I read Donal Ryan’s first three books – the two short novels The Spinning Heart and The Thing About December and the short story collection A SlantinI read Donal Ryan’s first three books – the two short novels The Spinning Heart and The Thing About December and the short story collection A Slanting of the Sun – but then lost track of his career. When I heard he was publishing a sequel of sorts to his terrific The Spinning Heart, I couldn’t resist. “Madness comes circling around. Ten-year cycles, as true as the sun will rise,” one character remarks here. Set a decade on, this replicates the structure of Ryan’s debut novella: 21 short chapters, each with a different first-person narrator. The Spinning Heart took place in the wake of the financial crisis and centered on murder and kidnapping cases – both of which still resonate 10 years later. I read it as an e-ARC and can’t go back to check, but my impression is that Heart, Be at Peace focuses on many of the same characters, if not the same exact set and order.
Once again, Bobby Mahon is the closest thing to a protagonist. His construction business has recovered from the crash, but he still struggles with guilt and anxiety, including when a so-called friend tries to blackmail him over a compromising photograph. The main plot, which involves a small-town drug ring, pulls in so many people and incidents. You piece it all together through hints that accrete gradually. More so than parsing the Limerick organized crime network, though, the pleasure is encountering all the fully realized but very different voices. You can hear them in your head, the Irish accent stronger in some and the speech more slang-filled in others. Each narrative is self-contained but they also link together.
In what is quite a gritty, macho book, the women’s stories stand out all the more. Lily has ancient knowledge of spells that she’d love to pass on to her granddaughter, yet is dismayed when Millicent only wants the magic to bind her no-good boyfriend to her. Hillary is a defence lawyer whose clients never do themselves any favours with their behaviour and dress. Fathers and sons are key, as in this novel’s predecessor, but Ryan also features mothers, daughters and wives who often know more than they let on. Another interesting voice is that of Vasya, a Russian immigrant who chooses to live in an outdoor encampment.
It can be a challenge to keep track of who’s who and how everything is connected. Overall, this feels less fresh and timely than The Spinning Heart. But it’s certainly possible to enjoy it even if you haven’t read its companion novel. It reminded me especially of Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, and you may also find the style reminiscent of Colin Barrett or Caoilinn Hughes. So many Irish writers are masters of voice and tone, and the same is true of Donal Ryan. Do try his work if you haven’t already. He has eight books to choose from now!
(3.5) Newman’s second novel for adults takes place during a week at Cape Cod, a popular Massachusetts beach resort. Rachel, nicknamed “Rocky,” is a fi(3.5) Newman’s second novel for adults takes place during a week at Cape Cod, a popular Massachusetts beach resort. Rachel, nicknamed “Rocky,” is a fiftysomething mother to two young adults, Jamie and Willa. She and her husband Nick have been renting the same cottage for their family’s summer vacations for 20 years. Although Rocky narrates most of the novel in the first person, in the Prologue she paints the scene for the reader in the third person: “They’ve been coming here for so many years that there’s a watercolor wash over all of it now … pleasant, pastel memories of taffy, clam strips, and beachcombing.”
Also present are Maya, Jamie’s girlfriend; Rocky’s ageing parents; and Chicken the cat (can you imagine taking your cat on holiday?!). With such close quarters, it’s impossible to keep secrets. Over the week of merry eating and drinking, much swimming, and plenty of no-holds-barred conversations, some major drama emerges via both the oldies and the youngsters. And it’s not just present crises; the past is always with Rocky. Cape Cod has developed layers of emotional memories for her. She’s simultaneously nostalgic for her kids’ babyhood and delighted with the confident, intelligent grown-ups they’ve become. She’s grateful for the family she has, but also haunted by inherited trauma and pregnancy loss.
There couldn’t be more ideal reading for women in the so-called “sandwich generation” who have children growing towards independence as well as parents starting to struggle with infirmity. (The contemporary storyline of Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered, which coincidentally is about a character named Willa, is comparable in that respect.) Newman is frank about Willa’s lesbianism and Rocky’s bisexuality, and she doesn’t hold back about the difficulties of menopause, either. Rocky is challenged to rethink her responsibilities as a daughter, wife and mother when she’s surrounded by equally strong-willed people who won’t do what she wants them to. The novel is so quirky, funny and relatable that it’s impossible not to sympathize with Rocky even if, like me, you’re in a very different life situation.
