“She sat on my bed with a look of such peacefulness it felt as though my damage and her damage just tore up the tenancy agreement and walked out, l
“She sat on my bed with a look of such peacefulness it felt as though my damage and her damage just tore up the tenancy agreement and walked out, leaving us penniless, leaving us alone, expecting us to care”
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK and Irish small presses.
It is published by Morbid Books.
I would best describe the book as a description of an intense three way relationship, told in turn by two of the parties Morgan (more hard headed, a self-confessed Junkie with an unclear but troubled background and long term familiarity with drug use – even as a child, fed weed in their baby food) and Florence (a teenage mum subsequently abandoned and almost imprisoned by her husband, separated now from he and their son, an award winning writer, who has suffered domestic violence and illness), with the third party Heroin, always present in their story
Then I would see heroin stood at the door, nodding for her to come over. He could take her from me quietly and quickly ….. She would ask me every now and then if I loved heroin more than I loved her. I could easily, immediately respond in the negative. I did not. But she would never ask me to stop using, or maintaining her addiction by agreeing to score, and using myself. Any complaint she made about heroin would denounce the natural order in her world. Take it away, and she was left with herself. Take me away and she was left with nothing. But she wanted to keep us both.
Of the two sections I preferred the section by Florence – I think both as I could see more of the reason for her use of drugs and due to its more lyrical nature, but I did not find this an easy book either to read or to empathise in any way with the characters.
“If you feel I’m over romanticising the then you’ve never truly loved, or you’ve never been addicted to narcotics and truly in love, or neither, or both”
ADDITION
When I was writing this review, I looked at other reviews to help me articulate my feelings about the book better. What I found interesting was that some reviews assumed Morgan was female, others male. When I asked the reviewers that led them to that conclusion they could not, on reflection, say - and in some cases they even then changed their review.
I had originally read the book as Morgan being male but as I re-read it for the review I realised that whereas Florence is clearly female (breast removal, birth of child, references to men deliberately condescending to her) and is referred to as "her" and "she" in Morgan's account; there is ambiguity the other way round. Morgan is never referred to as "he", "she", "his", "her" etc. and while there are passages that lead you to believe she is female or male, a closer read makes you think the passage is signalling the opposite. The author has confirmed the ambiguity was deliberate.
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK and Irish small presses - for which it has now been shortlI read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK and Irish small presses - for which it has now been shortlisted.
It is published by The 87: “a small press, publishing collective, events organiser, and platform for discussion” which is “especially interested in supporting writers from under-represented, minority groups”
The author’s background (which is relevant to this book) is described on her website
Minoli Salgado was born in Kuala Lumpur and grew up in Sri Lanka, South East Asia and England. She was educated at schools in Penang Hill, Colombo (briefly) and North Devon before going on to study English Literature at the universities of Sussex, Manchester and Warwick. After gaining her PhD in Indo-Anglian fiction, she returned to the University of Sussex where she taught postcolonial literature for many years as Tutorial Fellow, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and Professor of English.
The book itself is a collection of short stories, whose themes and structure is described in an excellent introduction by the author:
Though only some of the stories … engage with the war, all of them were written during or soon after the political conflict [the Sri Lankan civil war] and are conditioned by that time … Written between 1990-2011, they are also underscored by an exilic perspective that attempts to give meaning, pattern and shape to a home that appears to be torn apart … The book is divided into two parts – “Rumours” and “Ventriloquy and Other Acts” – that mark the permeable boundaries between public and private selves …. In everyday life, rumours occupy the place where public secrets congregate, They expand and grow in contexts if suppression where official facts are known to be lies. And ventriloquy is … an act of displaced speech … of finding a voice in a new guise.
The first section “Rumours” consists of 15 short stories (the longest 15 pages, the shortest – and the most powerful – 1 to 2 page pieces of flash fiction). The first 9 directly address the war and I think where the collection really comes to life is when the author combines excellent short story and flash-fiction skills with a powerful message: this is seen as its finest (in my view) in “A Feast of Words” and “Breaking News”.
“Million Dollar Wounds” – a UN officer reflects on a visit to a villager with a severely wounded child
“The Map” – a wounded (and delirious) army captain is pressed on where an ambush took place
“Brushstrokes” – a subversive artist is forced under torture to paint a picture of (I think) President Mahinda Rajapaksa
“The Dictionary of National Humilation” – a more absurdist story of a journalist gathering the testimony of writers writing less in a sense of “in the event of my death … ” than “in the knowledge of my [inevitable] death”
“Breaking News” - on a superficial level an absurdist Schrodinger’s Cat account of an exiled man scanning the internet trying to let his Sri Lankan war zone based brother know if he (the brother) is alive or dead, killed in a bombing raid. On a deeper level though its about being an exile when your home country (and relatives still there) are caught in a vicious war and the anomaly that, due to censorship, you are better informed than them as to events but free of their terrible effects and powerless to save them.
“Too Many Legs” – a short but horrific tale of mixed body parts
“Releasing Maruis” – a fisherman’s son is abducted and murdered by security forces
Of the other stories, my favourites drew more directly on Sri Lanka:
“The Waves” is a short but powerful account of the Boxing Day Tsunami;
“Solitary Reaper” is of two Sri Lankans (a young man and a middle aged lady) who meet in exile in a Kent village, both haunted by the impact of the war on their fathers.
The other stories: “Getting To No” – a story of a woman preparing to reject her husband’s attentions; “Sassy” – a rather surreal story of an author under pressure to change her writing style, whose life is instead taken over by the new style; “Father’s Will” – a story of two sons returning to an uncertain inheritance; “Kethmuathie” (which I did not really understand) –
although showing good skill and imagination, I found much less appealing simply as I think they lacked the distinctiveness of the other stories.
