Reading Habits 2025

 

Sue's Reviews > None of This Is True

None of This Is True
by 

Lisa Jewell (Goodreads Author)

Sue's review 

Crikey! Unputdownable, I read it in twelve hours, with a few hours of sleep in the somewhere. What happened? I still don't quite know... Five stars anyway.

*****

For Earth Day 22 April 2025 - a poem

 Passenger Pigeon

You dwelt in the vastness of the sky

with no fear of the hungry eagle

he couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You swarmed across the wild prairies

with no fear of the mighty bison

those couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  soared over the Rocky Mountains

with no fear of the grey wolf packs

they couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  nested in the red oak trees

with no fear of the long-legged bobcat,

she couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  flapped above people’s villages

with no fear of the families in their tepees,

these couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  flocked above the steaming railroads

with no fear of the well-armed hunter

he destroyed you, all of your millions.

*

The Passenger pigeon was once thought to be the most numerous bird on earth. The last one of their species died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1912.  Humans had named her Martha.

All About the Dogs - my latest short story

 (set on't Yorkshire Moors, with a hint of Royston Vasey)

Eight years being the time since my partner, Geoffrey, vanished, I’ve decided to have him declared dead. I’m told you can do it, as nobody’s heard from him for more than seven years.

Three weeks after his vanishing, I’d been to police and reported him missing, because I were worried. I weren’t actually much worried about Geoffrey. I were more concerned for the dogs, all three being a bit under the weather after something they’d eaten up on the moor and I weren’t sure how much the vet’s bill would be.

Me and Geoffrey had chosen the three dogs for their wild looks. Mackeson's a brownish border collier crossed with god knows what, he's powerful jaws for a collie. Spitz is a big boy, looking like a huge, grey, shaggy bear with great long legs and a curling tail. Geoffrey said he could be a shih tzu great Dane cross, but I think he were joking. I always reckoned that would be physically impossible, Spitz must be something like a wolfhound and mountain dog cross. The third dog, Delilah, has massive black curls and fetches half the moorland home tangled in them. She's possibly a giant cockapoo, if you look at her through squinting eyes.

They were all rescues, of course, Spitz being the oldest. The vet reckons he’s now about eleven, which he says is a good age for such a large dog. The others were half-grown pups when we got them a year or so before Geoffrey's disappearance. We’d agreed Spitz needed company especially as we were both out working, he’d been a bit destructive, demolishing shoes, doors, two sofas and a stray cat, we’d found that half eaten in the front garden. Of course Geoffrey were soft on dogs, he insisted on blaming foxes. Some people might have believed him, but I knew who’d come in with cat’s tail in his mouth.

Geoffrey loved to walk with all three dogs on his free days. Summer or winter, they’d all ramble for miles on the moors and if we were lucky, Geoffrey would come home with a few rabbits or game birds in his kitbag. Once he arrived with a lamb in the bag, he said Spitz had only spooked it and made it run, he wasn’t deliberately hunting it. Geoffrey was in denial.