One observation I would make is that Rocky is virtually identical to Ash in Newman’s debut, We All Want Impossible Things, and to the author in real life (as I know from subscribing to her Substack). If you read even the most basic information about her, it’s clear that it’s all autofiction. That’s not an issue for me as I don’t think inventing is inherently superior to drawing from experience; some authors write what they know in a literal sense and that’s okay. So, for her fans, more of the same will be no problem at all. But it is a very particular voice: intense, scatty, purposely outrageous. Rocky is a protagonist who says things like, “How am I a feminist, an advocate for reproductive rights, Our Bodies, Ourselves, hear me roar, blah blah, and I am only just now learning about vaginal atrophy?” (A companion nonfiction read would be Nina Stibbe’s Went to London, Took the Dog.)
In outlook Newman reminds me a lot of Anne Lamott, who is equally forthright and whose books similarly juxtapose life’s joy and sorrows, especially in this late passage: “this may be the only reason we were put on this earth. To say to each other, I know how you feel.”
This is a sweet, fun, chatty book that’s about a summer break – and would be perfect to read on a summer break.
Like many readers, I only knew A. A. Milne (1882–1956) for his Winnie-the-Pooh stories and had no idea of how much he wrote for adults: novels, plays,Like many readers, I only knew A. A. Milne (1882–1956) for his Winnie-the-Pooh stories and had no idea of how much he wrote for adults: novels, plays, journalism, screenplays, and yes, short stories. Even within this subset, I found a lot of variety. One of my favourites was “In Vino Veritas,” a tricksy mystery story for fans of classic crime whether Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie or Raymond Chandler. The narrator is a writer of detective stories which are often inspired by cases recounted to him by his police superintendent friend Frederick Mortimer. Mortimer tells him of a murder accomplished using a poisoned bottle of wine. But “I could almost feel the murderer behind us, pushing us along the way he wanted us to go,” Mortimer says. The evidence seemed almost too neat, and a replication plus a couple of switchbacks reveal that everything was not as it appeared for the superintendent, or for our narrator.
Milne plays with genre and history here. “The Secret” is a skewed fairy tale that even opens with “Once upon a time.” “The Lost Diary of Shakespeare” turns the authorship controversy on its head. “The General Takes off his Helmet” inhabits the time of Hannibal. “A.V. and R.V.” has a little girl distressed at a biblical account of mass death and her mother parroting an unsatisfactory mainline interpretation about punishment for sin and the need for faith; then we parachute into King David’s court and see him conspiring to blame it all on a woman.
But the stand-out for me was “The Birthday Party.” William Henry Baker, brimming with emotion after the birth of his first child, David Alistair Shawn, early one April morning, sets off by train for his office in the City. His wife has told him to have a good dinner and drink to the baby’s health, so after keeping his happy secret from his colleagues all day, he heads to the Savoy for a blowout meal. Just as he’s worried that he won’t be able to pay the large bill, a pair of diners takes him under their wing to form part of a harmless deception. He’s carried out Maggie’s instructions, but perhaps not in the way she might have imagined. Setting aside the injustice of his shell-shocked wife having to stay at home with an infant while he gets on with his normal life and has a luxurious meal (it was 1948, after all), this was a sweet straight-man-in-bizarre-circumstances story, the kind that might spark a screwball comedy.
There’s so much to discover just in this volume, and five other Milne titles have also been reissued in the last year or so. Soon adult readers will be saying, Winnie the who?
This is Kae Tempest’s 14th book, its title referring to the definition of prime numbers. I’d read one of their previous collections, Let Them Eat ChaoThis is Kae Tempest’s 14th book, its title referring to the definition of prime numbers. I’d read one of their previous collections, Let Them Eat Chaos, and enjoyed the performance poetry rhythms. There is a similar feel here – urban settings; internal and end rhymes – but more experimentation with theme, style and tone. Often the poet crosses casual speech with a formal approach: “Body” is composed of two nontraditional sonnets, while “The loop” is a villanelle. I also noted a repeated phrase as a fulcrum between the two stanzas of “Do it for the joy.”
The prose piece “Swear” features a heartbroken nonbinary god in the wreckage of the Garden of Eden: “Groaning in the empty garden in a moment that lasted till now, the almighty swore they’d never love again. And the words of the oath were famine, pestilence, genocide, flood.” It’s not the only biblical allusion; “Flood” references Noah and one epigraph is from Isaiah. Climate breakdown is a source of background dread, with “Even the youths shall faint and be weary” a sarcastic response to people’s relief at young people’s engagement with the environment – “Manaic adults peddling hope. Surely / the kids will sort it.”
