All the Good Things – Clare Fisher

Contemporary Fiction
4*s

Bethany Mitchell is in prison for doing a ‘bad thing’, what that is isn’t revealed until close to the end of the book. Erika, Beth’s counsellor in prison asks her to record the good things in an attempt to get her to ultimately confront what she has done.

I started All the Good Things with an open-mind; what I didn’t expect was how hard the experience hit me.
Bethany is just twenty-one but her life was already an exercise in surviving from her earliest memories. And this is exactly what we learn as her good things are lessons she’s learnt, or people she’s bonded with as she makes her uncertain way through the care system. This isn’t a straightforward account of misery though as Bethany has experiences that I’m sure many of us can relate to from her first job at the Odeon, and those that many of us have been lucky enough to avoid such as being removed from her first foster home where she formed a bond with her foster-father Paul over her love of stories, however outlandish.

One of the things that is so compelling is that this girl who obviously has difficulty, however justified, in personal relationships is utterly realistic. She loves stories, she likes excitement and she lives in the moment. Beth is intelligent and troubled and with each episode of her life I wanted to step in and do something, quite what I wasn’t sure, but to let such a life travel in such a wayward manner was very much like watching a slow motioned car crash, ‘the bad thing’ or some other ‘bad thing’ felt the inevitable outcome.

The construction of the novel which has us simultaneously reaching back pretty much chronologically, through the episodes in Bethany’s life, as a child at school, with her boyfriends, leaving care and moving into her first flat and onto a relationship where she felt like she’d reached adulthood. We also see her growing in confidence as she is helped by Erika to make sense of her past and to hopefully work towards making a better future.

The book is almost a textbook lesson on life on one level that doing a bad thing does not make someone a bad person, on another when life is full of unhappy events, even if you have some good moments that can go on the list then sometimes one event leads to another and then to another until they become overwhelming.

Some items on Bethany’s list:

Friends you can be weird with.

How cats find the sun to lie in even on a cloudy day.

Reading books which make me laugh and books which make me cry and books which make me feel a bit more OK about who and where and what I am.

Ultimately Clare Fisher has hit the holy grail in writing about such a sensitive subject, not only making us care about her mixed-up protagonist from a less than easy starting point but doing so without explicitly excusing any of her behaviour. Only the hardest of hearts could read this story without feeling sympathy for more than one of the characters inside the covers.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to Penguin who kindly sent me a copy of All The Good Things ahead of publication on 1 June 2017.

First Published UK: 1 June 2017
Publisher: Penguin
No of Pages: 240
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Amazon UK
Amazon US

This Week in Books (May 24)

Hosted by Lipsy Lost & Found my Wednesday post gives you a taste of what I am reading this week. A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words

My current read is All The Good Things by Clare Fisher which will be published on 1 June 2017 by Penguin.

Blurb

Twenty-one year old Beth is in prison. The thing she did is so bad she doesn’t deserve ever to feel good again.
But her counsellor, Erika, won’t give up on her. She asks Beth to make a list of all the good things in her life.

So Beth starts to write down her story, from sharing silences with Foster Dad No. 1, to flirting in the Odeon on Orange Wednesdays, to the very first time she sniffed her baby’s head.

But at the end of her story, Beth must confront the bad thing.

What is the truth hiding behind her crime? And does anyone – even a 100% bad person – deserve a chance to be good? Amazon

I have recently finished In Deep Water which is the second in the Cathy Connolly series set in Dublin by Sam Blake. Little BonesA real thriller of a read, it was great to catch up with Cathy Connolly after her first outing in

Blurb

Good intentions can be deadly . . .

Cat Connolly is back at work. Struggling to adjust to the physical and mental scars, her workload once again becomes personal when her best friend Sarah Jane, daughter of a Pulitzer-winning American journalist, goes missing.
Her father is uncontactable, but her mother reports that he’d believed Sarah Jane was investigating something dangerous – yet the only records Cathy can find suggest that Sarah Jane was just involved in a seemingly innocent children’s project. Sarah Jane was last seen leaving her workplace – a popular Dublin restaurant – but seems not to have made it home. And then a body turns up, and Cathy fears they have failed to save her friend.

But when it transpires that the dead woman is not Sarah Jane, she realises that this case is only just getting started . . . In the world of missing persons, every second counts, but with the clock ticking can Cathy find Sarah Jane before it’s too late? NetGalley

Next I plan to read Greatest Hits by Laura Barnett who wrote one of my favourite reads of last year, The Versions of Us. Greatest Hits will be published on 15 June 2017 by Orion.

Blurb

One day. Sixteen songs. The soundtrack of a lifetime…

Alone in her studio, Cass Wheeler is taking a journey back into her past. After a silence of ten years, the singer-songwriter is picking the sixteen tracks that have defined her – sixteen key moments in her life – for a uniquely personal Greatest Hits album.

In the course of this one day, both ordinary and extraordinary, the story of Cass’s life emerges – a story of highs and lows, of music, friendship and ambition, of great love and great loss. But what prompted her to retreat all those years ago, and is there a way for her to make peace with her past?

Daughter. Mother. Singer. Lover. What are the memories that mean the most? NetGalley

So what are you reading this week? Have you read any of these choices? Do you want to?

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph (May 9)

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening. Feel free to grab the banner and play along.

My opener this week comes from All The Good Things by Clare Fisher which will be published in the UK on 1 June 2017.

Blurb

Twenty-one year old Beth is in prison. The thing she did is so bad she doesn’t deserve ever to feel good again.
But her counsellor, Erika, won’t give up on her. She asks Beth to make a list of all the good things in her life. So Beth starts to write down her story, from sharing silences with Foster Dad No. 1, to flirting in the Odeon on Orange Wednesdays, to the very first time she sniffed her baby’s head.

But at the end of her story, Beth must confront the bad thing.

What is the truth hiding behind her crime? And does anyone – even a 100% bad person – deserve a chance to be good? Amazon

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph ~ Intro

1. Smelling a baby’s head right into your heart

Of all the good things that have ever been in me, the first and best is you. Every single part of you, from your stroke-able earlobes to the hope curled up in your toes. Remember that. Remember it when the dickheads say you’re bad a so-what thing. Remember it when you’re convinced the good things are jammed behind other people’s smiles. Remember it is the hardest when you feel like no thing at all.

What do you think? Would you keep reading?