The Sunday Times/Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year 2016 Shortlist

I am absolutely thrilled that these four talented writers have been shortlisted for this year’s Sunday Times/Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award for 2016. I’ve had the pleasure of reading all four of their excellent books before (click on the titles below to see my full reviews of each book) – and I even interviewed Jessie Greengrass at an event in Waterstone’s recently!

The Ecliptic by Benjamin Wood

Physical by Andrew McMillan

An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It by Jessie Greengrass

Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

Most of them I read over a year ago so it’s going to be fascinating going back to these books to see if my feelings about them have altered and it’ll be especially exciting discussing them with the super fab official shadow panel which I’m part of. How to pick a winner between books which are so wildly different in content and form? There’s an epic novel about the creative process; poetry which gives a radical slant on masculinity/the body; creative, heartfelt, funny & philosophical short stories and… however you choose to define Max Porter’s deeply moving novella/poetry/dramatic monologue/literary criticism/self help book!

Comparing these books is going to be a huge challenge so I would absolutely love it if you would read some or all of them along with me and let me know your thoughts! Or, if you’ve read them already, which would you pick as the winner?

The official winner will be announced on December 9th with our own shadow panel selection being announced some time before that. So stay tuned!

The Letters Page Vol. 1 edited by Jon McGregor

Have you ever had penpals or do you still have penpals? As a teenager I loved writing letters – real physical letters with pen and paper. There used to be a whole culture based around finding other penpals with things called friendship books. You’d add your address and interests to a little booklet with dozens of other names and this would get mailed around by other enthusiastic pen pal folk. It was like a social network site before the internet. In this way I acquired hundreds of penpals from all over the world. It was so exciting learning about other people and cultures far away from my own small town in Maine. But a big part of the thrill was coming home and finding a mail box full of letters addressed to me. It also helped me to know myself better writing about my life to these virtual strangers. There’s a special pleasure in getting a handwritten letter – an art largely lost with the advent of email!

An early correspondence I had with Joyce Carol Oates

The Letters Page recaptures a bit of this magic by producing a literary journal around the form of the written letter and includes extracts, short stories, travelogue and poetry. They’ve just published their first collected volume and it’s a beautiful limited edition boxed set with loose-leaf reproductions of the contributor’s original handwritten letters with illustrations. As editor Jon McGregor discusses in his introduction sending and receiving letters involves lapses of time: the letter you send is sent to the future and the letter you receive is from the past. This completely changes how we read and interpret something as opposed to an email that pops up in an inbox. Also, our handwriting contains our personality and it conveys such a different feeling seeing a person’s scribbles than reading an impersonal type-written form. There can also be things crossed out and doodles in the margins. At the beginning of this volume, George Saunders also discusses how letters aide us in developing “our understanding of our relation to the greater world”. This is definitely something that was important for me writing so many letters as a teenager and discovering the physical world outside of my own little circumscribed existence.

This was one of the last letters my grandmother wrote me. She believed the protein in peanuts was essential for good health. Reading this makes me cry.

The anthology includes writing from some very bright and cutting-edge authors who are able to find a new flair for their subject matter in this concentrated form. I’ve read books by several of these authors recently including Joanna Walsh who writes a funny and touching story about the gradual loss of some special cargo in a journey across Europe, Naomi Alderman who takes a new view on practicing the Jewish faith (or not), Kevin Barry who writes about the spectre of death/communing with other writers in rural Ireland and the hilarious Karen McLeod who writes a chatty letter to Alan Bennett.

There’s also some really diverse and startling writing. Some is more impressionistic like poets cataloguing a travel experience complete with drawings. Then there is writing which is more direct like a heartbreaking letter from Claudia Reed to her father about his struggles in the civil rights movement. Cassie Gonzales letter about representations of race includes a number of strike outs and corrections so the reader gets a sense of the actual thought process learning in some ways more from what’s been crossed out than what’s left in. Each letter says something particular about the experience of letter writing and couldn’t convey what they do in traditional Microsoft Word formatted printed pages. There is a relationship formed in writing and reading letters which is so intimate like peering into someone else’s window. As someone who used to love exchanging letters so much, it’s thrilling to see this form being kept alive in such a creative format as The Letters Page. Find out more about this special anthology here and the publisher Book Ex Machina's ordering page here. 

