to Le Bouef with her husband, never telling Ailenor. When Ailenor learns of the plan, she has the opportunity to take her fate into her own hands unlike Claude. She sleeps with Nicolas and falls pregnant, meaning she can never marry Le Bouef. Painter Phillippe, who has always loved her, claims parentage and marries her, saving her from a life as an unmarried mother. Unlike Claude, who is constrained and cooped up as a noblewoman, weaver's daughter Ailenor has enough freedom to plan her escape from a loveless marriage, earning herself a happier fate with a man who loves and cares for her.

Aside from social and gender politics, senses are key to the tapestries and to the novel. Each tapestry surrounds a different sense: sound, taste, sight, touch and smell. These senses are woven into the novel as they are woven into the tapestries. Nicolas and Claude's first meeting is filled with the senses, Claude sucking on a clove to allieviate toothache. Touch and sound are key to the novel's sexual themes and is at its pinnacle when Ailenor sleeps with Nicolas. As she is blind, Ailenor relies on touch and sound for her first sexual experience. When she asks Nicolas what she is missing by having no sight, he tells her touch is all she needs. It is here that Ailenor feels most free from being blind; it is finally an experience she can feel wholly without her sight. Nicolas plays with this fact in the tapestry for sight, adding Ailenor's face to represent the sense.

A novel pulling together multiple narratives of people involved in the arduous process of creating tapestries, The Lady and The Unicorn is a lyrical novel which uses the tapestries as a backdrop to expose the very different lives of the nobility and the masses in the 15th century. Rich, evocative and quietly tragic, it shows that status can be built on illusions and that the lives of nobility weren't really anything to envy at all.

My next read: The People's Act of Love by James Meek

The Gargoyle - Andrew Davidson

A novel about a love that seemingly spans seven hundred years, not to mention many social barriers, The Gargoyle explores our perceptions of beauty, sanity, faith and love. Written in the first person by an unnamed narrator and intertwined with classical allusions, it tells his tale of recovery and rediscovery when a burns victim finds he can finally fall in love.

Graphic from the outset, the novel opens with the narrator driving in a cocaine-induced haze. Distracted by a vision of flaming arrows flying towards his car, he loses control and crashes down the hillside, the car bursting into flames. His life is only saved by the car rolling into a river, extinguishing the fire. He then winds up in hospital, discovering that he has been hideously burnt and disfigured. The burns are so horrific, he even lost his penis during the accident.

Davidson's prose here is unflinching. His discriptions of bubbling skin and its consequences are written to fill the reader with discomfort and horror. Using his extensive research, he builds up a painstaking account of the narrator's horrendous treatment, from operations to maggots to skin slicing, all designed to rebuild as much of him as possible. All the while he doesn't want to survive. Until he meets Marianne. Her seemingly mad belief that they are past lovers from centuries ago intrigues him and slowly gives him the will to get better.

Despite the corny-sounding concept, the narrator and Marianne could not be further from the traditional novels' lovers. Before the burns, the narrator was a cocaine-addicted porn star, who owned a production company churning out graphic adult movies. He was a man who thrived on his sexuality and good looks. The epitome of male sexuality. At first, Marianne is an inpatient at the hospital's psychiatric wing. She seems to be a manic fantasist who believes she's meeting her long-lost lover again. The narrator is scared and unsure, writing her off as a psychiatric patient. But her tales of love and intriguing sayings about their past reel him in. And with no family, and being abandoned by his fairweather friends , he has no-one else who pays any interest to him.

Appearance and love are central themes to the novel. Before the accident, the narrator is handsome and virile, a famous porn star with no concept of live. But after the accident everything he prided himself on has gone. He loses his looks, his speaking voice, his friends,his production company and the life he knew. Even worse for him, he is literally castrated; he has lost the ultimate physical male symbol. When he starts to fall for Marianne, he explains that they could never consummate their relationship, a fact Marianne nonchalantly accepts. The contrast between his hedonistic lifestyle before the accident and the celibate one afterwards develops the idea that their relationship and love is from a higher, divine place. Their love is almost holy, built on a meeting of minds and souls rather than initial sexual attraction. The narrator's apparent journey through Dante's hell to return to Marianne as he cold turkeys from morphine reinforces this notion; he is granted safe passage through hell to be reunited with her. They are apparently reunited by a higher order.

