Tag: Tigerish Waters

2017 Favourites

By some miracle, this year I have managed to read 60 books (I’m on my 60th as we speak and am gunning to get it finished before the New Year). I’m both impressed but not surprised that I managed 60 books this year. While I wrote a dissertation, graduated from university, started working and edited a newspaper at various points throughout the year, I also travelled for four weeks, had surgery and spent a large portion of time horizontal – I think they all balanced each other out. Rather than going through the entire list, this blog just highlights a few of my favourite reads from 2017.

Favourite Non-Fiction

In cased you missed it, Animal by Sara Pascoe was my favourite non-fiction read of the year. It’s funny, informative, heartfelt, dark and full of discussions of female sexuality. Can’t recommend it enough. I run through all my 2017 non-fiction reads in my last blog.

Favourite Classic

I read Lolita this year and despite all its disturbing subject matter, it was a really beautiful book. I can’t pick it as my favourite though because that will only trigger yet another existential crisis about the difference between art and artist (of which 2017 has caused MANY). So with that in mind I’m going to pick Don Casmurro, which I read in Brazil, where the book is set and the writer, Machado de Assis, is from. I wasn’t really paying attention when I started reading it and it caught me off guard. One minute I was just having a read and the next I was totally transformed and hooked and weighed down by futility of the human condition (uhoh, another existential crisis is looming). I don’t have much experience with jealousy, but this book made me feel it in a really powerful way.

Favourite Play

I’ve read a fair old amount of plays this year, both for my degree at the beginning of the year and for fun at the end. While Fleabag, the Vagina Monologues, and Tigerish Waters all blew me away with their own unique style, nothing has inspired me more this year than David Ive’s Venus in Fur. I was introduced to the book, play and film by a class and a brilliant lecturer. I wrote an assignment on it, which I did well in, only increasing my infatuation. Then, once I was freelance writer, Natalie Dormer only went and starred in the damn thing and I reviewed it at work. So not only do I have a lot of professional and academic interest in this play, I bloody love the thing too. I’m not sure my year would have been the same without it.

Favourite Sci-Fi

Ooh this is so hard to pick because I loved vN so much, and loved writing about it even more, but for the second year running I’m going to have to give it to Chris Beckett. The final instalment of the Dark Eden series, Daughter of Eden, is the only book this year to literally make my jaw drop. Seriously, whether you’re into sci-fi or not, I cannot recommend this series enough.

Favourite Contemporary Novel

This one goes to the most transformative novel I read this year, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This books picks you up and takes you from country to country, city to city, articulates a diaspora I may never myself experience and compels understanding. I’ve got some Adiche on the TBR shelf and I can’t wait to get stuck in.

Favourite Comedy

This one goes to the play that made me choke with laughter in bed – Fleabag. I wasn’t sure the humour would hit me given I’d already seen the BBC series, but nope, it got me good.

Favourite Children’s Book

I’ve re-read some of the Potter books this year but I’m excluding them from this… which leaves me with one children’s book. Good job I loved it. The Journey to River Sea was as enchanting as everyone said it was. A real adventure story in an already adventurous environment.

Favourite Mixed-Genre Book

The formidable Tigerish Waters by Sophie Reilly. You can read my review here, and I hope you will buy a copy and read it yourself, it is astounding.

Favourite Self-Published Book

Does it count that I read my own book again this year if it’s limited circulation of self-publication is to me and me alone? Didn’t think so. In which case it goes to Richard Hopkin’s The Cincinnati Tin Trunk – a historical treasure hunt across America and Europe.

Favourite Book in French

Despite having read Rebecca in French this year and my favourite Annie Ernaux, I’m going to give this category to the Harry Potter books I’ve read in French this year. It has been nothing but a delight having an already loved world transformed into another loved world and language.

I do have a problem here though, the edition I’ve been reading seems to have been discontinued, meaning if I want to read them quickly I’m either going to have a mix matched collection or to pay waaay more than I can afford. Bookish people, help, what do I do in this situation?

