Latitude 2021

Bombay Bicycle Club on the Obelisk Stage

I arrived at Henham Park freshly double jabbed, clutching my negative lateral flow test result, a pack of FFP2 masks, and with a fair amount of nervousness about being in large crowds again. I’d book my ticket months ago with the belief that Covid rates would be low - they were last summer without a vaccine so it seemed logical that there’d be less to worry about this time round. In reality, rates were soaring and it felt foolhardy to be throwing myself into the fray. I needn’t have worried however, the crowds were considerate, it never felt unsafe, and the requirement to re-test on the Saturday morning provided some reassurance.

Walking through the festival site on Thursday evening, already bustling with activity, I felt the sheer joy of once again being surrounded by live performance and people who had missed it every bit as much. Everybody seemed to be getting into the spirit of the event immediately, and performers repeatedly commented throughout the weekend how amazing and surreal it felt being back onstage once more.

The Vaccines performing on the BBC Sounds Stage

Latitude is so much more than its music, with a brilliant comedy line-up, talks, dance and yoga classes, craft workshops, and even a full moon ritual ceremony. There were sign language interpreters at many of the events which was a welcome sight. I was struck by the broad sweep of ages in the audience, from tiny babies to grandparents and everyone in between. It was a chilled, friendly festival with everyone enjoying themselves in their own way without bothering others.

Late night entertainment in the Trailer Park

Some highlights for me were learning various dances through the decades, Katherine Ryan on the Women’s Prize for Fiction podcast, a surprisingly emotional event, Sophie Duker on the comedy stage, the surprise appearance of The Vaccines, and Kaiser Chiefs on the Obelisk stage. There were also plenty of brilliant new (to me) musicians, poets, and comedians, and I came back with a long list of performers to look up and support. Every night also offered some cheesy disco tunes to dance the night away to after the headliners had left the stage.

All in all, a fun, varied weekend which allowed for an escape from the grim realities of the outside world. It wasn’t entirely free from challenges, however, with a number of artists having to pull out last minute because of positive test results or the need to isolate. It was nonetheless a great coming together of people passionate about the arts having a blast and losing themselves in the music under a mercifully clear sky. Festival Republic succeeded in putting on a brilliant event despite all the uncertainty leading up to it.

Such A Fun Age, Kiley Reid

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The Chamberlains have recently moved to Philadelphia. Alix runs a successful blog which began with her writing letters to companies asking for free products and which has morphed into a pseudo-feminist career and a book deal. Her husband Peter is a news anchor and instigated the move away from New York City. Alix maintains the illusion that she  still lives there across her social media channels. With a lively three year old and a new baby to look after they hire Emira to take care of the children so Alix can make progress with her book, despite the fact her drive seems to have evaporated since the move. Emira is in her mid-twenties and works part-time in an office when not taking care of Briar. She enjoys babysitting, knows she’s good at it, but also feels the pressure of her friends’ lives outwardly progressing quicker than hers, and the need to find a more stable job with perks like health insurance.

One night, while Emira is at a friend’s party, Alix phones to ask her to take Briar for a few hours, there’s been an incident and they’d rather their daughter wasn’t there when the police arrive. The catalyst for the incident was a casually racist comment Peter had made on-air that day. Alix is already worried that Emira might have seen it, but what follows will send her spiralling into an obsession to show how different she is from other privileged white women in a way that is deeply uncomfortable and inappropriate.

While out with Briar in an upmarket supermarket Emira is accused of having kidnapped her, the altercation only being resolved when Peter arrives to clarify the situation. Another customer, Kelley, films the incident and encourages Emira to make it public, the complete opposite of what she wants. His concern at first might seem genuine albeit a bit pushy, but it soon becomes clear that his preoccupation with showing how woke he is is actually just as toxic. The event that night is the most overt incident of racism in the novel but the book is littered with micro aggressions, unconscious bias, and the privilege of people who believe they’re acting with the best of intentions. It is at times uncomfortable reading and there are many times where you wish the characters would take a step back and realise the consequences and realities of their actions. 

Emira is a strong, likeable character. She’s defensive of her privacy, avoiding social media. The mid-twenties pressure to feel like you’ve got everything figured out is relatable, as are the close friendships she has that are more like family. You want the other characters to stop trying to mould her into their idea of success. In the latter part of the book she contemplates her relationship with Briar and the aspects of it that she finds fulfilling and satisfying. She’s also torn between hoping that she grows into a self-sufficient adult and the dread of knowing she’d likely end up paying someone for the emotional labour and the cycle of privilege would continue. Emira cares a lot for Briar, and although she knows she’s being paid to love someone else’s child for them, she cares about that child enough to make it difficult to walk away. When Alix starts her campaign to get to know her she finds it uncomfortable and wonders at the privilege Alix doesn’t seem to realise she has. Emira sees that Alix can be a good mother so believes it to be a choice when she’s not.