Marianne's tale-telling is another central theme to the novel. She weaves a narrative of their lives in the thirteenth century, when she was a nun who treated him, a burnt soldier, in Engelthal monastary. She weaves a tale of his miraculous recovery, their love and how she leaves the order to be at his side. Like their modern relationship, their love is unconventional and frowned upon. In the modern times, he is a castrated severe burns victim and she is a woman with a history of mental illness. In the thirteenth century, he is a wanted mercinary and she is a nun who turns her back on her vows to follow the man she loves.

In between her narrative of their love, she tells traditional tales of love, spanning Japan, the Vikings and twelfth century Italy. From a man who catches a fatal flu from his wife to die at her side to a Viking warrior who sacrifices his life for his friend's child, they all represent sacrifices for love. And the reader later discovers that Marianne apparently made her own sacrifice for their love in the thirteenth century. She kills the narrator to save him from an agonising death at the hands of his enemies, the ultimate act of love.

While Marianne cares for the narrator during his recuperation during hospital, it is him that cares for her during her manic moments of creating her gargoyles. Artist Marianne says she gets divine inspiration for each gargoyle she creates, unable to stop until she has freed them from the stone. But her carving is laced with mania. She eats coffee granules from the spoon to keep carving without sleep and refuses to eat as she says suffering is needed. It is during these episodes where the narrator gets to care for her, encouraging her to eat a little and bathing her with a sponge as she carves. When her carving is over, he bathes her and puts her to bed like a child before feeding her up to renourish her.

With each passing day, the power balance in their relationship changes. At first, Marianne rescues the narrator, helping him to recover from his injuries by lavishing food, stories and attention upon him. Her help fills him with the will to survive, leading him to become strong enough to move into her home. But after he moves in, this power starts to shift. Gradually he becomes more independent and becomes Marianne's source of support, feeding her and physically caring for her as her body becomes ravaged by her need to carve.

A novel that spans centuries and stretches the reader's imagination, The Gargoyle is a thought-provoking tale that asks readers to believe in the impossible. Riveting, innovative and vivid, it questions our perceptions about fact and fiction and makes the reader ask whether the line between fantasy and reality really matters when it leads an ostracised man to find love for the first time.

My next read: The Lady and The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier.

My Piece of Happiness - Lewis Davies

My Piece of Happiness is a novel exposing the flaws and shortcomings of social care in modern Britain and the stigma attached to those the care system serve. Set in Cardiff, it centres upon the life of care worker George Rees, his clients and his colleagues. Silently raging against the constraints and bureaucracy that come hand in hand with his job, he gets more and more frustrated by the lack of support offered by the system he works in.

From the outset, George goes above and beyond the call of duty. He gets a paper round to complete with his client Sean even topping up his wages with his own money. Although an unorthodox approach in terms of the care worker rule book, the job gives Sean a sense of pride and self confidence. He later proudly tells his girlfriend Sarah's mother that he has a job and even continues the job after George's departure. George has the same approach to his other client Andy, who is severely disabled. He takes him to church every Sunday to sing and also takes him to the pub, giving him beer in his cup. During these times the reader is told of Andy's smiles and contentment, proof that he enjoys the interaction.

But throughout the novel George's techniques aren't approved of by his colleagues. He is working extra hours and getting too involved. His colleagues are all far more traditional in their approach. Mike is a unenthusiastic jobsworth, obssessing about the weekend rota and the fact that his teenage sons will be alone. Angel does things by the book and is defensive when George criticises her. Apart from one secret liasion, she constantly contradicts George, approving an approach which is most economical for the service. Boss Test is nervous, miserable and unhappy, stuck in a job he detests with responsibility he doesn't want. George's colleagues represent everything he rails against; pen-pushers obssessed with budgets, rules, meetings and set working practices.

The novel poses awkward questions about responsibility for people needing care. Following his mother's death, Sean has been cared for by his alcoholic father. But when it becomes clear he cannot cope with caring for his son, the care team are forced to decide his fate. Sean is sent to live in a hospital temporarily, an experience that leaves him scarred, agitated and upset. He repeats his wish not to go back there. The team are forced to ask his sister if she can care for him. But as a mother who works full-time she refuses and is unable to commit to caring for her brother. Sean's experience reflects how people in the care system can simply get found in a situation where they have nowhere to go and no-one who wants to take responsibility for them. Should it be Sean's father who gets his act together? Should his sister sacrifice her job and her family to care for him? Or should the care team use their stretched budget to care for him?

