Book Review - Stonemouth by Iain Banks

Many, many years ago, when I was doing my A Level English, I had one of those rare teachers who inspire you. Back then (as now) I spent a lot of time writing stories and I used to submit them as part of my coursework whenever I could. One day, the teacher asked me if I'd ever read any Iain Banks. From the sort of (slightly weird, character based) fiction I wrote, he thought Banks would be an author I'd appreciate. He recommended I start not with the obvious choice, Banks' controversial debut The Wasp Factory, but with his latest, The Bridge, a novel with one of the most striking and memorable opening scenes I've ever read. After that, I was hooked.

I've stuck with Iain Banks ever since, and though I've not loved all his books - and I could never get into his sci-fi work as Iain M. Banks - he's remained a favourite for the last 23 years. And every now and then, he comes out with a real belter...

Stonemouth revisits many familiar Banks themes and tropes. It tells of a young man returning to his Scottish family home after leaving under a cloud some years back (similar to The Crow Road), involves some very real yet very threatening local gangsters (Dead Air) and prominently features a bridge from the opening scene on. At heart it's a mystery novel - not so much a whodunit? as a whatdidhedo? - about a romance gone wrong. Like many of Banks' stories, the plot hinges on the effects of an everyday item used to devastating effects. If Dead Air made us extra cautious about using a mobile phone while drunk, Stonemouth warns us of the danger of disposable instant cameras at weddings.

Stonemouth is a gripping, funny, emotional and scary novel - it's Iain Banks back on top form. Read it.

Coming Attractions: More Sex & Violence plus some Peculiarity

Too Much Sex & Violence #4 is heading towards completion and will hopefully be hitting the streets sometime in what we're laughably calling this "summer". To whet your appetites, here's the front and back covers... a couple of wonderful arty homages from Nige & Dave...





But that's not all... my other new comic, Department of the Peculiar, drawn by the amazing Rob Wells is also nearing completion and provisionally scheduled for release some time in August (ish). Our good friends at the Forbidden Planet Blog were kind enough to preview the first five pages yesterday... so pop over there if you want to find out more.

Not Every Book I Read Deserves A Review

Here's a few I just couldn't be bothered to write about in depth... or even get all the way through. Life is too short.

Child 44 was a gripping classic.

The Secret Speech was a disappointing, though still entertaining, sequel.

It's a good job Agent 6 was the final book in the series because I wouldn't have bought any more. I skim-read this one and still found it over-written, rambling and self-indulgent. Tom Rob Smith has let the research take over, desperate to shoehorn his hero into every significant moment in 20th Century Russian history, somehow forgetting how to plot an exciting thriller along the way.

I was a huge fan of David Guterson's previous books, Snow Falling On Cedars, Our Lady Of The Forest and East Of The Mountain... but this one left me cold. The plot itself was intriguing and the relationship between the central characters had potential. But, just like Tom Rob Smith above, Guterson kept getting off the point until I lost all interest in finding out why the narrator's old schoolmate had gone off to live in the woods (a la Thoreau) before dying and leaving our hero a fortune in his will.

Excellent character writing but a series of very loosely connected vignettes does not a novel make. I'd much rather have read the continuing adventures of Sasha, the first chapter's kleptomaniac heroine, than any of the smug, privileged bores who follow her. If Sasha returned later in the novel, I stopped caring by the time the safari went bad.


Of course, I could be wrong about any of the above. Perhaps you read them and found them far more entertaining? Feel free to disagree.

48 Hour Film Challenge - Tapped Out

As last year, some mates of mine had a crack at the Sci Fi London 48 Hour Film Challenge. They were given a title, a prop and a line of dialogue... and just 48 hours to write and shoot a short sci fi film that included all three. Here's what they came up with...



Well done, guys - best of luck with the competition!

Book Review: Q, A Love Story by Evan Mandery

What is the point of this story?
What information pertains?
The thought that life could be better
Is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains

Evan Mandery won me over immediately by opening his latest novel with the above quote from Paul Simon's 'Train In The Distance'. It's one of my favourite lyrics, one that I've often heard rattling around my brain even when I've not listened to the song in ages. It pretty much sums up the human condition - if the human condition is a general dissatisfaction with one's lot.