The second section is a “fractured memoir” (with certainly auto-biographical elements) – with three sections (each of 10-15 pages) set respectively in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and England and setting out a childhood across those three countries. This is a story of growing up with a sense of displacement (shuttled from relatives to boarding schools by largely absent parents) and exile, and with language playing an important role: looking back on her time in Sri Lanka in the first section, the narrator can remember conversations in English even though she spoke Sinhalese at the time; later in an austere English boarding school she deliberately acquires (via mimicry) a cultivated English accent.
I must admit that I did not really connect to these sections – I could see what she was trying to do but the themes were for me obscured by the rather privileged (if not desirable) life described of houses with servants, and foreign private schools.
Overall though I found this a very good book and one of the strongest books on the longlist....more
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK small presses.
It is the first full length publication of SI read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK small presses.
It is the first full length publication of Structo Press, which is associated with the literary magazine Structo which contains “remarkable new short stories and poetry from all around the world, alongside essays and interviews with authors and others ….on the fiction side we tend towards the slipstream end of things, and encourage submission of works in translation.”. Structo Press has previously published chap books.
The book is a translation of a classic (it may be more accurate to say the classic) Spanish language short-story collection: “El Llano en llamas” by Juan Rulfo; whose only other book was the novel “Pedro Páramo” widely regarded as the most famous 20th Century work in Spanish literature and as a precursor to Magic Realism.
The collection (published in 1953) has had two well-known US English language translations but this translation by Stephen Beechinor represents the first UK translation. By contrast to the previous translation – Ilan Stevens in 2012 – this book has UK-English and also (perhaps in keeping with the much lower penetration of Spanish language in the UK) has retained very few Spanish terms other than proper names (the author regards El Llano as falling into that category).
It certainly read very naturally to a UK-English reader – I cannot recall a single jarring note. I cannot judge the fidelity of the translation, but the translator said he wanted to capture Rulfo’s “stark, spare style” and this seems to work well. I would have preferred (as with all translated books) to have seen a more detailed translator’s note on some of the choices made (both around style and some individual phrases/words) to go with the excellent foreword by Dylan Brennan.
The stories (17 of them over less than 180 pages) fall into a similar pattern – as one of the characters says
“You must think I’m doing here is rehashing the same idea over and again.”.
They are set in a post-war (and more importantly post-Revolution) Mexican countryside, struggling with the failed impact of impractical and likely corrupt land reform whose main result appears to have been to have lead to mass migration from village to town and towns to cities while leaving things in the countryside somewhere between unchanged and even worse – a sense captured particularly strongly in the two opening stories “They gave us the land” (men trekking to their allotted but completely uncultivable land) and “La Cuesta de las Comrades” (a story of murder, justice and revenge).
The countryside left behind is racked with poverty (“Because We’re So Poor” – about a girl likely to follow her sisters into prostitution after the loss of her cow) and prone to natural disasters (“The Day in Ruins” is the closest to a satirical story in the collection – of a voluble but insincere politician visiting a small town destroyed in an earthquake).
But most of all this is a brutal land of violence and retribution which is matched in the terse and brutal nature of the language used – language which is often effectively told in the form of monologues – either internal or oral storytelling.
Many of the stories feature bandits/revolutionaries (“The Man” moves between a fugitive murderer and a pursuer bent on revenge; “At First Light” a peasant on trial for murdering his patron; “El Llano in Flames” – a vicious and retributive series of massacres between Federals and rebels; “Tell them not to kill me” – a man is brought to justice for a murder he committed years ago (by the victim’s son – now an army officer) and pleads unsuccessfully with his indifferent/self-interested son to beg for his life; “The Night They Left Him Alone” – a fugitive and wanted murderer/rebel fleeing with his relatives, is unable to keep pace with his relatives – leading to them falling into an army ambush rather than him)
Others more family or personal related violence (“Talpa” – a man and his sister-in-law take the man’s badly ill brother/girl’s husband on a pilgrimage that they know/hope will likely kill him; “You Don’t Hear The Dog Barking” – a man carries his badly injured son towards a town for assistance, all the time berating him for his pas life; “The legacy of Matilde Arcangel” – a wife’s death blamed on a crying baby causing a horse to bolt leads to life-long enmity between a father and son; “Anacleto Morales” – a group of widows seek to force their ex-lover to assist with the canonisation of someone he actually killed in a thieves falling out).
Two stories that particularly struck me:
“Paso del Norte” – a kind of “American Dirt” of poverty written economic migration and border violence written some 65+ years previously and without a hint of cultural appropriation.
“Luvina” – the only one of the stories I felt which departed from the stark style of the other books and I believe was a step towards the ghost-world and magic realism of the author’s famous novel. “Luvina” is an almost fabled deserted town whose harsh landscape and ghostly inhabitants are described by a drunk ex-schoolteacher to his potential successor – a man travelling to the town for the first time.
It also has some of the most descriptive language – albeit not departing from the general theme of abandonment and despair.
From whatever angle you look at it, Luvina is an awful sorry place. You being headed there, you’ll soon realise. I would say its where sorrow makes her nest. Never a smile to be seen, and everyone goes around with a face on them like it got set in a cast. And, should you want, you can see that sorrow any time you please. The wind blowing there gets it stirred up, yet never sweeps it away. It lingers there like it was born there. And you get to know it by taste and by feel, from the way it bears down on you constantly, clutching you tight, like a terrible poultice crushed into the heart’s vital flesh
A worthy addition to the longlist – if perhaps unusual as being by an author dead for more than 30 years....more
“Rape” was a red word, a ravenous word. It was double edged, the word “rape”. It would automatically make me an accuser and Mike an accused. And it
“Rape” was a red word, a ravenous word. It was double edged, the word “rape”. It would automatically make me an accuser and Mike an accused. And it would immediately and forever afterward make it my job to justify myself, to defend myself as the accuser against all manner of arguments. I would somehow have to transform myself into an unimpeachable fortress of sexual righteousness”
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK and Irish small presses.
In the UK this book is published by Tramp Press, a small Irish publisher which aims “to find, nurture and publish exceptional literary talent and … is committed to finding only the best and most deserving books, by new and established writers”.
