|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1566895782
| 9781566895781
| 1566895782
| 3.49
| 334
| May 05, 2020
| May 05, 2020
|
really liked it
|
J.A x 2 – Japanese American meets Jane Austen A two-part collection of thematically related short stories about Sansei – third generation Japanese imm J.A x 2 – Japanese American meets Jane Austen A two-part collection of thematically related short stories about Sansei – third generation Japanese immigrants to America (here mainly California), and their interactions with the two previous generations and particularly the Nisei (second generation immigrants) and Kibei (American born/Japanese educated/America returning) generations whose experience of World War II internment coloured their worldview and in particular their parenting. The first part is a series is a collection of stories/essays already (with one exception) published by the author from 1975 to 2017. This is completed by a series of Sensei recipes (effectively Japanese/junk American fusion cuisine) and a timeline of Japanese American events (with a California bias) from 1868 to 2019 which also shows the ages of the three different JA generations and the well known American generations (Boomers etc). My favourite stories included “The Dentist and the Dental Hygienist” – an amusing story about an uncomfortably perceptive dental hygienist; “A Gentlemen’s Agreement” – more of a picture essay but which gave me interesting insights into the different Japanese immigration into Brazil compared to the US due to the presence of wives; Colono:Scopy – which uses that medical procedure as an uncomfortable/confrontational exploration of the Japanese role in recent American history; and best of all “KonMarimasu” which very cleverly links the Marie Kondo craze to various sites remembering JA internment camps via the idea of retention of memories and artefacts. The second part is effectively an enjoyable and imaginative series of pastiches of Jane Austen novels written with Sensei characters as the author explores how the tightly controlled, but changing, social mores of Jane Austen’s writing is partly mirrored in the world of the JA Sensei. The only criticism here is that the stories seem to me to really require for maximum enjoyment both an extensive knowledge of Jane Austen and a good knowledge of JA cultural references – which for optimal enjoyment may be a pretty small venn diagram intersection converging on the author’s JA sister Jane - a fanatical cos-playing Janeite. For me I score pretty highly on the first but my enjoyment was much stronger for the Pride and Prejudice/Emma stories where I know the original plot in huge detail, high for Sense and Sensibility where I have what could be described as prompted-plot awareness, and lowest for say Northhanger Abbey or Lady Susan where I have almost none) And on the second (as someone with only limited knowledge of Californian culture in general let alone Sansei specificities I felt I was lacking appreciation and even comprehension of these elements. A highlight for me was one scene – in which (in a replay of the “badly done Emma” Box Hill conversation) Emi is upbraided by her mentor George Kishi for harassing a well intentioned Church matron Mrs Esa for her generations refusal to talk about internment, oblivious to the social reasons for this. I received this book as an extremely thoughtful leaving gift by a colleague and friend – and it is a fascinating and very different read. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 16, 2022
|
May 17, 2022
|
May 17, 2022
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1913097811
| 9781913097813
| 1913097811
| 3.65
| 432
| unknown
| Apr 20, 2022
|
really liked it
|
Winner of the 2023 RSL Encore Prize for second novels Also shortlisted for the 2023 Folio Prize If the invisible air was loaded with invisible poisoWinner of the 2023 RSL Encore Prize for second novels Also shortlisted for the 2023 Folio Prize If the invisible air was loaded with invisible poisons, if my own bloodstream could be modelled by its tiniest contaminant component, then it was only logical to understand that the infinitely detailed world, within and beyond the things that I could make sense of, was dangerous. This was not what I felt as I moved freely around the village and the wood. I had a sense of total safety and this was a function of my background - my white body and my parents' confidence gave me a relationship with that environment that ran somewhere between feeling that I belonged to it, and feeling that it belonged to me, though I did not know of any child in our community, along any of the axes that were used to identify us - rich or poor; black or white; girl or boy; beautiful or ugly; strong or weak; bright or thick - who was kept inside out of a concern for their bodily safety. I had access to the wood, the fields, and to other peoples' homes as though I was an element of infrastructure, piped water or electrical wiring, running under the ground, between the trees, through and within the houses with a supply of something that the inhabitants, whether through habit or deep dependence, had stopped noticing. This is the second novel by Daisy Hildyard. However this novel has far more overlap with - and the author is I think better known for – her previous non-fictional book of essays “Second Body”, a book which has had rather mixed reviews here and whose blurs starts with the idea that to “To be an animal is to be in the possession of a physical body, a body which can eat, drink and sleep; it is also to be integrated within a local ecosystem which overlaps with ecosystems which are larger and further away”. (I did not read that essay but have some knowledge of it as the book had (particularly in its last essay) significant overlap with Caleb Klaces (her partner’s) 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize longlisted “Fatherhood”) This novel is mainly set in the author’s own childhood home area of North Yorkshire – in a kind of neither/nor place – not incredibly prosperous or downtrodden, not beautiful countryside, coast or big town, not entirely rural or urban. The protagonist for much of the book is a child roaming her home village (as per the opening quote) and observing, slightly passively the life of its inhabitants (both the other children at school, their parents and the wider village) and with an equal, if not possibly greater, weight of observation, the fauna, flora and fungi that surrounds and inhabits it – particularly a quarry and wood near the village. The framing device is of the narrator some twenty or so years later in lockdown in a City flat – no longer really part of active society and reduced to the status of observer, which therefore triggers memories of her childhood observations. Much of the nature writing in the main childhood part is both precise in its detail and at times beautiful in its prose; but this is no Monbiot or City living Green voting style account of the countryside but one steeped in reality and with a narrator (from something or a middle class family in the village) only too aware of the time of her privilege and even more so, two decades later, aware of what actually underlies much environmental writing. In a passage which I may just use for review of that writing she observes: Since then I have noticed how expressions of care for the environment are often outlets for hatred of other humans, both in the accusation out we that we are bad for other species, in which the accuser rarely seems to understand themselves to be a part of any we, and also in the protection of a privileged experience of greenery over the voices and essential needs of the poorer indigenous and local people. In England, the phrase local people is a byword for a community that is corrupted by its ignorance and incest — not only poor and undereducated, but repellently so. And there is much to enjoy in the ideas and themes the author explores – although in each case the execution (perhaps appropriately) explores a boundary –the boundary between excellent narrative linkage and rather clumsily executed segues. One of the narrator’s early related childhood memories is of a bus driver who repeatedly and deliberately fluffed his gear choice when climbing a hill – and unfortunately for me this served as a metaphor for some not always brilliantly executed gear changes. One key theme to the book is connectedness, not just the local connectedness of villagers or of underground fungal networks, but particularly a global connectedness which echoes the Second Body idea – as the narrator as an adult but looking back on her childhood muses on for example the interaction of global economic forces with the activity (or lack of activity) at the local quarry, or on the provenance of foodstuffs or destination of consumable materials. At times this can seem artificial and with an awareness of say plastic decay which seems age and era inappropriate and rather clumsily added via the latter awareness of the narrator in the present day framing. And the present day scenes and lockdown scenes themselves – while I believe crucial as a breakthrough to the author finding a way to cast her ideas as a novel are often very jarring when they arise – while a closing scene of a fire seemed a very clumsy way to crowbar in a theme of global warming which has been latent yet inevitable for much of the book. The book also explores class and race prejudices in the childhood era – not ones exhibited by particular offenders but ones gently endemic and implicit to the assumptions of the village. Again this can seem rather forced. I would say though that I really enjoyed an extended scene where two incidents are juxtasposed. The first is the schoolchildren’s delighted reaction to Jarvis Cocker (a fellow Yorkshireman)’s take down of Michael Jackson’s Earth Song (itself of course thoroughly related to the book’s ideas) – and the cautionary reaction of a teacher which looking back the narrator realises is a criticism of the racist undertones to the protest and the reaction to it. The second is a lapwing’s insistence on laying its eggs in the nestling hollows created by a tractor tire – with the inevitable result that the eggs are shortly after crushed. In both cases the link is an assumption of right to space, one that means no harm but is blind to privilege. So overall this is not a completely successful novel – but it is an ambitious, thoughtful and intelligent one and to be commended for it. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 16, 2022
|
May 19, 2022
|
May 16, 2022
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1913867250
| 9781913867256
| 1913867250
| 4.34
| 127
| unknown
| Apr 05, 2022
|
really liked it
|
Charco Press is an Edinburgh-based small UK press – they focus on “finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new r
Charco Press is an Edinburgh-based small UK press – they focus on “finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new readers in the English-speaking world”. This is the third book of their sixth year of publication but perhaps the most different to date as unlike all their previous publications (translations of novels from Spanish) this is the first of their new “Untranslated” series of books written in English but still with the key idea of bridging Latin America and English culture by publishing authors who are also Spanish translators, and Latin American authors who choose to write in English. This book is by Daniel Hahn – who is a prolific translator and also a great and generous (figurative and literally) champion of translation. A few years back I attended a kind of translation duel he set up – one of a number I believe he ran where two translators both translated a famous piece of work and then bought their translations to compare/contrast/discuss. Also a few years ago when joint winner of the lucrative IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (admittedly for the translation of a rather poor novel whose name has been thankfully generally obliterated from my memory) he used his share of the prize money to establish a new prize aimed at translators (rather than original authors) and also (which is I think even more unusual) for editors of translated fiction. One of Charco’s distinguishing characteristics is the prominence they give to translation – translators are listed on the covers and given equal billing on their website to the original authors, and further a number of their books feature a short translator’s afterword, something I think adds a lot to a literary fiction translation as the translator discusses some of the most interesting challenges/key decisions made in their translation, the style of the author in their original language and perhaps also gives a perspective on/interpretation of the original novel. And this book takes that idea to book length as it is a lightly edited compilation of a diary he published on the Charco Press website to live-blog his translation of Diamela Eltit’s “Never Did the Fire” – which Charco published alongside this. I would say though that the diary is much stronger on the translation challenges (be it how to deal with the definite article or gendered nouns), and on the style of the author (with Eltit’s writing being particularly marked in a number of ways) than on interpreting the novel (in fact Hahn effectively admits that parts of the novel rather passed him by). And this was perhaps my only slightly disappointment with this book which otherwise was an enjoyable and easy read. My only other comment would be that as a complete non Spanish speaker I think I gained less from reading this than if I had even some ability to read (French) or even some limited/specialist knowledge (German/Italian/Dutch). I have seen some debate about which order to read the two books in. I think optimal is probably to skim read the novel to get a feel for it, then read the translation diary and then read the novel properly (this matches in some ways Hahn’s own translation technique). Second best is perhaps more like my approach – read the first 50 or so pages of the novel until the prose becomes too dense/tortuous to be enjoyable, then skip to the diary for light relief and then return to the novel at intervals. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 14, 2022
|
May 15, 2022
|
May 14, 2022
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1913867218
| 9781913867218
| 1913867218
| 3.71
| 357
| May 2007
| Apr 05, 2022
|
liked it
|
Charco Press is an Edinburgh-based small UK press – they focus on “finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new r