“Wind in the tall trees” takes on a rough tree shape on the page. There are a couple of apparent break-up scenes, but a tentative new relationship fuels tender, mildly erotic love poems (“Flight” and “Fig”). The alliteration in “Pride” evokes a gradual coming to grips with gender identity: “Pride by degrees. It’s relative / I’ve carried my shame / like a drunk friend dragged / through the days of my life. / Damn dysphoria.” “Cocoon” envisions a transformation, which comes to fruition in the final poem, the LGBTQ manifesto “Love song for queens, studs, butches, daddies, fags and all the other angels.” Here the poet hymns queer heroes, then joins them. “You are the strongest ones among us. Daring as you do to live. Wholly as you are. While the rest of us go straight // to pieces for what we can’t bear to admit we carry.” What a fantastic tease that enjambment is.
I found more variety than cohesion here, but Tempest is likely to attract readers who wouldn’t usually turn to poetry. This is one I’d recommend to fans of Surge by Jay Bernard and Some Integrity by Padraig Regan.
More favourite lines:
“Why not stick it out with this insane human being, rather than dig it all up just to replant yourself in a parallel hole.” (from “Absurd”)
“life’s a chance to do.
It’s all been done before. We make it new” (from “Morning”)
(3.5) Rebecca Roberts adapted her 2022 Welsh-language novel Y Defodau, her ninth, into The Rituals, which draws on her time working as a non-religious(3.5) Rebecca Roberts adapted her 2022 Welsh-language novel Y Defodau, her ninth, into The Rituals, which draws on her time working as a non-religious celebrant. Her protagonist, Gwawr Efa Taylor, is a freelance celebrant, too. The novel is presented as her notebook, containing diary entries as well as the text of some of the secular ceremonies she performs to mark rites of passage. We open on a funeral for a 39-year-old woman, then swiftly move on to a Bridezilla celebrity’s wedding that sours in a way that threatens to derail Gwawr’s entire career. A victim of sabotage, she’s doubly punished by gossip.
As she tries to piece her life back together, Gwawr finds support from many quarters, such as her beloved grandfather (Taid), a friend who invites her along on a writing retreat, her Welsh-language book club, a high school acquaintance, other customers and a sweet dog. She and the widower from the first funeral make a pact to start counselling at the same time to work through their grief – we know early on that she has experienced the devastating loss of Huw, but the details aren’t revealed until later. A couple of romantic prospects emerge for the 37-year-old, but also some uncomfortable reminders of past scandal.
There are heavy issues here, like alcoholism, infant loss and suicide, but they reflect the range of human experience and allow compassionate connections to form. Gwawr’s empathy is motivated by her bereavement: “That’s what keeps me going – knowing that I’ve turned the worst time of my life into something that helps other people. Taking the good from the bad.” You can see that attitude infusing her naming ceremonies and funerals. I’ll say no more about the plot, just that it prioritizes moments of high emotion and is both absorbing and touching.
I think this is only the second Welsh-language book I have read in translation (the first was The Life of Rebecca Jones by Angharad Price). It’s whetted my appetite for heading back to Wales for the first time since 2020 – we’re off to Hay-on-Wye on Friday. The Rituals is a tear-jerker for sure, but also sweet, romantic and realistic. I enjoyed it in much the same way I did The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer, and was pleased to try something from a small press that champions women’s writing.
Daniel Schreiber is a Berlin-based essayist and biographer of Susan Sontag. These philosophical reflections on solitude and loneliness, coinciding witDaniel Schreiber is a Berlin-based essayist and biographer of Susan Sontag. These philosophical reflections on solitude and loneliness, coinciding with the first year of the pandemic, reveal his ambivalence about living alone and his frustration that the idea of the couple so defines society that anyone who does not fall in line is considered aberrant.
“I never made a conscious decision to live alone,” Schreiber says. Although he has had many partners, some of them long term, and even lived with two of them for a time, he is single at the time of writing, and can’t help but think that his state implies some kind of deficiency. Part of this he attributes to queer shame that he must have subconsciously internalized, and part to Pauline Boss’s concept of the “ambiguous loss” – missing what one has never had.
The author has many friends, men and women, but feels that society tells us platonic love is less than romantic love; “friendship is thus reduced to a time of transition … a threshold state that ends when one successfully integrates into traditional forms of cohabitation.” His friend novelist Hanya Yanagihara (who gives a quote on the cover) corroborates this suspicion, which A Little Life affirms: “In the end, she said, you are always alone when you are single.”
