not exactly true

reading & competition!

2012-01-06T17:14:00.000Z

Hello, fine people! Happy New Year and the likes. Here in Casa Valerie, we're gearing up for another house-move (gah - our fourth since 2008 and this time avec baby) sometime in February, so my minimal posting might get even more minimal for a while around then. I'm also sure we'll be without broadband for a while because the broadband-switching-bastards never want to make it easy for us. But then I'll back and I might even be living in a house! I've forgotten what it's like to have more than two rooms. Anyway.

On Sunday 15th January, Peter Wild, my good mate and the man behind Bookmunch, is launching his first novel, The Passenger! If you're Manchester-based, or even further afield, come along - as well as readings from Pete himself and the likes of Socrates Adams, Nicola Mostyn, Simon Crump and me (me!), there'll be live music from (hooker) and The Slow Readers Club. It's in Soundcontrol on New Wakefield St, right near Oxford Road train station. Also: buy Pete's book, The Passenger - it's excellent!

Also. There's a micro-fiction competition running at the moment as part of National Flash Fiction Day, and I'm one of the judges. Send your stories of up to 100 words (including title) by January 31st and you could win a whole bunch of books as well as getting your story published on the site (and maybe on postcards and posters too). Do it.

Reading List 2012

2012-01-01T18:06:00.003Z

Here's what I've been reading in 2012. As usual, an asterix means the book was a reread. I got a Kindle for Christmas in 2011, so this year I'm going to note which books were ebooks - I'll mark them with an (e). The plan, at first, is to use the Kindle to catch up on my classics, since I'm generally more of a modern lit person, and there are so many free out-of-copyright titles for download from Amazon. First up is Middlemarch, but I suspect it'll take me ages - who knew it was so long?? In the meantime:

January 2012
14. Everything's Fine, Socrates Adams. Reminded me of Gordon Lish's work. Brilliant.
13. (e) Jeff In Venice, Death in Varanasi, Geoff Dyer. My first Dyer - liked it a lot.
12. Dark Eden, Chris Beckett. SF novel. Not bad.
11. Vox, Nicholson Baker. Literary phone sex. Baker is an odd chap!
10. U & I, Nicholson Baker. Baker's paean to Updike. Funny.
9. (e) Present At A Hanging, Ambrose Bierce. Short stories. Not bad.
8. (e) Middlemarch, George Eliot. A monster, but liked once I got stuck in.
7. A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore. A brutally sad novel - really excellent.
6. The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker. Very funny meandering thoughts of an office worker.
5. Haggadah, ed. Jonathan Safran Foer. Jewish text for the Passover Seder. Poetic. Interesting.
4. This Isn't The Sort of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You, Jon McGregor. Interesting story collection.
3. Room Temperature, Nicholson Baker. A man's thoughts wander while he's feeding his baby. Lovely.
2. Cadenza 16, ed. Zoe King. Ditto (though I preferred number19.)
1. Cadenza 19, ed. Zoe King. Cadenza doesn't exist any more, but I got a couple of copies from Zoe back in 2009. Nice short set of poems and stories.

2011: best year EVER

2011-12-31T14:19:00.003Z

National Short Story Day 2011

2011-12-22T12:21:00.003Z

It's National Short Story Day today! Well, it is for my UK readers, anyway. So you British types should stop reading this and go read some short fiction. Quick off-the-bat recommendations: Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters. One of my favourites this year. I'm currently reading Jon McGregor's first collection, This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You - so far, so good. I just five minutes ago read the first story in Helen Simpson's Hey Yeah Right Get A Life - also excellent. Read Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son. Unbeatable. If you like weird postmodern clever stuff, try some Donald Barthelme. I've got John Updike's Early Stories on the go as a long-term project (it's massive) and what I've read so far has been brilliant. My friend Andrea's book just came out - Somewhere Else, Or Even Here. Buy it. Try the BBC National Short Story Prize anthologies. I just won a copy of Salt's Best British Short Stories 2011 - let's all read it. I'll shut up now. But do go read a short story - I mean, dude, they're SHORT. The duration of a cigarette or your tea-break. Read one on the loo. Okay. Shutting up. (Reading yet?)

Sarah Hall: review and reading

2011-11-19T22:48:00.001Z

My review of Sarah Hall's The Beautiful Indifference is live at Bookmunch.