Charco Press is an Edinburgh-based small UK press – they focus on “finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new readers in the English-speaking world”. This is the second book of their sixth year of publication. One of Charco’s distinguishing characteristics is the prominence they give to translation – translators are listed on the covers and given equal billing on their website to the original authors, and further a number of their books feature a short translator’s afterword, something I think adds a lot to a literary fiction translation. Here Charco have gone a little better than that and published an entire 200 page book on the translation process – Daniel Hahn’s “Catching Fire – A Translation Diary”. I have seen some debate about which order to read the two books in. I think optimal is probably to skim read the novel to get a feel for it, then read the translation diary and then read the novel properly (this matches in some ways Hahn’s own translation technique). Second best is perhaps more like my approach – read the first 50 or so pages of the novel until the prose becomes too dense/tortuous to be enjoyable, then skip to the diary for light relief and then return to the novel at intervals. The basic set up of the book is of an ageing woman living in a small bedsit with a man, both decades previously leading members in a revolutionary leftist organisation. The prose is both intense and circular in a way which matches the claustrophobic confinement of their current lives, and the repetition of their daily routines. The woman (who is the narrator) looks back on their past lives, particularly various incidents which occurred in the movement and especially what seems to have been the death of their 2 year old son from respiratory problems (with the two reluctant to take him to hospital due to their fugitive status). The past is often a third character in the novel – with various past revolutionary colleagues effectively living in the room in ghost form. The weakest part of the novel for me was that large parts of the narrators thoughts on the past are bound up in the tortuous language, procedural posturing of the left-wing revolutionary organisation in a way which to me only really worked if viewed as a satire on over-earnest student radicals claiming to represent a working class that has no interest in their revolution, but which I think here is actually serious (and in fact deadly serious given the history of suppression of the left wing in Chile). And while I liked the way that the concept of cells is used to link the development and decay of the revolutionary movement to that of the man and woman’s bodies – I did think this link was more than a little over laboured. And the only breaks from this dense plot were unfortunately not that welcome – a rather scatalogical description of the woman’s duties as some form of home help; a fairly gruesome account of a traffic accident and equally gruesome one of a violent bank robbery. Nevertheless this was a memorable read. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 14, 2022
|
May 15, 2022
|
May 14, 2022
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0571363784
| 9780571363780
| 0571363784
| 3.28
| 1,161
| Jul 19, 2022
| May 05, 2022
|
really liked it
|
This is an entertaining if perhaps lightweight (*) series of interlocking short stories (one almost a novella) – with the stories differing in their m
This is an entertaining if perhaps lightweight (*) series of interlocking short stories (one almost a novella) – with the stories differing in their main focus and style, but featuring a core of the same two characters – which look primarily at the lives of a group of 20 somethings who live in an unspecified large City (**) and work in the restaurant or advertising industries and whose lives are dopamine-dominated via the media of their smartphones and browsers, as well as by the financial tyranny of the intersection of high rent and low pay/long hour jobs and the pressure to resist the failure of being bailed out by the bank (and moving back to the home) of Mum (and Dad – although mainly Mum in this book). (*) The author has said that the book is deliberately set in a blurred every place global city – but the characters are noticeably English, London the only such English town and the author lived and worked in London – so its easier just to assume its London (**) It is very possible this is just the country living, City-working early Generation X in me coming out judgmentally when reading a book about Urban non-financial services Millennials – as I think there is actually a real depth to the writing in: The themes it explores (the way in which the book explores privacy and its invasion – not just via the internet or work surveillance but say by a landlord who does not respect boundaries); The inner lives it portrays (an extended side story has a – in her own view – plain looking woman musing on a humiliation she faced in a spin the bottle party when her schoolchild crush refused to kiss her); And in some of its original descriptive writing (a sky “the colour of the financial times” is a highlight). The two main characters are Julia – who works as a chef at a trendy restaurant and who suffers from self-doubt and indecision/passivity; and her one time college boyfriend Nick – now in rather a funk with an alcohol/self respect problem and working in a dead end job as a copywriter for an advertising/media agency where he tries to write stories when no one is looking (this last part is clearly autobiographical and of great interest to the writer as this Grant piece makes clear - https://granta.com/jem-calder-notes-o...). The first and longest story written in a series of short, snappily titled third party vignettes, tells of Julia’s move to her latest job and the relationship she allows herself to be drawn into with her older boss against her and our better judgement – the style is I think Rooney-esque (and Saint Sally blurbs the book) but of course whereas Rooney’s characters are famously non-techy (other than email) Julia conducts much of her self online. Better Off Alone was perhaps the weaker story for me – narrated in the first person a rather down on his luck Nick crashes a house party to little effect (other than we do go back to when he and Julia met). Distraction from Sadness is Not The Same as Happiness (a brilliant title from an anonymous internet course many years before) is I think likely to be the love it or hate it part of the collection – effectively narrated at first from the point of view of a dating site algorithm it sets out the relationship arc of a male user and female user (I think probably the female user is Julia) – and in doing so dissects 212t century dating both from the IT and “user” experience Excuse Me Don’t I Now You – has Julia and Nick briefly meeting at a Farmers' Market and then going for a walk together as we are privy (privacy invasion of course being the prerogative of a traditional novel) to their thoughts on each other Search Engine Optimisation is the third big part of the book – a multicharacter exploration of Nick’s workplace on a Friday when one of their fellow workers is leaving and effectively an examination of office protocols and politics in a timesheet’d, creative agency as the characters project, interact and typically fail to understand each other, all of it partly moderated by an IT worker who has used the keystroke and browser surveillance systems to track what each of the colleagues do for the large part of the time when they are now working. If I had a criticism of this part it is that it feels already very dated due to the pandemic The Forseeable then addresses this – set in early lockdown with Nick (the first party narrator) and Julia now both furloughed, both living back with their Mums and Face Timing each other and with Nick admitting that his last few stories “read like irrelevant period pieces, set in a frivolous, pre-contagion reality”. Overall a fresh and talented voice and a read which is while not a dopamine hit certainly rewarding. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 19, 2022
|
May 20, 2022
|
May 14, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 9781472297594
| 3.98
| 1,104
| May 31, 2022
| Apr 2022
|
liked it
|
Winner of the 2023 Hawthornden Prize. This book featured in the 2022 version of the influential annual Observer Best Debut Novelist feature (past year Winner of the 2023 Hawthornden Prize. This book featured in the 2022 version of the influential annual Observer Best Debut Novelist feature (past years have included Natasha Brown, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Douglas Stuart, Sally Rooney and Gail Honeyman among many others). And I would not be surprised to see it appear on literary prize lists over the next 12 months or so – as it clearly introduces a fresh and distinctive new voice to the UK literary scene from a very young author (the auction for this book – and a follow up around the St Paul riots – took place in 2020 when the author was a 22 year old recent English graduate). It will I think be a book that will divide opinion – many (and particularly mainstream) reviewers will I think simply go for the exciting young voice view; but individual readers I think may struggle with a number of aspects: the narrative style (particularly the speech), the literary techniques, the religious elements and the worldview of the protagonist (of which I struggled with the latter three aspects). This book has a very strong sense of place – set in the Stapleton Road area, described by Wikipedia as “a major thoroughfare in the English city of Bristol, running through the districts of Lawrence Hill and Easton. It is known for being very culturally diverse with many esoteric shops. However since the mid 20th century it has gained a reputation for having a high crime rate”. Here by contrast, and as an example of the vibrant writing which categories this novel, and particularly its beginning is how the same “Stapes” area is described here: There are roads in neighbourhoods like mine all across the country. Broad roads. Without mansions. In England they have names like City Road or High Street, except this road was called Stapleton, and those familiar with her charm might call her Stapes. The first party narrator is Sayon – part of the notorious Hughes family “known to police and hospital staff across the city.” whose various branches (shown as a – Olive – family tree before the text start) all under the matriarchal overview of his grandmother Nanny, dominate his life the book. Key family members include: Cuba/Midnight – strictly the son of Sayon’s mother’s younger sister but very much a brother to Sayon from school through to their drug dealing partnership; Sayon’s own mother Erica – one of the few to leave the Hughes family, having married a Church pastor Errol Stewart and having largely abandoned all links to the Hughes, including to her own son from a young age; his older cousin Hakim – the other escapee from the family, having converted to Islam, married a Somali girl Elia (Sayon’s school friend) and running a bakery; Winnie – the drug addicted daughter of Nanny’s sister Auny Winifred and a rather (to me) confusing list of other cousins – Jamaal, Hakim, Killa, Bunny all seemingly marked by their criminal, womanising and violent tendencies. Sayon’s long term girlfriend is Shona, now an up-and-coming music agent/producer she is also the daughter of a pastor – Lyle Jennings. Lyle’s Baptist church is more fundamentalist, and bible based than Errol’s more charismatic church and Shona is much closer to her parents than Sayon (in fact still living at home in a relatively idealistic home set up – note than we only really see Shona through Sayon’s eyes so we realise that her character and set up are idealised by him). The set-up of the book has both a long-term dream/fantasy of Sayon’s and a short term but very serious dilemma that threatens those dreams just as they are crystallising. His long term aim (as set out in the first chapter) is to buy a Clifton based mansion that his mother first showed him as a child – and his drug dealing and other criminal activities have got him close to that aim with nearly 80% of the price in cash; however just before the novel’s starts (and this is not a spoiler as it is revealed from the second chapter) Sayon kills someone to protect Cuba and is now desperately scrambling to cover this up so as to maintain his dream (and his relationship with Shona) This involves him effectively needing to make a breach with his own family and come under the influence of Shona’s father who, having always resented her relationship with Sayon, now sees Sayon’s salvation as his life project. The narrative style of the book is distinctive but also I would say uneven. As well as some vibrant prose (see the lengthy quote above), there are some brilliant figures of speech: “They hit every R' like joyriders hitting speed bumps” for a the accent of some (white) Bristolian builders; and “an ostentation of whites” to describe a group of early-gentrification phase inhabitants of the area – were for me worth the book price alone. And the book will for many readers be most distinguished by the speech of the various characters – typically Jamaican patois of various vintages – including sprinklings of Somali, for example (Sayon’s mother and a younger Cuba respectively) Boysah, yuh better lef di poor gyal loose, Sayon. Maybe next time mi bump innah Marcia mi could tell er, dem deserve fi know exactly who deh date dem daughter. As with “Who They Was” or “Mad and Furious City” (and the book will draw comparisons to both and sits somewhere in the middle of them) one’s ability to appreciate the book will partly correlate with one’s ability to follow the language (which for me was not an issue but I think may well be for others). But with all of this fairly distinctive language – the book also lapses into literary technique which is not just more conventional but I felt out of place in literary fiction. A number of chapters end with a heavily telegraphed transitions “I sought a moment’s comfort elsewhere”, “a familiar memory came to mind, “in the first year of secondary school, I almost [lost Shona]” or dramatic cliffhangers/revelations “I saw you kill that boy the other night” And among a tale of a 11-year-old (going on about 21 at least compared to my schooldays) gangster in the making (while also intelligent) Sayon recounting tales of his various schemes and fights what are we to make of the insertion of this sudden passage of exposition The school was more than seventy per cent Black but the higher sets were more Middle-Eastern, Vietnamese and Pakistani, which was an unsettling fact for one of the only cities in the country whose Black population was bigger than its Asian. And some of the writing, especially when we are meant to understand the jeopardy of Sayon’s position, would not be out of place in a pre GCSE creative writing exercise with too much