The relationship between Sean and Sarah is perhaps the most uneasy part of the novel's frustration with the care system. Because they are in the care system, their relationship is presumed by many to be a chaste and innocent one. It is assumed that because they are mentally disabled and more vulnerable than others, they won't venture towards sex. Sarah's mother helps her to apply make up but it never occurs to her that her daughter may be considering, or may even have already had, sex. When Sean confides in George that he wants to sleep with Sarah, even George is a little reluctant to talk in depth. But after discussing safe sex, he decides they should be left to it. However, when they are caught together, the fall out is devastating for both George and Sean. The episode makes the reader question whether George was right not to tell anyone that their relationship was sexual and whether the people who assumed it wasn't were simply naive.

A damning indictment against the social care system, like Poppy Shakespeare, My Piece of Happiness shows that 'care' may be the last thing on the list for the care system. Trying to balance budgets, case loads and rules all become above the clients' needs. Angry and realistically set against a brilliantly portrayed backdrop of Cardiff, My Piece of Happiness exposes the shortcomings of a system that puts clients last.

My next read: The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

The Welsh Girl - Peter Ho Davies

A novel set in a Welsh village in 1944, The Welsh Girl shows how war makes people question everything they thought safe and familiar and stuggle to adapt to a world filled with fear and uncertainty. Playing with gender roles and the false stereotypes surrounding enemies and heros, the novel shows that war, love and hate are never simple and that humanity can connect people who are meant to be foes.

The novel centres upon three main characters: Esther is a 17-year-old barmaid who feels trapped and frustrated in her home village; Karsten is a German soldier incarcerated in a POW camp after surrendering under enemy fire; Rotherham is a German Jew tasked with interviewing Nazi Rudolph Hess, who claims to have no memory of his part in the Nazi party but swears he was not involved in the Final Solution.

Identity is a central theme to The Welsh Girl. Rotherham is desperate to hide his Jewish roots from Hess and those around him, struggling with hatred for the anti-Semitism he and his family faced but keen to hide his Jewish roots from his colleagues and the people he interrogates. He passes himself off as an Englishmen, using his fluent German to his advantage. During the novel, we discover that Rotherham has often pretended to be a captured German soldier, hiding among the ranks to gather intelligence. But he is discovered. Hess also sees through his facade; he confronts Rotherham and tells him he believes he is a Jew. Rotherham's repeated failed attempts at hiding who you are shows that no matter what lengths he goes to, he canot escape who and what he really is.

Esther finds herself violated and abused after believing the English soldier who courts her is a gentleman. She finds herself in a situation she can't handle and is raped by the soldier, an encounter which leaves her pregnant. It is her naive notions of right and wrong that let her down again following the rape. The reader sees her thinking of the word but dismissing it because her idea of rape involves horror, screaming and melodrama. She tells herself that she went out with the soldier and that they had been seen in public together and entirely dismissed the idea that she was attacked.

The notion of nationality is important here. Later in the novel, when Karsten is on the run, the villagers fear the roaming German could violate their women; there is no notion that these violations could already be happening and have happened closer to home. Because Karsten is 'the enemy' he is the man to be feared, the man without morals, the man who will take advantage. But ironically this very man Esther is meant to fear is the one man that shows her love, care and unswerving loyalty. The notion of nationality is important in terms of Esther's baby. She is 17 and an unmarried mother, two facts that could be guaranteed to ruin her in 1944. But by pretending the child is that of lost war hero Rhys, Esther is embraced and supported by the community, a young woman who would be a married mother if her 'lover' had returned from war.

Absent mothers are another key theme in the novel. Karsten pines for his mother's approval, torturing himself over his surrender. He lies to his mother, pretending he is fine, and she lies to him in return in the single letter he receives from her while in the POW camp. He is desperate for her to perceive him as a hero, not a coward. Esther's mother is also absent after passing away. In her mother's absence, she finds herself taking on the motherly role, keeping the farm and house running, her life a constant drudgery of household duties. Her maternal role is reinforced by her care for evacuee Jim. She loves, disciplines and watches over him like a mother, positioning her as a woman far beyond her 17 years.