Its greatest success has been Mike McCormack’s 2016 Goldsmith Prize and 2018 Dublin Literary Award winning Solar Bones (which was also Booker longlisted on its subsequent publication by a UK publisher), and more recently Sara Baume’s “A Line Made for Walking” which was shortlisted for the 2017 Goldsmith Prize (but which was also, unsuccessfully, entered for the Booker Prize by a UK publisher).
The latter is what makes me intrigued as to what caused Tramp to pick up this book (which via its US publisher has already won the Governor General’s Award in Canada.
The book is a morally ambiguous account by Karen, a Canadian studying at a US University.
She starts a relationship with a boy in one of the fraternities – Gamma Beta Chi (but wider known as “Gang Bang Central” for its aggressively sexualised culture and rumoured practices), while at the same time renting a room in a house (“Raghurst”) populated by a group of lesbian feminists. The latter, while captivated by the teaching of Woman Studies/Literature Professor teaching a course on “Women and Myth”, also want to start pushing the theory they are studying into action – starting with shaming the golden boy of GBC who disowns a female student he impregnates and then moving on to a wider attempt to bring down the sexist fraternity culture.
The easily impressionable and morally ambiguous Karen tries to keep a foot in both camps – enjoying both being an insider on the fraternities customs and practices (and being particularly intrigued by the clearly immoral and abusive nature of some of them) and staying in her relationship with her boyfriend, while at the same time flirting openly with the “golden boy”; and yet also being exhilarated by the fiercely intelligent discussions, assured self-confidence, and radical thoughts of her Raghurst housemates, as well as the fiery and confrontational nature of their charismatic ringleader.
The sense is of someone low on confidence as well as privilege (as an “foreign” student she has to work her way through college and faces a future which she will have to shape for herself; who is immediately fascinated by those (both many of the GBC men and the Raghurst men) whose secure economic underpinning (from their family money and connections) leaves them free to either indulge in a slacker lifestyle or to take up a radical activism, in each case free of any ultimate consequence.
The main plot is a rather ill-conceived plan by the housemates, which almost immediately and (at least to the reader) predictably fails.
As the fall out starts to cause repercussions for the GBC members, but more for them (as well as more serious consequences for more innocent participants in an ill-fated GBC party), Karen attempts to maintain her moral ambiguity and neutrality (or perhaps more accurately her two-faced partisanship).
A lot of this book can on one level seem very foreign to a UK/Irish reader. A review in the Irish Independent puts this eloquently
“Take the issue of frat houses and sororities on US campuses, and the webs of privilege, discrimination (both on racial or lineage grounds) and abuse occasionally levelled at them. It is a phenomenon we are blissfully free of in European third-level education, our knowledge of them mostly drawn from Hollywood comedies where jocks crush empty beer cans on their temples and snooty princesses plot to destroy one another. All very odd when viewed from these shores.”
But the wider issues that the book raises are of course far from confined to the US – take for example the case that convulsed Ireland
The book is shot through (to levels that teeter on pretentiousness) with Greek myth imagery and language – Karen very explicitly drawing on the Professor’s teaching to view everyone and everything in mythical terms as well as seeing a continual line between the activities of say Achilles and his warriors and the behaviour of the Frat boys. Karen herself, with her ambiguous stance across two warring camps, models Helen of Troy (something that is spelled out for us towards the book end, unnecessarily I think). And one of the Greek heroes meets a suitably tragic end.
And in a further link to the Guardian story:
Those brotherly bonds depend on our debasement. The homosocial contract hasn’t changed since the Trojan War. It operates the same way in the military, with sports teams – anywhere men get together in any organised fashion.
I must admit that I preferred the very different literary treatment of the same concept that Pat Barker used in “Silence of the Girls”: making use of deliberate anachronisms (rugby drinking songs, World War I trenches) in an account actually set in the Trojan Wars, to draw the same (but oppositely directed) parallels with the present day.
The book is given a modern-day framing, which the author describes as:
From the start I conceived of this story as a set of events that leaves a lasting and traumatic mark on the novel’s narrator, Karen—so much so that she is compelled to re-visit them, to re-tell the story for herself, fifteen years later (in 2010, when she’s in her mid-30s). In that “present-day” frame, Karen’s long-term relationship has failed and she’s feeling stuck and uninspired in her career; in many respects the past is more lively and real to her than the present. She needs to go back and pick through the wreckage of her college years in order to salvage what was important and let go of the rest, including her own lingering sense of culpability and guilt.
A framing which I found rather unnecessary and also unconvincing – for example the Greek framing of the account makes more sense to me when voiced by the narrator in the 2010s (when she was studying that period and fervently discussing it with her room mates and Professor) rather than as a mid-30s Pinterest/domestic-design-blog photographer.
Tramp Press themselves describe the book on their website as a “lyrical yet eyes-wide-open account of the epic clash between fraternities’ time-honoured ‘right to party’ and young women’s demands for sexual safety and respect”
I would also describe it as a balanced account – in fact if anything the fraternities come out stronger than the young women.
At the risk of turning my review into a fulfilment of Godwin’s Law, I am tempted to compare the book to a Polish author writing a balanced account of the epic clash between Nazi German’s “right to lebensraum” and the Polish nations demands for self-determination and frontier integrity …….. an account in which the main storyline consists of Poles drugging German soldiers and encouraging them to violate the border.
Overall this is a book which is very well and intelligently written but simply did not work for me. Just as the women’s plans were never going to succeed to meet their aims, I could never see how the author's plot devices or her treatment of the subject matter would meet her aims....more
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK small presses.
The book is published by Prototype PublishinI read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK small presses.
The book is published by Prototype Publishing who aim to create “new possibilities in the publishing of fiction and poetry through a flexible, interdisciplinary approach and the production of unique and beautiful books”. Their work is divided into four types: Type 1 (their core) is poetry, Type 2 is prose (or works “less easily defined by genre but using prose as their medium”), Type 3 “interdisciplinary and collaborative publications which require new and innovative ways of thinking about writing and publishing” and Type 4 an annual anthology.
