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Here’s another review of my novel The Eloquence of Desire

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George is obsessed with the woman he has been having an affair with, but when her father, who is also George’s boss, gets wind of the situation he sends George and his wife off to do company business in Malaya. The couple opt to send their daughter Susan to boarding school. George’s wife, Dorothy is a woman of her time, the 1950’s required that a woman kept her mouth shut, even when she knew her husband was being unfaithful. As time passes, Dorothy begins to slip into her own world and George, thought still obsessing over Emily, moves on to a new lover. Susan, meanwhile, is having problems of her own, she begins to hurt herself out of fear and frustration about her parents unhappy marriage.

While the characters in this book were a little too self obsessed to generate real sympathy, I believe that that may have been the…

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A good review of my book. Thanks to http://carolesbooks.blogspot.co.uk

Saturday, 16 February 2013Book Review: THE ELOQUENCE OF DESIRE BY AMANDA SINGTON-WILLIAMS
Genre: Fiction
Published: 2010 by Sparkling Books
Source: Author

About the Book:

Set in the 1950s, The Eloquence of Desire explores the conflicts in family relationships caused by obsessive love, the lost innocence of childhood and the terror of the Communist insurgency in Malaya.
Richly descriptive and well-researched, the story told by Amanda Sington-Williams unfolds as George is posted to the tropics in punishment for an affair with the daughter of his boss. His wife, Dorothy, constrained by social norms, begrudgingly accompanies him while their twelve year old daughter Susan is packed off to boarding school.
Desire and fantasy mix with furtive visits, lies and despair to turn the family inside out.

We first meet George, travelling home on the tube, after his meeting with his boss where he learns of his ‘promotion’ to Malaya. Both he and his wife know it’s anything but a promotion.
His wife Dorothy feels powerless to do anything but go with him as she feared being frowned upon and shunned by other people if she divorced George. “The alternative to divorce, thought Dorothy, was to grit her teeth and depart for Malaya.”
She hates Malaya and they are both bored, Dorothy starts to fantasise about having an affair and their relationship is tested by other people and the frightening Communist threat to their lives.
Each chapter is written from a different person’s perspective and I thought this gave an added dimension to the story. The chapters also moved the story along so I was made to really think about what must have happened as the author quite often just gave clues and it was left to me to work it out, most of the time this worked okay.
Overall, I did like this style of writing, it flowed very easily. The descriptions of Malaya and the people seemed real and believable and I could easily picture them.
I enjoyed this story and would happily read another book by Amanda Sington-Williams

Saturday, 16 February 2013Book Review: THE ELOQUENCE OF DESIRE BY AMANDA SINGTON-WILLIAMS
Genre: Fiction
Published: 2010 by Sparkling Books
Source: Author

About the Book:

Set in the 1950s, The Eloquence of Desire explores the conflicts in family relationships caused by obsessive love, the lost innocence of childhood and the terror of the Communist insurgency in Malaya.
Richly descriptive and well-researched, the story told by Amanda Sington-Williams unfolds as George is posted to the tropics in punishment for an affair with the daughter of his boss. His wife, Dorothy, constrained by social norms, begrudgingly accompanies him while their twelve year old daughter Susan is packed off to boarding school.
Desire and fantasy mix with furtive visits, lies and despair to turn the family inside out.

We first meet George, travelling home on the tube, after his meeting with his boss where he learns of his ‘promotion’ to Malaya. Both he and his wife know it’s anything but a promotion.
His wife Dorothy feels powerless to do anything but go with him as she feared being frowned upon and shunned by other people if she divorced George. “The alternative to divorce, thought Dorothy, was to grit her teeth and depart for Malaya.”
She hates Malaya and they are both bored, Dorothy starts to fantasise about having an affair and their relationship is tested by other people and the frightening Communist threat to their lives.
Each chapter is written from a different person’s perspective and I thought this gave an added dimension to the story. The chapters also moved the story along so I was made to really think about what must have happened as the author quite often just gave clues and it was left to me to work it out, most of the time this worked okay.
Overall, I did like this style of writing, it flowed very easily. The descriptions of Malaya and the people seemed real and believable and I could easily picture them.
I enjoyed this story and would happily read another book by Amanda Sington-Williams

Story Accepted for inclusion in an Anthology

I have just heard that my short story, A Mother’s Love’ has been selected for inclusion in an anthology DARK BARD published by Indigo Mosaic. I wrote this a few months ago and had forgotten I’d submitted it! A story based on a woman’s journey to visit her son in prison

Short story selected for inclusion in an antholology

Good news!
I’ve just heard that my short story, ‘A Mother’s Love’ has been seleceted for inclusion in an anthology, DARK BARD, published by Indigo Mosaic. A story set around a mother’s journey to visit her son in prison

Ether Books Interview

Amanda Sington-Williams grew up in Cambridge and Liverpool, leaving school at 16. She has lived in Japan, Spain and Australia and has had a variety of jobs including teacher of English, bar work, film extra and model. She worked with homeless people for many years, was a co-ordinator for domestic violence policy for a local authority and managed a community centre in north London.

