Jenn AshworthReseñas

Ration book number 5 - a short story about a dentist and a badger and a child.½

This sounded like an interesting idea, an epistolary (email) novella about someone researching a female star of the silent cinema who disappeared after a spectacular murder in Blackpool in 1917. But the authors very rapidly seem to lose track of what they are trying to do with the plot, and it descends into a confused mess of supernatural nonsense about Faustian pacts, werewolves, and the like.

On the plus side: it isn't very long, it has a nice cover, and the authors seem to be much better at proofreading than they are at plotting, which is rare.½

Jenn Ashworth is a hard-hitting writer with a deserved and growing reputation and recognition. Ghosted (Sceptre), is the story of Laurie, whose husband disappears one morning with no explanation and leaves her questioning everything but doing nothing. Some weeks later she reports it to the police who do little themselves other than eventually considering her a suspect. It’s a moving story of loss, trauma, and unreliable reminiscence told with empathy and dark humour. I recommend getting acquainted with Jenn Ashworth’s writing and this is a great place to start.

An excellent novel set on the north shore of Morecambe Bay in the area around Grange. The landscape around the Bay has inspired not only this author but also Andrew Michael Hurly on the south side. The surrounding farm lands and fells are pretty but not exceptional but the huge tide swept bay seems to inspire fiction rooted in mysterious folk tales. Here we have the daughter returning to the abandoned childhood house where her mother died. Memories create disturbance. Those disturbances the author personifies as shapeless voices which good be ghost, spirits or the soul of the house. In the end all turns out for the best but with a lingering doubt of events re-occuring in the future.

As hard as I tried, I just could not get into or finish this book. I was really excited to read it but got disappointed quickly- it really takes a lot for me to not finish a book.

What can I say about this story? I guess the best description is that it's the sad story of teenage friendship gone wrong in the most devastating way. How well can we really know a person? Annie convinces herself that her neighbor is in love with her. Annie...like the majority of the characters... live largely within their own heads. Following the death of a teenager, a reconstruction process is under way to work out exactly what happened. The search for the truth peels back so many layers that the reader finds themselves asking "is there a real person inside?" I believe the biggest problem I had with the book is that I just didn’t like Annie or feel much compassion for what she and the others were going through as a consequence of their own making.

Following the deaths of her parents Annette has inherited a large house on the northern shores of Morecambe Bay. Two huge sycamore trees grow in the garden, insidiously growing into the foundations and populated by starlings. The house was owned by Annette's parents and her return stirs their spirits as they narrate the story of Netty's battle with cancer and the mysterious young man who came into their lives at this time.
I really wanted to love this book but for some reason it just didn't click with me, the reviews are excellent and it is obvious that Ashworth is an evocative and powerful writer. The story just didn't engage me and I found myself reading it at a very superficial level which is not what it deserves.

Fell is beautifully written and was a pleasure to read. Jenn Ashworth creates many haunting, beautiful and vivid pictures and has a wonderful way with words. I particularly loved how the house was portrayed, the descriptions of the decaying house really brought the place to life. But, I struggled to connect to her characters. The characters were individual enough but I couldn't picture them, I couldn't relate to them or get to know them on the level that I felt was needed. They were, literally, characters on the page, they didn't have enough substance or colour to make them stand out.

The book is narrated by the ghosts of the main characters parents and although I did enjoy them taking me through their lives, I found them rather flat and emotionless at times. The distance between them and what they were watching felt huge, like they weren't a part of what they were reliving, I wanted more emotion from them. It was like they were watching someone else's lives, reliving someone else's memories, not their own.

I am left with many questions. Every page read as though it was floating on the surface of something deeper. The book doesn't tell a full story, nor does it give me enough to fill in the gaps. Who is Tim really? What exactly is this strange power he has? What happened to Annette between then and now to make her the way she is? What was the fortune teller hinting at with Annette and her gifts? Is Annette's gift part of what drew her parents back? What was it that Tim saw in Annette?

I kept reading on expecting to learn more, to have answers to these questions. I set my hopes on there being some big finale that rounded everything off in the end, but the story just kind of fizzled out.

Fell wasn't an awful read, the writing alone was worth the time invested but the story itself felt superficial. Rather than having experienced a journey along with the characters, I feel instead that I was sat on the sidelines, watching their life story through a window.

Cold Light by Jenn Ashworth is a psychological study of three teenage girls who have a history of jealousy, lies and perversion between them. These emotions eventually build into a tragedy. As events are slowly unveiled we learn the history of the friendship and how the secrets they held and the intensity of their relationship goes way beyond normal.