of a tell-not-show style and some rather clunky formulations. The money in my trouser pocket weighed heavy as I found some resolution and marched up the Jenningses' garden path, but my nerves were far from serene. Recent circumstances had placed my life's work and aspirations at terrible risk, and when I was only a hair's breadth from it too. And the pastor's invitation to dinner had come at the worst possible time. The other really distinctive aspect of the novel is its religious underpinning. Each chapter starts with an epigraph – the majority bible verses (which typically fit the chapter well if not perfectly or clunkily) with some Jamaican proverbs and (particularly towards the end) some Quran verses. And the theme of religion and in particular sin/damnation/repentance/redemption is vital to the book, to Sayon’s dilemma and his journey and to the reaction of his mother, Nanny and prospective father-in-law to him and his decisions. In the book the national law as represented by the “Feds” is probably closer to an annoying and biased tax or occupational hazard rather than a rule to be respected – so that the justice both of the streets but particularly as mediated by religion is far more crucial. For the characters in the book some form of religious underpinning is taken almost as read and a choice between different shades of Christianity, Islam or Rastafarianism is more due to personal circumstances – for example with Sayon on a journey from Christianity to Islam informed really by his embrace of the need for some form of religious discipline alongside his rejection of what he sees as the hypocrisy of his parents. I understand that the epigraphs were originally intended to be more used in the text to reflect the way Black elders in particular would use bible verses in everyday life, but it was an editorial decision to reflect that an English readership (the author has called England “the least spiritual place in the world.”) would not really identify. As with a number of books that feature heavy Christian influences in a non-positive way I think the book may still be neither one thing nor the other for UK readers: many non-religious readers will I think still find the biblical influences at best extraneous, whereas Christian readers (and I suspect those from other faiths) will find the treatment of religion as voiced by Sayon at best reductive if not slightly insulting. Which brings me to my final issue – as with “Who They Was” I think some readers may struggle to sympathise with Sayon’s worldview and the didactic way in which it seems to justify say selling drugs to homeless people as exactly equivalent to a religious group feeding or clothing them, as well as the constant violence and criminal activities which can be justified due to injustices against past generations. Overall for me this was a novel which read very clearly as a debut novel and as one written by a young author, and one where a number of aspects did not really work for me – but nevertheless still a very interesting new voice who I think will go on to write much better novels. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 13, 2022
|
Jun 15, 2022
|
May 13, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||||
| 1913505081
| 9781913505080
| 1913505081
| 3.39
| 451
| Sep 07, 2021
| Sep 07, 2021
|
liked it
|
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists an award for which it is now shortlisted – although I p
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists an award for which it is now shortlisted – although I previously knew the book as my twin brother was very proud to win it in a hotly contested (*) Twitter quiz. (*) it may not have been hotly contested. It was also long listed for the Gordon Burn Prize and shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize. There is a lot to like in this book, particularly given it is a debut novel. It is set in North London – but unlike the rather smug self-absorbed upper-Middle class Islington set that seems to dominate much literary fiction (think Ian McEwan or Charlotte Mendelson’s rather awful Women’s Prize longlisted “The Exhibitionist”) not to mention politics, this book is focused on the working class community of Tottenham/Haringey and particularly the Turkish and Turkish-Cypriot diaspora there. Like so much of the admirable Desmond Elliott longlist it is an experimental book in a number of ways. It is a non-linear fragmentary account (like “Somebody Loves You”), told effectively in a series of vignettes which aim to assemble and coalesce over time into a picture of a multi-generational group of women. These are Grandmother Makbule - still traumatised by the discovery of the mutilated body of her husband in the Cypriot civil war; her daughter Ayla - mother of three, who with her children’s partner in jail has to find a way to dispose of the drugs he left behind and who hatches a plot to smuggle heroin in cabbages; and her daughter Damla who gives the book part of its mixed genre feel – coming of age novel mixed with London-street novel mixed with gangster novel, albeit one with a twist by turning the focus to the female characters who “Keep the House” and which deliberately undermines with subtle comedy the supposedly macho male characters who would be the normal focus. The book (like “Violets”, albeit to a lesser extent) mixes conventional prose with striking poetry The book (like “Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies”, albeit to a lesser extent) includes non-standard typesetting of text. Here the text is used when foreign (typically Turkish Cypriot) words and phrases are included – with the text supplying the translation in a way which effectively I think conveys a sense of multi-culturalism and diaspora More so than “Violets” and “Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies” the book shows the influence of Max Porter (here very explicitly as the book’s editor) Some of the writing can be very non-standard in its use of metaphor and simile – for example I noted “These interactions, space shared with the people hustling up made against me, were comforting. We moved in parallel lines, coasting the shoreline of baskets for good finds. It me feel like I was part of something computational— were being cued up into ascending actions.” And finally any book which has brief mentions (all positive and one really quite unusual) about each of Arsenal, Norfolk and Marmite could get an additional star for each of them. Now for the parts I did not like so much. The book as noted concentrates on a working class group – but (like “Iron Annie” also on the longlist) does so by largely portraying this group as built around the drug trade, and illustrating this by a rather odd requirement to shift an incredible amount of heroin. In both cases I found that my interest in the book was considerably diminished by this choice and uncomfortable with a longlist that seems to equate portrayal of working class characters with portrayal of gangsters/drug dealers. Possibly exacerbated by this I found that the story did not really coalesce for me on the way that I think the author intended – and further in what I think was meant to be at a least in part a character based novel I found too many of the characters too much of a blur despite (or even possibly because of) the cast of characters at the start. To be fair the author has said “Most of the publishers who had issues with the book wanted me to sort out my characters. They thought there were too many, or that some were too similar to each other. But people repeat themselves; in a group, everyone becomes closer in character to each other. Üzüm üzüme baka baka kararır– two grapes on a grapevine ripen each other” – but I was left a little feeling that the author could have taken more of this feedback on board. Related to this many of the metaphors/similes seemed to misfire for me – the example above I originally noted as a negative, not positive example. And finally the book had an early working title of “Love Letter to Tottenham” – whereas one of my all time favourite songs, particularly for singing in an enclosed space with hundreds of others has the following lyrics We hate Tottenham and we hate Tottenham Overall therefore an admirable debut which did not really work for me. North London forever (*) this inspirational lyric may not be from this book but be my newest favourite song and which works for me much better to convey a nearby part of North London https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjCJv... ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 07, 2022
|
May 09, 2022
|
May 07, 2022
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0857525735
| 9780857525734
| 0857525735
| 3.56
| 219
| unknown
| Jan 01, 2022
|
really liked it
|
My Bookstagram bookthemed Golden Retriever photo https://www.instagram.com/p/ChnFRNeLA... I have found in my relatively short experience that life hMy Bookstagram bookthemed Golden Retriever photo https://www.instagram.com/p/ChnFRNeLA... I have found in my relatively short experience that life has a way of giving me springs and autumns, one thing always following another and all seeming to vanish as quickly as they come. Ephemerality is what everything feels like in the end. I think I got the idea from Mum when she told me the stories of our family, the stories that had shaped us and brought us here. What the relatives she spoke about all seemed to share was a life that ebbed and flowed around them, one tide always giving way to another, so they were caught and pulled in different directions, every move they tried to make for themselves beset and foiled by some countermovement, so no matter what they tried to do to change their worlds, they always seemed to end up back where they started. Back on the farm. What became of their lives seemed to be out of their hands. They were just drawn through time by deep, irresistible currents. This is the fourth novel from the award winning playwright Barney Norris. I have read his debut novel “Five Rivers Meet on a Wooden Plain” and second novel “Turning for Home” (which incidentally could have made an alternate title for this novel) and found both very strong novels (the second particularly) from an author I consider very underrated. Melissa Harrison in her Guardian review of his debut novel finished her review with a sentence that I think sums up what I really like in his writing and what I think probably counts against him in a literary world which often seems to mistake misanthropic or transgressive writing for quality. There are different kinds of good writing. Technical skill – good prosody, pace, description and so on – counts for a lot, as does the ability to tell a story well. But there is another quality I look for, and it can’t be learned at writing classes. It shines out when characters are granted their complexity and handled with empathy and compassion, and it comes, I think, from being a decent human being. Judging by this tolerant and insightful debut, Norris has it in spades This novel has at its heart a first party narrator Ed, writing in 2019 (just pre COVID although certain scenes in the novel will I think have difficult resonances for many after the many private tragedies of the last few years). At the age of 10 Ed (largely accidentally) rescued a younger girl from drowning and years later a chance encounter leads them into a relationship. Ed is though still haunted from another formative, earlier and only just remembered childhood event – when his parents split and his mother moved out of the remote Sussex hunting lodge in which Ed lived with his two parents, and instead moved to her family’s remote sheep farm in Wales. I’ve known there was another life, a ghost life, happening just under the surface of my own – a boy I’d left behind in the wood who never grew up, who no one ever went back to rescue, who couldn’t even be reached if someone tried to find him now. Like a record playing in another room. That’s what became of my childhood. I’ve never done anything about it. I’ve never gone back, or sought out a therapist to talk things through. The only concession I’ve ever made to the memory of that boy is that every time I move out of a flat or a house and into a new one, I always make sure that I leave a day early. I’ll spend the day moving boxes into the new place, and then after dinner on the day I move, I’ll go back to the place I’ve left, and let myself in with the key I’ve kept, and check the rooms and cupboards one last time. I’ve rescued some useful things that way. A jacket I left on the back of a bedroom door. A scarf on a coat hanger. A crystal glass that belonged to my grandmother. What I’ve always hoped I’ll find, though, is the real original self I left behind. But that boy is never there waiting for me. Later Ed nurses his dying and estranged now alcoholic father before his death – leading to something of a breach with his Mum (and her new partner), one exacerbated by Ed (and his stepsister’s) clear reluctance to take on the farm (which has up until now been passed down through generations of the family who have struggled to make it viable). As Ed and his partner start their tentative but growing relationship, Ed takes the opportunity to reset the relationship with his mother, but difficult events cause him further pain and cause him to revisit his past but also to balance its weight and pull against the potential of the present (and future). As I try to go forwards through the story of my life, the feeling takes hold that somehow I am going in the wrong direction, that really what I want to be doing is going back, not flicking through the picture book towards its ending. I can’t find it, the secret of myself, the person I’m supposed to be; the key is lost, and I feel it must lie deeper, I must have lost it earlier, it must be buried longer ago. What I am trying to fight against is a sense that I regret having lived my life, that I would almost rather my life had never happened than for so much of it to be lost and unrecoverable. I don’t want to feel like that. I want to feel like I’m glad about where I’m going. The structure of the novel mirrors this tension in two ways. The 2019 sections are written in a present tense, but contain extensive reflections on Ed’s past and particularly his memories of his father, and his grandparents and his complex relationship with his mother. And interleaved with these sections are a series of vignettes from his family history – going back to his great grandfather, who as an Army officer immediately pre World War I marries Ed’s great grandmother (a very young Indian Christian) only to bring her back to London when war breaks out (an unexpected breach with her homeland from which she never recovers settling into melancholy and eventually mental illness, which in