Blogtour Review - Wonderful by Louise Beech

Wonderful

Louise Beech
Pick Lock Publishing, 1 June 2026
Available as: PB, 364pp, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781068337987

I'm grateful to Anne for sending me a copy of Wonderful to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Wonderful is published on what would have been Marilyn Monroe's hundredth birthday.

As the book opens, two women are finding new homes. In 1960s Hollywood, Marilyn is looking to buy a place that can be a retreat for her. In 2016, in Hull, Flora is moving to a flat that’s even more depressing than her last.

The book will continue to tell the stories of Marilyn and Flora, showing up similarities in their lives and also, eventually, some unlikely connections. Across the years these two women form an unlikely bond as Marilyn struggles for freedom and Flora tries to build a life, protect her sister, and overcome dark events from her early years.

Monroe, born Norma Jean and also with a troubled earlier life, has created a persona which has delivered her success as an actress, but living it is taking an increasing toll and she feels trapped. This can’t end well, as we know from tragic history, but Beech sensitively avoids cliches in giving us Marilyn’s own reflections on her life and her plans for the future. 

In Hull, Flora has also led a difficult life, quite how difficult we don’t learn till the end of the book. In her present, though, she’s focussed on the welfare of her sister, about to be released from a psychiatric ward. The relationship between the sisters, while not cosy, is very moving. Essentially they’re all each other has, their mother being around but little help. The emotional heart of the book is this relationship, one which leaves Flora little space or time for a possible romance growing with Neil, an aspiring magician who sometimes appears in the club where Flora works.

All this, and the Blessed Virgin Mary too! This perhaps unlikely figure appears to a number of women in the book, bringing a nosy journalist in her wake but also pointing to futures for some of them. Something is being built, something to support women’s autonomy and safety. Both Flora and Marilyn will play their parts.

As ever in Beech’s books, this is a story told from below, from the perspective of the underdog. Characteristically the action comes together in Hull, described as “the end of the line”, a contrast to the glitzy background of Monroe’s Hollywood (even if this has become a place she can’t set foot unless disguised) yet - across all Beech's books, a place of possibilities, growth and authenticity. Characteristically, too, this works, both on a story and an emotional level as the sheer grind of everyday life is transmuted into a struggle to understand one’s past, however dark, and realise one’s potential.

I love Beech’s books and this one fully lived up to my expectations. The book is hard reading, at times. Not everyone here is always perfect, or even always likeable. But there is a willingness to work, to build that future, that makes every page a treat.

An article I was reading the other day focussed on how resourceful Monroe was, setting up her own production company and using the law to obtain a measure of control from her studio. Beech’s nuanced portrayal captures this, as she surveys her future. 

For more information about Wonderful, see the author's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Wonderful from your local high street bookshop or online from Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, Waterstones, WH Smiths (always Smith's, there is no Jones) or Amazon.

#Review - Daffodils by Louise Beech

Daffodils
Louise Beech
Bolinda Publishing
Available as: Audio (narrated by Lesley Harcourt), 9 hours 48 minutes
Source: Audible subscription
ASIN: B09TG3FPMJ

I have been a fan of Louise Beech's books for some time. Her fiction combines real, believable characters in all their human muddle with gripping stories and they always, always have such heart.

In her memoir  Daffodils, Beech pulls the curtain aside and invites us to see some of her own life. It's a difficult story, kicking off from the moment when, in 2019, Beech's mother attempted suicide and loosely following her mum's hospitalisation and - sort of - recovery. We see the author's process of coming to terms (sort of) with what happened in 2019 and also, as part of that, her recollections of and attempts to understand her own earlier life. We also get to meet her younger sisters and brother, who share their own takes on that story, and (inevitably, look at the date) we see life overturned by the covid pandemic and by the lockdown measures necessary to address it.

I thought this book was beautiful, fierce and brave. It keeps coming back to mysteries - the mystery of Beech's mum's behaviour and treatment of her children (which often makes for hard and painful reading) and the gaps's in Beech's own recollection of that. Those gaps might not be surprising, given it was a life split across different houses and children's homes, sometimes with siblings, sometimes not, involving both periods spent at her grandmother's and occasions when her mum's raucous living arrangements disrupted all their lives.