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

“Swing Time” is being published this month, but I first read it in July because I had the great honour of being invited to interview Zadie Smith at this wonderful preview event. Having been a long time fan of Smith’s writing, it’s so interesting to see how this new novel differs from her other books in some ways but also develops further some of her most prevalent themes. Many of her novels give equal time and focus to several characters, yet “Swing Time” is written entirely from the perspective of a single nameless narrator. This gives the novel a more nostalgic feel because it vividly recounts an adolescent girl coming of age during the 1980s in North London. She befriends an energetic girl named Tracey (because their skin colour is similar) who claims her absent father is a backup dancer for Michael Jackson. The girls develop a love of dancing in a class and through watching scenes from Old Hollywood musicals that often involve Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers or semi-obscure African American actress Jeni LeGon. The novel follows the gradual breakup of their friendship and the narrator’s early adulthood when she works as a personal assistant for a famous pop star who wants to found a school for girls in West Africa. Eventually these two aspects of the story weave together showing how the narrator arrives at a crisis point. It’s an extremely engaging and intelligent novel about friendship, racial identity and our perception of time.

Central to the narrator's life are three strong-minded, wilful and (some might say) difficult women: friend Tracey, the narrator’s (nameless) feminist mother and the pop star Aimee. Tracey is a wilful girl who often leads the narrator and their friends into delinquent behaviour. It’s easy relating how as an adolescent you would be easily drawn to but secretly repulsed by her behaviour. It’s also touching the way Smith relates how at that age you overlook obvious lies that friends sometimes tell you so as not to embarrass them. There are also startling scenes involving abusive sexual behaviour from schoolboys towards the girls at their school. Smith delicately handles how the girls were not simply victims to this outrageous behaviour, but in some cases participated in it. This definitely doesn’t excuse the behaviour of the boys, but shows the complexity of burgeoning sexuality. It’s also skilfully presented how their friendship ebbs and flows until a point at which the girls’ paths in life sharply split apart. 

The narrator’s mother (who also remains nameless) is an absolutely fascinating individual. She's one of those characters I find utterly compelling to read about, but I'd be terrified of meeting her in real life because she can verbally cut people to shreds and often does. She has an impatient attitude towards all the usual domestic duties and interests that other women (such as Tracey’s mother) on the council estate engage in. Instead she spends as much time as possible reading, educating herself and developing social projects such as a hilariously disastrous scene where she tries to turn a square of grass on the estate into a community garden for local children. As well as being fiercely driven and community minded (even when it goes against the opinions of those around her) she has a touching vulnerable side which comes out especially when her partner’s children from a previous marriage arrive at their apartment one day.

Finally, Aimee is an American mega pop star who first rose to fame in the 80s. She’s a white singer and a great dancer whose image has evolved through decades of continuing popularity with a strong gay fan base and a keen interest in philanthropy work in Africa – any guesses who she might be partly inspired by? Through a quirk of fate when the narrator works at a music company she ends up becoming Aimee’s personal assistant. The pop star operates on some other level of reality where she wants to magnanimously found a school for girls in an impoverished part of Africa, but doesn’t want to involve herself in the complexities of local politics. Yet, being mixed race the narrator finds her time in Africa and the connections she makes with some people there has a profoundly personal affect upon her. It’s also her entanglements with some of these people that put her working relationship with Aimee in jeopardy.

At the centre of the novel are the very personal and thoughtful observations of the narrator who we get to know intimately (even though we never learn her name). She has an interesting way of considering perceptions of identity and how she views herself by watching many old musicals and interacting with people in Africa. There’s a remove from experience whether its watching these films with their dodgy representations of black people or the teaspoons of truth she gets from her African friends: “great care was taken at all times to protect me from reality. They’d met people like me before. They knew how little reality we can take.” It’s moving the way she is searching throughout the novel to find reflections of herself and struggles to understand where she fits into society.

Fred Astaire dancing in black face in the film 'Swing Time' - the narrator watches this clip at the novel's opening when seeing a director being interviewed. Coincidentally, I actually went to this talk with Herzog at the Southbank Centre where this clip was shown.