Alix is a conflicting character. Early in the book she’s almost sympathetic - lacking confidence in herself and her blog, struggling to adjust to the family’s new life away from her support network and the lifestyle that makes her feel as if she is someone. As the novel progresses however, we see how blind she is to her own actions, how unhealthy her obsession with hiding her privilege is. When her connection to Kelley first crops up it claws back a bit of sympathy, but there’s two sides to every story and it’s not always clear whose version you should believe. Kelley is something of an enigma from the start. Overly confident and blinkered in his views, his cocky attitude twinned with Alix’s revelation make you suspicious, yet he can be convincing. 

This is an interesting read that subtly weaves a lot of different threads together, and the title could just as easily refer to Emira’s age as to the time period we’re living through. It shines a light on the pitfalls of social media, privilege, racism, and the role class plays. The characters feel natural and believable, even if you wish some of their actions were less so, this is a promising debut.

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When Will You Get A Real Job?, Elin Petronella

Photograph reproduced with permission of
Elin Petronella

When Elin Petronella met Charles Henry in 2016 it was the start of a beautiful love story, but also of an inspirational creative journey. Elin was studying Politics, Philosophy, and Economics while Charles had been working as a photographer after completing a degree at the Beaux-Arts de Paris. Elin introduced him to the joy of embroidery and he encouraged her to try new styles and take her creativity seriously. Before long they were winding up their lives in Paris, gaining a significant following on Instagram, and travelling around Europe, creating as they went. When Will You Get A Real Job? Is a case study of their first year as creative entrepreneurs.

A central message of the book is that the most important thing is to keep creating. Creativity is a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it. Elin writes of how committing one hundred percent to your art, of not having a back-up job, forces you to focus and keep working hard. The idea of being busy being busy is a useful one to think about - are the tasks you are spending most of your time on really that valuable? Yes, social media presence is important, but when it takes more time than creating, something has gone awry. Similarly, it is easy to fall into endless preparation work - there comes a time when you just have to get on with the doing.

Elin writes with great honesty of the dilemmas they faced and the difficult decisions they sometimes had to make. They were very much learning as they went, and they were offered some seemingly big opportunities early on that they turned down in order to maintain artistic control and reinforce the value they place on their own work. On setting your prices and not working for free, her wise advice is  ‘…if you don’t value your time, then why would someone else…?’ Despite this, she writes of their struggles to start with, finding it uncomfortable to ask people for money, yet soon found that they had a group of fans who were more than willing to pay for their designs and courses. It’s easy to read with a little voice in your head telling you that your work isn’t as good, that you don’t have the skill they do, but Elin shows that self-doubt is a common plague on creatives.

She writes about the decision making process, and times when they had to reconsider actions when they realised it wouldn’t serve their aim. She offers practical advice such as the importance of people seeing your work more than once, that people need to see something seven times to really remember it, so for everyone constantly struggling under the pressure to put new content out there, this is a gentle reminder that it is not only okay, but beneficial, to repost your work. She points the reader to secondary sources they found useful in learning about business and marketing, and gives good advice on how to choose what to focus on by thinking about what your aims are.

I picked this book up expecting to find it interesting but was surprised to discover that it was incredibly hard to put down, it will leave you eager to find out what the next chapter has to offer. I closed the book feeling inspired to put my all into my own creative endeavours. Elin perfectly balances personal memoir and practical advice in a way that is bound to leave you fired up and ready for action. I would highly recommend this book for all creative entrepreneurs starting out.

The ebook can be downloaded from the Charles and Elin Academy.

Check out their work over on Instagram @petronella.art and @_charleshenry_

Their YouTube channel is full of process videos, handy tips, and inspiration.

Their podcast, albeit discontinued, has some interesting episodes and interviews with other creative entrepreneurs, as well as some sweet insights into their lives that will make you fall for them as a couple. 

Gender Euphoria, edited by Laura Kate Dale

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This post is part of the blog tour for the book. Thanks to Random Things Tours and Unbound for providing me with a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

This groundbreaking anthology brings together the experiences of non-binary, agender, gender fluid, and intersex writers, focussing on gender euphoria rather than the dysphoria that usually gets the most column inches. The result is a moving, enlightening book that will give you a real insight into the lives of non-cisgender people and the experiences that give them the greatest sense of gender euphoria.