I went to see Sarah read in the Deansgate Waterstone's in Manchester on Wednesday. I'd only heard about the event by chance a couple of days beforehand, on twitter, and I guess the advertising wasn't really up to much, because only six people turned up - and that included a Waterstone's staff member. How depressing is that? You hear about ill-attended readings, sure, but still: this is a Booker-shortlisted author in Manchester's biggest bookshop - and Manchester's a pretty literary town. As my friend Andrea commented, that couldn't have been good for sales. It was such a missed opportunity for her fans here, too, because she was excellent - didn't bat an eyelid at the diminished audience, read a section from the first story in the collection, and then conducted a really fascinating Q&A with the half-dozen of us about her writing process, her relationship with her publisher (Faber), her cover designs and all sorts. My now-crawling lunatic baby roamed the rows of empty seats, squawking away to herself, and then made friends with the author (and a lovely Waterstone's lady) and I got a couple of books signed, so a good night was had, but I think Sarah Hall couldn't have been massively impressed by her Manchester public. If any of you get the chance to see her read in the future, jump at it: she's brilliant. (And the book isn't half bad either, of course!)

novel extract!

2011-11-12T12:09:00.001Z

An extract from the first chapter of my novel-in-progress is on the internet! Huge thanks to Melissa Mann from Beat The Dust for saying yes. What a great start to the weekend! The rest of the issue is pretty wicked, too - I especially like Tania Hershman's Move Quickly Now, Ewan Morrison's Incident In A Mall #42, and Clare Pollard's A Night In Varanasi. Go, read!

Fiction Desk Vol 2 review

2011-11-10T21:03:00.001Z

My review of All These Little Worlds: The Fiction Desk Anthology Vol 2 is live at Bookmunch.

prizes and fraud and all sorts

2011-10-30T12:08:00.002Z

Let's be chronological about this:

Vivmondo (aka Richard Hirst) came second in the Manchester Fiction Prize! This is excellent: not only do I know Viv, but his story, School Report, is brilliantly creepy. You should definitely read it. Also, they created a special second prize place just for him. Fancy! The winning story, Days Necrotic, by Krishnan Coupland, is fantastic, so read that too - who'd have thought necrophilia could be so damn sexy? (I dread to think what that sentence is going to do to my Google ranking...) Click here to read the winners and the other shortlisted pieces.

Then, what? Well, myself and Seren went along to the Manchester Literature Festival as official bloggers for the Prize Culture event, a debate about literary prize culture (d'oh) that took place on the night of this year's Booker announcement. You can read my write-up here. Seren contributed by chewing on her cardigan, but I've got to say, she did that admirably. Julian Barnes took the Booker, of course, as I'm sure you all know; I haven't read the book, but to be honest, I'm wearying a little of the whole shebang. The books I've really loved this year didn't get anywhere near the Booker and what I did read of the shortlist (Pigeon English) I wasn't massively enthusiastic about. I'll read the Barnes eventually, probably, but I'm not rushing out.

Then, right, some utter bastard tried to hack into my Google Checkout to buy an iPad! I had a confirmation email about a transaction I knew nothing about, so I logged on and stopped it. The card associated with the account was an old, already cancelled one, so the payment hadn't gone through - ha! I called the bank, they said I was secure, so that's good; I reported it all to Google, who froze my Checkout account (irritating); I changed all my passwords, then called the police about attempted fraud and they hung up on me! Fuckers. So then I went online and got a number for the anti-fraud people, called them, gave all the details, and they logged it and advised me to get a credit report, which I did, blah blah, and anyway, I'm all fine. The twat who tried to hack me, though, had changed my Google delivery address to his/her own address:

111 lothair road
leicester
LE2 7QE
UNITED KINGDOM

So, if you know who lives there, punch them really hard in the face/balls/whatever from me. Apparently the police won't do shit unless there was actual fraud - i.e., if they'd succeeded in buying their iPad, the cops would follow it up, but because the card payment didn't work, it's not an issue.