Behind all that, though, Beech suspects things, and people, that she has has blotted out and there are  hints of painful events and possibly even abuse. After consulting everyone who might be able to explain, and all the records that are available, and going over all the different versions, significant gaps remain. This leads to a book that is both raw and painful and yet calm, collected and focussed and it sets down the evidence and speculates. You can see in some of this the the hand of the excellent novelist that Louise Beech is - employed here not to decide how the gaps may be filled, what the plot ends, but to identify them as gaps and catalogue the potential dangers therein. It felt to me a bit like a mine clearance operation, as Beech sifts through the landscape of her memory, raising flags and barriers to show the dangerous ground, the paths to avoid. And then she ventures inside to these dangerous places, not exactly defusing and rendering safe, but exploring the landscape for us and showing how she is transforming it and succeeding in living there.

I want to stress here that you shouldn't read this book thinking, oh look, that's where she gets this incident or that episode from one of the books. Yes, of course, obviously Daffodils does highlight events which have inspired Beech's writing, but I had a sense reading this that the real truths exposed here - sometimes painfully - are moral truths, truths about persistence, integrity, and love. Those are qualities which her readers will recognise at once from her novels and which are more important I think and much more fundamental than details of plot. Yes, reading this book did shed light on the novels, but not in such a cause and effect way.

And it sheds light on much else: the (sometimes amusing) background to being a hard-working author, the frustrations of negotiating for her mother's care with an overstretched and wilting NHS (this even before the pandemic), the solidarity and humour of the sibling group in the face of that adversity, and, in the end, the unknowableness of another human being - even one as supposedly close as a parent. You can feel the struggles that Beech has on this last conundrum, as she wrestles both to see her mother safe and cared for, and counts the cost of what that same mother has done, and not done, to and for her kids. 

Not, as I said, remotely an easy read, but a heartfelt book and I am so grateful to the author and rather humbled that she (and of course also her super sisters and brother) have been willing to let us into their lives in this way. 

The audio is read excellently by Lesley Harcourt, including a variety of voices for the family members - in a story where we get numerous, sometimes contradictory, accounts of past events, as well as flashbacks and a great deal of authorial comment, it's always clear what perspective we are hearing and the story came over naturally and clearly. 

Finally, and not least, I know a lot more now about daffodils than before I listened to this book!

For more information about Daffodils, see Louise's website here. You can buy Daffodils from only retailer sites such as Amazon.

#Blogtour #Review - This is How We Are Human by Louise Beech

This is How We are Human

Louise Beech

Orenda Books, 10 June 2021

Available as: PB, 289pp, e, audio

Source: Advance PB provided by the publisher

ISBN(PB): 9781913193713

I'm grateful both to Orenda Books for sending me an advance copy of This is How We Are Human to consider for review and to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in this blogtour.

I was rather wary of this book. It's about a young man, Sebastian, who has autism, how his mother Veronica cares for him - and how she sometimes gets it wrong. It is very close to home for me. My daughter (now in her twenties) has autism. She has had her ups and downs, as we have we in seeking support and trying to ensure she can live an independent and fulfilling life. 

There are differences: young men and young women are seen by society in slightly different ways. Also, my daughter has learning disabilities and is non-verbal, which Sebastian in This is How We Are Human is rather fluent, not to say loquacious. Still, I recognised a lot here. As the parent of a young person like Sebastian, your life becomes focussed on your child. You become their advocate, their interpreter to an often shockingly indifferent world. See for example the episode at the start of this book, where Veronica is seeking help from a sexual health clinic for Sebastian, who is suffering all the frustrations of a young person without a girlfriend or boyfriend and who has little prospect of finding one. The response of the other clients in the waiting room, and of the doctor when eventually Sebastian and Veronica meet her, is hardly helpful.

As a parent, you also, inevitably, fail. Quite rightly, adults who have autism want to control their own lives rather than having them managed by their parents. The difficulties they have with that can be considerable. In This is How We Are Human likeable, slightly posh, steely determined Veronica, with her extensive collection of headscarves, is simply at her wits' end. She is doing her best, but she has reached her limits - and the world is beginning to shut down for Sebastian as he, also, begins to reach and cross boundaries that the world sets for people like him. 