The high concept of Q is pretty much unbeatable. The novel begins when the unnamed narrator meets Q (Quentina Elizabeth Deveril), the love of his life. They both fall head over heels and marriage seems inevitable... until our hero is visited by a future version of himself with a grim prophecy: marry Q and both your lives will be marred by unspeakable tragedy. Initially reluctant to accept this warning, the narrator is eventually convinced that breaking off their relationship will be best for them both. And so his life continues without Q... until he's visited by a different future version of himself with a new piece of life-changing advice. Each time he follows his future self's instructions, it's not long before another one pops up to set him off in a different direction entirely.

It's an excellent premise filled with comic possibility, and the final third of the book delivers upon this premise with both humour and heartache. Unfortunately, the first half does tend to ramble as the author goes off on the occasional entirely unnecessary tangent. You may want to skip the chapters taken from the hero's attempt to write an alternate history of Sigmund Freud's life: they do follow the book's overall theme but add nothing to the story itself and reek a little too much of vanity project. Some of the meandering comedy was also a little too faux-Woody Allen for my tastes: there were times I wanted to scream at Mandery to stop trying so bloody hard to be funny. But writing humour is the trickiest of talents to master and you may find these sections hilarious. It's a very subjective business, being funny.

All that said, I'd still hugely recommend Q for it's ingenious plot and the breathtaking drive of its final hundred pages. If you're a time travel buff like me, you'll want to know how it ends.

I Am A Whinging Student (Hirst, 2012)

As part of my PGCE teacher training, I'm not just teaching... I'm also studying. For the most part, I find I'm enjoying being a student again. It's certainly better than the 9-5 drudge of office work that swallowed the last 20 years of my life. I like going to seminars. I enjoy class discussions and activities (though I can do without some of the "this is rubbish, why are we doing this, how is it relevant?" carping from my fellow students). I like getting feedback from my tutors. I just love the university atmosphere - it's a lot more relaxed than I remember. Then again, the campus in question is separate to the main uni and made up mostly of happily dull adult learners like me. Joy! I'm even enjoying getting involved with extra-curricular activities such as writing interviews for the university's marketing department and becoming class representative to give course feedback at the twice-yearly Student Panels. Nobody else wanted to do it, but I found it fascinating. Certainly more so than writing radio ads.

The only thing I don't like about being a student again is writing essays. It's not that actual essays themselves I have a problem with, it's the way the focus has shifted from the importance of content to the secondary matter (in my eyes, anyway) of referencing. When I did my original degree in the early 90s, you got an essay question, read a few books around the subject, wrote your findings up in your own words, threw in a few quotes, compiled a bibliography... and that was that. Nowadays every sentence, every idea, every bloody word has to be referenced to where you took it from, who else might have had that thought first or used those words in approximately the same order. Otherwise you're up on charges of plagiarism, your work gets referred, and you're made to stand before the Jedi Council to explain your actions before being excommunicated or burnt at the stake. And you know what's to blame for all this...?

The bloody internet, of course.

Way back in the day (yes, I'm a Soprano), when I wrote an essay, I went to the library, took out a few books (the same few books that everyone else was using) and got on with it. Nowadays I have instant access to thousands of books - not to mention all the journal articles and other students' essays that google will point you towards. But wait, there are also programmes which analyse your finished work and pick out key words and phrases to ascertain exactly where you stole every last thought... if you haven't bloody referenced it. Even if you have your own individual opinion on a subject, you better not voice it unless you can find someone else who's said it first. Sometimes I know exactly what I want to write for a specific section but I have to spend hours searching for an appropriate reference to either quote directly or paraphrase so that I can't be falsely accused of plagiarism. You wonder if stamping down on plagiarism might also be putting a stop to individual expression. We never had to worry about this before the bloody internet took over everything.

And don't even start me on which style of referencing I'm supposed to use. Oxford? No, Harvard. Ah, but which branch of Harvard...? Personally, I think I'll opt for the old Stan Lee footnote style. 'Nuff said, effendi!

Writing Is All About Self-Doubt

I had the chance to teach some Steinbeck recently, as part of my PGCE, so I ended up re-reading Of Mice And Men as research. I probably won't end up delivering the lesson I'd planned (for reasons I won't bore you with) but I thought I'd share something I discovered in the novel's introduction... it may offer a little comfort to the struggling and frustrated writers among us.

Even when financially secure, Steinbeck wrote out of a kind of liminal zone: on the one hand confident in his art, secure in his expression; while on the other doubtful of his abilities, puritanically wrestling with a sluggish will. Over and over in the journals he kept while composing his novels, he records his angst, easing the self-doubt, so it seems, in the very process of writing the revelatory words:

"It is strange how this goes on. The struggle to get started. Terrible. It always happens... I am afraid. Among other things I feel that I have put some things over. That the little success of mine is cheating. I don't seem to feel that any of it is any good. All cheating."