turn affects her son (Ed’s mother’s father) who has to shoulder the burden (and irresistible current) of caring for both his mother’s health and the struggling farm, a burden that proves too much for him. And alongside the idea of the past/future is a recurring theme of the draw of home (be that Sussex, Wales or India) – including a generational change from those who stayed in the countryside, to those who gradually migrated to the City, to those who now live in the City but visit the countryside for holidays (and to gain some kind of connection with a lost past). This haunting of home standing alongside the draw of the past. The Welsh have a word for this feeling, hiraeth, but there’s no word in English. And that’s strange, really, when you think about it. Because what country could be more haunted, more crowded by the remnants and the echoes of lost worlds than rain-soaked England? How could a feeling be more English than this one? It is a failure of our language, a failure of our culture, not to know how to speak of the things left behind Other recurring ideas include the (more recent and in my view sub-optimal) music of Radiohead; the titular idea of currents and undercurrents (literal and figurative) – perhaps fitting with the idea of (lack of) control over life’s circumstances and events; inheritance – often unwelcome (again both literal and figurative) “life was a series of inheritances taken away from you one by one, or given to you when you least wanted them, and there was no sense of controlling any part of it”. Two aspects I suspect that will I discover more about closer to publication: the author writes novels and plays in a slightly linked universe (but I was not able to find many links); the author in 2021-2022 seems to be embarking on much more autobiographical novels and, other than a linked Sussex hunting lodge and a one-time fractured skull, I was not aware of any strong links between Ed and the author. Overall this is another beautiful novel from an author who deserves much greater recognition. If a novel is at heart an empathy machine then Norris is a hugely skilled machine operator. My thanks to Random House UK, Transworld for an ARC via NetGalley ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 08, 2022
|
Jun 10, 2022
|
May 07, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0393541754
| 9780393541755
| 0393541754
| 3.67
| 3,562
| May 03, 2022
| May 03, 2022
|
it was amazing
|
Now a Pulitzer Prize finalist. This intelligently written book is effectively an intriguing mix of two different genres: Indian family saga - think sa Now a Pulitzer Prize finalist. This intelligently written book is effectively an intriguing mix of two different genres: Indian family saga - think say Arundhati Roy’s earlier work) with a US immigrant angle (think Salman Rushdie in particular) Dystopian tech story – think somewhere on a spectrum between the rather clumsy execution of Dave Eggers and the literary obliqueness of Emily St John Mandel (but borrowing the naming conventions of Margaret Atwood). One of the more obvious comparisons in the latter is Jennifer Egan, and particularly her latest “Candy House” which contains a remarkable amount of overlap in terms of the underlying tech device which drives the plot: Egan had the Collective Consciousness and “Own Your Unconsciousness” App and Vara the “Harmonica” and “Clarinet”; the tech visionary behind it – Egan had Bix and Vara her eponymous character; the groups actively opposing and opting out – Egan’s Eluders, Vara’s Exes; and even the ambiguous relationship of the tech visionary’s children – Bix’s son Gregory and King’s daughter Athena – to both their father and his technological legacy. Another comparison that sprang to my mind overall was to Preti Taneja’s Desmond Elliot Prize winning “We That Are Young” which is a recasting of King Lear to the family (and particularly the daughters) of an Indian oligarch (in this case though “Tempest” serves as potential but less explicit template): albeit that novel is almost entirely set in India. I also was reminded a little – for very different reasons – of the Booker and Women’s Prize shortlisted “Great Circle”, of which I remarked there were at least 5 good novels in the book – which added together lead to a book that was simultaneously too long and unsatisfying in every aspect. Here I think its clear there are two potential novels interwoven (plus a whole Piketty style meditation on capital, even a digression into indigenous American beliefs), but Vara makes a choice to keep the overall book to a managable length so leading to a novel I thought was actually pretty well executed with some really clever links (one example below); albeit at the expense of including storylines which seemed extraneous (but were at least brief). The eponymous subject of the book is from a family of relatively well-off but Dalit coconut farmers – as oldest son of the oldest son (albeit his father, married to the sister of King’s mother who died giving birth slumps into languor after King’s grandfather’s death – leaving King’s Uncle to take charge) he is the heir apparent to the business – one becoming increasingly lucrative under his Uncle’s Patronage, although always struggling with anti-Dalit prejudice. He is also, as result partly of his heir status and partly due to a family disaster (of which we learn much more later) sent off for an English language education and thriving in his computing studies at University is recruited as a graduate student in the US. There, together with his graduate sponsor and his sponsor’s daughter (who in turn becomes his lover and wife) the three of them set up a nascent personal computing business, which starts with more of a home kit Sinclair/ZX feel but overtime combining say the PC selling skills of a Microsoft, the design genius of Apple and the data monoploy of a Facebook – their firm named Coconut – becomes the world’s most valuable firm. The final step to world domination starts when a financial crisis/COVID hit US government agree a plan to effectively outsource most of their work as government to a small group of large firms (Walmart, JP Morgan and of course Coconut). These firms , who form a Board of which King Rao becomes chair, then over around 10 years sign similar agreements for around a third of the world before (and this is where the backstory takes its extreme/dystopian turn) effectively setting up as a supranational organisation and effectively abolishing national states, with King now CEO of a kind of supercharged version of the British East India company (as an aside this linkage, and the way that the latter was largely responsible for the perpetuation of a Caste system which would otherwise have died out which also permits one of the many discussions in the novel of societal structures and hierarchies - is a perfect example of the control and intelligence that the author brings to her writing and the way she dies up the seemingly disparate storylines). Overtime the book then heads firmly into the kind of binary/extreme changes which characterise the dystopian genre. Society evolves into a combination of capitalist tech utopia and Chinese style state surveillance and control – with individuals deemed as Shareholders and with money/taxes replaced by a form of Social Capital, all moderated by an all purpose Algo(rithm) which also runs the legal system – an Algo I would describe as all powerful although it seems unable or unwilling to really deal with the threat of climate change, which at some point in the history of the novel has passed a tipping point. King Rao’s fall comes when he pushes too hard and too early a product – the Harmonica – which contains an injection of genetic code to allow individuals to access the internet from their thoughts. Some resulting deaths invigorate the long running resistance to the Board/Algo and leads to a deal whereby Rao has to stand down and the Exes are allowed to go off grid on a group of globally distributed Islands – the Blanklands, portrayed to those still under the Algo world as badlands but in practice a kind of principled anarchic/pure communist society. The story is actually told/written down by Rao’s daughter Athena who (we learn almost from the first chapter) is under arrest charged with the murder of her father and is drawing her case together for judgment by the Algo no behalf of the collective global Shareholders. Athena was born after King’s wife died from a frozen embryo - her name is based on the Zeus/Athena legend although Miranda would be a better name as King Rao (whose legend only grows in his exile – including the belief he has found the key to prolonging his life, hence his nickname) raises her in exile and complete isolation on an island. There she realises as she grows up that he has used her as a prototype for his next development of the Harmonica – the Clarinet, which allows people access to each other’s memories and which also forms Rao’s real answer to how to achieve immortality for himself and ultimately for a humanity he feels is doomed (by the storage of stories and memories – something which becomes a closing coda to the novel). Athena then rebels against her father and joins the Exes where she encounters more of her past than she expects, while having to navigate (my phrase) the Brave New World they are creating. Athena’s access to Rao’s memories facilitates the multi-strand nature of the novel with chapters moving between a number of different timelines: Rao’s upbringing in India in his sprawling Dalit family – which includes a number of strands which I felt were left rather hanging and which I was really unsure added to the novel; Rao’s early time in the US which was one of the strongest sections I felt; Athena’s own early life – this part can at times be exposition heavy as she sets out what she has learnt from her father of his own back story albeit it is interesting over time how this links to what she currently discovers both from other but more so from her father’s own memories; Athena’s time with the Exes – this part was interesting albeit not always convincing (perhaps like Miranda she adapts a little too soon to meeting people for the first time) and at times a little didactic as we get a theory of capital relationships, and its interaction with technological change, through the ages. Overall I felt this was a novel which could easily have not worked but instead held my interest throughout to the extent that many of the criticisms I had of individual elements were secondary to my overall enjoyment of this thoughtfully written and thought provoking book. My thanks to Atlantic Books, Grove Press for an ARC via NetGalley. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 20, 2022
|
May 24, 2022
|
May 07, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0857525212
| 9780857525215
| 0857525212
| 4.09
| 10,016
| Aug 18, 2022
| Aug 18, 2022
|
liked it
|
Shortlisted for the 2022 An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of The Year. My Bookstagram review: https://www.instagram.com/p/CharYxhMI... The house wasShortlisted for the 2022 An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of The Year. My Bookstagram review: https://www.instagram.com/p/CharYxhMI... The house was filled with women. Mother and Nana and Saoirse and Honey and Kit and Josh’s mother Moll, and Moll’s old friend and alleged lover Ellen Jackman, and Doreen, quiet but friendly and no sign about her of the harridan that Nana had made her out to be, and in the centre of all of them, sitting up and trying her best to move around her soft-edged space, grizzling now and then against her cutting buds of teeth, smiling at the rank of women smiling back at her, delighted with and fascinated by all the sounds and smells and shapes and textures of her universe, was Pearl, a perfect little queen, fat with love. Ellen Jackman said: Aren’t we the queerest coven that ever stirred a pot? And they all laughed. This is the sixth novel by the best selling and much recognised (including twice Booker longlisted) Irish author Donal Ryan, whose previous novel “Strange Flowers” won the Irish Book Awards Best Novel Prize in 2020 (he having previously won the Best Newcomer and Best Short Story categories). This book will I think appeal hugely to “Strange Flowers” as it is a fairly direct follow up to that book (albeit one which can easily be read standalone) featuring a new and very striking four generational group of women alongside a group of characters from the previous novel. The book begins with a tragedy – as a new father (of a girl of less than two weeks and as yet unnamed) is killed in a car crash. Then we move forwards to the family left behind – the young girl Saoirse, her mother Eillen and the matriarchal Nana (already widowed and now bereft of her favourite son, leaving her two remaining sons, the rather simple Chris and the increasingly IRA-missed up Paulie to run the nearby farm). Unlike “Strange Flowers” which I described as having “writing [which] is languid and full of empathy, character insight and gentle description” – this book is set out in a series of 2 page chapters/vignettes, which makes the book very easy to navigate and read, but I felt on balance subtracted from the book’s literary merits. It does however showcase Ryan’s ability, alongside quieter writing (the book opens with two melancholic, reflective chapters) to bring to life the lively and abusive dialogue between Mother and the quick witted and foul mouthed Nana – as well as their reputation among and interaction with the locals around them. What it also does is allow the story to move forward naturally over the years at a pace: we see Saoirse grow up and grow increasingly rebellious herself, we come to realise that Eileen is estranged from her posher/more respectable own family due to her unmarried pregnancy, that Paulie’s paramilitary involvement becomes more serious and results in torture and then detention, that Chris’s resulting solitude turns him away from what seems a life of inevitable bachelor-hood to marriage to a town girl (Doreen) who has a wary relationship with the other women in the family. Saoirse then has a baby (after a fleeting encounter with a later famous singer) – Pearl who forms the fourth generation of the family but whose birth also reveals a terrible void at the heart of Doreen’s life . Saoirse took a doleful stock of herself. Twenty-one years of age with a three-year-old daughter. No Leaving Certificate, never even had a job. Never really had a proper boyfriend, except Oisín who’d hardly been more than a crush that grew into an obsession in her mid-teens and ended in a burst of anger in an alleyway in Nenagh. Her greatest joy in life, besides her daughter, whose unlikely father didn’t know she was alive, and outside of the narrow confines of the bungalow she lived in with her mother and her grandmother in a small estate in a village that nobody’d ever heard of, tucked between a hillside and a lake, was a friendship that seemed now to have ended with a girl from London whom she’d loved and, almost completely unknown to herself, been jealous of, in equal measure. At one stage when Nana has one of a number of turns (which later develop into more serious medical incidents) she is found by Kit Gadney and later jokingly mistakes a black nurse for Alexander Elmwood – and suddenly we are in the world of “Strange Flowers”, even more so when the prodigal Joshua and Honey return to Ireland and become friends of Saoirse. In a meta fictional conceit Joshua - who we remember as a writer from the first novel – asks Saoirse to write down her memories and stories for him to use as a base for a novel. I was unclear in the first novel if we were meant to see Joshua as a good writer (as some of his work – in particular his biblical story rewrite - is included as part of the novel) but here there is less doubt as Joshua turns Saoirse’s family story into a sensationalist terrorist one, and there is a nice twist at the end as Pearly sits her Leaving Exams (which I much preferred to the deliberately withheld but not terribly dramatic revelations of “Strange Flowers”.) Overall for me, while enjoyable, this felt not just as a “novel of two halves” but more like two disparate novels stitched together. I very much enjoyed the opening but as the book progressed I missed the main focus being on the two oldest women and the teenage Saoirse and their lively interactions and rather resented the “Strange Flower” characters having a greater influence on this one at the same time that the novel seemed to lose much of its uniqueness. However, this probably reflects my ambivalence towards that novel and fans of “Strange Flowers” will I think feel very differently. My thanks to Random House UK for an ARC via NetGalley ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 10, 2022