The “Never So Lonely” chapter is about the Covid-19 situation in particular. Schreiber acknowledges that being alone does not have to equate to loneliness, yet the less he saw of people during lockdowns, the more he struggled mentally and emotionally. “At some point, a self-reinforcing dynamic of fear set in: the lonelier I felt, the less I could talk about it. And the less I talked about it, the lonelier I felt.”
Hiking, gardening, yoga and, eventually, foreign travel were among his coping strategies. This is as much a mini-memoir as it is a work of cultural criticism. Its academic tone is evident from a glance at the bibliography: Hannah Arendt, Roland Barthes, Joan Didion, Deborah Levy, Audre Lorde, Maggie Nelson and so on. This resonated with other loneliness- or solitude-themed books I’ve read, such as The Lonely City by Olivia Laing and Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton. It offers not answers, but solemn, quiet thoughts.
(3.5) I was drawn to Henry-Jones’s fifth novel by the setting: the remote (fictional) island of Seannay in the Orkneys. It tells the dark, intriguing (3.5) I was drawn to Henry-Jones’s fifth novel by the setting: the remote (fictional) island of Seannay in the Orkneys. It tells the dark, intriguing story of an Australian family lured in by magic and motivated by environmentalism. History overshadows the present as they come to realize that witch hunts are not just a thing of the past. This was exactly the right evocative reading for me to take on my trip to some other Scottish islands late last month. The setup reminded me of The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel, while the novel as a whole is reminiscent of The Night Ship by Jess Kidd and Night Waking by Sarah Moss.
Only a week after the Managans – photographer Luda, son Darcy, 16, and daughter Min, 14 – arrive on the island, they witness a hideous accident. A sudden rockfall crushes a little girl, and Luda happens to have captured it all. The photos fulfill her task of documenting how climate change is affecting the islands, but she earns the locals’ opprobrium for allowing them to be published. It’s not the family’s first brush with disaster. The kids’ father died recently; whether in an accident or by suicide is unclear. Nor is it the first time Luda’s camera has gotten her into trouble. Darcy is still angry at her for selling a photograph she took of him in a dry dam years before, even though it raised a lot of money and awareness about drought.
The family live in what has long been known as “the ghost house,” and hints of magic soon seep in. Luda’s archaeologist colleague wants to study the “witch marks” at the house, and Darcy is among the traumatized individuals who can see others’ invisible scars. Their fate becomes tied to that of Theo, a young man who washed up on the shore ten years ago as a web-fingered foundling rumoured to be a selkie. Luda becomes obsessed with studying the history of the island’s witches, who were said to lure in whales. Min collects marine rubbish on her deep dives, learning to hold her breath for improbable periods. And Darcy fixates on Theo, who also attracts the interest of a researcher seeking to write a book about his origins.
It’s striking how Henry-Jones juxtaposes the current and realistic with the timeless and mystical. While the climate crisis is important to the framework, it fades into the background as the novel continues, with the focus shifting to the insularity of communities and outlooks. All of the characters are memorable, including the Managans’ elderly relative, Cassandra (calling to mind a prophetic figure from Greek mythology), though I found Father Lee, the meddlesome priest, aligned too readily with clichés. While the plot starts to become overwrought in later chapters, I appreciated the bold exploration of grief and discrimination, the sensitive attention to issues such as addiction and domestic violence, and the frank depictions of a gay relationship and an ace character. I wouldn’t call this a cheerful read by any means, but its brooding atmosphere will stick with me. I’d be keen to read more from Henry-Jones.
A couple of years ago, I reviewed Bazterrica’s Tender Is the Flesh, a dystopian horror novel in which cannibalism becomes commonplace. “Brutal but briA couple of years ago, I reviewed Bazterrica’s Tender Is the Flesh, a dystopian horror novel in which cannibalism becomes commonplace. “Brutal but brilliant,” I called it. That’s what I was hoping for from this collection of 20 of the Argentinian author’s speculative short stories. Unfortunately, I found the death-drenched work uneven, but there were a few individual stories and recurring elements that I appreciated.
In “Unamuno’s Boxes,” a woman becomes convinced that her taxi driver is a serial killer; in “Anita and Happiness,” Pablo suspects his lover is an alien. In both of these, the imagined identity is so strongly rooted that it reflects, or even alters, the reality. My favourite line of the book came from the latter: “human beings are a mere parenthesis between two unknowns.”