Writing was Steinbeck's passion and his livelihood, but it was also a perpetual challenge... even with public recognition, [Steinbeck] wrote with a considerable degree of anguished doubt about his own creativity.

On the one hand, I take comfort in that. On the other... it strikes me that even Steinbeckian success doesn't bring satisfaction. Still, self-doubt is always better than smug complacency.

By the way, did I mention that Too Much Sex & Violence #2 is out now...?

Movie Review: The Artist

Michel Hazanavicius's homage to the era of black and white silent movies has been lauded as a brave, funny and moving piece of film-making. It tells the story of George Valentin (a star-making performance from Jean Dujardin), a silent movie actor who finds himself dinosaured when the talkies start making a big noise in Hollywood. George's career is on the slide, his marriage is failing and his fortune is dwindling - but he's not without friends, notably his dog (a canine-Oscar worthy performance from "Uggie") and his former butler, Clifton (the always excellent James Cromwell). Then there's Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo, another name to watch), an up-and-coming starlet whose career follows the opposite path to George's as she becomes the first genuine star of the talkies. Will she remember the silent star who gave her big break... and will George's wounded pride allow him to accept her help?

The Artist arrives on a huge wave of hype and it's certainly unlike any other film I've seen in a long time. It took a while for my brain to adjust to watching a movie with no dialogue, but one pivotal scene where George faces up to the fact that sound is the future (and he's the past) made it all click. Although there's nothing revolutionary about the plot, the way it's told should be celebrated as a lesson to film-makers and storytellers everywhere. It certainly made me realise how lazy a lot of contemporary directors have become with regards telling (via dialogue) rather than showing (via visuals). In the bloated 3D SFX era, The Artist was a breath of fresh air... and a must-see movie for writers everywhere, particularly those working in any kind of visual media (not just film or TV - but comics too). No one's a bigger fan of well-crafted dialogue than me - but at risk of paraphrasing Ronan Keating (or Alison Krauss, to maintain some semblance of cred), sometimes you do say it best... when you say nothing at all.

2011 - Books of the Year

The Best of 2010 Countdown continues with the best books I've read this year. No attempts to categorise them into books that were published in 2010 or not... instead, a short countdown of my favourite non-fiction reads before we get onto the main event.

Click the links to read my full reviews. If you can be bothered.

My Top Five Non-Fiction Books of 2010

5. Adventures On The High Teas - Stuart Maconie

4. Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman

3. The Progressive Patriot - Billy Bragg

2. Good Morning Nantwich - Phil Jupitus

1. How I Escaped My Certain Fate - Stewart Lee

My Top Ten Fiction Books of 2011

10. World War Z - Max Brooks

9. Furnace - Muriel Gray

8. Room - Emma Donoghue

7. Started Early, Took My Dog - Kate Atkinson

6. The Hollow Man - John Dickson Carr

5. The Passage - Justin Cronin

4. Full Dark, No Stars - Stephen King

3. Seeing Stars - Simon Armitage

2. Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith

1. The Crimson Petal And The White - Michel Faber

It was a difficult list to judge this year, largely due to a couple of my favourite books suffering from huge flaws in their final acts. Justin Cronin's The Passage is prime example - in many ways, it's the most engrossing novel I've read this year... but it just doesn't know when to end. Child 44 was not so all-consuming, yet it was far more balanced and satisfying on conclusion. The top prize had to go to Michel Faber though, combining a cracking genre plot (a genre I'm usually not that interested in) with beautiful, witty and imaginative prose. The TV adaptation was fun, but not a patch on the source material.

What's the best book you read this year?

Comfort & Joy

I won't lie to you: it's been a rough year here at SOS Towers. Losing my job, crashing my car, having to watch Green Lantern, Transformers 3 and Season Of The Witch... that'll take the spring out of your step and right. I've had stress, sleepless nights and moments where I've just plain broken down and sobbed into my porridge. But no matter how miserable I've felt, there are some things which always give me comfort. This post is a tribute to those...

1. Coffee Shops.

Obviously, the coffee itself is important here, but there's also something hugely comforting about taking time out from your day to sit in a coffee shop and watch the world go by. It feels like a special treat and makes me feel sophisticated and adult: something I'm especially grateful for after sitting in an anonymous cattle queue at the Job Centre. Coffee Shop Culture gets a lot of stick, but I think it's one of the true advances in our society. When I was a student first time round, our only options were pubs and grubby cafes. The rise of coffee shops make me think there's hope for civilization after all.