Overall, The Welsh Girl is a fascinating insight into three people's very different experiences of war. It shows how set notions of enemy and hero are a lot less clear cut, even though the people left behind may not want to face up to that. The novel is filled with lies, deceptions and omissions, all of which allow people to continue in these deluded notions to enable them to continue to comfort themselves during the harrowing realities of war.

My next read: My Piece of Happiness by Lewis Davies.

My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult

For this read, I'm going to do something a bit different. I am going to compare Jodi Picoult's novel to the film. I saw the film a few weeks before reading the book and I was surprised at how much was condensed, changed and omitted. So here goes...

My Sister's Keeper is a novel which explores one of the biggest moral dilemmas a parent can face: should you have a child to save their sibling? And, if you do, at what point does your 'saviour' child have the right to say no? The novel centres around thirteen-year-old Anna, who was born to save her sister Kate from cancer. Anna decides to sue her parents Brian and Sara for medical emancipation, telling them she doesn't want to donate a kidney to her sister.

The novel is split between the perspectives of several characters: Anna, Sara, Brian, Anna's brother Jesse, Anna's lawyer Campbell and her guardian ad litem Julia. It is only in the novel's conclusion that we hear from Kate. This is an interesting choice. In many ways, the novel is all about Kate; her illness is the driving force behind the events. It links and polarises the characters and her survival is the Fitzgerald family's mission. But until the novel's conclusion, the reader is never given her voice, her opinion. It is all second hand, the characters' perceptions of who she is and what she wants. And as the novel progresses to the conclusion of the court case, it is clear that Anna is the only one who really knows what Kate wants. In the novel, Kate only gets her voice after Anna's death. It is only then, and some years in the future, that Kate gets her chance to speak. With its dramatically different ending, the film does not do this. Instead, Kate dies and Anna lives, meaning that, apart from through Anna at court, the viewer never gets Kate's perspective. Like in the novel, she is seen in scraps, a picture of her character built through others' conversations and recollections.

Both the film and the novel are more about the ripple effect Kate's illness has on her family. Jesse is pushed into the shadows and Anna becomes important for her genetic ability to save Kate. Sara's quest to save her daughter becomes her number one priority. Even her husband gets pushed aside emotionally as she focuses her energy on Kate alone. In the book, her emotional neglect of her family is shown in Jesse's actions. He's a thief, an arsonist and experimenting with drugs and alcohol. Sara and Brian have lost patience with him, seeing him as a selfish attention seeker. In the film, however, Jesse is a different character. He is soulful, lost and searching, roaming the streets to find a sense of purpose. It could be that the film would have been too long to focus on Jesse's delinquency; or it could be that the film was dulling his character, making him more sympathetic to the American filmgoer.

The film makes a number of changes to Kate's relationship and last night with Taylor. In the book, Kate decides not to wear a wig as it scratches her head. She also has to wear a dress which fits over her medication line. This practical detail is glossed over in the film, during which Kate is transformed into a flame-haired beauty in a revealing white dress. In the book, Sara chaperones the dance Kate and Taylor attend. In the film, this doesn't happen, leaving them free to slip out and sexually experiment in a disused part of the hospital. When Taylor doesn't call in the film, Kate thinks it is because she let him go too far; in the novel, she thinks he's just cooling off. These subtle changes adapt the tone of their relationship, making Kate's experience something filmgoers could relate to more.

The choice to adapt the ending of the film is the biggest and most controversial change to the novel. In the book, Anna is killed in a car crash hours after winning medical emancipation. Her kidney is used to save Kate and she survives. In the film, the family accept Kate's wishes to die and she passes away. It ends with Anna and her family making their annual holiday on the anniversary of her death, looking into the sunset. At the back of the novel, Picoult says: "...if I wanted it to be a true story, [Anna's death] was the right conclusion". It is interesting, therefore, that such a change was made to the film. The film's ending certainly is more predictable and more "Hollywood". It is also less shocking for the filmgoer. Killing Anna kills everything she battled for. It flips everything the reader expects. But that's what makes it a good ending.

Harrowing, thought-provoking and tragic, both as a film and a novel My Sister's Keeper explores the complex relationships of families and how the illness of a loved one affects every person. But they do so fairly differently and these differences will keep you thinking almost as much as the moral questions Picoult poses.

My next read: The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies