Book Review: The Mill by Mark West

The Mill is, in essence, a story about grief.  Michael, the main character, has recently lost his wife and is understandably struggling to come to terms with a new way of life without her.  In this raw emotional state he is persuaded to join a support group of other widows and widowers.

This aspect of the book is straightforward enough.  The story is convincing and the writing is clear and descriptive without being gushy, which made it stand out from other, less subtle books I’ve read before which deal with pain.  It is an emotional tale, but one in which you sympathise with the characters without feeling guilt-tripped into pity.

However, there is more to this novella of just 76 pages.  Michael develops a recurring dream in which he hears his wife’s voice in a woodland clearing; he is sure he recognises the place but he cannot quite identify it.  He is unsettled by the dream, but is even more disturbed to find that he is not the only one to have dreamt of that same clearing…

Eventually he realises that the clearing is in fact somewhere he played as a child, close to a deserted house known as The Mill.  Why is he, and why are the others who have had the same dream, being drawn to The Mill?  What really happened there?

The Mill is an easy afternoon’s read, being so short.  I have to admit though that I would have preferred to find it as part of a collection of short stories, rather than a stand-alone book.  The conclusion I had suspected was in fact the correct one, but I still felt surprised because it seemed better suited to a short story than a novel.

I ended the book feeling a little disappointed, but only because I was left wanting more.  Perhaps it seemed shorter than it actually was because I’m a fast reader, I don’t know.  I thought that more could have been made of the ghost story – not possible in the space available, but maybe in a hypothetical extended version.

I did like West’s writing style, however and having found out that The Mill was previously published as part of an anthology called We Fade To Grey, I might consider buying this collection of his stories at some point.

You can find out more about The Mill here.

Book Review: Under The Dome by Stephen King

If I were ever to be given the opportunity to meet and interview just one contemporary author, it would probably be Stephen King.  His writing output and his creative mind are incredibly inspiring, and I’ve read and become caught up in many of his novels.  I’m always struck by the way he manages to avoid clichés and instead crafts inventively apt metaphors and similes time and time again.

Under The Dome is epic.  Just in terms of size, it’s nearly 900 pages long.  I picked up a paperback copy in a charity shop for 50p (an absolute bargain for such a monster!) but I’d recommend getting it in eBook form if you can as it’s pretty heavy.

It’s also epic in terms of scale.  The novel tells the story of a town suddenly trapped under a mysterious invisible force field, nicknamed The Dome.  In true King style, it doesn’t take long for law and order to start to disintegrate and for the dark sides of ordinary people to start to show.  The ever-increasing body count keeps you wondering who will be next to drop; King has no compunction about encouraging you to become attached to a character before brutally killing him or her off.  No-one is safe from the writer’s axe.

Book review: Not So Stupid! by Malorie Blackman

“The Devil seethed with fury; to be summoned in this way was galling but he had no choice.  The Book of Old had been found and the invocation spell had been executed correctly.

‘Your wish?’ he roared.

Mrs Engell, who stood before him, did not flinch.  The sight and sound and smell of the Devil was nothing compared to what she had been through in the last twenty-three years of marriage …”

(From ‘Detail’)

As a child and then as a teenager I read a lot of books by Malorie Blackman and enjoyed them all.  Her stories are exciting, her characters are genuine, and I always felt that her writing voice was speaking to me as to another adult, rather than talking down to a child.

This collection of short stories is one which will never leave my book shelf.  I’ve re-read them many times and they never get dull.  The first story – ‘Skin Tones’ – begins as an imagining of life after death in a sort of hate-filled Purgatory, and the second –‘Dad, Can I Come Home?’ – is set at the end of a futuristic outer-space war, so you quickly become accustomed to expecting the unexpected and opening your mind to the increasingly inventive stories thrown your way.