Smith wrote a fascinating article about Christian Marclay’s art piece The Clock. This is an installation which is a looped 24-hour montage with scenes from films and television that make real-time references to the time of day. It’s really one of the most extraordinary artworks I’ve ever seen and I sat hypnotized watching it for several hours when it was showing at the Hayward Gallery in London. It feels like Smith was influenced by this when writing about the way the narrator views old musicals. She’s a girl from the 80s watching a film ‘Ali Baba Goes to Town’ from 1937 which is a Hollywood interpretation of an African tribe acting like dancers from Harlem. It’s a complex, layered look at time with versions of identity being refracted through multiple lenses and it leaves the narrator somewhat lost. In this way, it makes an interesting companion read to recent Booker winner Paul Beatty’s The Sellout which also looks at depictions of race in early television and film. Late in the novel the narrator befriends a gay couple who seem to embody something she herself can’t quite obtain. She makes the observation that they are “Two people creating the time of their own lives, protected somehow by love, not ignorant of history but not deformed by it, either.” The narrator seems in some way to have been deformed by these images from the past and the novel’s story is her journey to arrive at a more cohesive sense of self.

I don’t want to classify this as a post-Brexit novel (Smith also wrote a very strong article called ‘Fences’ about our post-Brexit world). But the novel’s portrayal of growing economic, social and political division over the course of a few decades feels very timely – particularly in how it’s portrayed with the gap in understanding between the narrator’s mother and Tracey– both lived in the same estate in the 80s but arrive at very different places and positions in life. The way their stories plays out show how there’s been breaks in how different factions of society are able to communicate with each other. In a technological age where we should be more united because we have easier means for creating dialogue it seems like we’re becoming more closed to other people’s opinions and isolated. The novel plays out a scenario between these characters where this is intensely felt.

It feels like this could be Zadie Smith’s most straightforward novel in a way as it’s told only through the voice of a single narrator. Yet, it’s also one of her most complex for the finely textured way it represents sexual awakening, friendship, fame, racial identity and history. I’m still thinking about it months later and some of its most vivid scenes really stick out in my mind. I also couldn’t help looking up on Youtube some scenes from musicals mentioned in the novel and it’s really shocking some of the things they portray. The story provokes me to think about these artefacts from the past in a more complex way. “Swing Time” is a masterful, highly intelligent and deeply enjoyable novel that will really stick with you.

Midwinter by Fiona Melrose

Like a lot of people, I have a real affection for foxes. I guess it’s something about the bushy tails and that beautiful red/copper colour of their fur that makes them so attractive. One of the things I love most about London is coming home late at night and seeing a fox trotting down an empty street. At the heart of Fiona Melrose’s debut novel “Midwinter” is a female fox that lives on the periphery of a farm inhabited by a father and son. She’s only seen occasionally by the father Landyn who feels a connection to her and a growing sense of protectiveness as he notices her becoming ill. The fox is just a small part of the story but she seems to represent something much bigger. The missing part of this family is the mother Cecelia who died in a brutal way while they were living in Zambia several years before. Landyn and his son Vale never discuss the emotional repercussions of this traumatic loss, but a horrific accident between Vale and his friend Tom which happens at the start of the novel forces the father and son to confront their shared grief. “Midwinter” is a beautifully written novel that movingly shows the way lives become embittered when communication breaks down and how new routes for connection can be formed over time.

I really respond to fiction that sympathetically deals with individuals and families facing hard economic realities – something many of us struggle with in our everyday lives but I find that this is often left out of contemporary literature. Like many British farmers, Landyn Midwinter finds that his profits are steadily dwindling over a number of years to the point where he’s facing bankruptcy and this has a painfully difficult impact upon his home life. It’s astutely observed that “Everyone has a fine and deep-bedded family when the cash is rolling in but take that away, and you’ll find out soon enough how well the centre holds.” In a desperate attempt to save his family and make a new start he uproots them and responds to an ad seeking people experienced in agriculture to manage farms in Zambia. Here his family faces a whole new set of challenges which build to the tragic loss of Cecelia.

