INKY SQUIGGLES

We Are Not Okay by Natália Gomes , £7.99   (HQ Stories, 9780008291846) Publication date:  2 May 2019 My rating:   ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ⚠️  This review contains spoilers and refers to sensitive issues, including sexual assault and suicide. Four teenage girls: all of them different, all of them struggling with their own shame and secrets. Lucy loves to gossip, Ulana is from a conservative Muslim family, Trina likes to party and Sophia has a seemingly perfect boyfriend. But in this book by the author of the dark social problem novel Dear Charlie , no one is exactly as they first appear. Gomes’ chatty, readable narrative style belies, and sometimes jars with, its mature subject matter, which ranges from interracial relationships and teen pregnancy to slut-shaming and sexual assault. The chapters cycle through each girl’s perspective; each is given a voice, and I assume that the intent is for the reader to identify with different aspects of the narratives, building a cumul...

Photo credit: Rick's Photo Thing Last September, I started a new chapter in a book I had convinced myself I had long since finished. Resuming higher education through an MA in Publishing wasn't something I'd mapped out as part of any five-year postgraduate plan. Though I had toyed with the possibility as a recent graduate, this was more out of a sense of obligation than anything else. Besides, I wasn't exactly grief-stricken to see the back of late-night essay-writing frenzies and endless grade-chasing. While I went on to pursue journalism training, this turned out to be one of the most unbalanced and stressful periods of my life. Why, then, was I potentially putting myself through something like that again?

The interviewer looked me in the eye and smiled. "Where do you see yourself five years from now?" "When will people stop asking me this ridiculous question?!" I groaned. "How am I supposed to know?! Anything can happen! Life can change dramatically in one afternoon, one year, let alone five! Having goals is one thing, but why do you have to put a timeline to it?!" Alright, I didn't say that. Out loud, anyway. I certainly thought it. There are two questions I never know how best to answer: "Where are you from?" and "Where do you see yourself in the next five years?" From this article I grew up moving between towns, cultures, and countries  –  I spent my formative years in England, South East Asia, and the United States. Thanks to my parents' work as pastors and missionaries, life could be shaken up overnight  –  an exciting, sometimes heart-breaking reality. Occasionally I wondered if I was alone in my struggle to ans...

Thank goodness for Writer's Club, an oasis of creativity for the dry deserts of a college student's soul. Today was the first time in months that I've had chance to do any creative writing, thanks to a writing game in which characters, settings, and conflicts are written up randomly and then chosen according to the roll of a dice. My prompt required me to write about a Catholic priest whose flaws of jealousy and pride were eating his life away. Twenty minutes later, and I had written this short story. Enjoy the fruits of my burst of creativity! * "O gracious Lord, grant rest to this good man's soul," the elderly priest intoned as he stood over the bed of his dying parishioner. Father James stood quietly in a corner of the room as he watched his superior go through the last rites with the wizened old man, and he couldn't help noticing how the sorrowful family at the bedside looked on Father James's mentor with the kind of reverence one mig...

Do you ever wish that life had a soundtrack playing in the background? The soundtracks to Gladiator and Batman have gotten me through many late-night study sessions. Just today I woke up to  Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1  (guaranteed to instill the instant belief that today will be beautiful and grand), cleaned the kitchen with the excitement of  Vivaldi's Spring , and then proceeded to make scones with melancholy and foreboding thanks to part of  Dvorak's New World Symphony . Music just makes everyday moments so much more epic. I used to live waiting for epic moments. How could I possibly enjoy the day's hum-drum assignments when there would be a party at the weekend, or a wedding next month, or a vacation abroad soon? As a young teenager, the film  Inn of the Sixth Happiness  caught my imagination, and somehow I got round to believing that life would be incomplete unless I did something as similarly glorious and noteworthy as leading orphan ch...

...and I'd given up hoping that my first time driving a car would come any time before my 25th birthday, after which I might finally have the time and money to learn. However, I got my first taste of driving a couple of weeks ago. I watched from the safety of a picnic rug as my brother and two of his friends raced around a field in my brother's black Vauxhall Corsa SRi.  "That looks like so much fun," I thought. "Such a shame I don't know how to drive." I looked back down at my book and determined to content myself, but somehow the pages had lost a little of their charm.

I began the spring semester of my second year at university with the firm resolve to be a kitchen goddess. Four months before, I had finally moved out of the residence halls into a stylish little apartment (albeit university-owned), and I was still enormously excited at the thought of having a proper "home" with lots of space to entertain, and without having to rely on the campus cafeteria for my meals. I pored over recipe books like The Bean Book and Vegetarian Meals in Minutes (acquired during Christmas break back home in England) with all the joy of a 1950s housewife. I made menus and shopping lists and planned dinner parties. "Just wait," smiled my senior-class friends knowingly. "You'll soon be living off ramen and sandwiches like the rest of us."