2. Alex Lester on Radio 2.

I tend to sleep with headphones on, tuned to Radio 2. It helps me gets to sleep and if I wake during the night it helps me get back to sleep. It gives me something to think about and distract my mind in the wee small hours when problems always seem far worse than they might actually be. 3am is the worst time to find yourself lying away with an over-active imagination, so thank god for Alex Lester on Radio 2. An amusing, genuine and inoffensive jock who plays a good variety of music and helps keep me from despair. See also Huey Morgan, Bob Harris and Richard Allison on a weekend. And Chris Evans for making me want to switch off the radio and get up as soon as it's morning.

3. Mum & Dad

They say you appreciate your parents more as you get older. I appreciate mine more every time I see them.

4. Comics

Though I can't afford as many of them as I once did, the ones I do buy, take from the library or re-read from my rapidly dwindling collection in the attic continue to give me solace. From the wonderful, warm nostalgia buzz of rediscovering comics from my youth to the rare examples of uncynical mainstream books (thank god for Dan Slott's Amazing Spider-Man!) to all the wonderful home-made small press books I continue to discover and champion. I still love reading novels and listening to music, even watching TV... but nothing calms my mind last thing at night like a good comic.

5. Writing

It's still there. Whenever I get the chance. Not as often as I might wish, but writing has always helped me sort out my thoughts and put things in perspective. Even blogging helps, but the real peace comes from writing fiction. Hopefully I'll continue to be able to steal time to write, whatever else life throws at me, it's the only thing that keeps me sane.

What gives you comfort no matter what...?

Book Review - Dark Steps

Dark Steps is a short anthology of stories from fellow blogger and writer Martin Pond, available to download or read on old-fashioned dead trees, if you're a traditionalist like me.

The collection opens with The Waiting Room, a scary slice of future-shock spiced with sharp ideas and a chilling, utterly unexpected, denouement. It's probably my favourite story here, but that's not to detract from the delights that lie ahead.

Dream Feed will surely raise hairs on the necks of new parents everywhere as a spooky voice is heard over the baby monitor by a sleep-deprived father.

Near-Death Experience, which I've read before on Martin's blog, reminds me of M. Knight Shyamalan's Unbreakable - and there's no finer comparison in this genre.

The longest story here is The Inheritance, a clever piece of writing in which a son visits his dying police man father in hospital only to face some shocking revelations. The twist is obvious to the reader long before it hits the protagonist, but there's much worse to come. In his foreword, Martin claims it's his least favourite story in the collection, yet it lingered in my mind long after I set the book aside.

Three other stories and an extract from Martin's work-in-progress novel, Drawn To The Deep End, complete the anthology. It's an excellent collection of unexpected tales told in everyday surroundings with a vein of dark humour running just below the surface.

To find out more, visit Martin's writing blog or Pip's Pages, his original home on the web.

My New Office

For far too many years, the view out my office window looked like this...

Now I'm the Word Wrestler, I'm working from home, and the view from my office window looks like this...

That's what I call an improvement!

Not only that, I've just moved my office from the attic to the box room / 3rd bedroom. While the attic satisfied my "lonely writer in his draughty garret" fantasies, it didn't quite have the view and often felt a little isolating. My new office feels both more professional and far more inspiring... the words are already beginning to flow!

I questioned whether anyone would be interested in seeing my new office... but then I realised that if I were reading your blog, and you did a feature on the room where you write... I'd be fascinated. But unless you put your house on the market and I pretend to be a prospective buyer just for the sake of coming round for a nosy, I'm probably unlikely to ever see it. Unless you fancy responding with a post of your own...

Here's the view from the opposite side of the room. Yes, I have a lot of books. That should hardly come as a surprise. In case you're wondering, the comics are still up in the attic. Yes - that's my new Comic Room!

(If Louise is reading this, I'm joking. Really. Don't hit me. Please. Not again.)

The Word Wrestler Cometh

For anyone who's wondering what I've been up to since my redundancy, or about my plans for the future, here's the answer...

I've become the world's first official Word Wrestler! A freelance copywriter. A self-employed copywriter, proofreader and social networking expert. My business is very much in its infancy and I'm sure to make mistakes so I'd appreciate all the feedback I can get. If you have time to take a look at my copywriting website and want to offer any helpful, constructive advice then either leave a comment here (I've disabled comments on the site itself) or send me an email. It's a scary step, but also a very exciting one, and I'm determined to find my way in this brave new world.

