I hear my mother’s voice. No more secrets, Philip, I promise. Someone is coming, get ready…

Memories come thick and heavy like the rains that fall in the jungle. Dense droplets wash the leaves and soak into the ground, cleansing the acrid smell of rubber, absolving the jungle of its sins.

Book blurb

Philip Goundry is 93 and living out his days quietly in a care home in England when a young researcher from Singapore arrives, wanting to learn more about his former life in Malaya for the Singapore archives. His memory growing fitful, Philip is torn between wanting to unburden himself and staying silent, as he has done all these years, about the sinister and shocking events of his childhood on a Malayan rubber plantation. The truth, however, has a habit of winning.

My thoughts

Philip is 93 and in a home. He was a writer. His health has however not been so good. Philip grew up on a rubber plantation in Malaya where he lived with his family.

I hear my mother’s voice. No more secrets, Philip, I promise. Someone is coming, get ready…

from Someone is Coming by T.A. Morton

He is visited by Dr Lin a researcher who is coming to record Oral history interviews as part of a government initiative to record Singaporean history. What would he have to offer as he was just a child? What is Dr Lin’s real purpose?

I hear my mother’s voice. No more secrets, Philip, I promise. Someone is coming, get ready…

from Someone is Coming by T.A. Morton

As he recalls events during the interviews he is constantly telling himself to beware of what he says. At first not sure what it means but then as his memory clears and snippets of his life are recalled he finds he cannot stop himself from saying the things he is thinking, the very things he does not want to recall.

The tension is palpable. Philip’s snippets of memory and the constant repetition of his mother’s words.

No more secrets, Philip, I promise. Someone is coming, get ready…

from Someone is Coming by T.A. Morton

Those words over and over again build up the tension until I, the reader, cannot bare not knowing whilst Philip cannot stop himself from telling.

Someone is coming, get ready…

from Someone is Coming by T.A. Morton

Oh my! What a revelation. I was stunned, horrified and devastated for both young and old Philip.

This mind-bending novella is a beautifully constructed and written story. It is gripping with a tense, haunted feel to it.

Thanks

Many thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for an invitation to this lovely BlogTour for Something is Coming by T.A. Morton and to the publisher for an eCopy of the book.

BlogTour

If you’d like to read more about Someone is Coming why not check out the rest of the BlogTour posts?

Information

Published: Monsoon Books (August 2022)

Paperback 9781915310040
Ebook 9781915310057
Extent 176pp
Category Fiction / Historical

Buy: AmazonSmileUK |Your local bookshop or library | Monsoon Books |Bookshop.org (affiliate link)

Author

T.A. Morton is a Singapore based Irish/Australian writer. Previously she has worked as a journalist and Editor for Longman Pearson in Hong Kong. Her short stories have been published in the Lakeview International Journal of Arts and Literature and The Best Asian Short Stories. She is studying towards her Masters in Crime and Thriller writing at the University of Cambridge.

In February 2020 her novel The Queen, The Soldier and The Girl was shortlisted for the Virginia Prize for fiction. In October 2020 she was shortlisted for the Strand International Flash fiction prize and the Bridport prize. In Autumn 2022 Monsoon Books published her novella, Someone is Coming.

She is currently completing a new crime thriller novel.

Check out her website: T.A. Morton or follow @TAMortonwriter