|
Jun 12, 2022
|
May 07, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1474619231
| 9781474619233
| 1474619231
| 4.10
| 1,733
| Jun 24, 2021
| Jun 24, 2021
|
really liked it
| He remembers a train journey with his pa when he was a boy. The first time he has left the city. From Delhi to Madras. How he had leant out of the He remembers a train journey with his pa when he was a boy. The first time he has left the city. From Delhi to Madras. How he had leant out of the open dsoor, wind striking his face and body, exhilarated by the speeding landscape of temple town and market. Sacred shrines and connecting rivers. Buffalo submerged in muddy waters and rows of dusty cornfields. Holy cows tethered. He had known then the value of his ancient homelands: that India was many complexities of tribe and dialect and ritual woven together, an inextricable fabric of pulsating life. How could anyone put borders on that? I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists, although I had been aware of it as it featured on the influential Observer Best Debut Novelists of the Year feature for 2021 alongside such other successful and impressive books as “Little Scratch” (2021 Desmond Elliott Prize shortlist), “Open Water” (2021 Desmond Elliott Prize longlist, Costa First Novel Award winner), “Lear Wife” and “Assembly” (also on the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize and for me the best novel of 2021). I read the book in hardback and feel sorry for anyone who read it on Kindle as the hardback book itself is an absolute work of art with a cutaway cover and beautiful front and end paper illustrations. The book itself is, by the standards of this year’s Desmond Elliott’s Prize pretty conventional – one that gains its strength from both the harrowing portrayal it gives of the period of history it portrays (India at the time of partition in 1947-8) and the memorable cast of characters in the Delhi household which lives through the trauma of that time, rather than so much from the relatively conventional if atmospheric writing. Perhaps unusually the author of the book has more of an emotional/travel connection to India than a familial one – with an Iranian born mother and estranged father from Pakistan, was born and grew up in London, worked as a pastry chef/café owner, took an MA in Creative writing and came to the topic of Partition originally through a Radio 4 programme – which made her determined to give a voice to what she saw as the lost voices of the women caught up in the traumas and horrors of the time via rap and abduction. The novel was heavily researched – including via fiction covering the era and via a lengthy immersive trip to India. And perhaps as a result and particularly early on in the novel, I felt like what the book gained in authenticity it lacked in originality – so much so that some of the early parts felt a little like a pastiche of the familiar Anglo-Indian novel with many of the familiar tropes. Whereas perhaps I had hoped for a slightly more askance/different take on the time (although of course with all the risk that would have given of accusations of appropriation). The Delhi household itself is a Brahmin household of two University lecturers. Bappu/Bhai is a rather timid dreamer - increasingly unable to reconcile his idealistic view of a tolerant household and society with the terrible sectarian hatred and violence around him. His one moment of bravery was went he went with bribes to rescue the house cook Dilchain from her in-laws after her abusive husband burnt himself to death trying to kill her – a rescue motivated partly by principle and partly by love of her cooking and which leads to some unrequired love for him from Dilchain (who as the higher caste family members lose their way in the horrors of partition increasingly leads the family from below). Ma/Tanisi was orphaned when young, and bought up by her Uncle on a houseboat in Kashmir where she learnt the Urdu she now teaches (both at University and to the sons of a well known local Muslim – both positions becoming increasingly untenable) and of which she, with her blue eyes, still dreams as well as remembering her infatuation with her Uncle which she seems to find echoed more in the father of her charges than in her husband. Tanisi and her Uncle are (I think) of the Pir Ali caste (which I think from some research is associated with the poet Tagore and seen as heretical by pure Brahmins). Both live with Daddee Ma – Bappu’s mother – now a bitter and bigoted old woman after the loss of her husband and many babies. Their two daughters are Alma – fourteen years old, prone to wearing a red apple clip. Much of the early part of the book is implicitly told from her viewpoint, giving it something of a young adult feel initially. Due to concerns for the safety of unmarried girls, Daddee Ma arranges an overly hasty marriage for her, including clumsily faking her astrological chart. Alma herself is somewhat obsessed with the world of Djinn’s and gods and of legends and transfers some of this to imagined visions of her promised husband. The younger daughter Roop is something of a psychopath in the making - prone to pulling the wings of insects or otherwise torturing them and to an obsession with blood and death. The final member of the household is a Muslim Ayah who Bappu in his idealism allows to stay in the house longer than is safe for anyone. The back cover blurb says “When Partition happens and the British Raj is fractured overnight, the wonderful family we have come to love is violently torn apart” – which I have to say was certainly not my take on the novel as I struggle to see that many (or any) of the characters were loveable (and some very much the opposite). For me it would be more accurate to say that the terrible ordeal the family lives through drove my sympathy for what would otherwise be a fairly unlikeable, privileged group. Later Alma retakes over the implicit narration – having been forced to grow up very quickly with the novel now very far from a young adult one. Further as a dramatic opening to the novel makes clear, her particular circumstances allow for a clever metaphor for the horrors and sacrifice involved in the traumatic birth pains of the new nations. Overall a worthwhile addition to the longlist – even if it seemed slightly out of place in its relative conventionality. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 10, 2022
|
May 13, 2022
|
May 07, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1999922336
| 9781999922337
| 1999922336
| 3.85
| 1,141
| Nov 01, 2018
| Nov 01, 2018
|
really liked it
|
I bought this book at Foyles after an event where the author of it (whose fictional work I already knew from her very good second novel “Asylum Road”)
I bought this book at Foyles after an event where the author of it (whose fictional work I already knew from her very good second novel “Asylum Road”) was interviewing, with great skill and insight, the equally perceptive Natasha Brown for the paperback launch of her brilliant novel “Assembly” (my Golden Reviewer book of 2021 and the Foyles book of 2021). Coincidentally on the day “Assembly” had been shortlisted for the Society of Authors Betty Trask award for debut writers under 35, and “Asylum Road” was shortlisted for the Society of Authors new Gordon Bowker Volcano Award for a novel focusing on the experience of travel away from home – and the next day shortlisted for their well-established Encore Award for second novels. This book was published by the UK small press “Peninsula Press” in 2018 as one of their non-fiction Pocket Essay collection. It was written after the author’s debut novel “Sympathy” – a book which itself featured on the influential Observer Debut Novelists feature in 2017 alongside the to-be literary phenomenon’s Sally Rooney and Gail Honeyman – with the author herself being seen as something of the literary voice of the Instagram generation. The book starts as more of a personal examination of anxiety and how the author’s own anxiety interacted with the exposure she felt after putting her writing in the personal space, and from there goes on to examine topics such as internet feminism, autofiction and how male and female authors are treated very differently when informing their novel from their own lives rather than seen as representing a Universal “I”, private and public spheres – and how these topics interact. Through this she draws heavily on the writing of authors I know such as Rachel Cusk, Jenny Offill, Olivia Laing (and interestingly also Chris Kraus given the Kathy Acker bio link in Crudo) and Elene Ferrante. Much of the discussion around Ferrante in the essay is in support and explanation of her decision to use a pseudonym – and I found this amusing as, doing the same on Goodreads, my first and only interaction with the author was with her laughing (so much so her signature went a little wrong) when Natasha Brown (hearing my real name) exclaimed “you are not a dog!”. Overall I found this an interesting book – perhaps best read in small sections as the writing can be intense, and one to revisit alongside reading future work (or revisiting past work) of the featured authors and Sudjic herself. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 06, 2022
|
May 07, 2022
|
May 06, 2022
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1529074495
| 9781529074499
| 1529074495
| 3.83
| 119,322
| May 03, 2022
| Aug 04, 2022
|
liked it
|
Now joint Pulitzer Prize winner. 12th in my 2022 Booker Prize longlist rankings - my Bookstagram rating, ranking, summary review and Book themed Golde Now joint Pulitzer Prize winner. 12th in my 2022 Booker Prize longlist rankings - my Bookstagram rating, ranking, summary review and Book themed Golden Retriever photo is here: https://www.instagram.com/p/Chgs5vzs-... This is a tale which bridges two cultures (art/literature and high finance), but which is very much a book of two halves (the first almost deliberately weak, the second intriguing) and which left me in two minds (hence my rating – a mix of a 4*+ concept and a 2* execution). CP Snow famously wrote an article/lecture/essay book on the chasm that had opened between the cultures of arts and science – in my view (and as someone with a foot in both camps) there is a similar divide now between the worlds of literary fiction and finance. If you can find someone in finance who reads they are likely to read non-fiction books with possible some genre fiction – and similarly few literary fiction books even cover finance. Of those that do many seem to misunderstand it (for example confusing the direction of interest rate change impacts) – and even my book of 2022 Natasha Brown’s “Assembly” uses banking as a canvas on which to focus a social mobility/meritocracy lens on the topic of colonialism and its lasting impacts (eg we do not know what job the unnamed narrator does for her bank – just her seniority). So I welcome this book’s explicit aim to address that divide and to provide a literary exploration of capital, investment and banking and via one dictionary definition of the title. The author has further stated his aim as examining and deconstructing one of the foundational myths/classic American narratives of American society (the role of free market capitalism and the investment markets and particularly the self-made wealthy entrepreneur) in the same way that his first novel “In The Distance” did with the Western. At the same time the author wanted to examine the other definition of Trust and in particular the idea of the trust that it is implicit in fiction and reading “Reading is always an act of trust. Whenever we read anything, from a novel to the label on a prescription bottle, trust is involved. That trust is based on tacit contracts whose clauses I wanted to encourage the reader to reconsider. As you read Trust and move forward from one section to the next, it becomes clear that the book is asking you to question the assumptions with which you walk into a text.” Because this is a book written in four very different parts – each with a different writer, a different narrative voice, a different style and a different purpose. The Washington Post and leading Goodreads reviewer Ron Charles in his review says this quartet of very different stories is “what Wall Street Traders would call a 4-for-1 stock split” – thus illustrating perfectly my contended literature/finance divide, given that split into four identical parts is almost the exact opposite to what Diaz does. Interesting though I think some form of more identical split would have worked much better here (see later). The book starts with around a 100 page pastiche of (or possibly tribute to) Edith Wharton and her fiction which not only documented the Gilded Age of America but which was towards the end