Well, onwards! Last Sunday, we went to the Literature Festival's Book Quiz - here's a write-up by Kevin Danson - and I'll give a high-five to anybody who can name the baby in the second-prize team, Five And A Baby... (hint)

Oh, AND! This was brilliantly unexpected. A German lit mag, WortMosaik, contacted me asking permission to translate and publish my story, The Girl in the Glass, which first appeared in PANK a couple of years ago. They'll send me two copies of the magazine when it comes out in December. High-five!

Evelio Rosero

2011-10-21T12:44:00.001+01:00

My review of Good Offices by Evelio Rosero is live at Bookmunch.

Simon Van Booy review

2011-10-09T21:01:00.001+01:00

My review of Simon Van Booy's Everything Beautiful Began After is live at Bookmunch.

A.S. Byatt review

2011-10-04T16:58:00.000+01:00

My review of A.S. Byatt's Ragnarök is live at Bookmunch.

BBC National Short Story Award 2011 Anthology review

2011-10-03T17:56:00.001+01:00

I almost forgot to link to this. My review of The BBC National Short Story Award 2011 Anthology is live at Bookmunch.

post-smut trauma

2011-10-03T17:47:00.000+01:00

So my smut reading last Wednesday went well! Ben Judge's dolphin/lemur sex story did, however, make my baby cry - but at least we'll know exactly where her future psychological traumas originated, which should save us plenty on therapists' bills. Also: Socrates' story had an anus in it and one audience member left in protest. Brilliant.

Next: all of you should click here to read, 'In The Bush', an excellent story by Emma Martin, a very talented member of my online writing group. Best thing you'll read all day - promise.

Who entered the Myslexia novel competition? I didn't, what with the novel being in a massive state of unreadiness, but I'll be interested to see who wins. Another thing I didn't enter was the Harry Bowling first chapter prize, because, like the gold-plated fool I am, I left it till the last minute and didn't realise it was postal entry.

We went to the Book Barge on Saturday - it's moored in Manchester's Castle Quay until tomorrow and it's well worth a visit. They trade as well as sell, so you can bring along your own books and see if they'll do a swap - they'll also swap books for food and stuff, too, so get your bartery head on. There was a free acoustic gig on while we were there, too, AND it was a million degrees hot outside, so it was all remarkably summery for early October. Lovely!

That's about it. I haven't crashed the car yet. Seren's trying to eat Andy's laptop and I think she's got my speaker cable in her mouth. Ta ra.

smut!

2011-09-25T11:56:00.000+01:00

That got your attention, didn't it, you dirty-minded buggers? Well, I'll not disappoint. I've got a story coming out this week in an anthology called Quickies: Short Stories For Adults. It's got bad airplane sex and awkward teenagers in it. Yum! Also: the anthology's being launched this Wednesday (28th) by the Flashtag writing collective as part of the Didsbury Arts Festival here in Manchester. If you're around, come along to the Northern Lawn Tennis Club at 8pm and you'll get to hear me (and others) read their filth. Here's the Facebook page for the event.

A.L. Kennedy review

2011-09-22T09:00:00.000+01:00

My review of A.L. Kennedy's The Blue Book is live at Bookmunch.

what, I have to think of a title, too?

2011-09-20T13:27:00.002+01:00

I've just looked at my blog stats, and it's embarrassing how little I've updated this thing in 2011 (so far). It's all been links to reviews, and though I love the free books and legitimized holding-forth that the reviewing affords me, it's hardly absorbing for you lot, eh? Also, shockingly, it's been a whole year since my MA finished (a new class are being inducted this week, which means my class were the year before the year before - ancient history!) and two years since I moved to Manchester, and I'm really stupidly flabbergasted by how quickly time is moving. And, as well, I've never sloughed off that whole September is the New Year thingy that you get in school, so it seems like now is the time of year where things ought to recommence. (Blogging, anyone?) So let's meander through what I've been doing.

(1) The baby! Seren. AKA, The Best Thing Ever. Seriously. Once you get past the sleep deprivation (give it two months), this child-rearing thing fits into a normal day pretty darn well. You can rest a book on a baby while you feed it/her, for instance. Did you know that? Also, giant whopping infant headphones let you bring a baby to an outdoor gig and the cinema (except Cineworld, who refused us access to Kill List because the child is under 18, and they're now on my own personal Kill List, the fascist bastards). Babies totally enjoy literary festivals and readings and launches, too, and they're a superb literary pub quiz mascot. Make note of that, prospective parents. Also, you can read anything out loud to a baby and they'll laugh at it. Even books about boredom or the Holocaust or Driving Test Theory. Brilliant! And they're free to feed (well, this one is) so it all works out well with the Impoverished Writer/Artist household that we've grown here in Whalley Range.