This book, the debut novel, by an award winning poet, one which freely incorporates poetry in the prose alongside free verse, clearly fits into their overarching theme.
The author is an academic Lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature and is married to another writer – Daisy Hildyard whose book of essays The Second Body was published by Fitzcarraldo and which turns out to have significant overlap with this book (see below).
The book’s basic plot is of a couple (he a writer with a grant to write a novel, she in some form of employment), who shortly after the birth of their first child (a daughter Gina) move from London to a new housing development on a flood plain somewhere in the North: their move funded by an inheritance from a distant relative – one of the first person narrator’s Russian emigre relatives).
The death (and also I think his daughter’s birth) turn the narrator back to remembering his relatives – particularly his mother’s paternal grandfather and he is drawn to a particular housing development which he believes (or convinces himself in a fantasy) to be on his great-grandfather’s burial site.
(Interestingly this story had relevance for me having recently bought a property in a village where my maternal grandfather was born and several of his antecedents are buried, back to the mid 19th Century).
Threaded through this story though is the narrator’s discovery of fatherhood – the way in which his daughter’s birth cause him to rediscover much of his life and identity – for example her first words cause him to think about the meaning of language (which is of course at the heart of his work and identity).
And Fatherhood causes him to examine his physical identity and emotional role in the family unit, his relationship with his wife, his interaction with other men, his own childhood and the shared father role he experienced (between his natural father and stepfather). We see also something of a gentle breakdown in his mental health.
The last quarter of the book is dominated by catastrophic Christmas flooding of their new-build house, which not just destroys most of their possessions but also almost all of his writing after the birth of the daughter. The new beginning that a child brings to a marriage and a life, a beginning which is also accompanied by destruction, as so much of life before a first child arrives is irrevocably lost and all of our previous habits and attitudes come under examination, is I think brilliantly mirrored in the events of the flood and the couple’s reaction to it.
There are lots of excellent lines in the book, for example these two lines sum up a father’s experience of the birth:
“Now I touched her shoulder and she thanked me and asked me to not touch her shoulder” “I found a flannel – an unbelievable triumph”
I also loved
“The baby arrives home. You must bathe it in words. You are a relentless tour guide, unfamiliar with the world you describe”
“We removed her hat and dreams moved across her face and escaped through the top of her head. My beard hairs claimed her cheeks. Her lips kissed ghosts, then began to syn with sounds: zombie words. We supplied the words, day and night, as though she required translation”
“The public myth began when she was named”
“We tried out her name again in private, still loose on her body”
As well as mixing prose with poetry, the book also freely mixes the fictional with the memoir/biographical. Here I think the book is on one level less innovative – in fact increasingly auto-fiction seems to be becoming a default (with anything other than auto-fiction leading to outrage at the cultural appropriation involved) and of course is very commonly used in the area of motherhood (for example Jessie Greengrass, Rachel Cusk). However a perspective on and examination of fatherhood is far less common.
And the mix of fiction and biopgraphy is also interesting here in some literary ways.
Firstly, the events of the last quarter of the book are I believe very strongly mirrored in the last quarter of the author’s wife's “Second Body” – the last of the four essays of which examines the exact same flooding event. Although I have not read the book this review (https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...) contains copious references to events which are also mentioned in Fatherhood (just as two examples: some passersby filming the wife drying the husband’s notebooks; a scene where the couple actually find some release in throwing away their damaged possessions – a scene interestingly which lead to criticism in reviews of “Second Body” due to its incongruity with the book’s environmental themes).
Secondly, at one point the narrator is commissioned to write a poem for the National Poetry Day's Theme of "Light" and is assigned a 2AM slot of a series of poems means to represent a day. Interestingly (at least to me) this did actually happen (https://poetrysociety.org.uk/event/be...) and in fact Klaces was commissioned to write 6-8PM as well as 2-4AM both poems being featured in the book: the latter explicitly identified as a poem; the former as what starts as a stream of consciousness but then, later in the text, is referred to as a poem by his wife (Daisy Hildyard) who calls from her conference to say "I'm standing in the poem where you think you're God" and then compares his poem to her reality.
The poems (which also serve as a good introduction to the author’s poetry and the themes and style of the book are here):
My reservations about the book are two-fold: firstly, there were times when the text veered off too far into the realms of (at least for me) incomprehensions (and the 6-8 poem would be a good example); secondly for a book explicitly about new-born parenthood and about language and the intersection of the two – the book simply seems to mis/over represent the vocabulary of a 1 year old child.
Fragments are often quite jagged and sharp, one should handle them with care Both abstract and concrete shrapnel tends to cause mutilation or death I
Fragments are often quite jagged and sharp, one should handle them with care Both abstract and concrete shrapnel tends to cause mutilation or death It is therefore best avoided when it flies hot and deadly through the air
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK small presses.
This book is published by the UK small press Istros, from their website (my emphasis) …
At Istros, we believe that high-quality literature can transcend national interests and speak to us with the common voice of human experience. …. Istros is the old Greek and Thracian name for the lower Danube River, which winds its way down from its source in Germany and flows into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and goes on to cross many of the countries of South-East Europe: Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. Its watershed also extends to other neighbouring countries, with one of the main Danubian tributaries, the Sava, serving Slovenia and Bosnia/Herzegovina, while also feeding the waterways and lakes of Macedonia and Montenegro and Albania. These are the countries of focus for Istros Books, evoking the image of the Danube river flowing carelessly across the borders of Europe and encapsulating the ideal of the free-flow of knowledge and the cultural exchange that books promote.
Faruk Šehić was already longlisted for the inaugural version of the Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2017 for a translation of his 2011 novel “Quiet Flows the Una”. That book won the EU Prize for Literature and the citation there detailing his career is worth reproducing in detail as it captures much of the sense of this collection, originally published in 2004.