The writers are all fairly young but are from all walks of life with very individual stories to tell. The editor, Laura Kate Dale, contributes a number of essays on her experiences as a pansexual trans woman. The scenarios are different but there’s a connecting theme of joy when the writers learn to love themselves with or without the approval of people around them. Many find freedom in letting go of overtly trying to hide signs of their birth assigned gender - tales of obsessively plucking all facial hair daily, feeling the need to constantly wear feminised clothes regardless of whether they fit the mood or not, give an insight in the constant practical issues that can cause a lot of stress and feelings of restriction. A lot of this arises more from a desire for others to correctly gender them rather than necessarily needing it for their own sense of identity. The reader feels the relief and freedom of reaching a point where going out with a bit of facial hair showing is no longer seen as an insurmountable barrier, and the euphoria that comes with being correctly gendered by others. 

One essay talks of the challenges of being pregnant and breastfeeding, activities that are heavily gendered by society, as a non-binary person. Another speaks of their fear as a trans man getting married that they’d be referred to as a wife during the ceremony, and the joy that came with a celebrant that took the time to understand their concerns and helped make the day a euphoric one.

This is a book that doesn’t shy away from the challenges of those who battle not only their own insecurities but lack of understanding from society more broadly. They write with great honesty about their experiences and sense of isolation, but also of acceptance and finding safe spaces where they’re finally able to feel themselves without fear. It’s a book that will make you smile and make you cry, but most importantly, you’ll close the book with a much greater understanding of the lived experiences of the writers and the little things we can all do to make the world a happier, more accepting place.

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The Heart’s Invisible Furies, John Boyne

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Boyne’s powerful novel takes us on a journey through Ireland from 1945 to 2015 in seven year increments. The book opens with sixteen year old Catherine Goggin being publicly shamed in church for having fallen pregnant out of wedlock. She’s forced to leave her hometown to fend for herself in Dublin while the man responsible experiences no repercussions. Our narrator, Catherine’s baby, is born in the midst of a violent homophobic attack that will sadly be mirrored later in his life. The rest of the book follows Cyril through life, struggling with his sexuality and the unbending, restrictive morals of a country firmly in the grasp of the Catholic Church. We will follow him to Amsterdam and New York, seeing shifting attitudes in other countries while Ireland stubbornly refuses to ease the harsh views and laws that cause misery to many.

The characters are brilliantly drawn. Cyril's adoptive parents, Maude and Charles Avery,  seemingly have no interest in raising a child and remind him constantly that he isn’t ‘a real Avery’. He is fascinated by their relationship growing up, ‘Two people who could not have been more ill-suited to each other’s company had somehow managed to find each other and sustain something resembling a relationship while apparently feeling no interest or affection for the other whatsoever.’ It is hardly surprising then that they don’t treat the latest addition to their family with much more tenderness. Charles shows disregard for his wife, having affairs and never bothering to read the books she writes. Maude has a novel approach to writing, not reading herself, and entirely against being widely read, she is furious when Charles’ run-in with the law push her books up the bestseller lists. 

Catherine appears briefly in many sections throughout, but fleetingly and tantalisingly close to her son without realising it. She proves herself to be strong-willed and loyal, successfully carving out a career for herself in the tea-room of the Dáil Éireann where she was fortunate to meet a woman willing to give her a job while heavily pregnant. There are moments where her sadness over her lost son begins to emerge only for the moment to pass before it can develop into a conversation that might reveal their true identities.

Cyril himself is shy and lacking in confidence as a child and young man. He meets Julian at the age of seven and is blown away by his confidence and sexual knowledge. From the day they first meet, Cyril is drawn to him, his feelings developing over the years to encompass lust and unrequited love. They remain friends for many years but Cyril always keeps his feelings and sexuality to himself, until they come to a dramatic climax that will change their relationship forever.

There’s so much in this novel, but the overarching focus is the changing attitudes to homosexuality and the terrible injustices that law and Church impose. For a long time Cyril believes his feelings for Julian are just a phase, but he is eventually forced to admit that they’re not. He goes to a doctor for help but is told he can’t be a homosexual because there aren’t any in Ireland, before subjecting him to a cruel treatment designed to create negative associations with erotic thoughts of men. Cyril considers killing himself on a number of occasions, denied the opportunity for loving sexual interactions. He has sex with hundreds of men, rarely knowing their real name, and always with a sense of urgency and a fear of being discovered. The idea of taking a man home with him, of having sex in a bed, and spending the night together feels an impossible dream.

By 1980, with his life in Ireland in tatters, we find Cyril living in Amsterdam where he finds a stable partner in a city where they can walk along holding hands without fear of what will happen to them. Jump forward to the late 1980s and New York, where the Aids epidemic is taking hold and shifting attitudes toward fear and hostility. The President refuses to acknowledge what’s happening and Cyril and his friends are removed from a restaurant for discussing the disease. It is a sad step backward, with him noticing that even friends seem uncomfortable with displays of affection between him and Bastiaan. In his role as a volunteer at the hospital we are witness to the isolated deaths of those shunned by family or too afraid to tell them what they’re suffering. The book ends on a slightly more positive note with the successful referendum on legalising same-sex marriage. The final sections are nonetheless heart-wrenching as Cyril nears the end of his life, reflecting on those he’s loved and lost, and repairing relationships at home.