Told in a bleak, almost surreal manner, I had trouble getting into this book but eventually the hints the writer drops and the many questions that arose enticed me into the story. These are not likeable girls, they are mean, seem to have a sense of entitlement and no empathy to speak of. I can’t say I liked the story, but it certainly became one that was difficult to put down.

Cold Light seems to have left me with more questions than answers as I ponder the motivations of the characters. The story is told in flashbacks from 10 years in the future and in the end the strongest emotion I felt was one of sadness for the waste that their lives became by being shaped by guilt and shame. Not an easy or comfortable read but a memorable one.½

In The Friday Gospels Jenn Ashworth tells the story of a Lancashire Mormon family on the important occasion of the second son’s return from his mission in Utah. The narrative is built around the separate testimonies (or five gospels) of Jeannie, Martin, Julian, Pauline and Gary Leeke detailing events on that Friday as the hours leading to Gary’s arrival unfold. Complex webs of deceit and conflicts of loyalty are gradually revealed. There are moments both tragic and redemptive, with unforgettable characters populating the story: stuffed shirts and tormented sinners, teenagers struggling with impossible expectations, a child deemed incorruptible by virtue of her inability to understand basic concepts. It is an essay on the seductive and potentially destructive power of a communal religious heritage.
I approached The Friday Gospels as a reader with some understanding of the Mormon religion. My parents were Mormons, born and raised in Salt Lake City, and while I was never formally a member of the Church (having been born post-fall and, later, having witnessed my mother’s ex-communication) I have many memories of visits to Utah and of spending time in the homes of my Mormon cousins. Reading The Friday Gospels, I was reminded vividly of the atmosphere and mood, the essence of a Mormon orthodoxy. A particular passage comes to mind in the metaphor of the icing on the cake – a metaphor used to instruct a group of young men and women on sexual morality. It is a powerful lesson that, once taught and taken to heart by youth in the first years of sexual maturity, has the power to invoke fear and guilt and – further – places the onus of physical purity and, by extension, purity of the spirit squarely on the ‘sisters’ in the faith. A sense of entrenched patriarchy permeates the book. A woman’s fate is ‘sealed’.
In another passage, the eldest son Julian is interrogated by Church elders as one at risk of a fall. Ashworth's portrayal of Julian's meeting with Brother Lawson and Bishop Jackson conveyed the same subtle, soft spoken approach taken by the elders who fretted once over my mother's soul. I was unable to read Ashworth’s account of Julian’s discomfort and indignation without remembering that day in my mother’s life when she sat with a bishop and an elder as they attempted to bring her back into the fold. (She offered them coffee; they declined, so she lit a cigarette and poured herself a cup. A couple of days later she received the letter – cast, she was, into outer darkness.) With skill and compassion, Ashworth renders the elders’ persuasive arguments and Julian's responses – a defendant by virtue of his independence of thought, an individual deemed 'unworthy to feel the spirit' - with fascinating insight and accuracy.
The book evokes a real sense of place, particularly through the musings of Gary, who has lived for two years in Utah, returning to Lancashire and his home in Chorley with its windows like ‘little joke panes of glass’. Place is also evoked in the habits and language of the characters in the book, the things they do, the places they go. And there is something else in the book that conveys an almost constant sense of oppression: a condition of underlying poverty, both material and spiritual. The mood is fitting to the themes.
I recommend the book. One challenge an author faces is how to go about taking the reader on a journey that might involve a willing suspension of disbelief. The characters peopling this book are complex, as human beings are, but in the course of a single day an awful lot happens to them. At times I felt I was being asked to accept the implausible, but in the end the book stayed with me, the narrative something I had to mull over and consider long after coming to the last page.

Jenn Ashworth writes books that are so different to anything else. Quirky characters, and always something that's not revealed right to the end.
This follows Lola and what has obviously been the tragic death of her friend Chloe. We don't discover how tragic, and the shadows Lola has lived with until the tenth anniversary of her death and the ground-breaking ceremony for her memorial.
The uncurling of a great tale.