In other news, I'll be appearing live this weekend along with Paul Rainey, Rob Wells and Steve Miller at the Comics - On The Ration panel at this year's Caption Comics Festival in Oxford. The C-OTR panel is on Sunday afternoon but I'll be there most of the weekend, with copies of PJANG for sale and free Too Much Sex & Violence postcards for anyone who wants one. If you're coming along, do pop over and introduce yourself. I'll be modelling some of the outfits from my recent What I'm Wearing Today post, so you shouldn't be able to miss me.

I Already Forgot What This Post Was Supposed To Be About

There are three floors in our house. We need a lot of room for all my books, CDs and comics... and all Louise's clothes and shoes. The problem with three floors though is that I find it very difficult carrying a thought up or down two flights of stairs. I can usually remember what I'm doing by the time I reach the middle floor, but another ten steps is more than my failing memory can manage. What did I come down into the kitchen / up into the attic for? Why am I here?

I've never had the best short term memory. Or long term memory. Or any kind of... what was I talking about? Oh, yes. It's getting worse as I gradually slither into middle age though. There's an old Terry Wogan cliche about opening the fridge door and not remembering what you came here to get... and this has become my life.

My solution to not being able to remember anything for longer than a goldfish is to write myself notes. As I type this, I can't see my desk for scraps of paper reminding me to write this week's thoughtballoons script, write a competition entry script for Dave to draw, defrost the tuna for Wednesday night's tea, paint the ceiling in my new "office" (even though I did that last week), compile this week's Top Ten, download some photos from my camera, buy some melt-in-the-middle chocolate puddings and cat biscuits, and finish off the application form for next year's Apprentice (only one of those is a lie). And as soon as those things are done, there'll be a mountain more notes to take their place.

It drives Louise insane that she can't ask me to do something without me jumping up to write it down... but if I don't write it down, it just won't get done. Even on the back of my hand there's faded biro memos reminding me to look for my old CD walkman and see if it still works (for my mum to listen to her talking books on) and check out the graphic novel section in Holmfirth library to see if there's anything worth reviewing for Comics - On The Ration (I tried this, this morning, but couldn't get near the graphic novels for kids on their school holidays - I mean, for god's sake, what do kids want with graphic novels? What is this, the 80s?). I'm getting more and more like Leonard from Memento every day.

I do contend though that, as a writer, I have more things to remember than normal people. On top of all the everyday stuff, story ideas come to me at the worst possible times and if I don't write them down I might lose the one... the breakthrough... the tipping point... the masterpiece that someone finally wants to read. But why do the best ones always come when I'm in the shower?

Too Much Sex & Violence

Too Much Sex & Violence (TMSAV) is my new comic, scheduled to debut this September. I'm very excited about it - not just because I think it's the best comic I've ever written, but also because I've managed to persuade / bribe / coax / cajole / blackmail / force at gunpoint so many fine artists (some I've never worked with before, some I've not worked with in a long, long time) into drawing it for me. The book is a continuing series set in the northern seaside town of Fathomsby, featuring an outlandish cast that includes dapper gangsters, depressed detectives, paranormal prostitutes, monster DJs, retired superheroes, psychics who know all your most sordid fantasies, nuns with very sharp teeth... lashings of sex and violence. Because these things sell comics. And because I think I can make them interesting... beyond just cheap titillation. We'll see.

To find out more, and discover the stellar array of talent that has agreed to draw this book, click here. Then ask yourself this...

Can you ever really have TOO MUCH Sex & Violence?

Started Early, Took My Dog

I've not been watching the new Case Studies TV series starring Jason Isaacs as Kate Atkinson's accidental detective Jackson Brodie... mainly because I enjoy the books so much, and couldn't imagine the most successful elements of Atkinson's writing translating well to TV. Unlike the majority of TV shows adapted from crime novels, Atkinson's stories are never about the plot. They're about character, about history, and about writing.

Take her latest, with the sublime title of Started Early, Took My Dog. There is plot here. A mystery gradually unfolds about a crime that took place many years earlier. Jackson's been hired to trace the parentage of a New Zealand woman who was adopted as a child, and his investigations lead him back to his home city of Leeds. Adoption is a recurring theme - another character, a former policewoman called Tracy, buys a child from a local prostitute to give the little girl a better future, while even Jackson becomes an adoptive parent, of sorts, when he liberates a small dog from its thuggish owner (the dog later repays Jackson by saving his life). As with all great mystery novels, there's twists and misdirection aplenty. There's also - typical of Atkinson, though anathema to many thriller writers - huge dollops of coincidence and serendipty. Yet none of this is all that important. It's all about the writing.