of the literary realism movement – a novel called “Bonds” by Harold Vanner which tells the story of a Wall Street banker/trader/tycoon Benjamin Rask – his taking advantage of the 1920s bull market and then his more controversial role in the 1929 Crash; alongside the story of his art patron/philanthropist wife Helen and her mental instability and treatment for that in Europe. The second section is around a 100 page pastiche (and in this case definitely not a tribute to) the self-aggrandising (if unfinished) business autobiography of a Wall Street banker/trader/tycoon Andrew Revel – his role in growing the nation’s prosperity by helping the 1920s bull market and then his saddened realisation that speculation had driven the market too high leading him to evade the 1929 Crash; alongside the story of his art patron/philanthropist late-wife Mildred and her emotional and mental stability ahead of her treatment for cancer in Europe. The third section (and easily the strongest of the book) is written by Ida Partenza – the daughter of an Italian anarchist effectively in America as a political refugee – she is hired by Revel to write the second part of the novel as a counterbalance to the sensationalist impact of the first (which he and everyone else regards as his lightly fictionalised biography). While researching the book (to the limited permitted by Revel who wishes to tightly control the narrative) Ida finds that neither Vanner or Revel’s portrayal of Mildred seems to meet the complexity of her character but is unable to discover the true Mildred. Parts of this section are narrated closer to our present day as the now elderly Ida visits a museum made of the Revel home (where she wrote her book) and explores the archives. The fourth and shortest part of the book (albeit still much stronger than the first two) is Ida’s final discovery – a very fragmentary diary written by Mildred before her death, while being treated in Europe, which contains a revelation as to the real story of Revel (and his roles in both the bull market and crash) which to be honest has been pretty easy to guess from the beginning. As I have implied this is a book of two halves – the first two sections for me were very weak although mercifully easy to skip through at a quick pace, as my brother’s review says “there is barely a word that is not wasted”. In the first section in particular I started writing down passages and turns of phrase that annoyed me before deciding to go for the pastiche rather than tribute option. What I was less clear on was the author’s decision to lead with the entirety of the two sections rather than having the four sections interleaved through the novel. I believe the aim was to draw the reader into each story and to the world it posits before revealing another layer of the story – but neither for me was sufficiently well written to draw me in so spoiling the effect. Further there are by now myriad mainstream media and Goodreads reviews which make the set up of the first two parts (as revealed in the third) clear which also negated any impact of revelation – and in some ways that is anyway to the book’s benefits as I think many modern readers taking the first section (at least) on face value may well have bailed. I am sure there is a point for this – as the book itself says “the worst literature, my father would say, is always written with the best intentions”. The obviousness of the “reveal” in the fourth section I can live with better – as the book seems to strongly signpost this by discussing (on two separate but importantly linked occasions) someone recounting a detective style novel and someone else (older or wiser) having to effectively pretend that the reveal of the murderer is a surprise. There is though a lot to like in the novel in terms of its concept – both at a macro and more micro level. On the overall level I liked (while not thinking it entirely worked) the ideas of linking the sustained and collective illusion (or perhaps collective decision to place collective faith in a narrative) that lies behind not just fictional stories themselves, but non-fictional accounts, behind national (and national identity) stories, behind political movements and also behind financial markets. On the micro level I enjoyed for example: the exploration of the marginalisation of (and even worse co-opting or blatant stealing of) female voices and ideas; the idea that a blend of human psychology with mathematical analysis is key to investment success (and it reminded me of the intersection of art-empathy-gut call & data-science-hard facts at the heart of commercial insurance underwriting); the fragmentary ideas in the fourth section about the transition from literary realism to literary modernism (and its equivalent in music). My thanks to Panmacmillan for an ARC via NetGalley ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 06, 2022
|
Jun 12, 2022
|
May 06, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1783787813
| 9781783787814
| 1783787813
| 2.92
| 2,091
| Jun 14, 2022
| Jun 02, 2022
|
liked it
|
Published today 2-6-22 This book and its reception overall remind me of two things Firstly (and rather obviously) the author’s previous book “The Heav Published today 2-6-22 This book and its reception overall remind me of two things Firstly (and rather obviously) the author’s previous book “The Heavens” which could hardly be faulted for ambition, but certainly could for execution and seemed to be several novels in one: a relatively standard/derivative dystopian science fiction scenario (here the idea of time travel to the past altering the present) presented in a way which seemed to draw heavily on Dr Who; with some historical fiction (which walked on the edge between some cringey prithee-heavy dialogue and some actually very beautiful writing); political commentary (here on why we accept the world as it is while also believing it can be changed); an examination of abusive relationships; and a actually moving description of mental illness. Secondly (perhaps less obviously) “American Dirt” a novel which, both in its writing and in the choice of marketing publicity, was open to heavy criticism but where much of the actual criticism directed, both in mainstream media and here on Goodreads, was either by people who had not really read the book (and were reacting second hand) or by others who seemed to overtly focus on some scenes in the book which to be honest they had, mis or at least over-interpreted (I would like to think by accident due to their hurt/sensitivity to the issues it raised for them). This book is also I think a rather ambitious but sometimes very clumsily executed mix of: Relatively standard/derivative dystopian (possibly utopian) science fiction (the particular trope here being the sudden rapture-style disappearance of men); A twist on this aspect which rather than really spending too much time trying to add some pseudo-science to explain it – instead goes for much more of a X-Factor/spooky/mystical/open-ended explanation with a series of strange and videos of those who disappeared (which give the book its title) which fuel various conspiracy theories, and a resolution which will I think prove very controversial with some readers (and give those looking for an excuse to criticise the book some ammunition); Two very involved back stories for the two main characters (which feel like they could and possibly should have been a novel in themselves) – one serving as a quote troubling examination of an abusive grooming-style relationship in ballet, and the other as an examination of American societal/police racism against an African-American traditional religious movement as well as of an radical form of politics based on mixing the Biological concept of Commensalism with a view that additional wealth adds effectively zero Utility. I say clumsily executed because in the disappearance story the author (and possibly publishers) attempt to add racial diversity and to address issues of gender fluidity seems (to me) rather tokenistic and also appears to have backfired. Overall definitely an interesting novel which is already dividing opinion in readers and on which I have decidedly mixed opinions. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 05, 2022
|
May 06, 2022
|
May 05, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 057137266X
| 9780571372669
| 057137266X
| 3.55
| 50,036
| May 24, 2022
| May 26, 2022
|
liked it
|
Published today 26-4-22 He’d also screamed over her cold body on a merciless beach, just like Feyi had screamed on that dark road. Those were momentPublished today 26-4-22 He’d also screamed over her cold body on a merciless beach, just like Feyi had screamed on that dark road. Those were moments that broke timelines, that cut them so deep and so bloody that they would never stitch back together again, that the life before the cut was as dead as the person who was lost. Just memories through a haze of hurt. This is the third adult novel by the Nigerian born multidisciplinary artist and writer whose extraodinary debut novel “Freshwater” was told from an Igbo spirituality worldview with multiple self/split narrators, and whose second, equally literary novel “The Death of Vivek Oji” explored similar ideas of gender fluidity, otherness, identities and prejudice within Nigerian society, in perhaps a more conventional/accessible way. This novel is of a very different genre – to quote the author from Twitter, it “is a romance novel. It is not ‘literary’ whatever that means – it was meant to be a romance novel, it was written as a romance novel, and I love that it’s a romance novel. If you’re going in expecting it to be like my literary fiction work, please know that it’s not literary fiction. It is romance. If you hate romance novels but want to give it a try because I wrote it, wonderful! It’s still going to be a romance novel when you read it. They also set out the high weight of profanity in the novel and the sexual openness of the “queer Black girls” in it and warn “if you’re a pick me who loves respectability, you might be offended by these characters” Which is a pretty good overview of the book – although a shame it was part of an extremely ill-advised rant at those at Goodreads who gave their book negative reviews and who they pretty well accuse of being racist and anti-gays. Anyway the book itself tells the story of an American (of Nigerian descent) Feyi Adekola a conceptual/installation artist who five years before the book lost her husband in a car crash (a subject she circles in her work where she paints with animal blood and has a hanging installation of wedding rings with her partners still bloodied ring among them). Now for the first time since the accident, and encouraged by her roomate and one-time lover now best-friend Joy (a lesbian with, in Fey’s view, a rather doomed penchant for previously straight married women) she re-enters the dating scene with something of a bang, having explicitly described, unprotected sex with Milan who she meets at a houseparty. After a fling with Milan she moves on to his friend Nasir, although with the relationship moving much more slowly and not consummated when Nasir arranges for her work to be displayed at a prestigious art exhibition on his home Caribbean Island and for her to stay with him at the luxury house of his father there. Arriving on the Island she finds that Nasir’s father is the 2 Michelin Star chef Alim Blake, and although Alim is some twenty years her elder, the two form a secret but deep connection founded not just on mutual attraction but on their shared hurt and loss (the bisexual Alim having lost Nasir’s mother in a swimming accident some years before). Alim and Fey’s burgeoning relationship plays out in the luxury and paradisical setting of Alim’s house, against the background events of the art exhibition and after-party, and against the open hostility of Nasir and his sister Lorraine who, already embarrassed at a previous affair their father had with a man, now see her as a gold-digging groupie usurping their mother’s place). The Island part of the novel in particular is set in a world of extreme and rather unbelievable indulgence, privilege and luxury – for example here is what happens when Feyi arrives at Alim’s home “They parked under a steel-beamed trellis dripping with bougainvillea, and Feyi stepped out of the car. There was entirely too much to look at—her eyes could only snag on the details a few at a time: the soaring birds of paradise along the pathway, the albino peacock watching them from the grass, the side door inlaid with mother-of-pearl.” – accompanied by heavy name dropping of real life celebrity artists who actuallly appear in the book as side characters. And it is easy to react negatively to this. But in the author’s defense this is very much part of the genre and crucially here the author reserves the world of decadence, richness and art for black characters – for example featuring a host of black artists (previously unknown to me) such as Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze, Moses Dumney, Katherine Agyemaa Agard and Charmaine Bee. Overall I try to judge a book against two criteria – did it work for me personally as literary fiction and did it succeed on its own terms. The first would be probably a two star (albeit there is some excellent writing on trauma and grief such as my opening and closing quotes) but the latter is 5 stars, so my overall rating is a compromise rounded down for the Twitter attacks. So, madness and mess. Something that took up space. Something that felt furiously alive, because survival could be so very, very angry. Feyi had seen a glimpse of it in Pooja during their lunch, had felt it in herself while confronting Nasir at the museum. Madness and mess, anger and life, but the anger was specific, a fire fueled by grief. Heart-rending, cloth-rending grief, but it couldn’t return to that place she and Alim had talked about, the place you might never get out of. You weren’t alive in that place. My thanks to Faber and Faber for an ARC via NetGalley ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 04, 2022
|
May 06, 2022
|
May 04, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1526635984
| 9781526635983
| 1526635984
| 3.61
| 329
| Feb 09, 2021
| Sep 02, 2021
|
it was ok
|