A dark and compelling portrayal of lives gone astray. Ashworth is a gifted writer. I was especially impressed by the way the plot unfolded. Just as we think we understand what is going on, something new is revealed. Recommended.½

Ashworth successfully elucidates the girls’ lives – especially Lola’s. They are fraught with the tensions and allure of dangerous older men, the peril of a flasher – whose crimes are escalating- on the loose, and their own semi-abusive treatment of one another. Lola’s life is further complicated by the delusions of her elderly father, hostile relationship with her mother, and a harsh mixture of guilt and defiance concerning her own actions the year Chloe died. With the mystery of the newly uncovered body in the woods, all the pieces are carefully placed for a tense read as the true nature of Chloe’s death is revealed. However the pacing is off, and the meandering plot of the novel exceeds plausibility, and proves too problematic to overcome. The transitions between past and present are frequently abrupt and confusing when overlapping each other. As interesting as the girls’ stories could have been, the sprawling narrative and numerous plot lines diffused interest in the fates of all involved.

This is why I love book groups: they draw your attention to books you might otherwise never have discovered.

What's it about?

Jenn Ashworth's debut novel, 'A kind of Intimacy', stars Annie, a lonely, obese woman who narrates her increasingly awkward attempts to build a new life and get to know her new neighbours - without revealing too much about her past.

I found the blurb intriguing and the opening lines drew me in:

"After the van had been loaded and sent on its way I took off all my clothes and kicked the sofa I was about to abandon. Not just a little kick either. I really belted it."

Annie isn't just abandoning a sofa. Gradually, through her recollection of the past and her inadvertent admissions to her neighbours, she reveals a darkly disturbing history and, more frighteningly, a deeply deluded sense of her self and her interactions with the world. From her early attempts to seduce the milkman to her unjustifiable conviction that next-door neighbour Neil is preparing to leave his sexy young girlfriend, Lucy, for her, Annie reads the world around her as she wishes it was, twisting evidence in ways that are occasionally astonishing. (Noisy sex next door? It must be Neil's way of letting Lucy down gently.)

What's it like?

The gaps between Annie's narrative and the reality the reader can perceive initially create sympathy, especially as the other characters can be distinctly unsympathetic - Lucy is cruel about Annie's weight, neighbourhood watch member Sangita is a gossip - but as time draws on, Annie's misinterpretation takes a darker turn and her deliberate obtuseness becomes horrifying.

It might sound odd to say that I enjoyed this, and perhaps I mostly mean that I enjoy thinking over the whole conceit in retrospect. While reading, I wondered how far Annie really was self-aware and conscious of the narrative she was spinning; by the end of the novel it seemed unbelievable that she could really believe what she was saying. That isn't to say that I thought the book was flawed. Actually, the ending is so effective because all the preceding events help the reader to understand that Annie's insistent lack of awareness is not pathetic or sad but dangerous.

Unusually, I felt the praise on the back cover was entirely justified. Alison Flood from The Guardian notes that 'A kind of intimacy' has been compared to 'Notes on a Scandal' by Zoë Heller, which is entirely appropriate (and another book I absolutely loved). The blurb suggests that Annie has "too much in common with the rest of us to be written off as a monster" and I suspect this is what makes both books so powerful. It is easy to build small interactions into intensely significant ones if you are feeling particularly vulnerable for whatever reason. It is more difficult to be bothered to eat well if you're persistently cooking - or, eventually, microwaving - for one. These small truths make us feel that we can understand some of Annie's world, that she is not an Evil Monster, but an ordinary person gone badly awry.

Annie's narrative voice is very engaging and easy to read; despite being chronically short of time I finished the book within a few days because it was so easy to pick up and slip back into her world. The ending is dramatic, perhaps overly so for some readers, but I felt that it worked well with the preceding material and I liked that there was a definite closure to the novel.

Final thoughts

I really enjoyed Ashworth's debut novel and will be keeping an eye out for 'A Cold Light', her second novel, which has an almost equally intriguing premise. Reading this has also made me want to re-read 'Notes on a Scandal', though this will have to wait until I have made a respectable indentation in the 'borrowed' section of my TBR pile.

Some readers have complained that Annie's malaise is too obvious, seen too quickly, and removes doubt from the reader's mind. I disagree that it should be hidden; by introducing Annie's deluded perspective early on the reader isn't wondering whether or not she can be trusted, instead they are wondering with increasing urgency what she has done (does she have a daughter? If so, where is she?) and what she might do yet. This creates a great deal more tension than simply wondering whether or not Annie can be trusted.

Ashworth has been commended for her comic gifts and there is dark humour here, but it's more shake-your-head-in-mildly-amused-disbelief than ooh-that's-funny-but-a-bit-naughty-so-I-shouldn't-laugh-at-it-really. Amusing, but not laugh-out-loud funny. This isn't intended as a criticism, simply an observation that I would market his book based on its narrative strength and dark tone rather than its comic aspect. (Besides which, I always find this kind of "comedy" deeply uncomfortable as you are being encouraged to laugh at someone who is clearly Not Quite Right.)