There are a few cases of poetic justice here, such as when a football obsessive decides to take out his feelings on a cat and instead gets his comeuppance. Two other stories, “Roberto” and “Earth,” include revenge for child sexual abuse – they have mighty satisfying conclusions. Along with those two, the stand-out of the collection for me was the final story, “The Solitary Ones,” which is the closest to straight-up horror and features a young woman riding the subway alone when the electricity goes out. It’s one of four second-person narratives; that’s always an interesting point-of-view. (The rest are roughly equally split between first and third person.)
My qualms were about a couple of unpleasant repeated topics and the vague or generic nature of many of the remaining stories. Several involve suicide, which is not problematic in and of itself – “A Light, Swift and Monstrous Sound” is a strong opener in which a woman finds her elderly neighbour dead on her patio – but in two places it’s a too-convenient way of concluding a story about someone with mental illness. Two late stories apply menacing imagery about religion. Perhaps I’m overly sensitive about such things, but I prefer a more balanced depiction.
The title makes intriguing reference to other creatures, particularly birds, but apart from a couple of sinister appearances and one stereotyping page about the threat of a wolf, it doesn’t live up to that promise. Although I cannot wholeheartedly recommend Bazterrica’s short fiction, you might want to seek out select stories. Meanwhile, I would urge you all to read Tender Is the Flesh, which also engages with the question of the ethical treatment of animals.
The comparison with Sweetbitter, one of my favourite debuts of the past decade, drew me to Service, and it’s an apt one. Irish writer Sarah Gilmartin’The comparison with Sweetbitter, one of my favourite debuts of the past decade, drew me to Service, and it’s an apt one. Irish writer Sarah Gilmartin’s second novel is a before-and-after set partly in the stressful atmosphere of a fine dining restaurant in Dublin. Head chef Daniel Costello worked his way up from an inner-city childhood and teenage carvery-pub job to a two-Michelin-starred establishment known as T. But then came a fall: accusations of sexual assault from several female former employees led to the restaurant’s temporary closure and a high-profile court trial. Daniel maintains his innocence. His lawyer plans to cast shade on the lead waitress’ reputation, and question her failure to come forward until one year after the alleged rape.
Three alternating first-person narrators fill in the background of the macho restaurant world and the Costellos’ marriage. First is Hannah Blake, a former waitress who is not involved in the current lawsuit but has her own stories to tell about Daniel, who treated her as a protégée during the brief time she worked at T while she was a university student. “I’ve never felt as alive as I did that summer,” she writes; it was thrilling for a girl from Tipperary to be at the heart of Dublin’s culinary life and to have a world-leading chef believe her palate was worth training. We also hear from Daniel himself, and then his wife Julie, who begrudgingly supports Daniel but is furious with him for the negative attention the trial has brought her and their two sons. Some family members and neighbours have started avoiding them.
Gilmartin invites the reader to have sympathy for all the protagonists, even when it gets complicated. There was a point about three-quarters of the way through when I had to rethink who I felt sorry for and why. I would have liked a few more restaurant scenes to balance out the aftermath, but that is a minor quibble. This is a solid Me Too novel with pacey, engaging writing and well-rounded characters. It’s made me eager to go back and catch up on the author’s debut, Dinner Party: A Tragedy.
Icelandic author Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir was familiar to me from Butterflies in November (2013), a whimsical, feminist road trip novel I reviewed for FoIcelandic author Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir was familiar to me from Butterflies in November (2013), a whimsical, feminist road trip novel I reviewed for For Books’ Sake. Dómhildur or “Dýja” is, like her grandaunt before her, a midwife – a word that was once voted Iceland’s most beautiful: ljósmóðir combines the words for light and mother, so it connotes “mother of light.” On the other side of the family, Dýja’s relatives are undertakers, a neat setup that sees her clan “handling people at their points of entry and exit.”
Along with her profession, Dýja inherited her great-aunt’s apartment, nine bottles of sherry, pen pal letters to a Welsh midwife and a box containing several discursive manuscripts of philosophical musings, one of them entitled Animal Life. In fragments from this book within the book, we see how her grandaunt recorded philosophical musings about coincidences and humanity in relation to other species, vacillating between the poetic and the scientific.
As Christmas – and an unprecedented storm prophesied by her meteorologist sister – approaches, Dýja starts to make the apartment less of a mausoleum and more her own home, trading lots of the fusty furniture for a colleague’s help with painting and decorating, and flirting with an Australian tourist who’s staying in the apartment upstairs. Outside of work she has never had much of a personal life, so she’s finally finding a better balance.