Craic cocaine I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists an award for which it is now shortlisted Craic cocaine I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists an award for which it is now shortlisted despite in my view being the only weak book on a very strong longlist. It is a book which I initially found very reminiscent of the 2016 winner (and Women’s Prize for fiction winner that year) Lisa McInerney’s “Glorious Heresies” of which I wrote it was a “novel set among the low life (alcoholics, prostitutes, drug debaters, crime gangs) of Cork, the often depressing subject matter, violence, nastiness of characters and behaviour, and sex, drug taking and swearing is offset by the author's empathetic portrayal of the characters and their inner struggles, and her ear for dialogue and her vivid and original use of imagery and language ..... making the book a surprisingly enjoyable read.”, although for most of this book unfortunately it was far more reminiscent of McInerney’s (to me) genuinely disappointing follow-up “The Blood Miracles” which both lost the multi-narrator element which made the debut novel so strong and had an unwelcome concentration on drug dealings and gangs. This book even perhaps has elements of the third novel in Lisa McInerney’s series (of which I have to say I decided to DNF early on) which I believe featured a returnee (unsure of her sexual and gender identity) from Brexit Britain to Cork. There are also resonances with Kevin Barry’s 2019 Booker longlisted “Night Boat to Tangier” – a book which began life as a playscript and was then turned into a novel once the play was abandoned. That book featured two Irish gangsters/drug smugglers and was a conflicting mixture of brilliantly evocative descriptive writing and a wonderful ear for writing with profane-laden and clichéd dialogue. Again this is perhaps an unfortunate comparison as I felt that this book had more of the latter than the former. This book is set initially in Dundalk (a town which rather oddly no one in England seems to have heard) with a set piece road trip around Britain. The novel is I believe the first in a series set in the underworld of Dundalk and has also been adapted and toured as a “spectacle of spoken word and music”. The book is largely written in a Dundalk vernacular of which I have two comments. Firstly that it really is very easy to follow – I have seen reviews that referred to getting the hang of it after a few pages, for me it was a few lines. But secondly that while the dialogue between the characters did at times really spark, the narrative voice (also in the slang) did not really seem to work for me and I could not hear the voice in a way in which I could in other Irish vernacular novels. I would also say that for large parts of the book (particularly initially) I had to remind myself that Aoife was female – partly I think lazy default assumption on my behalf with a male author voicing a drug dealer, but partly I think due to another way in which the voice of the novel just did not seem authentic to me. The narrator is Aoife – one of the players in the Dundalk underworld which also includes: the traveller-descended Rat King (so named for a wild rat he carries in his pocket); Paddy (connected to the Real/Continuity IRA) and his high-pitched sidekick Squeak; Smokey Quigley (who runs a pub which acts as a neutral meeting point for the different gang leaders as well as the Garda – particularly Detective Kellher with who Aoife has a strong affinity) and Shamey Hughes (Aoife’s informer). Aoife, hitherto hetrosexual (although this seems to be forgotten in some parts of the book) ends up sleeping with Annie (a strongwilled, magnetic but also manipulative, English-educated incomer from Belfast) and the two fall into a relationship. The main plot of the novel is when the Rat King asks Aoife to dispose of 10kg of cocaine – and she hatches a plan to travel to the UK with Annie and use the latter’s contacts for the sale. Thereafter the book kind of alternates between: the tale of the road trip which for me oddly lacked local colour and dialect and which at times became far too implausible (a champagne bath was a particular low light); and a series of reminisences of various rather disparate incidents which previously occurred in Ireland – for too many of these I found them tedious, sordid and repetitive, was not able to appreciate any of the craic being liberally enjoyed and could not see how they contributed to the narrative or advanced this reader’s experience. Overall I am afraid simply not a book that worked for me – by the end I was rather bored with both parts of the novel so that I failed to feel any emotional heft from the way that the story concluded. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 03, 2022
|
May 04, 2022
|
May 04, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 152906936X
| 9781529069365
| 152906936X
| 3.98
| 6,354
| Mar 31, 2022
| Mar 31, 2022
|
it was amazing
|
Winner of the 2022 Golden Reviewer Book of The Year . Winner of the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novel and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Priz Winner of the 2022 Golden Reviewer Book of The Year . Winner of the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novel and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. 1st in my 2022 Booker Prize longlist rankings - my Bookstagram rating, ranking, summary review and Book themed Golden Retriever photo is here: https://www.instagram.com/p/ChF0QOxsV... It was a stupid idea. The book was too advanced for her; too advanced, she was sure, for a student of science. But she was trying, at least trying, to understand what was happening to her daughter's body. I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize and I have to say up front that a debut novelist, and in particular one in her mid-20s, simply has no right to write a book this good. Because this is a remarkable book which combines a fresh voice and literary (as well as typographical) experimentation with a central idea which is universal (but I think seldom covered in fiction), resonant themes, and with a deep maturity in its empathetic understanding of people’s bodies and mind. Introducing a reading of the book (on Damian Barr’s Literary Salon) the author explained how growing up with a mother with breast cancer for almost her whole childhood, that the cancer never, even from a young age, struck her as something that her family were battling, but something they were living beside every day a kind of abstract, shape-shifting idea that came and went, something they had to understand as if befriending it might tame it. Her mother died of the cancer when she was 14 and it was not something she had ever intended to write about, but the intense last six months of her mum’s life kept returning to her as she began to write. She also explained that she had been experimenting with prose poetry, based around the interior landscape of a woman’s body, thinking about the idea of how our bodies harbour the events and people that have shaped us, and how she could capture that on a page. And it is from these two, rather experimental, narrative threads that the book was initially woven. In a publisher interview (where she also sets out the contemporary novels that have inspired her book (The White Book, Checkout 19, Autobiography of Red, Lincoln in the Bardo, Multiple Choice, The Familiar, Grief is a Thing With Feathers – note the second book on the extremely impressive Desmond Elliott longlist to show Max Porter’s direct influence) Maddie Mortimer describes the book brilliantly by saying “There are three narrative threads in the book that are not only in constant communication, but are actively competing against one another to ‘tell’ the story. The events happening in Lia’s past and present are mapped onto the landscape of her body, the first person eats away at the third, there are fragments of anatomical science and religious philosophy, of poetry, painting and dance and typographic moments where words drip, or swell, as if magnified — they mirror and bend. By experimenting with form like this, by shifting between styles and building up patterns to pick at and unravel I found that the novel had become about the very act of storytelling; about the way we choose to frame our lives, and which version of ourselves we let take the lead. As Lia (an illustrator with a vast imagination) nears death, she is attempting to make sense of her choices, her illness. The piecing together of self is her final creative act.” Because the basic plot of the novel, is about a woman and children’s book writer-illustrator Lia who has had a return (and spreading) of the breast cancer which first arose shortly after the birth of her Yellow-loving child Iris (now highly perceptive and recently started at secondary school). The other key human characters are: Lia’s husband Harry (a University lecturer with a hobby as a Gardener); her mother Anne, now widowed after the death of her high-Anglican and deeply faithful Parish-Priest husband Peter and whose relationship with the rebellious Amelia has always been marked by mutual judgement and suspicion and who now elderly (and scrawny pigeon or generously Dove-like in appearance) struggles with how to deal with, as well as make theological sense of, her daughter’s illness; Matthew – how came to the Vicarage as a waif and stray when he was 15 and Lia 11, and who was effectively adopted as something of a (to Lia) preferred prodigal by Anne and Peter, before becoming an on-off lover of Lia for many years (starting when she was just 15) but who now is something of a Fossil-ised memory for her. But the most distinctive character is a first-person voice, which (at least at first) I interpreted as Lia’s long-dormant, now reappearing cancer and one which sets out to explore the interior contours, pathways, vessels and organs of her body. There the voice encounters the aggressive Red chemotherapy treatment sent to destroy the cancer and the group of those who are part of Lia’s past and present (who he sees as Yellow, The Gardener, The Dove, The Fossil and so on) which in turn leads to his exploration bringing long dormant memories to life. All of this captured not just through an often poetic prose shot through with cultural reference, and with an active exploration of words and meaning, but in a fluid and varying typography – starting with the use of bold and italics as signifiers of voice, but incorporating varying font sizes and then even non standard text orientation. And increasingly the various already porous barriers in the book: the past and the present; the exterior and the interior; Lia’s body and thoughts and the almost constant presence in them of the cancer – largely disappear. So that for example the voice increasingly becomes part of Lia. And there is a remarkable scene with Lia and family attending a dance performance where the voice choreographs the set of internal characters (Yellow etc) on the exterior stage. Really this description only touches the surface of a novel which is all about what goes on underneath that surface (both literally and figuratively – although the very distinction between literal and figurative, physical and mental, experience and memory is one the book implicitly rejects). What I think is most impressive about the book is that put all the experimentation to one side and this would still be a deeply thoughtful book about the human condition with a complex and involving plot and a series of fully realised characters. Be it: the mother/daughter relationship (as experienced from both sides and across multiple generations); Fatherhood and being the partner of a cancer sufferer (there is a brilliant aside when Harry picks up Lia from a hospital appointment wearing the expression he has on Iris’s first day at a new school); the very complex and nuanced exploration of faith/loss of faith (with Anne/Peter/Matthew and Lia all on their own non-linear journeys); school playground politics and dynamics; long term on-off relationships or terminal illness – the book has nuance and depth. The author herself spoke about how this developed over the course of the book: for all the play and ‘fizz’ there were also simple delights that emerged unexpectedly along the way. I learnt that a fully realised character or frank, honest dialogue can be just as poetic as a perfectly constructed metaphor, or a bit of clever word play. This, I think, is growing up. It’s realising that you have nothing to prove. It’s leaving your coat and scarf and pretension in the hall, taking the hands of your characters, and letting them lead you through the house. A comment which I think shows the maturity lacking from many other “literary” or “experimental” books (many of which either are content just to play with form, or which are largely didactic) but which is present in abundance in this really excellent book – one which (returning to the opening quote – taken from the book) has learnt the need for story and human example. Hugely recommended. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
2
|
Aug 28, 2022
Apr 26, 2022
|
Aug 31, 2022
May 2022
|
Apr 26, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1919624821
| 9781919624822
| 1919624821
| 3.60
| 10
| unknown
| Mar 18, 2022
|
really liked it