Veronica isn't, though, one to give up easily. So she turns to 'high-class escort' Violetta for help.

Violetta is a fascinating, vividly portrayed character - a young woman who needs to raise money quickly and has found a way to do that. She's beginning to recognise that there is a cost and we see vividly depicted episodes of PSTD. (Do be aware that the book is explicit in places. It is never prurient or exploitative, but does feature Violetta being abused (and one incident takes that so the extreme) as well as other episodes that chip away at her self-esteem. We learn a lot about her background and the trap she is in, paying for her father's care and how she, too, shows courage and finds her way through. In fact this book is as much Violetta's as it is Sebastian's and the strange, quirky relationship they build is well observed and, in some ways, heartbreaking. But then a lot about this book is heartbreaking, from Sebastian's frustration (and his shrewd understanding of it) to the bullying he suffers to the way that the default reaction of the wider world, when any problem comes up, is to try and tidy him away. (I've experienced this - again from the parent's perspective - when Daughter, frustrated beyond endurance, committed some social outrage to a chorus of tutting from the adults around. My tip? The most accepting, welcome place we ever found was our local McDonald's). 

This is How We Are Human is, as I said, a book that comes close to home for me, and some of these times it provoked tears. I really don't think I'd have read it if it had been written by anyone other than Louise Beech, whose honest, human and brave stories I've simply come to love. When I saw what she was writing about, I knew I could trust her with a subject like this and that she would respect and understand the Sebastians and Veronicas of this world (and, indeed, the Violettas as well). 

And she did.

So, this is rather wonderful. It is a deeply human book, the title so apt, because the reality of autism really does challenge narrow minded assumptions about what it is to be human and demand that we so-called neurotypicals take a good hard look at ourselves.

On a lighter note, for fans of Louise's writing, I can confirm (slight spoiler!) that Bob Fracklehurst is back!

About Louise Beech

Louise Beech is an exceptional literary talent, whose debut novel How To Be Brave was a Guardian

Louise Beech

Readers’ Choice for 2015. The follow-up, The Mountain in My Shoe was shortlisted for Not the Booker Prize. Both of her previous books Maria in the Moon and The Lion Tamer Who Lost were widely reviewed, critically acclaimed and number-one bestsellers on Kindle. The Lion Tamer Who Lost was shortlisted for the RNA Most Popular Romantic Novel Award in 2019. Her 2019 novel Call Me Star Girl won Best magazine Book of the Year, and was followed by I Am Dust.

For more information about This is How We are Human, see the Orenda Books website here or hop on the blog tour and read some of the reviews listed on the poster below.

You can buy This is How We are Human directly from Orenda, from your local bookshop, or online from Bookshop, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon. 

 

Review - I Am Dust by Louise Beech

I Am Dust
Louise Beech
Orenda Books, 16 April 2020
Available as: PB, 344pp, e
Read as: Advance review copy PB
ISBN: 9781913193218

I'm grateful to Orenda Books for a free advance copy of I Am Dust to consider for review.

Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return...

There are books I read for review because they catch my eye and I think they might interest.

There are books I read for review because I've read the author before and I think I'll like them.

Then... then there are Louise Beech books - which means I know I'll be in for a good time (if a heart-wringing, emotionally involving one).

I Am Dust is, of course, no exception. Operating on two parallel timelines, we see Chloe, a thirtysomething adult, working as an usher at the Dean Wilson theatre in Hull in 2019. We also see Chloe, with her friends Jess and Ryan, rehearsing in the summer of 2005 for a youth theatre production of Macbeth - and dabbling with a Ouija board.

In 2019, the Dean Wilson is preparing for a revival of the iconic musical Dust, considered cursed by some since the lead actress was killed during its premiere run 20 years before at the same theatre. The  murder was never solved, and understandably, speculation runs wild - especially Eoin the part of Chloe's mate Chester.

In 2005, relations between the three friends become more and more intense. Chloe fancies Jess. Jess has eyes only for Ryan. Ryan - well, Ryan is basically in love with himself. The instigator of the Ouija sessions, which take place after hours on the Macbeth stage - among the witches props, royal robes and daggers of the Scottish Play - Ryan has some objective of his own. There is something he wants, something he knows, something he needs. Chloe has always considered herself sensitive in these matters - what might the pressure of the sessions drive her to?