I really warmed to the grandaunt character and enjoyed the peppering of her aphorisms. As in novels like The Birth House and A Ghost in the Throat, it feels like this is a female wisdom, somewhat forbidden and witchy. The idea of it being passed down through the generations is appealing. We get less of a sense of Dýja overall, only late on finding that she has her own traumatic backstory. For a first-person narrator, she’s lacking the expected interiority. Mostly, we see her interactions with a random selection of minor characters such as an electrician whose wife is experiencing postpartum depression.
I felt there were a few too many disparate elements here, not all joined but just left on the page as a quirky smorgasbord. Still, it’s fun to try fiction in translation sometimes, especially when it’s of novella length. This also reminded me a bit of Weather and Brood.
Jess Kidd’s fourth novel is based on a true story: the ill-fated voyage of the Batavia, which set off from the Netherlands in 1628, bound for IndonesiJess Kidd’s fourth novel is based on a true story: the ill-fated voyage of the Batavia, which set off from the Netherlands in 1628, bound for Indonesia, but wrecked on the Abrolhos Islands off the western coast of Australia in June 1629. If you look into it at all, you find a grim story of mutiny and murder. But we experience the voyage, and view its historical legacy, through the eyes of two motherless children: Mayken, travelling on the Batavia to be reunited with her merchant father abroad; and Gil, who, in 1989, moves in with his grandfather at his Australian beach hut and observes archaeologists diving into the wreck.
Chapters alternate between the two time periods. Mayken is in the care of her old nursemaid, Imke, who has second sight. As Imke’s health fails, Mayken goes semi-feral, dressing up as a cabin boy to explore the belowdecks world. Gil, a tender, traumatized boy in the company of rough grown-ups, becomes obsessed with the local dig and is given a pet tortoise – named Enkidu to match his own full name, Gilgamesh. Mayken and Gil both have to navigate a harsh adult world with its mixture of benevolent guardians and cruel strangers.
An explicit connection between the protagonists is set up early on, when a neighbour tells Gil there’s a “dead girl who haunts the island … Old-time ghost, from the shipwreck,” known as Little May. But there are little links throughout. For instance, both have a rote story to explain their mother’s death, and both absorb legends about a watery monster (the Dutch Bullebak and the Aboriginal Bunyip) that pulls people under. The symmetry of the story lines is most evident in the shorter chapters towards the end, such as the rapid-fire pair of 33–34.
These echoes, some subtle and some overt, are the saving grace of an increasingly bleak novel. Don’t be fooled by the focus on children’s experience: this is a dark, dark story, with only pinpricks of light at the end for one of the two. In terms of similar fiction I’ve read, the tone is more Wakenhyrst than The Essex Serpent; more Jamrach’s Menagerie than Devotion. (It didn’t help that I’d just read Julia and the Shark, an exceptional children’s book with a maritime setting and bullying/mental health themes.) I engaged more with the contemporary strand – as is pretty much always the case for me with a dual timeline – yet appreciated the atmosphere and the research behind the historical segments. This doesn’t match Things in Jars, but I was still pleased to have the chance to try something else by Jess Kidd.
Chase of the Wild Goose, a playful, offbeat biographical novel about the Ladies of Llangollen, was first published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s HogChase of the Wild Goose, a playful, offbeat biographical novel about the Ladies of Llangollen, was first published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press in 1936. I was delighted to be invited to take part in an informal blog tour celebrating the book’s return to print as the inaugural publication of Lurid Editions, which will focus on reprinting lesser-known and trailblazing 20th-century classics.
Mary Louisa Gordon was a medical doctor and early graduate of the London School of Medicine for Women. She also served as a prison inspector and had a special concern for the plight of female prisoners; another of her works was Penal Discipline (1922). Chase of the Wild Goose was published when she was 75. She underwrote the book to keep it in print until her death in 1941. A word-of-mouth success, it sold reasonably well in those first years.
I’d encountered the Ladies of Llangollen a couple of times before, in nonfiction: in The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl, where they are among her exemplars of solitary, introspective living; and in Sign Here If You Exist and Other Essays by Jill Sisson Quinn, where, in the way that they blur the lines between romance and friendship, they presage her experience with an intimate female friend. This was a different way to explore their story.
“The two heroines of this story, the Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, have a remarkable history. They achieved fame at a stroke. They made a noise in the world which has never since died out, and which we, their spiritual descendants, continue to echo.”