It’s impressive the way Melrose so fully explores the particularly masculine way the father and son deal with their feelings. The story alternates between Vale and Landyn’s perspectives which gives a rounded understanding of the individual emotional pain each man is suffering from and why they aren’t able to express this to the other. Many men deal with emotional suppression through drinking and violence. This is what Vale resorts to because he can’t rationally explain the residual anger he feels towards his father over the loss of his mother and it leads to unfortunate consequences. But there is also a touching tenderness to the way he is aware of his father’s peculiarities and does small things to support him. Although Landyn has a really nurturing personality and fiercely protects the welfare of animals, he’s not able to bring himself to discuss his son’s anger or openly express his own mourning.

A fox I came upon when walking home recently one night.

One of the most moving passages comes when Landyn contemplates the way both he and his son are acting irrationally because of their grief. He reasons that “Hauntings aren’t about being afraid, they’re about longing. If you don’t crave the thing that stalks you it’s just a thing, or a person or a fox, maybe, because it has no meaning. What a haunting is, though, is all your longing for someone in a shape you can wrap your brain around.” The mental projection of the mother looms large in their present lives and the reason she torments them both so much is that they’re not acknowledging to each other that she’s there. Vale longs for her guidance and Landyn is steeped in loss, but without openly discussing these difficult issues they give in to destructive impulses.

Fiona Melrose artfully handles the oftentimes brutal reality of rural life and these characters’ violent outbreaks with a poetic and philosophical beauty. I was totally immersed in the story which slides back and forth in time to show the conflict and scarred existence of this father and son. Interesting James Kelman’s most recent novel “Dirt Road” also shows a father and son who find it difficult to emotionally deal with the loss of the mother of the family. However, the story and the statements Melrose make are very different. I highly recommend “Midwinter” – especially as an absorbing read as we enter the colder months of the year and it’s worth mentioning that as an object I think the book has an exceptionally beautiful cover.

The Power by Naomi Alderman

Standing for women’s equality is something I feel really strongly about. So reading Naomi Alderman’s deeply imaginative novel “The Power” which charts ten years of a matriarchy’s rise to global power is such a thrilling experience. The novel begins with groups of adolescent girls suddenly finding they possess special powers to generate and control powerful electric currents. They can train themselves to use this electricity as a weapon. As more and more women find this strength awakening within them, control at all levels of society shifts to favour women. But just because women rise to power doesn’t mean that this is a utopia. Soon the battle for dominance leads to the equally horrifying psychological, physical and sexual subjugation of men just as has been the case for women over the course of history.

The story concentrates on several diverse characters including an abused foster child who reinvents herself as Mother Eve to lead a religious following, the daughter of an English gangster who takes control of a lucrative drug trafficking business, a Nigerian man who discovers a flair for journalism in recording the women’s rise to power and a female US politician and her conflicted daughter. Much of the action of the novel takes place in an Eastern European country ruled by a queen named Tatiana. This at first seems like it will be the seed state for the new female order of the world, but it soon experiences heavy conflict in the chaotic tussle for power. These different characters’ stories come together in a dramatic and fascinating way.

There are some quite disturbing scenes in the novel with violence enacted against both men and women. But it’s interesting how I felt conflicted about certain scenes where men were being taken control of through humiliation, abuse and rape in the way many women have been in the past and continue to be in the present. I naturally feel repulsed by any violence, but part of me couldn’t help feeling that such punishment was only just after years of similar subjugation that women have experienced. It’s clever how the novel makes you question yourself and your own values in this way – as well as to what degree we blind ourselves to other people’s suffering when we’ve grown up thinking certain power imbalances are natural.

I found it really effective and moving how Alderman writes about women’s development and the formation of identity. She does this particularly well in describing adolescent girls and the radical changes which occur at this period of their lives. In one vividly dramatic scene she writes: “Nothing special has happened today; no one can say she was more provoked than usual. It is only that every day one grows a little, every day something is different, so that in the heaping up of days suddenly a thing that was impossible has become possible. This is how a girl becomes a grown woman.” This beautifully encapsulates the way we gradually change and how we find ourselves capable of things we didn’t believe we could do before. So the fable of women controlling an electric power can be seen more as the way physical and psychological changes occur in stages of development.

One of the difficult things about considering gender issues is not to fall into lazy generalizations such as women are nurturing and men are aggressive. Certainly all of us exhibit these traits at certain times. A character writes: “Gender is a shell game. What is a man? Whatever a woman isn’t. What is a woman? Whatever a man is not. Tap on it and it’s hollow. Look under the shells: it’s not there.” Our society operates so heavily based on gender binaries, but if you examine individuals closely gender just becomes another malleable identity trait. The story has an innovative way of questioning such categories.