I loved the awkward, triangular relationship between Chloe, Jess and Ryan, the balance always shifting in response to the lurching dynamics of the teenagers, and to external pressures. Beech writes, I think, with great insight when she draws these characters: they ring true, and one worries for them - not only in 2005, but in the future, where Chloe seems alone. What has become of Jess and Ryan?

What, for that matter, has become of Chloe? Part of the lure of this book is the slow drip of revelation about her life then, and now. I don't want to spoil it, so I won't say a lot, but it's clear that she has been deeply affected by something. She has been self-harming. She can't remember all of what went before - so we as readers are in some ways ahead of her when strange things start to happen at the theatre. There's a tension hanging over this book, a genuine sense of menace, whether from the supernatural or from the unresolved dynamics of fourteen years ago. It's exacerbated, somehow, by the way Chloe seems to stand in the spotlight - her mum and dad appear and are mentioned, but never named. She seems to have answers but not to know them, if that makes sense.

And all the while she is weaving her own story, writing a script, that seems both a commentary on what she's been through and a way out of her own life.

I just loved this brooding, claustrophobic novel. In Beech's last, Call Me Star Girl, most of the action during police during one torrid night at a local radio station (mentioned briefly at the start of I Am Dust). Here it's more spread out, the action taking place over several months in each timeline, and the locations are less constrained physically but - as theatres - perhaps even more freighted with hopes, dreams and fears: dangerous spaces, which have to be treated with care, according to established rules (like never mentioning the name of the Scottish Play). Ryan lays down rules for the Ouija sessions too, but the three friends don't pay much heed to them and there's a sense from the start of them playing with fire...

I Am Dust is at the same time a sensitive character study, a heart-stopping, spooky tale and a scorching page turner that will have you up past midnight to complete it (if you're brave enough).

For more information about the book see the publisher's webpage here. If you haven't read anything by Louise before (WHY?) check out my reviews of The Mountain in my Shoe, Maria in the Moon, The Lion Tamer who Lost, and Call me Star Girl.

If you can buy I am Dust from your local bookshop - many are now operating mail order - please do, they need as much support as possible right now. Alternatively, Hive Books are now taking orders again, or you can buy from Blackwell's, Foyle's, Waterstones or Amazon.

Review - Call Me Star Girl by Louise Beech

Call Me Star Girl
Louise Beech
Orenda Books, 18 April 2019 (PB) 18 February (e)
PB, e 277pp

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for a free advance reader's copy of Call Me Star Girl.

You may look at the publication date and think "April? Why's he reviewing this in January? Go away, it's still Winter." Well, e-books are a thing, and you can read this on your favourite device from 18 February. In any case, I can't keep quiet about this one - I want it on your radar because it's a book you'll want to devour, the kind of book that draws you in and plays games with you and then haunts you. And you don't want to miss out on that.

There's the setting, a late night radio studio occupied by a sole presenter. Stella McKeever whispers her truths to the insomniacs, the night workers, the lovers, the ne'er do wells who come out in the dark to do whatever it is they do. And she solicits secrets in return. Outside, the police hunt down the killer who recently murdered pregnant Vicky Valbon only streets away. Inside, on the hour, Stella repeats her canned news broadcasts, marking zero progress in tracking down Vicky's killer.

There are the characters.

Stella, giving her last ever show (why?) in the small hours. She's had a difficult start in life, abandoned by her mother when she was twelve with no explanation, in a relationship with a man who pushes her boundaries, wants her to do transgressive, dangerous things - like "playing dead".

Elizabeth, Stella's mum, trying to find a place back in Stella's life and trying to be helpful to young mothers by working as a doula. (Is she trying to atone?)

Tom, that man who pushes Stella to her limits and beyond.

But most of all, there's Beech's compulsive, claustrophobic writing, piling on the pressure through the  night in which Stella remembers and tells her story and voices fears between the "reheated news", texts and messages from restless callers. During this we see snatches of both her life and of Elizabeth's, then and now. It's a moving story, often dark and gradually we learn what happened. All the way through, Stella's interrupted by calls from The Man Who Knows - who won't tell us what he knows, but who may be stalking Stella. Meanwhile, doors bang in the (empty?) studio, Stella begins to hear voices from her past and present... and one of her colleagues goes missing.

