Manchester – DaneCobain.com

Title: Mill Girl

Author: Sue Reid

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 224

Rating: 3.5/5

I read this book because it came with a whole bunch of others that I bought as a job lot on eBay. It stood out because it’s part of a Scholastic line that focusses on historical fiction, and it’s also pretty cool because it takes the form of a diary.

We’ve got a young female protagonist living in Victorian Manchester and who works in a Mill, and so you know going in that she’s going to have a pretty tough life. At the same time, the book’s clearly aimed at younger readers and so there’s nothing here that’s so intense that it would stop a parent from reading it to their kids.

But to be honest, the point here is more to educate kids about what it was like back in the day, and I think it does a pretty good job of that. Even though it’s written the way it is, in an episodic format based on diary entries, the author actually manages to do an impressive job of worldbuilding, and so it’s easy to feel as though you can smell the city.

Plus I’m originally from the Midlands, which makes me an honourary northerner. I was always going to like it. A nice find!

Learn more about Mill Girl.

Adrian Baldwin – Barnacle Brat | Review

Title: Barnacle Brat

Author: Adrian Baldwin

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 406

Rating: 9/10

Adrian Baldwin – Barnacle Brat

I feel like there should be a disclaimer here because this book was sent to me, but it wasn’t for review purposes – it was a gift, a Secret Santa present from the author himself. Not so secret, then.

Still, I’m far from ungrateful – it turned out to be a cracking read, a well-written book from a guy who’s got a history of writing for the screen. Barnacle Brat is Baldwin’s first novel, a “dark comedy for grown-ups” with a seriously interesting story-line and more twists than you can shake a stick at.

I won’t go into too much detail when it comes to the plot, but I will tell you that it follows a young man called Leon who sees a lot of weird stuff that no-one else can see, including an angry clown with a baseball bat who seems to be out to get him. His visions get more and more disturbing, and along the way you’re treated to a rollercoaster ride through his bizarre but endearing psyche.

Adrian Baldwin

Leon’s on a mission to move away from Manchester to Wales to settle down and get some writing done, a mission which I suspect the writer bases on reality – Baldwin made the same journey himself, and here he really is writing about what he knows, although he claims that he never had an imaginary friend.

Personally, I thought that the book was a real barnstormer, something you could read again and again, discovering extra layers to the story every time – I think that, in part, that’s because there are so many twists that your perspective on Leon changes over time, and you’re almost a different reader at the end of the book than you were at the start. It’s pretty rare for an author to achieve that.

Overall, this is a cracker of a novel, an impressive debut by a man who clearly knows his way around a story – it’s recommended reading for pretty much anyone, but especially for people who like the weird and surreal or for people with a great sense of humour. If you’re afraid of clowns, though, then I suggest you try something else – apart from the fact that Pogo the clown sounds absolutely terrifying, there’s also a massive picture of him on the cover. You wouldn’t want to have nightmares now, would you?