Her poetry has been read out on BBC radio. Many of her short stories have been selected for readings or published in magazines and anthologies. Her first novel The Eloquence of Desire was published in 2010.

Amanda has an MA in Creative Writing and Authorship from Sussex University. She teaches Novel Writing at The Hanover Centre in Brighton, is a freelancee writer and lives in Brighton with the artist, David Williams. Find out more on her website.

What attracts you to short fiction as a discipline?

I like the idea of writing about one incident that happened to a character during their life. Writing a short story gives me breathing space from the intensity of novel writing.

You have nine stories on the Ether app. What do you think about our combination of mobile phones and short content?

Mobile phones are perfect for short content. No need to carry laptops or books.

Who would you invite to a literary dinner party? (characters, writers – anyone!)

A literary dinner party? All the authors on my bookshelf, but logistically impossible so I’d invite Rose Tremain, Aminatta Forna, Miss Haversham to see what she’s been up to during last 100 years, Chekhov,Peter Carey, Fay Weldon and I think Bill Bryson to keep me laughing all evening.

As a published novelist, do you see any fundamental difference between the skills required for writing long fiction and short fiction?

I’d say that you need to have an obsessional streak to write a novel. Although a short story can take a while to write, you don’t have to attack it every day.

How has your work within the community, including with homeless people and victims of domestic violence, influenced your writing?

There’s more influence in my novels than short stories, but my work in that field definitely plays a part in my novel plots or characterisations.

What does the immediate future hold for you?

I’m working on a novel and will eventually get back to a short story I’ve nearly finished. Then there’s the teaching and mentoring.

Spanish Diet – a poem

Yesterday I over-ate,
Paella. Cooked in stock of Spanish origin.
Crisp green peppers chopped,
tomatoes softened.
Washed down with fruit; fermented,
from fine French roots.
Today I must suffer.
A punishment most severe.
Nil by mouth.
Stomach in full time siesta mode.
Café espresso on tap
to deaden
the lurking hunger pains.
Along the Barcelona avenidas.
Plane trees thick with pollen.
Passing panadarias,
bread sticks, golden
plaited loaves
fresh from the oven.
A baker opens his door; beckons.
Down to the port,
nets brimming with silver.
Tipped onto shiny decks.
Sailors in bars, knocking back brandy.
Tasting miniature fried fish
heaped onto porcelain plates.
Eating ‘till their bellies are bursting.
Into the covered market
See how far I’ll go.
Ancient salamis, with musky smell.
Catches at my throat.
Hues of brown, thickened pink, and spotted red
Swollen; frustrated longings
swinging in the breeze.
Circular cheeses split open.
Unblushing, they reveal the flesh beneath their coats,
the gentleness of churned milk,
tangy orange and creamy white.
I’m intoxicated, I’m being driven mad!
A stall of olives.
Soaked in oil and garlic
Stuffed with pimentos, coated with herbs,
green ones, pitted, or small black ones
not long picked.
Shoveled into bags.

Take, take, the man offers me a spoon.
Well just one. Just one black one.
To stem the rumbles;
to break my diet of the day.

I wrote this many years ago…. (read out on BBC radio)

This isn’t about writing, this is about TANGO

Last night I went to my first tango class. First the teacher had us stamping to the music, then walking forwards, backwards and sideways in the tango embrace. I discovered that tango is really a kind of walking embrace. I danced the tango for two hours and experienced maybe for five minutes that heightened sensation of the tango meditative state which is talked about and yearned for and which I’ve heard is addictive. Well I am hooked! I’ll be dancing the tango every week from now on…

Bank holiday – what holiday?

No holiday for me. I’ve been chained to my pc all day and writing, writing writing. Not for me queues of traffic on the M25. Not for me walking along Brighton sea front in the rain, nor shopping in packed to the gills streets. Oh no, for me it’s a writing day and I’ll party some other time when the block sets in.

Aaagh, still not writing. I say blame the builders.

Our new windows look amazing and the builders have gone leaving behind enough debris and dust to give a home to a family of dust termites if there are such creatures. Fantastic windows but I’m no further with my writing…

Picking up the lingo

There is one compensation to having builders rip your house apart. Apart from what I hope will be a brilliant job when all’s finished! Snatched conversations, builder’s lingo – all fodder for writing – have no idea what, but there must be something there…surely?