In short, I highly recommended 'A kind of Intimacy' if you enjoy reading unreliable narrators, novels which focus on personal relationships and / or darkly comic stories.

When deciding if this was a book I wanted to read or not, I was torn, more than I've ever been before about adding to the To Be Read pile. The description promised an ominous tale of mysterious deaths in the recent past, told ten years later from the point of view of one of the survivors. Now that I've finally completed the book I'd categorize it as a dark young adult tale.

Had I known it was going to read like a young adult novel, I probably would have passed. I have no patience for the machinations and social cliques of self-absorbed teenage girls. Perhaps that says more about me as a reader than it does about this book, but I've clearly determined this is not a genre I can make myself care about.

Our narrator, Lola, is in her mid-twenties, watching the groundbreaking ceremony for a memorial to two of her friends who died ten years ago in what was determined to be a dual suicide pact. At 14 Lola was a social outcast - from a lower-middle class family whose parents had her late in life, thus making them much older than her friends' parents. Her father is losing his sanity, becoming obsessed with various projects he takes up then abandons. Her mother is devoid of any emotion.

When new-to-the-school Chloe befriends Lola, Lola's social prospects brighten. Chloe pretty and possesses a cocksure attitude which tends to get her anything she wants. Including a 19-year old boyfriend who is obsessed with photographing Chloe in various states of undress.

Pregnancy scares, pedophilia, flashers - all the tropes of those things your mother warned you about are here. Along with a rival for Chloe's attention who soon relegates Lola to the fringes of the school's social pecking order.

In the end, the mystery wasn't much of a mystery - you'll know whose body is found, you'll figure out what happened to the two dead lovers and you won't care about any of it because the characters are so off-putting, so narcissistic, that you'll find yourself wishing the surviving characters meet the same fate.

Ok, Imagine, for a moment, that you live on a nice quiet little middle-class street policed by the local volunteer neighborhood watch. All the lawns are tidy and well-kept. The neighbors know one other, and nothing much ever happens here. And then imagine that a madwoman moves in next door.

Now switch scenarios and imagine yourself as that madwoman, and that you’ve moved into that nice little neighborhood. You’ve not only moved there, but you want to belong, you want to mingle, you want to make friends................
I can compare A Kind of Intimacy's unreliable narrator, anti-heroine Annie Fairhurst to Stephen King’s Annie Wilkes from Misery. Need I say more?

I received this book as a Goodreads ARC giveaway. This was a great book and I really enjoy it

This book was not at all what I was expecting. Laura is an adult watching the memorial for her friends who died years before. When the mayor starts to dig and then stops abruptly, only Laura knows why. It's because he found a body, and only Laura knows who it is and how they got there. The story goes back and forth between the present and the past, back to the summer where Laura's friends died. Secrets come to light and we learn the truth about the dead person buried.

I would love to say that this book blew me away, but unfortunately, it didn't. In fact, I'm not sure why I kept on reading other than I wanted to know about the body. Laura was a very unlikable character, a follower, constantly complaining and with no redeeming qualities. Her friends were even worse. They were rude, snotty, pretentious little jerks and I just didn't understand why Laura didn't tell them to screw off and be done with them. I guess that's why I didn't like her. Laura's mother was a horrible, horrible person and I wanted nothing more than to jump through the pages and strangle her myself.

Other than the rotten characters, the writing itself was not my favorite style. It seemed to drag on forever and focus on little things that ultimately didn't really matter in the end. It took forever to come to the climax, and even then I was let down. I suppose the "twist" ending might do the job for some people. but I saw it coming and was not impressed.

So sadly, this book just wasn't for me. Don't let that deter you though, perhaps I am just an anxious reader and was desperate for the story to unfold. If you like slower, meatier reads, then give this one a shot.

Underwhelming story. What felt right is the way the author wrote about the utter self-absorption of the teenagers. Not one I'll pass along to others.

A ground-breaking ceremony is taking place for a memorial to a young girl and her boyfriend, now ten years dead. Watching the television broadcast is the now grown girl's best friend, Suddenly, it all goes awry as the spade hits something it shouldn't. "You can tell from their faces that something has gone wrong. But I'm the one who knows straightaway that the mayor has found a body. And I know who it is." Thus starts Jenn Ashworth's atmospheric novel about the friendship of two fourteen year old girls, jealousy and reminiscence. Ashworth is at her best in capturing the anxiety of adolescence, the competitive nature of young girls, and striving to be more grown up than they should. If this is a time of your life which you've done your best to forget, you may wish to skip this book. If you enjoy psychological dark dramas, this might be for you.

