Kathleen Jowitt

The sequel to 'Speak Its Name', this book finds Colette and Lydia a few years past graduation, Colette struggling on with her PhD, and Lydia working for the council while applying for ordination.

It feels very honest and raw, with our heroes trying to work out what they want to do with their lives, and what they will sacrifice for that.

I felt the ending was a bit sudden and glum though. It's nice that they've got each other, and they've got their faith, and they can stare at the infinite possibilities of what comes next, whether that's marriage, ordination, a PhD, or something completely different, but I wanted the neat tidy happy ending for them! Maybe the whole point of this book is that you don't always get that.… (mehr)

A Spoke in the Wheel is a lovely contemporary novel following the lives of a former cyclist.

Ben, our former cyclist who had to quit the sport due to a doping scandal, moves in with Vicky and Polly. All three love cycling to various degrees, and that's what brings them together. We watch these characters grow and move through life as Ben finds his solace outside of the cycling world. Polly has been ill for a while and is in a wheelchair, and is working hard to try to find her place in the world now that her dreams have changed. Vicky also loves cycling and is in a club but is also a workaholic.

The biggest thing about this book was the diversity. I liked seeing members of the LGBT community and a woman in a wheelchair. These two topics weren't shown as something mind blowing, it was just normal. This whole book felt like a coming of age and finding yourself story. It was quite lovely and simple to read. We just followed their lives.

If you like slice of life books, then this book is for you. It's a wonderfully written story just following the lives of our main characters. We watch them grow, change and react to the world around them. It was the kind of "simple" read I needed - it didn't have a complicated plot, it was easy to read and it wasn't dramatic. It's just lovely.

Overall, I'm impressed. Kathleen Jowitt has a great writing style and made Ben's voice very readable.

Four out of five stars.

Thank you to Kathleen Jowitt who provided me a copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.… (mehr)

This is a sequel to Speak Its Name, in which evangelical Christian Lydia, a second-year university student and dutiful hall monitor for the fundamentalist Christian Fellowship has to face up to the secret she tries to hide from herself (and possibly God): that she is a lesbian. Falling for Colette, a bi-sexual Methodist student, who is open and certain of her identity and her Christianity, finally gives Lydia the courage to come out – and her public announcement is glorious.

Now, three years later, Colette is working on her PhD while Lydia supports her with a paid job at the local council. Speak Its Name was from the point of view of Lydia; this is Colette’s story and very different in feel as she’s an introvert to Lydia’s extrovert. In a way their roles are reversed, Lydia being certain of who she is and wants to be, and Colette feeling rather lost, even though she doesn’t say so (in a parallel Lydia’s original journey, I realised). Lydia has found a gay-friendly church and is very active in it, feeling called to be become a vicar despite the Church of England’s ban on same-sex marriages and restrictions on candidates. I felt for Colette, dealing with a difficult and mostly absent PhD supervisor, knowing that if Lydia is accepted for training, Colette’s life will be hugely different, difficult, and in some ways necessarily hidden and a lie because of church politics.

Despite not knowing the world and culture they move in that well, I was totally engaged in Colette and Lydia, their lives in ‘the real world’, their friends (Peter makes a reappearance!), and was sorry to get to the end and say goodbye. All the characters are so well drawn and, yes, real, that I felt very involved in their lives and sorry to leave. I hope there will be a sequel.… (mehr)

I really really enjoyed this. A lot of the reasons are probably more to do with me than the book - it was a huge nostalgia kick that reproduced so many echos of my undergraduate years. The weirdly People's Front of Judea nature of the Christian Unions. The student politics of hugely pointed motions and counter motions. Even the ceilidh dances!

It is the story of evangelical Christian Lydia, discovering that she can be gay and Christian. Her love interest is a bisexual Methodist (yay, no bisexual invisibility in this queer narrative!) and although you spend a lot of the book going 'oh, Lydia, stop treating this lovely lovely person like a dirty secret!', the ending is so full of warm fuzzies and glorious denouncements. Total fix it fic.

Interesting paired with Undivided, as an example of how real life and fiction are very similar, but not the same...… (mehr)