These are the opening lines of what, in its first half, is a fairly straightforward chronological account of the protagonists’ lives, from their first meeting to when they flee to Wales to set up house together at Plas Newydd. They grow up in Ireland and, although their prospects differ – EB has a wealthy upbringing at Kilkenny Castle, whereas teenage SP has recently lost her mother and is being passed around relatives and acquaintances – both are often told that marriage is the only viable option. The eccentric spinster stereotype is an unkind one, but one EB is willing to risk. In one terrific scene, she shames her archbishop great-uncle for being just like everyone else and threatening to sell her to the highest bidder in matrimony. Still, the notion persists that if only the right man comes courting, they’ll change their tune.
At their first meeting EB and SP engage in an intense discussion of the possibilities for women, and within two weeks they’re already pledging to be together forever: “I think that nothing cheap, or second-rate, or faute de mieux, will ever do for you or me … We think—you and I—that we want something strange and exceptional, but something different may be ordained for us,” Eleanor says to Sarah. “From now onwards I… won’t you keep me… in your heart?” Sarah asks in parting. Eleanor replies, “I think you have been in it since before we were born.”
The strength of that romantic conviction that they are fated for each other keeps them going despite difficulties – EB’s father disowns her and cuts her off, which has inevitable financial implications, though she had already bought Plas Newydd outright; and for both of them, leaving Ireland is a wrench because they feel certain that they can never go back.
By Part II, the erstwhile fugitives, settled into local life in North Wales, enter into a sedate middle age of visitors and correspondence. Much of the material for this section is drawn from the journal EB kept. Part III is where things get really interesting: in a metafictional twist, Gordon herself enters the narrative as she meets and converses with the long-dead Ladies at their house, reflecting on the social changes that have occurred since their time.
As the Afterword by Dr Nicola Wilson notes, Chase of the Wild Goose is creative nonfiction in the same vein as Orlando, building on real-life figures and relationships in a way that must have seemed ahead of its age, not least for how it looks back to venerate queer foremothers. Although there are long stretches of the book that are tedious with biographical detail and melodramatic speeches, there is enough in the way of convincing dialogue and scenes to make up for that. While I feel the novel probably has more to offer to academics and those with a particular interest in its subjects than to general readers, I was pleased to be able to experience a rediscovered classic. I marvelled every time I reminded myself that this largely takes place in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century. Gordon ably reproduces the diction and mores of the Ladies’ time, but her modernist intrusion takes it beyond pastiche.
As for the title, I’m most accustomed to the wild goose as a metaphor for the Holy Spirit in Celtic Christian iconography, but of course it is also a pun on the proverbial wild-goose chase. Gordon nods to both connotations; the phrase appears several times in the text and is the protagonists’ private term for their search for a life together – for liberty and for love. You have to cheer for them, achieving what so few could in their time. Here’s to you, Ladies!
The New York City publishing world was an irresistible draw of this historical novel, my first fiction read from Francine Prose. In June 1953, Simon PThe New York City publishing world was an irresistible draw of this historical novel, my first fiction read from Francine Prose. In June 1953, Simon Putnam, newly graduated from Harvard with a degree in folklore studies, is living at home with his parents on Coney Island when the Rosenberg execution appears on television. The whole country has been caught up in this sordid real-life spy drama, but his family has an unusual connection that makes them feel they have more of a stake: Simon’s mother grew up in the same tenement building as Ethel Rosenberg and they attended high school together. The Putnams feel the execution was a disgrace, and Simon’s mother has even created a sort of shrine to Ethel in their apartment.
This puts Simon in a tricky situation when his uncle gets him an editorial job with a publisher whose next project – intended to keep the struggling firm afloat – is the potboiler The Vixen, the Patriot, and the Fanatic, a thinly veiled version of the Rosenberg story that relishes in their demise, turning them into “Soviet sex zombies.” Besides being in poor taste, it’s atrociously written. Can Simon turn it into something more in line with his values without displeasing his boss? Complicating matters is his crush on the book’s author, Anya Partridge, a vamp who wears a fox stole and happens to be confined to a mental asylum.
Nothing is what it seems in a suspenseful narrative inspired by the events of the Red Scare. Characters who initially embody stereotypes end up surpassing expectations. I have trouble putting my finger on why I found this novel underwhelming on the whole. Maybe it was something to do with the far-fetched turns and Simon’s impassive narration. Or one too many references to his sex fantasies about Anya. I don’t see myself seeking out more fiction by Prose. But if you’re a fan of Three-Martini Lunch by Suzanne Rindell and especially The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott, you may well find this a pleasant summer diversion.