The Short of It:

As the title suggests, the light that falls upon these characters is a harsh, unrelenting light. It seeps in where it’s not welcome and leaves its chilling aftermath behind.

The Rest of It:

It has taken me WEEKS to write this review. Not to actually write it, but to ponder WHAT I’d actually write about once I finally sat down to do it. It’s not that it was a difficult book to read. It wasn’t. It’s not that I couldn’t get into the characters, because I did. I think it had to do with the fact that when I finished it, I was like…”Hmmm. Interesting.” Then a week later, I was like…”Hmmm. It was so dark!” Then each day after that, I continued to think about it and it dawned on me, that what I thought was a book that fell into the YA category, really wasn’t that at all.

That made me ponder it some more.

There are no likable characters to speak of. No one in the book would ever be my friend. Lola is like any other fourteen-year-old in that she wants to fit in and when she hooks up with Chloe, she finds that niche, that “in” if you will. Chloe is pretty and popular and really, very into herself. She is the classic bad girl. She drinks and smokes and steals things and she gets Lola to do the same. But it’s obvious from the beginning that Lola has a lot going on in her head. Her family is dysfunctional and her dad, although too smart for his britches has some issues, as well as her mother.

After Chloe hooks up with a real loser of a guy, things begin to go downhill for Lola. She’s not Chloe’s center anymore and often takes a backseat to Chloe’s boyfriend but when something happens to Chloe and her boyfriend, the town paints a very different picture of the girl Lola knew.

Ten years later, when the town decides to build a monument in Chloe’s honor, Lola finds herself revisiting her past and what really happened that fateful night.

Cold Light is a quiet mystery that hits you over the head long after you've closed the book. It took awhile for me to digest the ending but after much thought, the ending was perfect and quite fitting given what I knew about the characters. I know that getting hit over the head does not sound like a good thing but for me, it was. It was a departure from what I expected it to be and I am always impressed when a book surprises me in some way.

Ashworth does a beautiful job of capturing just how obsessive teenage friendships can be without preaching about the dangers of mixing with the wrong crowd. It’s suspenseful and well-paced and not necessarily for the YA crowd although I can see them reading it as well.

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A cold, dark mystery with real characters. A heavy read that will keep you thinking long after you are done reading it. 3.5 stars!

Try as I might, I could not get into this book. The characters were not worth caring about, the storyline dragged on at a pace that would make a snail feel like a Kenyan. Page after page of bland dialouge. I thought at first it was because the last book I'd read (Gone Girl) was so great that my expectations were too high. But when I did finally put this book down and tried another one (a Linda Howard) I was immediately excited about reading again. I found myself laughing at marketing which says this book is "reminiscent of the works of Tana French..." I happen to have a Tana French audio book going on in my car at this time and I can assure you that they are worlds apart. Disappointing to say the least but life is too short for books that don't grab my attention.½

When Lola was 14 her best friend, Chloe, died. The authorities determined Chloe and her older boyfriend killed themselves after Chloe’s parents found out about the relationship, but Lola always knew the truth. In the decade that passed, Lola and Chloe’s other friend Emma went their separate ways while the community romanticized Chloe’s story. With the community having raised funds for a memorial, a local TV station broadcasts the groundbreaking which leads to the shocking discovery of a body. But Lola isn’t shocked as she watches on TV; she knows all the details and begins to reflect on what happened all those years ago.
Cold Light is told in both present time and Lola’s reflections of what happened when she was 14; thus, the story is partly a mystery, but primarily a story of the dynamic between three teenage girls. The mystery is by far the weaker plot. The ending, which revealed all, struck me as far-fetched and reframed my entire opinion of Lola who turned out to be quite the unreliable (or at least not very forthcoming) narrator. However, I entirely enjoyed the story of the teenagers who fought with each other and their parents, who broke the rules and sometimes suffered the consequences, and who sought love and approval in the wrong places.

This book introduces us to Lola (Laura), Chloe and Emma, three teenage girls. While there is a storyline, I found the theme to be that of the pains, fears, and struggles of growing up. The awkwardnes, the insecurites, the jelousies and obbsessions of "best friends." The fears of losing the bond of your friends or becoming and outsider, the spitefulness, the tenderness.
I enjoyed the book on the fact that anyone can identify with the emotions and turbulences of growing through those coming of age years.