(2) The book reviews. Come on, Valerie, tell us something we don't know.

(3) Trips! Bulgaria, for Andy's exhibition in Sofia, AKA a work trip that me and Seren hijacked. Best vegetarian food ever in Sofia, I swear on my virtual life. Also a brilliantly tiny natural history museum. And we had to get a passport for the baby. She's three weeks old in her picture. Mental. I didn't have one until I was sixteen. (Already practising the 'back in MY day' diatribes for when she gets uppity.) Where else? Hay On Wye - books! David Vann! Gary Shteyngart! Fresh coffee every morning on the campsite. Lovely. Seren fell in love with the red tent. (At the time, she was also in love with a red cushion.) Then Bristol (babies get you a free hotel upgrade!) and Dublin (family) and Llandeilo (cheap Groupon getaway).

(4) The novel. Oh, sigh. Oh, procrastinate! I'm revising the thing now. Revising, redrafting, ripping most of it up and starting again - same old, same old. But it's progressing. In fact, I should be doing chapter four right now, but I'm entertaining (?) you guys instead. Selfless, is what I am. Anyway. It's probably not going to be a long novel, but each chapter seems pretty long (shortest so far is 4k, longest is 7k). If I get chapter four hacked at sufficiently this week, that'll be Part One dealt with for now. Baby steps, eh?

(5) Driving! I've got a provisional driving license. I'm 31, so that's probably not something I should admit. Still. Lessons are very expensive (though still a fuckload cheaper than they are in Ireland) so I'm getting a headstart by having Andy teach me the basics in the ASDA car-park at night. (Seren's just loving the impromptu trips in the car-seat, and she expresses her joy by moaning and shrieking. Bless.) Three outings so far and we've done starting and stopping and driving in circles and going around the mini-roundabout and three-point turns and parking in the parking bay with no other cars nearby. The power may well go to my head, so consider yourselves warned. I have NOT mastered reversing.

Look at the length of this post! I'm having a cup of tea for my efforts. *takes a bow*

BBC National Short Story Award 2011

2011-09-12T19:59:00.003+01:00

I keep thinking of topics for blog posts and then forgetting them. One that I have remembered, however, is that my former MA tutor and dissertation supervisor, MJ Hyland, has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. So has Jon McGregor (whom I interviewed for Bookmunch last year, and who was also shortlisted for the Award in 2010) Alison MacLeod (whom I met very briefly at ShortStoryVille in July), KJ Orr and DW Wilson. I reviewed last year's anthology here and I might get my mitts on this year's one, too - we'll see. Anyway, good luck to everyone. The stories will be broadcast all this week on BBC Radio 4; MJ's is already up, and she's been interviewed on Front Row - if you follow the link above, you'll find further links to all this stuff. I haven't listened to the story yet, but I did hear the interview, and one interesting thing was that the story in question came from her novel-in-progress - a scene that's been rewritten and adapted for the shorter form. I'd like to see the two versions side-by-side, to see if the characters and plot come across differently in each. Have any of you done this - not so much built a story up into a novel, because I reckon that's pretty common, but taken a chunk of novel and re-formed it?

Stephen Kelman review

2011-09-05T01:00:00.000+01:00

My review of Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English is live at Bookmunch.

Michael Ondaatje review

2011-09-04T01:00:00.000+01:00

My review of Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table is live at Bookmunch.

review round-up

2011-08-28T04:00:00.000+01:00

Here's a few in one go: my reviews of Hollis Hampton-Jones' Comes The Night, Kapka Kassabova's Villa Pacifica and Julie Myerson's Then are all live at Bookmunch. The first was disappointing, the third was excellent, though difficult, and the second - well, dull doesn't come close. But go on, read the review anyway!

not a lovely name

2011-08-27T18:37:00.000+01:00

Well, my mission to have a whole week of DFW was a resounding failure; turns out he's not at all compatible with noisy family life. I got stuck in when we got back, mind, as did the baby. Page 141 absolutely astounded her:

