Books Books
Category: Ebooks, Fiction, Literary Fiction
Number of pages: 256
ISBN: 9781781723982
Publication date: September 23, 2017
Price: £9.99
Category: Ebooks, Fiction, Literary Fiction
Number of pages: 256
ISBN: 9781781723999
Publication date: September 23, 2017
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
Shortlisted for the Rubery Book Award, Fiction Category 2018
‘This is a great story, told with sensitivity, and a first class eye for comedy. A memorable read.’ – Rubery Book Award
‘Handled with great sensitivity, this has great comedy, exciting developments and very moving moments, right through until the nicely worked solution to the mystery.’ – The Daily Mail
Maria Donovan’s debut novel, The Chicken Soup Murder, subverts the crime and murder mystery genres in a meditation on bereavement, friendship and the meaning of family. This emotionally involving coming-of-age narrative is told with resilience and humour by eleven-year-old Michael, a thoughtful boy who tests the boundaries of his own behaviour as he carries a burden of knowledge no one else seems willing to share.
Michael’s happy early life in a small seaside town – a cosy world of cricket and football, experiences shared with his best friend Janey and her family – is disrupted by the arrival of a bully, and blasted by visitations from Death: the biggest bully of them all. Within Michael’s own past are unanswered questions: why does he live with his grandmother? Are his parents really in prison? His magical creative thinking lands him in trouble: how reliable is his story and why is he the only one who thinks that a murder has been committed? What can he, a schoolboy about to turn twelve, do about it?
Haunted by the injustice of a killing, he takes on the burden of trying to do the right thing: first helping the widowed mother of his best friend, and then seeking justice for a murdered woman, as he resorts to making trouble in order to get at the truth. As Michael struggles to help himself and the people he cares for to move on, he learns about the acceptance of the facts of natural death – whether unexpected or predictable, caused by illness or accident. He sees what happens to those left behind when a loved one dies and, above all, how to recognise and overcome the stumbling block formed by the deliberate taking of a life to those who are grieving.
Maria Donovan
Maria Donovan is a native of Dorset and has strong connections with Wales and Holland. Past career choices include training as a nurse in the Netherlands, busking with music and fire around Europe and nine years as a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan.
Among her publications are: Tea for Mr Dead, flash fiction (Leaf, 2006) and Pumping Up Napoleon and other stories (Seren, 2007). Further short stories appear in anthologies: ‛The House Demon’ in Sing, Sorrow, Sorrow (Seren, 2010), ‛The Wish Dog’ in The Wish Dog and other stories (Honno, 2014) and ‛Learning to Say До Свидания’ in New Welsh Short Stories (Seren, 2015). She draws on her experiences of place and of crossing borders, for instance in ‛Slaughterhouse Field’, commissioned for the New Welsh Review, and set amongst caravan people in Holland. Her fiction is often offbeat, exploring uneasy relationships, mind and body: ‛My Own CVA’ was a prizewinner in a competition run by The Lancet; ‘My Cousin’s Breasts’ was shortlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize. Her flash fiction story ‘Chess’ won the Dorset Award in the Bridport Prize 2015.
Maria’s debut novel, The Chicken Soup Murder, was a finalist for the Dundee International Book Prize.
‘Full of humour and written with a big heart.’
Tracy Baines
‘I was gripped until the very last sentence.’
Frost Magazine
‘This novel shines in its warm-hearted treatment of grief, written with a light touch and with a deep understanding of what it means to lose someone.’
Eluned Gramich, New Welsh Review
‘A lovely, warm-hearted novel about love and grief.’
Francesca Rhydderch
‘Fresh, suspenseful and tantalising.’
Christopher Meredith
‘A beautifully written debut, with characters to fall in love with.’
Danny Wallace
‘A thoroughly original, startling and very good novel indeed.’
Fay Weldon
‘This is a great story, told with sensitivity, and a first class eye for comedy. A memorable read.’
Rubery Book Award
‘Handled with great sensitivity, this has great comedy, exciting developments and very moving moments, right through until the nicely worked solution to the mystery.’
The Daily Mail
‘The Chicken Soup Murder is a thought provoking, yet gentle heartfelt hug of a tale, and a very lovely read indeed.’
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