Hilary’s Favourite Novel of 2017

Last but not least is Daphne du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek. I love Rebecca so I was ready to love this one, but I got so much more than I bargained for. I just feel that the book was ahead of its time in lots of ways which made an already compelling book a delight to read. I wish I’d known about it a year ago, it could have been a really interesting addition to my dissertation.

For full pictures of my 2017 reads head over to my Instagram: FictitiouslyHilary.

December 29, 2017
Review: Tigerish Waters – Sophie Reilly

Launching this week is a stirring book written from the front line of a bright young woman’s battle with her mental health. Tigerish Waters is the selected writings of Glasgow-born Sophie Reilly, edited by her brother Samuel Reilly after Sophie took her life last year. This striking combination of poetry, prose and fiction is both an upsetting marker of a waste of talent and a celebration of a short but thoughtful life.

Knowing the context around Tigerish Waters you might not expect the book to be so funny, but Sophie’s voice and style is a lot of really wonderful things, and comic is one of them. Having suffered with a plethora of mental illnesses including Anorexia Nervosa, Bipolar Affective Disorder and Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, her writing speaks of unfathomable pain and hardship as well as total euphoria. By articulating her relationship with her mental health through drama, poetry, short stories and diary entries, Tigerish Waters offers insight into a gritty reality of extreme highs and the lowest of lows.

The dark, ironic and humorous style leaves you wanting more from this talented young writer, but then you remember the context of the book’s publication and it all begins to feel desperately sad. Throughout, Sophie talks about the future, specifically about when she’s written a play or a memoir or a novel. “Nobody who attempts or commits suicide wants to die” she writes, and we think of how a book was always supposed to be part of Sophie’s future, but the reality is not how anyone, least of all Sophie, would have wanted it to come about. And yet, the publication of Tigerish Waters does come with barrels of hope. All profits made by the book are being donated to the Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH). The book passes comment on the “non-existence” of Dundee’s mental health services and the counter-productive support Sophie felt she received. Tigerish Waters has the power to serve as a real wake up call to a revolution that needs to happen with the treatment of mental illness in Scotland and beyond.

For me personally, I was deeply effected by the normality of Sophie’s life. At first glance it is all very relatable. In her diary entries she talks about Gavin and Stacey, Harry Potter, Orange is the New Black, even her crush on the show’s star. She expresses her concerns about the overbearing presence of social media on girls’ self-esteem and she hesitates over whether or not she really needs a smartphone. She was a normal young woman with a promising future (she had been accepted to study Theology and Literature at St Andrews). If one ever needs a reminder of how mental health issues can and do impact everyone and anyone, Tigerish Waters is a prime example. In one diary entry Sophie calls us to take pride in our mental health issues. Taking inspiration from some of the triumphs of the Gay Pride movement Sophie titles the essay “Mental Health Pride”. It is a confident approach to mental illness that could have a really positive effect in my opinion, and I hope that message will be another positive thing to come from Sophie’s life.

“If one ever needs a reminder of how mental health issues can and do impact everyone and anyone, Tigerish Waters is a prime example.”

For me, the two most poignant parts of the book were the short play “Before the Snuff of the Lights” and the poem “Birth & Growth.” While both play an important part in telling Sophie’s story, they are also standout for their quality and creativity. (Update: I just heard a performance of “Before the Snuff of Lights” at the book’s London launch, which only affirmed my opinion that it is really extraordinary and mindful piece of writing.)

It is easy to get swept up in the circumstances of Tigerish Waters’ publication, when perhaps the emphasis should be on the phenomenal talent the lies in the sentences and verses of Sophie’s writing. Anyone who has ever lived and wondered why will find something in this book that makes them say “I thought it was just me.” From that, I hope they will be motivated to demand help, receive it and share their unique voice with the world.

Tigerish Waters, the selected writings of Sophie Reilly, edited by Samuel Reilly, is available on Amazon for £6.99. Published by Mad Weir Books, all profits from the book will be donated the Scottish Association for Mental Health.

November 29, 2017