| Sometimes I think we were just selfish. We were proud of her and in love with her and at the same time, we did not see her. Then again I know that Sometimes I think we were just selfish. We were proud of her and in love with her and at the same time, we did not see her. Then again I know that I am wrong to think that because I know this story is not about me and Eustace so much as it is about Eustace and Sybilla and I do not think that the answer to this story lies in anything so simple as parents who were closer to one another than they could be to their child. This story is about that man, whom I loved so much that it hurt to see him trying so hard with the clay to make his little girl let him in. This story is about that girl and how she in a hundred thousand ways, was so unlike him and, in another hundred thousand ways, suffered in exactly the same way as he did. This story is being told by me because I watched it, every moment of it, every breath. I watched this great gas cloud of love that hovered over them, between them, yet was out of reach because she was what she was and he was so much what he was, too big for his clothes, too small for his giant soul. I remember that day as though it was today, now when I am sitting on the deck with Eustace and I have told him, with my boots almost breaking my ankles and my coat hanging off my shoulders, that she is found. The author of this book Charlotte Fairbairn is editor and co-founder of Spiracle Audiobooks – which focus particularly on literary and small press books (most recently the Galley Beggar published “Insignificance” by James Clammer). This is her fourth novel – but her first for some 18 years after 3 published in around 4 years. The book is published by Linen Press "a small, independent publisher run by women, for women ... now the only indie women’s press in the UK" In line with the Goodreads blurb I think this book is best categories as a slightly magical/fable like story but one which examines family relationships in a very relatable way. The author has described it very perceptively as a book which examines how it can happen that even love is not enough. I would also say that for me as I completed the book I also realised that it could be seen as a rewrite of the famous biblical parable of the Prodigal Son, but: With a daughter rather than a son (and with all the nuances and complexities that adds to the father/child relationship; Narrated from the viewpoint of the (in the bible account) absent wife – one who is both a participant and an observer in the parent/daughter dynamic; But one with a different ending and one which gets to the heart of the book, and one which is a recurring motif throughout – what does it mean for a child to be lost and to be found. The novel’s introduction serves to familiarise ourself with the slightly fluid nature of the prose and the recurring presence of a moon-and-stars clock which serves as a temporal marker through the novel; and to list the book’s main characters - the Father (the leonine craftsman Eustace – big of heart and body and life), the narrator mother (a costume designer with Highland origins), Sybilla (their beloved, late developing somewhat ethereal daughter) and a fourth character - a river where most of the novel is set (the family living for the central part of the novel on a reclaimed coal barge – Ann of Goole) and which gives the book its very flow and flux. Other characters are recurring themes include: a public memorial conceptual art-installation on which Eustace works as well as a life sized horse and rider sculpture he builds in private and which he hopes will cement (and later restore) his relationship with Sybilla; a symbolic performance of The Rite of Spring for which the narrator designs the costumes; Eustace’s old landlady Julieta who is one of the only keys to a difficult past which drives Eustace’s search for fulfillment in his new family, Julieta herself still reliving her richer castle-dwelling camomile-lawn walking past; Sybilla’s imaginary childhood companion Hat-Man and then a cuckoo-in-the nest that (together with some misjudgements – actual or perceived) draws her away from her family and introduced the key tension in the book. Overall I found this a really enjoyable novel – I was reminded a little of say Sarah Hall’s “Burntcoat” but I felt here the fable like nature of the writing, the way it is "fractionally out of reach" actually added to rather than subtracted from its power and resonance. Recommended. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 2022
|
May 03, 2022
|
Apr 24, 2022
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1911648225
| 9781911648222
| 1911648225
| 3.70
| 87
| unknown
| Sep 01, 2021
|
really liked it
|
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists. Overall I felt this was a very distinctive and also vi I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists. Overall I felt this was a very distinctive and also vitally important book one perhaps best described by the author herself in an epilogue Writing through and out the other side of what happened to me, my growing aim was to explore the relationship between racism in childhood and adult life, which is why this hybrid novel is constructed from a critical race memoir of growing up British despite racism, and through fiction inspired as an adult trying to love while living through hate crime. The book opens with the memoir - a 15 page “Autobiography of Love and Racism” in which the author sets out her life via a series of 13 incidents when she encountered direct and indirect racism through infancy, primary and secondary school, university, and then work in the creative industries and academia – culminating in an appointment in what looks like an exciting new job in academia outside of London, one where we are told the racism reaches a new depth. The second chapter is effectively a link between the memoir and the novel – headed “Digression; How to Write About the Trauma of Racism” the author, newly back in London after being the victim of racist hate crime openly explores how best to write about what happened to her, setting on the idea to use “only the specifics of the racist crime I experienced, and explore the theme of racist crime in a genre-fiction way ….. [while also trying to] use the theme of hate despite love to counter the crime plot” a novel with “ethnic minority characters in the foreground”, a “white love interest” and a white “faceless aggressor”. Apart from the epilogue, the remainder of the book is the 200+ page novel – but while having some of the elements of genre (suspense/terror, mystery and detection, relationship(s) ambiguity and development, police procedural etc.) even this part is far from a conventional novel. The basic plot is about a mixed race, British, academic and care-leaver Tesya. She left a rather underwhelming position at a “Golden Spires” University for a new position at New Build University in the countryside north of London where she was the subject of a sustained series of psychological racial harassments (curry paste on doorposts, mutilated photos, name card defacement and removal). Now she is back in London in a redbrick University and is in a lesbian relationship with Holly. Holly is white and is newly widowed (or separated) and not yet willing to come out to her friends or children so their relationship is rather clandestine and dictated almost at whim by Holly’s availability – often causing Tesya to take refuge in her almost lifelong friendship with her black ex-military PE sporty friend Jazz, or the safety of her last foster mother Zehra’s home. Over time Tesya starts to sense the same pattern of racist incidents starting to re-emerge Now, while at the same time revisiting what happened Then with her police case officer. The chapters as well as switching between sections Then and Now – also contain Author’s Notes (often as she comments on how something Tesya feels or experiences relates to her own life) and most daringly sections written from the viewpoint of Tesya’s unnamed white antagonist written in the form of a series of videod lectures into how to carry out racial attacks and about the power dynamics and psychology involved (particularly when the victim is a woman and the attack is motivated by what the author cleverly labels “misogynoir”). The Epilogue then explains the narrative and genre choices that the author made – some of which relate to her using the fiction to give some closure to the past and hope for the future that she still has not experienced in reality. Overall I thought this was an excellent book. The choice of using a fictional device but grounding the specifics of the racist crime in the author’s lived reality seems to work really well. The fictional setting gives the book (at least to me as a fiction reader) more emotional/empathetic impact than a pure memoir/autobiography and the often very well intentioned but ultimately unhelpful white colleagues around Tesya challenged me with how I would react – or possibly have reacted - in similar circumstances in my own workplace; The real life underpinning means that the reader cannot dismiss the most disturbing elements as far-fetched or exaggerated; the Author’s notes on how she experienced equally makes it impossible for the reader to attempt to explain away their impact (note that non-victims/non-perpetrators dismissing/explaining away the experiences of victims is a key theme of the book); And the techniques used by the aggressor and the way he extrapolates them from more day-to-day micro-aggressions (some of which can be positioned by the instigator as simply power politics) can make for very challenging reading for a white, male reader. Overall highly recommended. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Apr 24, 2022
|
Apr 26, 2022
|
Apr 24, 2022
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1783787279
| 9781783787272
| 1783787279
| 3.72
| 649
| unknown
| Feb 03, 2022
|
it was amazing
|
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists. Overall I thought it was a very strong book. On one l I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists. Overall I thought it was a very strong book. On one level a rather simple interleaved two part story with a trajectory of convergence that is implicitly established almost from the first page. We follow, in approximately alternating chapters (sometimes the story stays with a character) the storylines of two Violets. The first Violet opens the book with a graphic image of a pail of blood as she miscarries the babies she conceived with her soldier husband on one of his leaves from action, and the book follows her as she is released from hospital (after a hysterectomy) to effectively life on her own for the remainder of the war with her husband taking a promotional posting to Burma and the war in the Far East. This story can at times seem rather barren of action and threaded through with a sense of a life both on hold and unmoored but this of course is very deliberate and effective. When her husband eventually returns some time after VJ Day he has a decisive plan to kick start a family. The second Violet, who lives in Wales, by contrast opens the book desperately looking for blood as she realises she is pregnant by a now departed, once wounded Polish soldier her mother had lodged. This Violet conceals her pregnancy and decides on an impulsive decision to volunteer for the ATS, where she is posted to Naples, falling somewhat under the spell of a charismatic but enigmatic fellow postee. Eventually late in the war, she has to admit to her pregnancy and return to England where she decides to place her child in a Mother and Baby home. Both sections are written in a series of short paragraphs and in a rather sparse prose, in chapters which often have a cinematic quality in their dialogue or short action scenes and (at least in the second Violet’s sections) vivid South Italian settings. But interspersed through the novel (particularly but not exclusively in the sections of the second Violet) are a series of free verse sections in italic which are effectively addressed by an omniscient narrator to Violet’s unborn child “Pram Boy”. The above (apart perhaps from the poetry part) can seem very conventional, but it is elevated above that in four ways (in increasing order of impact): Firstly, by its strong element of biography, originating in the story of the end of World War II birth of the author’s father and in particular the stories of his birth and adoptive mothers (both with the same name) Secondly, in its nuanced exploration of motherhood. A view informed by the author’s own experience (starting after the birth of her first child in 2014 and finished after the birth of, I think, her fourth in 2021), but also by her research and teaching specialty on gender and “the ways in which women’s productive and reproductive labour is incorporated into nation-building projects through the institutions of marriage and the family.” – not just through the two main characters but by other characters around them including friends and fellow hospital-internees, we see various aspects of societal expectations around pregnancy during and after the second world war. Thirdly in its juxtaposition of what can seem like very modern attitudes and frankness to women’s bodily functions, pains and desires, in a historical fiction contest. This was very striking and so I was fascinated after completing the book to see that the author has said “I really wanted to invest my characters with the kind of intimate habits and sensations that might not normally be included in historical novels, either because it’s assumed they don’t matter or maybe are taboo, especially in relation to women’s bodies. I think I wrote through a contemporary lens, addressing current concerns, to explore the limits of what we consider relevant or permissible to include in literary representations of WW2 today.” Fourthly, and most memorable, by the very distinctive poetry voice that is threaded throughout the novel – written in a kind of (my phrase) spiky and jagged style. One which is reminiscent of some of the writing of Max Porter (with who the author once worked as a bookseller) and one which why it may not always work in each stanza, creates a memorable cumulative effect. Some examples: Pram boy, pill boy, You know who And the book for all its jaggedness and almost confrontational imagery and language has a memorable and moving ending which turns it into something of a memorial to a father and to two grandmothers, as well as for this reader elevating it from the good to the excellent. For your mothers did not leave you, you were kept ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Apr 20, 2022
|
Apr 22, 2022
|
Apr 20, 2022
|
Hardcover
|
Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer
>
Books:
2022
(193)
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| 3.49
|
really liked it
|
May 17, 2022
|
May 17, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.65
|
really liked it
|
May 19, 2022
|
May 16, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 4.34
|
really liked it
|
May 15, 2022
|
May 14, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.71
|
liked it
|
May 15, 2022
|
May 14, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.28
|
really liked it
|
May 20, 2022
|
May 14, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.98
|
liked it
|
Jun 15, 2022
|
May 13, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.39
|
liked it
|
May 09, 2022
|
May 07, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.56
|
really liked it
|
Jun 10, 2022
|
May 07, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.67
|
it was amazing
|
May 24, 2022
|
May 07, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 4.09
|
liked it
|
Jun 12, 2022
|
May 07, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 4.10
|
really liked it
|
May 13, 2022
|
May 07, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.85
|
really liked it
|
May 07, 2022
|
May 06, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.83
|
liked it
|
Jun 12, 2022
|
May 06, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 2.92
|
liked it
|
May 06, 2022
|
May 05, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.55
|
liked it
|
May 06, 2022
|
May 04, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.61
|
it was ok
|
May 04, 2022
|
May 04, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.98
|
it was amazing
|
Aug 31, 2022
May 2022
|
Apr 26, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.60
|
really liked it
|
May 03, 2022
|
Apr 24, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.70
|
really liked it
|
Apr 26, 2022
|
Apr 24, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.72
|
it was amazing
|
Apr 22, 2022
|
Apr 20, 2022
|
Loading...