Atkinson writes wonderfully chatty, meandering prose that feels at times like being caught on a bus with an old woman nattering away in the seat beside you. Yet there's so much truth contained within her stories - the kind of everyday details that grant us keen insight into the characters she creates, and make the world they inhabit as real as the one outside your window. And she's given us a unique hero in Jackson Brodie. More than just a reluctant detective, in many ways he's a reluctant human being. He wanders round the country making little effort to solve the mysteries he's presented with, stumbling across clues, very occasionally connecting with someone else (but usually ending up disappointed), living out of Holiday Inns and B&Bs, getting into scrapes, eventually coming up with answers. At least now he's got a dog to keep him company...

The Sorry Entertainer

The Sorry Entertainer is a newsprint anthology of comic strips from an international group of creators, compiled by editor Simon Moreton. It includes a half-page strip called FACE FOR RADIO by me and Chev, along with many other excellent diversions.

Find out more and buy yourself a copy for just £1.20 by clicking here.

Department of the Peculiar

To celebrate the 1st Anniversary of thoughtballoons, all the contributing writers are allowed to write a 1-page script featuring a character or characters of their own invention this week.

I chose to showcase a page from the new book I'm working on with Rob Wells (to be honest, Rob is doing most of the work), Department of the Peculiar.

Pop over to thoughtballoons to read the 1-page preview now.

Room

Don't let anyone tell you different - Room is a horror story. Other reviewers may talk about the life-affirming drama of hope triumphing over despair, or of the way the author takes us by the hand and shows us our world from a perspective we've never before seen it, but despite its happy ending and warmer second half, the sensation that stuck with me was of the overwhelming horror and sadness of the opening scenario.

Room tells of Jack, a young boy who was born and has lived the first five years of his life locked in a (slightly more hi-tech than most) garden shed. Jack's mother was kidnapped long before he was born and has been held prisoner for years by a sadistic control-freak rapist. The young woman does everything she can to protect her son from the truth of his situation; the boy accepts his lot because Room is the only life he's ever known. It's the battery chicken argument applied to a human child, and the infinite sadness of Jack's story comes from what he doesn't know, and from how happy he manages to be despite the hand fate's dealt him.

That's the first half, and many authors would have kept the whole novel here. Emma Donoghue instead chooses to move the story on, turning Jack's world on its head and allowing his unique perspective to experience something of the world beyond Room. This is mostly a success, though there are times in the final chapter when the novel veers a little too much into cutesy "kids say the funniest things" territory before a final creepy coda brings everything full circle for a satisfyingly shiversome resolution.

Room is not a lengthy novel, but it is powerful. The first half in particular will stay with me for a long time as one of the saddest pieces of writing I've ever read. It's disturbing without being graphic, and Donoghue harnesses the power of the reader's imagination to devastating effect. She's not afraid to ask some uncomfortable questions along the way and refuses to paint her protagonists all white, despite the horrors they endure. Room will make you think, it'll make you shudder, it'll make you smile.

The Apple

Just before the recent TV adaptation aired, I reviewed Michel Faber's excellent novel The Crimson Petal And The White and predicted...

"For all its excellent cast (including the always watchable Chris O'Dowd, Richard E. Grant and - yay! - Scully), sparkling script, grubby period detail, kinky costume drama romping and acres of naked flesh and naughtiness... it's not a patch on the novel."

Well, I couldn't have been more right. As enjoyable as the TV version may have been, I still walked away unsatisfied. The pictures are always better inside your head.

Thankfully, that's when I discovered The Apple, a short collection of stories which return us to the world of The Crimson Petal, offering tantalising glimpses into the past and future of our favourite character's. So we learn how Sugar spent Christmas Day while she was still living in Mrs. Castaway's whorehouse, discover how a common housefly destroys Bodley's libido, and find out how young Sophie grows up to become a champion of women's rights. And while William Rackham grows old and bitter, Clara, his former maid takes to the street to survive and ends up involved in a darkly comic dalliance with The Rat Man, who insists she let one fingernail grow without being cut or chewed...

Imagination, revelation, wit, warmth and sparkling prose. If you enjoyed the novel, or even the TV adap, I'd recommend you track down a copy of The Apple.