This is a book that deals with some heavy issues and offers far more depth than can ever be conveyed in a short review. Despite the themes and suffering within, there’s also a lot of humour, sometimes revealing a deeper reflection but in a way that will put a smile on your face. This is a book that will keep you up at night reading ‘just one more chapter’ and stay with you for a long time after turning the final page.

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Self Contained: Scenes From A Single Life, Emma John

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This post is part of the blog tour for the book. Thanks to Random Things Tours and Octopus Publishing for providing me with a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

In this brutally honest memoir Emma John explores the positives and negatives of living a single life and the challenges of maintaining friendships as people throw themselves into their growing families. It is a meditation on independence and a challenge to the long accepted view that we aren’t complete until we find our soulmate. She does not hold back on her sometimes less complementary feelings, making this a book that I think everyone can relate to in one way or another.

Her relationship with her sister is central, their great affection for each other apparent at every turn, yet she admits to worrying about being left behind, of losing her place as the one her sister would always turn to. The news of an imminent addition to the family also throws her into a spin. She admits to these struggles, but doesn’t run away from the situations, resulting in a much happier outcome than she’d imagined. John raises an interesting idea, that when friends and family get married or have children, her life and role in theirs change without her consent. This can lead to feelings of helplessness and lack of control. She logically understands the shifts but struggles to resist feelings of rejection, of being pushed further out of the circle of loved ones.

Despite these feelings she also admits her own reluctance to engage with some aspects of her friends' lives. She’s never, for example, seen the fascination of babies and doesn’t hide this from the new parents she knows. In her desire for friendships to stay the same she inadvertently puts up barriers. She’s frequently self-deprecating and her honesty is raw, but she seems not to notice her devotion to her friends, stepping up when they’re in need and doing what she can to look after them.

There’s a definite feeling that her life lacks the markers of progress that those around her are hitting and this causes a feeling of stagnation. She tries throwing herself into work but hates knowing when everyone goes home they’re no longer thinking of her, believes that she isn’t the first person anyone would turn to. It’s when she begins to shift her focus from external forms of validation, stops thinking of herself as waiting for her future to begin and follows what makes her happy in the here and now, that she seems to really find her feet. The closing chapters touch on her experience of lockdown and the pandemic more generally, the absence of loneliness and the realisation that she has a solid support network who rely on her too.

This is a brilliant, thought-provoking book that will make you consider the way value is perceived in a life. It is about single life and how this interacts with shifting family dynamics, friendships that stand the test of time, and ultimately learning to accept yourself, setting your own priorities, and living for the present.

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Love and Miss Harris, Peter Maughan

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This post is part of the blog tour for the book. Thanks to Random Things Tours and Farrago Books for providing me with a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Titus Llewellyn-Gwynne has fallen on hard times. The Red Lion Theatre was bombed during the war and his backer for a theatrical tour has pulled out. Luckily, George appears with a play that nobody has yet agreed to stage, and, perhaps more importantly, the money to fund it. The Company is soon on tour in an old double decker bus, travelling around the south of England, causing mayhem and unknowingly being followed by Reuben Kramer who has less than savoury intentions for their leading man.

The tone throughout is light and the humour frequently plays with farce. There are potential murders on the horizon but the string of attackers following one step behind each other is more comic than threatening. There are some very unpleasant characters, Kramer especially has a lot to dislike, and yet none inspire any great feelings of hostility.  Reuben is also graced with the most complete backstory, allowing us a glimpse into the life that has formed this somewhat unhinged, power-hungry man. Other characters also fall into a life of crime but have a chance of redemption through art.

The reader is only privy to snippets of the play which we are told is George re-writing her own love story with a happier conclusion. An unexpected consequence of putting on the play is a change in her fortunes. Indeed, it offers opportunity and joy to many involved, taking characters out of London for the first time, and creating a close-knit group that’s not without its internal troubles.

This is a light-hearted read with a lively host of characters who are sometimes difficult to keep track of. Maughan offers enough insight to give a sense of their past and the way it impacts their present. The small towns they visit are found in varying levels of disarray, and variously welcome them with open arms or treat them with suspicion. Rural bureaucracy and gossip is played up and contribute to the humour of the book. This would make a great holiday read and is perfect for anyone looking for some light-hearted entertainment with the occasional moment of sincerity.

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