I did read the Alex Keegan book in Dublin, though. And I had bubble baths and went shopping and did that thing where the fish eat your feet and ate a catastrophe of cakes. We drove down to Tipperary and visited my uncle, whom I haven't seen in a very long time, and Seren saw her first donkeys. I met an assortment of babies even newer than my own (hello, Maya; hello Kate!), including one still in utero, so I'll have to go back in February to see him/her on the far side. And my nephew was as ace as ever:

For the first time in about eighteen months, we managed to fly without ash clouds or snowstorms fucking us over, though the Ryanair ground-staff in Dublin did try to make us pay €60 for going over our luggage allowance, which only adds to my suspicion that their scales are maliciously tipped, since there's no WAY the extra baby-clothes and the couple of new toys that we accumulated in Dublin added up to over three kilos. We (meaning Andy) had to empty the case and the carry-on and put on several layers of t-shirts before phoning my sister to loop back round to the airport so we could fill the back of her car with our extraneous stuff and get her to post it over to us later. Ryanair, we hate you so much. DFW probably didn't help the weight thing, though.

Speaking of which.

I'd left The Pale King on top of my mum's kitchen radiator on Tuesday morning while I fed the baby, and my niece came over and looked at it. 'Whose book is this?'
'That's mine,' I said. 'I'm reading it.'
She's five-and-a-half with a year of big school under her belt. The book's enormous. She had a flick through. Six hundred pages. 'Is there nothing good at all in it?'
'There's no pictures. Only reading.'
'Only reading?' She closed it and looked at the cover. 'What book is it?'
'It's good. It's by a man called David Foster Wallace.'
She shook her head and dropped the book back on top of the radiator. 'That's not a lovely name,' she said, before heading out to make mud-and-grass pies in the garden with her cousin.

Not much else to say, really.

on my holidays

2011-08-16T13:52:00.000+01:00

In about three hours I'll be on a plane to Dublin, to introduce/show off/offload the baby to various relations and friends - whoop! I'd say 'there'll be a break in blogging', but that would imply there'd been some kind of blogging routine that could be broken, and we all know that's a big fat lie. Anyway, my holiday reading will be DFW's The Pale King, a book I'd been very, very excited about, that arrived in the post the day I was in labour (I actually had my boyfriend bring it into the hospital for me), but that I haven't opened yet because I wanted to be able to concentrate on it, and the last four months have been full of exhaustion and napping and catching up on my reviewing. But now it's time! So let's hope it doesn't send me over my luggage allowance, eh? (I've got some AL Kennedy and Alex Keegan in case I need a DFW-break.) See you in a week, blog-people o'mine.

Sebastian Barry review

2011-08-10T19:17:00.002+01:00

My review of Sebastian Barry's On Cannan's Side is live at Boookmunch.

The View From Here

2011-07-31T17:51:00.003+01:00

I've been a very absent blogger lately; I'm sure you're all sick of nothing but links to book reviews. Let's have a quick detour to an art exhibition instead, eh?

Andy Broadey (my partner) has got a solo show on at the moment in Manchester's BLANKSPACE gallery. He's been working on his fine art PhD for nearly four years, now, and this show is the culmination of his work. (He has to hand in a dissertation too, but to be fair, you aren't going to be reading that, so let's sidestep and carry on.) The exhibition's called 'The View From Here' and if you go along you'll see three big photographic installations. He's interested in conventions of gallery design and display and architectural interventions into exhibition spaces. The opening was last Thursday and it went really well - huge thanks to those of you that turned up, with a special shout-out to Kim and Will, and the Wild clan! - and the show will be up until August 7th. Andy'll be there most of the time and I'll be around sometimes too, so get your asses over there. It's just down the road from the Anthony Burgess centre, for those of you who've been there. Opening hours: Monday to Friday 1pm-7pm (Tuesdays until 9pm) and weekends, 11am-4pm. (oh, and edit to add: Kevin Bradshaw's written a very thoughtful review of the show here, and Sarah-Clare Conlon's got another one here!)

Other than that, I'm ploughing my way through a mountain of book reviews and worrying vaguely about the novel and reading massively inappropriate stories to the baby and drinking gallons of tea. Same old, same old.

Alan Hollinghurst review

2011-07-27T09:30:00.000+01:00

My review of Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child is live at Bookmunch.