Novella Express #3

Edition #3 of Novella Express

A New Dawn for the Novella

featuring:

• Bluebird by Sonia Hadj Said

• Between the Virgin and the Sea by Cath Barton

• Dear FIN by Andrea Layne Black

Novella Express is a book series publishing novellas submitted from around the world.

CONTRIBUTING TO EDITION #3:

Bluebird starts on a morning that the protagonist believes to be the end of her life.

An immigrant from Eastern Europe, the narrator has spent the last ten years thriving to be a writer or a journalist in London and failing on every front.

In a bid to try and save herself, she takes a month off from her catering job and takes us down memory lane of experiences of being a young immigrant woman as well as a struggling artist. Minimum-wage jobs, unpaid internships, school certificates, rented rooms in dangerous-feeling areas, nightlife, rejections, family expectations: these are all entwined in her inner monologue as she fights for her own life before time runs out.

Without sentimentality, Sonia Hadj Said's captivating novella records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness as an immigrant woman attempts to reconcile herself to the world around her.

Cath Barton's melancholic novella Between The Virgin and the Sea is set in an unnamed city which has fallen off the map of the world, and is accessible now only by sea.

Violence has broken out in the city and the people, fearing that the church is involved, pray instead at roadside shrines.

The story tells the events of a day at the end of which the white statue of the Virgin which stands on a hill overlooking the city may ― or may not ― come to life to restore peace to its people. Central to the story and living in the barrios is a boy called Tag, the things of which he dreams and the maps he draws.

Set in a surreal and changing city, in which pizza delivery is carried out by donkey, and nothing may be what it seems, Between the Virgin and the Sea explores themes of childhood and coming of age.

A captivating blend of magical realism, tender comedy, and literary experimentation, Between the Virgin and the Sea is a captivating portrait of urban life quite unlike any other.

Andrea Layne Black's LGBQT novella Dear FIN tells the story of Jack Wilson, a young man mourning his beloved dog, on the eve of his 17th birthday and the six-year anniversary of the tragic death of his parents, as he struggles with friends, family, sexuality, and his troubled feelings in the small coastal community of Old Riverdam.

Dear FIN creates the dazzling, funny, and raw world of a troubled teenager; coming of age; coming out; coming to terms; and coming together with new friends and loves.

The narrator Jack is an instant friend to the reader, too ― and Jack will make you look at life more differently than ever before.

A book that dives deep into the pressures of how mental health and loss can take a toll on your life, Dear FIN is a fun heart-pounding novella that looks at coping with loss.

To read Dear FIN is to step with Jack as he struggles with friends, family, sexuality, and his troubled feelings in the small coastal community of Old Riverdam. A funny and charismatic tale from Canada, Dear FIN is a satisfying and thoughtful novella, within which the reader can unusually participate.

Published by Leamington Books, Edinburgh