“most of his other works include the subjective experience of the war as a focus. The prose in his short stories is sober. Without judgement, he depicts the everyday experience of war, the brutal events, but also weaves in natural observations of the soldiers. Every detail is valued, be it the death of a comrade or the sight of birds on a power line. The unsettling effect of the stories unfolds through this ironic juxtaposition. Šehić knowingly uses authenticity as a rhetorical device, saying, “my readers should hate the war.””
It is translated by Mirza Purić, who brings to the translation both his origins growing up close to the author (which means he understands the local dialect the soldiers in the book adopt – albeit with no clear way to render that effect in English) and his background as an ex-military interpreter (to what is a book dominated by the lives, thoughts and dialogues of soldiers).
A series of fragments which capture how war is not just horrific, but for those both banal and mindless but all encompassing to those involved in it with effects which reverberate in their lives long after the physical war has ceased.
This book, due to its style and subject matter, was not one I would have contemplated reading without its longlisting – and to be honest not a subject or style I would seek out again – but that is personal taste. Partly I think because the book at heart is about holding up the reality of warfare (and the impact on those forced to conduct it) to those who buy into nationalistic myths around both – and I did not need any extra convincing on those points....more
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK and Irish small presses.
It is published by Book Works “EstI read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK and Irish small presses.
It is published by Book Works “Established in 1984, we are dedicated to supporting new work by emerging artists, and our projects are initiated by invitation, open submission, and through guest-curated projects”
And this book was (the final) part of just such a series “Semima” a series of 9 books commissioned by an artist and writer Stewart Home by a mix of specific commission and open submission- with the nine books looking for “artists or writers willing to take risks with their prose and who demonstrate total disregard for the conventions that structure received ideas about fiction” and with an overall series tagline “Semina: where the novel has a nervous breakdown”.
And its fair to say that Coson’s book perfectly fits the criteria both for the series and the (not dissimilar in intent if not in wording) criteria for the Republic of Consciousness Prize.
The conventions which the book totally disregards include coherence of plot (in fact to be honest even the concept of plot) and background explanation for the reader. However while the novel may have been having a nervous breakdown I found myself enjoying the story.
And while there is a lot innovative in the book – it does overlap strongly with in content with another recent small press book (and one which I think should have been entered for this prize Fitzcarraldo’s “Insurrecto”) and in approach with books like the RoC longlisted/Goldsmith’s shortlisted “Playing Possum” with multiple allusions to historical events and other art forms – allusions which to really appreciate what the author is trying to do, require either detailed knowledge of the subject under consideration (here the history of the Philippines – particularly in the 20th Century) or some extensive use of Google/Wiki/You Tube.
I must admit though that I found this book much easier to follow than Playing Possum and the associated internet research both fun and non-involving.
And in that spirit here are some links to add future readers and to allow them to enjoy the book as a straight read while gaining some insights and illustration at minimum effort.
“Can’t you just go, she thinks to herself. Find something to do, or play, or something”
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republ
“Can’t you just go, she thinks to herself. Find something to do, or play, or something”
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK and Irish small presses - for which it has now been shortlisted.
And Other Stories is a small UK publisher which “publishes some of the best in contemporary writing, including many translations” and aims “to push people’s reading limits and help them discover authors of adventurous and inspiring writing”. They are set up as a not-for-profit Community Interest Company and operate on a subscriber model – with subscribers (of which they now have around 1000 in 40 countries) committing in advance to enable the publication of future books.
Famously and admirably, And Other Stories were the only publisher to respond to Kamilia Shamsie (subsequent winner of the 2018 Women’s Prize)’s 2016 challenge to only publish books by women in 2018 (https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...)).
This book, translated by Martin Aitken (most famously joint translator of the sixth and final volume of Knausgaard’s My Struggle series) and published in 2019, was originally written in 1997 (which is important to the plot as a 21st Century word of smartphones would render the plot even more implausible than it is).
The book ostensibly tells the story of a single Mum, Vibeke and her eight year old child Jon – they have recently moved to a small, remote Norwegian town – Vibeke is an Arts and Culture officer at the local authority.
Set over a single Winter’s night, the evening before Jon’s 9th birthday, and written in the present tense, it cleverly interleaves (without any marked breaks) the simultaneous third-person point-of-view accounts of Jon and Vibeke to create an atmospheric tale with a never-realised undercurrent of menace.
Flush with the success of her first presentation Vibeke decides to go into the village, initially to visit the library but then distracted by a travelling funfair, where she decides to go with one of the workers into the nearby town. Jon, convinced that his Mum is preparing for his birthday, goes for a walk around the village, following an older girl back to her house where the two fall asleep together and then finding the house locked around midnight walking some more.
At the fair, Vibeke meets an eccentric woman selling cuddly toy tombola tickets, and the same woman later picks up the wandering Jon.
Jon’s world is one of habit/obsession (particularly with not blinking) and imagination – like many 8 year olds at times he operates in a parallel world of his imaginings.
Vibeke’s world is one of love – but a search for love and the adult companionship that she does not get from Jon, rather than a giver of it. The quote with which I open my review is on page 17 and immediately after (even thought its unspoken) Jon does go out never to return. Vibeke does think about Jon occassionally for another 17 pages but as soon as she goes out he ceases to exist in her thoughts – despite thinking of the day of the week and searching for a newspaper (all I think clues that she knows full well what day it is) she has no idea it’s her only son’s 9th birthday and when she finally returns to the house she does not even think to check on him in bed.
I think there are different ways to view the book – either as a rather unbelievable tale : not just in Vibeke’s behaviour, but in that of others who interact with Jon (the girl who takes an 8 year old back to her room and then falls asleep, her parents who think nothing of an 8 year old being in their house late at night and don’t think to ask after his parents, and who then allow him to walk out into the cold night not long before midnight). The only person who does seem to realise the oddness of an 8 year old wandering around is the funfair-lady, herself a clear eccentric and also a rather unbelievable character as she works out who Jon’s mother is and then seemingly goes looking for Jon. And there seems to be a clue to the incongruity of this interaction when Jon (an 8 year old as a reminder) takes his first drag on a cigarette and does not cough. All of which I think leads to the more obvious conclusion – that the book is more of a fantasy and that perhaps Jon does not exist as a character, a theory which is also supported by the over-heavy use of perfectly remembered dream sequences in the book (which is never a literary device that I enjoy).