I found the way the story is told through that one long night just enthralling.  All the threads of Stella's life - her past, present and future - are brought together in one intense, pressure-cooker sequence as she cues songs, begs her audience for secrets to share and begins to put together the pieces from what she finds. (Awkward thing, asking for secrets: people may tell you them).

Beech used the idea of a character taking calls from strangers during the silent hours in Maria in the Moon - it's one with obvious dramatic potential - but in Call Me Star Girl she dials up the noir to 11 - the shadows in the studio, the lonely people out there hanging on to what Stella says, the noise that might be footsteps on the stairs... and she gives us Stella, the Star Girl herself, asking questions. Stella avoiding giving answers. Stella talking to us, as though we were sitting in an empty kitchen at 2.30 in the morning, any hope of sleep given up.

Or steering a taxi through the rainy streets.

Or a truck up the darkened motorway.

There's a fascination, I think, with those dark hours, with the people who are awake though them, and Beech exploits this to the full, serving up a dense, haunting, and deeply, deeply unsettling take on that  In the course of doing that she will tie you in emotional knots with a story that has moments of joy, fear, pity and such intense sorrow.

Secrets will be revealed, and truths come home to rest. But is Stella ready for what she'll find?

I think this is Louise Beech's best yet - which is saying something. Come April, you need to get your hands on it!

You can preorder Call Me Star Girl from your local bookshop or online from Hive Books, Blackwells, Waterstones and Amazon as well of course as other retailers.

For more information about the book see the publisher's website here.

Blogtour - Maria in the Moon by Louise Beech

Maria in the Moon
Louise Beech
Orenda, 30 September 2017
PB, 270pp

Always find out the real names...

I'm grateful to the publisher and to Anne for an advance copy of this book and for inviting me to take part in the blogtour.

I loved Beech's previous book, The Mountain in my Shoe (full disclosure - my review is quoted in this one!) and with Maria in the Moon I think she's done it again - that is, delivered an involving, acutely observed slice of life featuring characters you'll care desperately about and an emotional punch that could win a gold medal for boxing at the Olympics.

Louise Beech

This time the setting is Hull, soon after the 2007 floods. The TV cameras have moved on and people are left to rebuild their lives and their homes. Families live in hotel rooms, grotty flats, or caravans in the drive. Front gardens are piled with filthy furniture. Yet people carry on. This finely observed story deals with one life, but we always see the bigger picture; bus passengers grumbling about neighbours getting lavish new kitchen on the insurance, revellers out for a good time as Christmas approaches, the ubiquitous question "Were you flooded?"

Catherine is flooded out of her own house and volunteering for Flood Crisis, spending two or three shifts a week listening to desperate people, meantime sharing a flat with Fern, the sparky writer of the "Wholly Matrimony" column in the local paper. (Fern is far from that state herself, but her editor doesn't know). To a degree their existence seems almost cosy, despite the dripping tap, the lack of space or privacy, and Catherine's only having a sofa to sleep on). There's certainly support and solidarity from Fern when Catherine wakes from a nightmare: I enjoyed the portrayal of their friendship.

Catherine herself is a wonderfully drawn character. It's clear from the outset that she has issues, and we may suspect she's working at the helpline so can ask the questions and not have to answer them. But she's marvellously vivid and alive, coping with her ruined house, her spotty relationship with her stepmother and with - well, with whatever it is she can't remember fro when she was nine. Steaming through life in a haze of indulgence, edgy sex and swearing, she's nobody's victim, won't be pitied and has built defences around herself like the walls of Troy.

In a story like this it's clear that something is going to happen to bring those walls down, so in a sense there's no mystery here, nevertheless Beech brings a real tension to the story as we discover secrets long hidden and especially as Catherine experiences the aftermath of that.

It would be so easy to leave things after the big reveal, implying that now everything will be OK. Of course life is seldom that neat and Beech acknowledges this. In so doing she makes Catherine even more real and vivid - and tugs on the reader's heartstrings as she does. I think you'd have to be pretty lacking in empathy not to shed a tear over the ending.

Overall a delightful book with a powerful, beating emotional heart. I'm so glad I read it and I'm sure you will be too.