Sugar and Snails

Author/Guide: Anne Goodwin

Why a Booktrail?

20004 and earlier: The past lingers on, etched beneath our skin .

ISBN: 978-1908600479
Genre: Fiction

Comment

What you need to know before your trail

At fifteen, Diana Dodworth decided to change her life and to escape the rather tight confines of her small town life. However now thirty years on and she can’t help thinking about what happened back them.

She’s kept her secret close to her chest ever since and never told anyone. That’s until Simon Jenkins comes into her life.

Simon’s work is to take him to Cairo but then Diana will have to face the very place, the very thing she’s tried all things time to avoid. Simon doesn’t know, can’t know the truth but will she finally have the strength to face up to the past and to let it go?

Locations

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Travel Guide

The author links to the 2 distinct locations:

I attended university in Newcastle (as does Diana) and lived there for the next twenty years. I’d moved away by the time the novel is set, but still had friends there and went back frequently, and even held a second launch event at what used to be my local library in Jesmond. It’s a wonderfully vibrant city and I still feel I’m coming home when I see the Angel of the North, across the Tyne on one of the road or rail bridges.

I spent a month in Egypt in the late 1980s (about fifteen years after Diana visited), with about a week in Cairo, so it’s a short and distant acquaintance. But I did enjoy delving into my memories and the internet to write the scenes set there, even if many of them didn’t make the final cut.

Booktrailer Review

Clare: @thebooktrailer

A real personal and heartfelt story. Diana speaks in the first person and it’s as if she speaks to you and only you for she shares such emotional secrets and thoughts that you want to keep looking round to make sure no one is listening in to such deep thoughts.

It’s hard to review this book without mentioning the various issues in it but I don’t want to do that as had I known all what the book was about it wouldn’t have been quite the same as in this way, I’ve been beside Diana as she too felt, experienced and reacted to events. It’s a powerful read there’s no doubt about it and what makes it even more so is the fact that Anne Goodwin has a background in psychology.

It’s a story of identity and coming to terms with who and what you are whilst at the same time having to cope with how others act and think. The use of flashbacks builds up images of her life and by the end you have to stand back to see the full picture. Like in life, it’s not until you see the full picture that the full story really makes its impact.