Good but not good enough. Daniel is a resilient young Englishman who is interested in Angola and organises a budget travel journalism trip. Starting with the 'easy bit' a stay on the laid back isle of San Tomeo he then travels Angola from end to end, meets lots of snapshot people, has a lot of experiences cf Laurie Lee, Patrick Leigh Fermor and comes back to Blighty and writes all about it. Daniel is strong on information. I now know a lot more...

Past 2 a.m. The night explodes into action. A loud motor, loud voices, thudding footsteps and people downstairs – it’s the fallout time for returners from the factories come home to roost. What are they doing here? Have we another Italian family who cannot live apart – and have formed their own warren to live safely in their pile of bodies. As their history predicts, they have sentries posted throughout the building, read mind and actions for...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p066svr5/hidden-series-1-episode-1?ns_mchannel=email&ns_source=&ns_campaign=PANUK_DIV_23_IPL_Recommends_D&ns_linkname=bbcone_hiddendrama_dramathriller&ns_fee=0 As any of my long-term blog readers knows (which numbers about two and a bit) the embourgeoisement thesis that was used to determine whether working class folk can become middle class by becoming Luton car workers or continually...

What a great week for poetry, I've been dithering over: https://www.abctales.com/story/ladle/borrowed-days https://www.abctales.com/story/richard-l-provencher/its-more-poetry and https://www.abctales.com/story/parson-thru/fuente-de-la-mora They each did wonderful things to my heart and head - but I had to plump for Ewan's deceptively simple portrait of loss for poem of the week: https://www.abctales.com/story/ewan/here-are-things-0 There's been...

Einstein was right, time is distance. John Banville asks ‘when does the past become the past?’ The answer, of course, is it doesn’t, but it does. Recently, the citizens of Ireland voted to modify the law and allow women to have abortions in their country. Banville tells a story of how his mother was reprimanded by the parish priest for reading ‘Women’s Own’ magazine showing the influence of the Catholic Church in controlling people’s lives. Only...

Lullaby is plot, point of view, sharply drawn characters, shock by information. It won the Prix Goncourt. Would it have won a prize from a panel of English-speaking judges? I don't know. I think the mainstream literati prefer books where less happens and more is 'off the page' in nuanced hints, where we are given 'the information' by mannerisms of gesture, and half sentences. Lullaby gives us the pieces of a horror puzzle in a clever, well-...

Huge thanks to Parson thru for choosing our Story and Poem for May: Pick of the month for May 2018 Poem Pick of the month for me has to be Romance Killer by Socialeaf, 3 May 2018. Wistful thoughts on relationships, framed within an intimate moment on a beach. Stream of consciousness piece with a small child as mediator, distractedly coping with a melting ice-cream (we’ve all been there) and bringing life back into equilibrium. The author draws...

Kieron Smith, Boy almost in a stream of consciousness, single-minded, dizzying prose, which for over 400 pages guides you through the before and after of late 1950s Glasgow with its decaying tenements and rats and squalor and then the promise of new greenfield sites and housing schemes, mile after mile of houses with inside toilets but nothing much to do. I’m guessing the first part is near Govan, where Kieron lives with his mum and dad, who has...

I'm sure lots of you will remember Annest, who wrote on ABCTales as Rosa Cruz - one of my favourite poets! Call for Submissions Nine Muses Poetry is an exciting new webzine managed and edited by Annest Gwilym, poet and occasional short story writer. This webzine features all forms of poetry by new, emerging and established poets, showcasing the best of contemporary poetry. https://ninemusespoetry.com Annest's debut pamphlet of poetry, Surfacing...

All you lovely people who have pledged for No Good Deed are entitled to enter this competition to receive a bundle of No Good Deed goodies. Competition runs for one week here