Sharon Duggal – Should We Fall Behind Bluemoose Books Out 22 October 2020 Should We Fall Behind is for anyone with a heart who has ever looked at a person huddled in a cold shop doorway surrounded by everything they own and wondered how they got there. Jimmy is an alcoholic smalltown boy unsuccessfully running away from his demons who befriends a young woman Betwa, and shares his pitch in a big city underpass, but she suddenly disappears. His disorganisedRead More
LOVEMYREAD chooses … Should We All Fall Behind as one of 6 books especially curated for adults for October 2020 FICTION Jimmy Noone escapes his difficult life in a small town and finds himself living on the streets of a big city where he meets Betwa, who brings with her a chance of real friendship and a glimpse of new hope. Betwa disappears and Jimmy walks across the sprawling metropolis searching for her. He arrives on Shifnal Road onRead More
Elspells Review Review: I don’t think it is any great secret that I am a massive fan of the books that Bluemoose have published so far this year. Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught and The Sound Mirror by Heidi James are two of my top reads of 2020, and as such I was both excited and slightly nervous about diving into the third novel in Bluemoose’s year of only publishing books by women. I need not have worried – this book is stunning. IRead More
Engrossing commentary on the woeful state of the nation SHARON DUGGAL’S captivating debut novel The Handsworth Times was so successful because of its precise detailing of place and time. For her second book, the author shows true creativity in doing quite the opposite but with equal success. From the working-class south Asian community in Birmingham facing endemic racism in the 1980s in The Handsworth Times, Duggal shifts location to a nameless but vaguely contemporary city somewhere in England. Precisely,Read More
Should We Fall Behind is … A quietly urgent book, that asks of today’s Britain, ‘Where’s your humanity, for fuck’s sake?’ A book that will sit rightly on my book shelves next to Steinbeck, Mistry and Strout. Read full review HERE
Sharon Duggal’s second novel, SHOULD WE FALL BEHIND will be published by Bluemoose Books in October 2020. For more information and to request a review copy, please contact Kevin@bluemoosebooks.com
The Anthology Love Bites is a anthology of fiction inspired by Pete Shelley and Buzzcocks. The collection consists of both short-fiction and even shorter flash-fiction in keeping with the immediacy and brevity of the 3-minute pop song and the one-note guitar solo. Guest Editor(s), Contributors Love Bites is edited by Andrew Gallix, Tomoe Hill, C.D. Rose and features: Featuring What Do I Get? a new short story by Sharon Duggal Published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe
The concept explored in this exciting, new short story collection, The Book of Birmingham, featuring up and coming writer Duggal, and skillfully edited by Bhanot, is starkly modern. It is also strikingly framed by the political setting of one of Britain’s largest Northern cities. Seamless interaction of spaces – physical, social and emotional – create the best compendiums, and is why these particular titillating segments – illuminating “snapshots of people’s lives” as described by Duggal– make such powerful comment. The geographically marginalised yet emotionallyRead More
Sharon Duggal read first from her story, Seep. Her story of girls doing something maybe they shouldn’t, but maybe not so bad now, in 1960s Handsworth, to a soundtrack of American Soul music. Oh it just put me exactly in the room with her fish out of water protagonists, it was beautiful and stunning and intimate and beyond it foretold of the thrills and spills ahead which I can only contemplate from afar now. I was actually excitedly transported farRead More
Edited by Kavita Bhanot Featuring Balvinder Banga, Alan Beard, Jendella Benson, Kit de Waal, Sharon Duggal,Joel Lane, Malachi McIntosh, Bobby Nayyar, C.D. Rose & Sibyl Ruth Few cities have undergone such a radical transformation over the last few decades as Birmingham. Culturally and architecturally, it has been in a state of perpetual flux and regeneration, with new communities moving in, then out, and iconic post-war landmarks making way for brighter-coloured, 21st century flourishes. Much like the city itself, the characters in the stories gathered here are often living through moments ofRead More