Despite my reservations, this is an absorbing novella and one what has already won several award nominations in the US and I can see it making the RoC shortlist....more
Now longlisted for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize.
Hungry Paul … his best and only true friend. A man who had stood by him through everyth
Now longlisted for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize.
Hungry Paul … his best and only true friend. A man who had stood by him through everything and who had always reserved a space in his (admittedly quite) life just for Leonard. Their friendship was not just one of convenience between two quiet, solitary men with few other options. It was a pact. A pact to resist the vortex of busyness and insensitivity that had engulfed the rest of the world. It was a pact of simplicity, which stood against the forces of competitiveness and noise.
Bluemoose Books is an independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, and describes itself as a “‘family’ of readers and writers, passionate about the written word and stories, [who] delight in finding great new talent.” Admirably in 2020 they have committed to a woman-only list for 2020.
This book was one of their 2019 publications – and one which featured in so many 2019 book of the year lists by bloggers/reviewers whose opinions I rate that I had to read it. One I can already see featuring on my 2020 “best of” list.
The quiet, unobtrusive and meaning-filled book is the story of two friends – Leonard and Hungry Paul – both quiet 30-ish year old men living quiet, unobtrusive but still meaning-filled lives, still based in their childhood homes.
Leonard was “raised by his mother alone with cheerfully concealed difficulty, his father having died tragically during childbirth” (an opening sentence which sets the scene for the gentle and quirky humour of the book – humour which is all the stronger and more admirable for being essentially target -free).
His mother quickly identified his character (in a sentence which in turn sets the scene for the strength of the observational writing).
“As sometimes happens with boys who prefer games to sports, Leonard had few friends but lots of ideas. His mother understood with good intuitive sense that children like Leonard just need someone to listen to them”
And the two form a partnership, which ends just before the book starts, with his mother’s death.
Leonard, who works writing entries for children’s encyclopedias, recognises that this represents a key turning point in his life and that he has the choice either to retreat further from the world (which he fears will turn him into a grumpy eccentric) or start to carefully engage with it (a path he embarks on when a single mother at work – her child a fan of his work - starts to show interest in him).
Hungry Paul lives with his retired parents (his father an economist – which leads to some on point observations about that profession and about The Economist magazine; his mother a teacher). His older sister Grace is away from home and shortly to be married. That marriage gives the book its other main narrative arc – Paul’s family consumed with the preparations for it, and Leonard accompanying him there as his “plus one” (so as to free up the limited spaces for 2 other guests).
Hungry Paul is a master and practitioner of silence, mindfulness, pragmatism – living in and for the moment and avoiding commitment and conflict.
Though his life had been largely quiet and uneventful, his choices had turned out to be wise ones: he had already lived longer than Alexander The Great, and had fewer enemies too.
He works, occasionally, as a casual postman – a job choice which fits his life choices
He didn’t have to decide which of a patient’s limbs to amputate first, or where to invest the life savings of a company’s pensioners. There was no pressure to report fourth quarter losses to the “higher ups” in HQ … His job, on the few days he did it. Involved no agonised decisions or regrets that might spoil the conversation over dinner.
Much of the strength of the book lies in the dynamics between he and his family members
The three of them . had always seen themselves as bumpers along the blowing lane for him to bounce between, saving him from mundane dangers and guiding him towards his achievements, modest though they were.
And the dynamics between the three of them – their roles, interactions worked out over many years but now starting to evolve with Grace’s impending marriage and the retirement of Paul’s parents – an evolution which dawns on Hungry Paul more slowly than Leonard – and which unlike Leonard he seems less immediate need to react to – given his concentration on the present moment rather than the future.
But he had now become awakened by the thought that, no matter how insignificant he was when compared to the night sky, he remained subject to the same elemental forces of expansion. The universe, it seemed, would eventually come knocking.
A (rather odd) email competition and a fortuitous meeting with a master of mime, acts as the first tentative knock of the universe.
This is a very enjoyable and well written book – full of pithy but non-cruel observations:
Helen and Barbara entered into what Peter called “nattering”, a seamless narrative of personal stories, asides and value judgements, delivered in a point/counterpoint style with each woman taking her turn on the mic, with a seamlessness known only to middle-aged women and gangsta rappers.
On a simplistic level it could be seen as “up-lit” but it avoids the tropes that seem to have developed in that genre (heavy reliance on co-incidence, sympathetically portrayed but unreliable narrators, and late revelations which are largely down to that unreliability).
Leonard and Hungry Paul are not portrayed as flawed or unreliable – on the contrary they have a clarity of understanding due to their clutter-free attitude to life.
Two of the set piece conversations in the novel feature them using that clarity to gently unpick the pretentions, attitudes and assumptions of characters dear to them (Leonard to his work colleague and her approach to testing him in their nascent relationship; Paul to Grace about her self-adopted role in the family) – perhaps only weakened by both including a man explaining something to a woman.
The limited plot is mercifully free of coincidence or twists – if I had a criticism it would be that some scenes (an out-of-date chocolates incident and a IT-helpdesk colleague) seem to be lifted from a sit-com.
The book is perhaps more similar to Toby Litt’s brilliant “Patience”. It is a book which celebrates life and mundanity, gentleness and friendship.
As such it acts as a perfect anecdote to the tendency to see unpleasantness as somehow more literary; as one wedding guest says of an attendee on a creative writing course she ran:
She was [in her stories] always using phrases like “There was an empty chair by the door”. You know, trying to be depressing, because she thought it was more writerly.
Highly recommended when you want a reminder that good writing can also celebrate goodness....more
Now shortlisted for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK and Irish small presses.
This book published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe has been shortlNow shortlisted for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK and Irish small presses.
