Book Review & Book Tour: ALL THE GOOD THINGS BY CLARE FISHER

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for All the Good Things

Published by Penguin on 1 June 2017

What if you did a very bad thing... but that wasn't the end of the story

Twenty-one year old Beth is in prison. The thing she did is so bad she doesn't deserve to ever feel good again. But her counsellor, Erika, won't give up on her. She asks Beth to make a list of all the good things in her life. So Beth starts to write down her story, from sharing silences with Foster Dad No. 1, to flirting in the Odeon on Orange Wednesdays, to the very first time she sniffed her baby's head. But at the end of her story, Beth must confront the bad thing. What is the truth hiding behind her crime? And does anyone - even a 100% bad person - deserve a chance to be good?

All the Good Things is the debut novel of Clare Fisher and is so moving, so thought-provoking and so sad but it's also uplifting and beautiful ...... it's so many things but it's also an unforgettable story.

Beth narrates her life story as if she's talking to her child.  She talks of her unhappy childhood with her single mother, her foster parents, her friends and work, boyfriends.  All told in a totally honest way.

No-one can stay invisible for ever - it's too boring. The only way to make people see me was to do something bad.

She finds an escape in her life by her imaginative writing, her teachers praise her but she doesn't understand why.

She makes wrong decisions, but she doesn't know why she makes them, why she spoils the good things in her life, she's vulnerable and lives in her own unreal world, and sometimes she makes good decisions.

All this is leading up to 'the bad thing' which placed her in prison and she believes she doesn't deserve any good things to happen to her.

Beth is such a complex character, she had good times and bad times, like all of us, but it's how she deals with them that makes her different and this difference slowly dawned on me as I read her story. 

All the Good Things is a beautifully written story, it's a memorable story, with perfect pacing and compelling characters.

Meet the Author

My short fiction has been published widely in print and online, including in anthologies from Siren Press, Cinnamon press  Litro, Aesthetica, Annexe Magazine and Flight Press. I won second place in the 2015 Ilkley Literature Festival short story competition, and won the 2013 London Short Story Prize and Cinnamon Press writing award.

I’ve also taken part in collaborative projects; In 2014 I was Writer in Residence at the UK Young Artists Festival, where I met and was hugely inspired by artists in all sorts of other mediums. My forthcoming collection, HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN,  began life as an ACE-funded commission for Leeds Light Night 2014, where I made a live art installation for the first time. worked as a satellite artist to Stevie Ronnie as part of the PH1 Residency project at the New Schoolhouse Gallery in York.

I run a monthly writer’s group in Leeds, WordLab, and do freelance editing, most recently with Cornerstones Literary Consultancy.

I hold an MA (with Distinction) in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London and  BA in Modern History from Oxford. I speak French, play the piano, run, swim and walk.  I work at the strange and wonderful Square Chapel in Halifax.

My thanks to Penguin for giving me the opportunity to take part in the blog tour.  

Please see what all the other bloggers thoughts are.

Available to buy from Amazon UK