Are you having a groovy June yet? If not, I have just the remedy: a juicy coming-of-age novel that drops you directly into the Baltimore summer of 197Are you having a groovy June yet? If not, I have just the remedy: a juicy coming-of-age novel that drops you directly into the Baltimore summer of 1975. Mary Jane Dillard, 14, lives in the upper-class white neighborhood of Roland Park. Her parents are prim types who attend church every week, belong to a country club, and pray for the (Republican) president’s health before each sit-down family dinner. When Mary Jane starts working as a daytime nanny for five-year-old Izzy, the Cones’ way of life is a revelation to her. They are messy bohemians who think nothing of walking around the house half-naked, shouting up and down the stairs at each other, or leaving a fridge full of groceries to rot and going out for fast food instead.
Dr. Cone is a psychiatrist whose top-secret assignment is helping a rock star to kick his drug addiction. Jimmy and his actress wife, Sheba, move into the Cones’ attic for the summer. If they go out in public, they wear wigs and pretend to be friends visiting from Rhode Island. While the Cones are busy monitoring or trying to imitate their celebrity guests, Mary Jane introduces discipline by cleaning the kitchen, alphabetizing the bookcase, and replicating her mother’s careful weekly menus with food she buys from Eddie’s market. In some ways she seems the most responsible member of the household, but in others she’s painfully naïve, entirely ignorant of sex and unaware that her name is a slang term for marijuana.
Open marriage, sex addiction and group therapy are new concepts that soon become routine for our confiding narrator, as she adopts a ‘What they don’t know can’t hurt them’ stance towards her trusting parents. Blau is the author of four previous YA novels, and while this is geared towards adults, it resonates for how it captures the uncertainty and swirling hormones of the teenage years. Who didn’t share Mary Jane’s desperate curiosity to learn about sex? Who can’t remember a moment of realization that parents aren’t right about everything?
Music runs all through the book, creating and cementing bonds between the characters. Mary Jane sings in the choir and shares her mother’s love of both church music and show tunes. Jimmy and Sheba are always making up little songs on which Mary Jane harmonizes, and a clandestine trip to a record store in an African American part of town forms one of the novel’s pivotal scenes. The relationship between Mary Jane and Izzy, who is precocious and always coming out with malapropisms, is touching, and Blau cleverly inserts references to the casual racism and antisemitism of the 1970s.
I love it when a novel has a limited setting and can evoke a sense of wistfulness for a golden time that will never come again. I highly recommend this for nostalgic summer reading, particularly if you’ve enjoyed work by Curtis Sittenfeld – especially Prep and Rodham.
This is the third novel I’ve read by de Kerangal, after her 2017 Wellcome Book Prize winner, Mend the Living, and 2019’s The Cook. Painting Time resemThis is the third novel I’ve read by de Kerangal, after her 2017 Wellcome Book Prize winner, Mend the Living, and 2019’s The Cook. Painting Time resembles the former in the way it revels in niche vocabulary and the latter in that it slowly builds up a portrait of the central character. But all three books could be characterized as deep dives into a particular subject – the human body, gastronomy, and painting, respectively.
The protagonist of Painting Time is Paula Karst, one of 20-some art students who arrive at the Institut de Peinture in Brussels in the autumn of 2007 to learn trompe l’oeil technique. They’re taught to painstakingly imitate every variety of wood and stone so their murals will look as convincing as the real thing. It’s a gruelling course, with many hours spent on their feet every day.
Years later, the only classmates Paula has kept up with are Jonas, her old flatmate, with whom she had a sort-of-almost-not-quite relationship, and their Scottish friend Kate. The novel opens with the three of them having a reunion in Paris. Given this setup, I expected de Kerangal to follow all three characters from 2007 to the near past, but the book sticks closely to Paula, such that the only secondary characters who come through clearly are her parents.
It’s intriguing to see the work that comes Paula’s way after a degree in decorative painting, including painting backdrops for a Moscow-set film of Anna Karenina and the job of a lifetime: working on a full-scale replica of the prehistoric animal paintings of the Lascaux Caves (Lascaux IV). The final quarter of the novel delves into the history of Lascaux, which was discovered in 1940 and open to the public on and off until the late 1960s. Deep time abuts the troubled present as Paula contemplates what will last versus what is ephemeral.
As de Kerangal did with medical terminology in Mend the Living, so here she relishes art words: colours, tools, techniques; names for types of marble and timber (Paula’s own surname is a word for limestone caves). The long sentences accrete to form paragraphs that stretch across multiple pages. I confess to getting a bit lost in these, and wanting more juicy interactions than austere character study. However, the themes of art and history are resonant. If you’ve enjoyed de Kerangal’s prose before, you will certainly want to read this, too.
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