This book published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe has been shortlisted for the 2019 Goldsmith Prize – which I think could not be more appropriate, and in fact is overdue recognition of Isabel Waidner’s concept of a form of fiction which in line with the prize’s aims “breaks the mould … extends the possibility of the novel form …. embodies the spirit of invention that characterises the genre at its best”.
In 2018 I was one of the judges on the Republic of Consciousness Prize for small press fiction. One of the more unusual and challenging entries we received was “Gaudy Bauble” - their previous novel. I recall at the judges meeting that its shortlisting was quickly agreed as it so clearly fulfilled the aims of the prize – to highlight small presses publishing groundbreaking fiction.
In my review of that book I referenced the author’s thesis (https://pure.roehampton.ac.uk/portal/...) which helped considerably with my understanding of what they had achieved with the novel. In my own words I believe that Waidner’s key idea is to link two areas: conceptual art (something which she feels has only had limited cross over into literature) and post-identity gender fluidity – this leads to their concept and invention of trans-literature.
A key element of their writing I believe (again in my words) is the rejection of the traditional novelistic structure featuring a main character, other key characters, minor characters and then passive objects with which they interact.
I believe that Waidner implicitly equates this rigid and hierarchical structure with a traditional patriarchal, gender-rigid society. In their writing therefore the dominant character is a fluid concept – and just as an hierarchy starts to form (often to the relief of the tradition-bound reader, who finally starts to be able to identify the book with conventional concepts of plot and character and feels they are returning to something they know), Waidner very deliberately overturns this hierarchy and introduces a new main character, including in many cases what initially seemed inanimate objects – often based around patterns or illustrations on clothing (clothing often described in detail, and all it seems based on items that Waidner or their friends have worn).
Other thematic elements of Gaudy Bauble which stood out to me on my initial read (and before reading the thesis) were: the clear use of Google as a tool to take an idea and extend in a kind of free-association exploration of an initial concept and a search for links or word plays that can be incorporated to alter the course of the novel or to facilitate the introduction of new protagonists; the slightly odd narrative which at times can read like a rather literal translation from their native German.
To my interest, both of these elements (which I initially may have regarded as criticisms) are dwelt on and examined and explained in the thesis as intrinsic to their situation and to their new literary concept.
All of these concepts are explored in this book – which is perhaps a more approachable and accessible version of their first novel but very recognisably from the same genre.
I think part of that may be due to my familiarity with Waidner’s very distinctive techniques and style.
A second element is that the book has a clear overriding and very topical theme of Brexit to go alongside its exploration of: class in Britain, hostility to immigrants, polygenderism – interestingly all themes also explored in the 2019 Booker prize winner Girl, Woman, Other.
It would be appropriate if this book – more of a Person. Jumper, Other – joined that book by winning the 2019 Goldsmith....more
Now shortlisted for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize and recommended by me (as Mr Brown) in the Guardian’s Book of The Year awards
https://wwwNow shortlisted for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize and recommended by me (as Mr Brown) in the Guardian’s Book of The Year awards
I knew that one day all I would have was the memory of Jim and not Jim himself present in my peripheral vision making all my other senses go zing and now that time has indeed come and Jim is not present and has not been present for many years what I remember and want to record in long-hoarded words and word orders is not only the delicious presence of him Jim but also the delicious panic of that time during which I often told myself Calm down and take it all in but there was always too much world to take in because there was always more gorgeous detail than I had time or senses for and every caterpillar-of-a-When immediately became a butterfly-of-a-What and flew off into the flock of a thousand interplexing Whats whose air-dance of now being like this and now being like that was too delicate for anybody to remember but a god.
Elliott suffers from spastic cerebral palsy and has been left by his Mother in the care ward of a 1970s Catholic children’s institution. He can (barely) move his right hand but is otherwise paralysed and incapable of speech (although not of sound), he is however something of a musical savant, devourer and storer of words (both coming mainly from listening to radio and readings by the Nuns) – but almost all of this ability is hidden from others around him and only takes place in his mind, a mind that both we and Elliott visit.
Elliott himself is visiting from his future. The novel is written many years later (during which he is transferred on maturity to an associated male-run institution where he is literally left in a broom cupboard, but later rescued by a horrified Brother and then treated by a Doctor to reduce his muscle spams, enabling him to painstakingly type this account).
It tells of a seminal 50 day period in his younger life, when he forms a fleeting but, for Elliott, epochal friendship with a blind, mute boy Jim – one that enables Elliott to briefly experience some of his wildest (to him – painfully modest to us) wishes for a brief, but, for him, transcendent period .
Of course at the time despite my word-hoard I didn’t think it this way with these sentences in this order because often I was just a mute panic and a fantastic feeler-of-feelings. Even so it turns out didn’t do a bad job of remembering this or that butterfly of present-moment Jim with his warmth and goodwill towards all men but particularly it seemed towards me. And though I do have more language now thanks to the unlocking by Dr Masters and the books I am able to hear and the questions I am able to ask people I still know that even were I time-travelled as I am now back inside myself as I was during the Jim-time I would remember it no better because at the same time as watching air-dances of Whats I would be putting together words I wanted to remember in a particular order with a particular resplendence of rhythm and crumple of sounds and so the world would become lost to me trying to get it right in words rather than simply being the world of deliciously panicked now now galloping now giddily giddily galloping.
The situation and abandonment of the children on the ward can be heart tugging. The imagery in this passage will I think stay with me long after most books I have read this year are but vague memories.
Worship me mummy. Every child is Jesus for a while but every orphan is a single piece from a jigsaw puzzle the rest of which is somewhere else and so wherever it is is itself entirely ruined and frustrating … but the piece of the picture on that jigsaw piece may only be cloud-edge and sky or artificial blue and the orphan will spend useless hours of years of hours worrying over what complete painting or photograph they should form part of. I have seen in front of the doors of the lift as they finally closed I have seen little Jesuses be turned by the gap becoming a dark slit and a number counting down from 3 to 0 turned straight into jigsaw pieces I have seen and then heard them start crying as sons and daughters and finish crying as orphans
Elliott too desperately misses his Mother – counting down years by his annual Christmas card (the only time he learns of the births of other siblings from the addition of a new name to the card), but is a keen observer and consumer of everything around him – noise, sounds, characters, routines, relationships, the play of light and colour and the scattered but to him magical glimpses of the world outside, one he yearns to visit, an ambition he patiently nurtures, seeing Jim as giving him a fleeting opportunity to realise it.
