Books

As our inaugural post on our new ‟books” blog here's a piece about the recent Valley Press title Grandmother divided by Monkey equals Outer Space I first posted to the creative writing and sharing platform, Hi, which I was introduced to by former Inpress Board Member Steve Dearden. I haven't forgotten my self-challenge to read and post about a book from each of the 40+ Inpress member publishers during my time here. I'm up-to-date with the reading, but have a lot of catch-up on the posting ...

Doing a six month stint at Inpress I have several challenges on my hands, not least one that boils down to numbers: with over 40 publishers in membership, there’s a lot of reading to do to become familiar with their tone and style. The ‟guilt pile” on our coffee table has been growing at an alarming rate, to protests from the tidier-minded members of the household, and I've resorted to stashing a second pile under the bed.

So when I awoke this Sunday morning to the first day of British Summer Time - with rain lashing the window and wind whipping noisily round the eaves, my response was to make a cup of tea and retreat back under the covers with the topmost book on the pile. I hadn’t encountered Nora Chassler's debut novel Miss Thing, so had no idea what to expect from Grandmother divided by Monkey equals Outer Space.