The children on the ward are fed Catholicism alongside their meals – Elliott describing lunches as say “Cardinal Newman and mulligatawny soup with for me the bits strained out”.
At the age of nine and three quarters Elliott reflects that the “spastic and mongoloid and mental” conditions of the children was a sign of “not divine love but divine indiffernence or rather non-divine non-existence” but decides to put his trust “entirely completely” in God and test him by praying for a visit from his Mother in the next 12 months. When this does not materialise, Elliott loses his faith and very nearly his entire purpose for life, despairing of the ”atrocious selfishness of his mode of existence” – his physical condition rendering him he feels unable to offer any form of help to anyone else.
The reader though – particularly a Christian reader – cannot help but observe that Elliott’s life is far closer to the real Gospel, and his understanding of the teaching of Christ far greater, than that of some of the Nuns around him (albeit for many of them their care for the children is clearly sacrificial and motivated by service and mercy).
It is hard not to be reminded though in Elliott’s life of this list: (re ordered to fit the novel): self-control (of his mind, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, love (for Jim), finally joy (at the book’s end) and of course (throughout) patience.
Elliott’s greatest abilities and greatest lessons for us are to make so great an experience from so little, to examine even the most mundane and limiting circumstances for their variety, meaning and experience, to approach life with a wonderful mixture of optimism and hope while still being fully aware of its sadness and tragedy.
It says everything about the power of this novel that its most beautifully transcendent moment occurs with Elliott bleeding and dazed, tipped off his wheelchair and lying in a urine stained layby.
This is a desperately beautiful, emotionally intense, and uniquely moving novel....more
So I will just add a few thoughts and observations of my own.
The writing is earthy, scatalogically, viscerally evocative – I am not sure I have read many books where the effect of the writing goes beyond mental images to almost physical impact.
But it is also, particularly in the first part, written in a style which can only be described as florid (excessively elaborate) and complex, using English vocabulary the meaning of which I found myself having to check.
That first part is narrated by an unknown omniscient narrator (the start of the third part initially seemed to imply to me that the first two parts might be narrated by the elderly Eleonore to her great grandson Jerome, but I changed my view on this as I carried on reading.
Given the narrator does not seem to be a particular character looking back, and given the use of a continuous present tense, and that passages are described alongside characters being described as watching or observing, then I can only really see the passages as representing those same characters viewpoints.
Now it is very difficult for an educated, literary adult writer to voice either an uneducated peasant or a child, or particularly an uneducated peasant child, but I cannot see these two passages as representing anything even close to a successful attempt:
Animated by a fragile grace, his fingers race along the buttons like the tremulous legs of a moth, the death’s-head hawkmoths that eclose from chrysalides in the potato fields. Then he gets up, comes to the table and when the genetrix in turn sits down, raised his joined hands to his face, his proximal phalanges interlaced ….
Tegenaria spiders have woven and rewoven dense funnel webs, frozen by the sediment of time, swollen and made heavy as oriental hangings by dirt, sawdust, the husks of insects and the translucent chitin moulded by distant generations of arachnids.
In the third and fourth parts, the writing retains its evocative qualities while shedding its more florid tendencies and to my fascination (given these two passages were the ones that I noted in the first part as most troubling me) I found in the third part, almost the same passages re-written:
Serge sits back in his chair, steepling his fingers in front of his face.
.. spiders in shadowy haylofts that weave webs .. that .. are still there a year, a decade, even a century later, the web a little dustier, a little thicker, a little more forbidding
So is there something deliberate in this over-writing?
The strongest section for me, by far, was the second – that set in the First World War, as we see the impact on an male-dominated, sustenance farming society of the young men suddenly going to war, see the fear and tragedy felt by families as those young men do not return, the changed society to which the survivors do return, and the mental and physical legacy of violence with which they return, and the impact which that has in turn on society.
I enjoyed as passage - as the farmer sons come to terms with the violence they are now expected to enact for the sake of a war in a previously very distant world (a war, in which in my views, surely the horrendous loss of live, and the institutional indifference to it, had its origins in the world of industry not of agriculture)
Since birth they have watched killings. They have watched their fathers and mothers take the lives of animals. They learned the gestures and copied them. They in turn have killed hares, cocks, cattle, piglets, pigeons. They have shed blood and sometimes drunk it. They know the smell, the taste. But a Boche? How do you kill as Boche. Surely this would make them murderers, even if this is a war?
The third and fourth parts however were spoiled for me by the rather heavy handed and far from subtle denunciation of modern farming: if the aim is to convert or provoke the reader, I find this kind of literature-as-preaching typically tends to provoke a counter-reaction in me (in this case making myself a bacon butty). A sense of perspective seems to have been sacrificed for polemic.
As an example of the excessiveness is this key passage:
This coldness, this hard-won indifference to the animals has never quite managed to stifle in Joel a confused loathing that cannot be put into words, the impression – and, as he grew, the conviction – that there is a glitch – one in which pig rearing is at the heart of some much greater disturbance beyond his comprehension, like some machine that it unpredictable, out of kilter, by its nature uncontrollable, whose misaligned cogs are crushing them, spilling out into their lives, beyond their borders, the piggery as the cradle of their barbarism and that of the whole world.
Now in among the descriptions of the natural world, this section features both a grass snake (at two metres) and a male domesticated pig (at four metres) that seem to mirror the excessiveness of the writing – so again I ask is this deliberate?
Overall certainly a very interesting book - and one which makes the Man Booker International shortlisting of another polemical, pro animal rights, anti Catholic, book from the same publisher look even odder than it already was....more
Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer
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