Scattered throughout the text are drawings of artefacts which purportedly show how at certain points of history women have possessed this special power. This adds to the feeling that such an evolutionary change is natural. It’s quite a fun way of reconsidering history. The author also compels us to think carefully about what we don’t know about the past: “This is the trouble with history. You can’t see what’s not there. You can look at an empty space and see that something’s missing, but there’s no way to know what it was.” The novel is framed within a written correspondence between two friends Neil and Naomi. In doing so, Alderman cleverly changes the entire context which the novel’s text exists within just as Margaret Atwood did at the end of “The Handmaid’s Tale”. The way that the author has structured this novel elevates it out of a pure fantasy story to provoke compelling questions about the way society is organized and how we might think about it differently.

“The Power” is a thoroughly engrossing story that questions the meaning of gender and inventively inverts the order of society to suggest new perspectives.

Becoming a shadow judge for The Sunday Times/Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year 2016 Award

I snapped this pic of Sarah Howe looking very excited when it was announced she won the prize last year.

A book prize I love following is The Sunday Times/Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award. This is an award which came back with gusto last year after being on hiatus since 2009. Only writers who are 35 years or younger are eligible. It’s wonderful to see promising young writers encouraged and supported in this way. Not only does the winner receive an award of £5000 but the runners-up also receive £500 each – a nice addition which means it’s not all or nothing for the writers being recognized. The shortlist for the 2015 prize was so interesting and diverse with the winner being Sarah Howe who wrote the beautiful book of poetry “Loop of Jade”. This award straddles multiple genres considering fiction, non-fiction and poetry, but I think it’s particularly nice that a poet was recognized for such a prestigious prize. Past winners have included great literary stars including Adam Foulds, Zadie Smith, Sarah Waters, Caryl Phillips and Helen Simpson.

So I'm delighted that I've been invited to join an official shadow panel for this year’s prize alongside great book bloggers Naomi from TheWritesofWomen, Kim from ReadingMatters, Simon from SavidgeReads and Charlie from TheWormHole. When the shortlist for this year’s prize is announced we’ll be reading all the books on it and meeting to discuss them to decide our own winner. This will be announced as a kind of fan favourite proceeding the announcement of the actual winner. I’ll be so excited to join in as having detailed discussions and debates about books is what I love most!

The shortlist will be announced on November 6th.

The winner will be announced on December 9th at a ceremony at the beautiful London Library – this is a library I particularly love. Back in May I wrote about a special publication “On Reading, Writing and Living with Books” which came out as part of the library's 175th anniversary.

Stay tuned to find out what authors are shortlisted for this year’s award and our discussions about the books. I hope you’ll join in reading them with us!

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

It was fortuitous that the book I ended up reading during my short holiday this past weekend was Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout”. Last night it won this year’s Man Booker Prize. I was also lucky enough to be invited to his publisher Oneworld’s Booker party. To see the jubilation for everyone who has worked on this novel watching Beatty being honoured was wonderful and I think it was unexpected for many people, including the publishers because they also published Marlon James’ novel which won the prize last year. It may have broken my winning streak for guessing the Booker winner, but “The Sellout” is an excellent choice for its wit, ingenuity and unfettered voice which creatively raises questions about race relations in America. 

The novel opens with its black narrator only known as Me being taken before the Supreme Court for owning a slave and trying to reinstate segregation in his neighbourhood – a place called Dickens which has been erased from the map. He recounts the story of his unusual life being raised by his tyrannical behavioural scientist father, living alongside a former actor named Hominy who pronounces himself to be his slave, his ill-fated love affair with bus driver Marpessa and his work growing the sweetest fruit/best cannabis on his own LA farm. After his father's death he also continues to help facilitate the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals, a black group that meet regularly within a donut shop to debate societal affairs. The story moves through a series of high-concept situations which outrageously play up stereotypes and explode the racial issues we normally tiptoe around in society.  

This feels like a very personal novel by an author who has grown frustrated with the way the politics of race relations has shaped everything about how we conceive of our own identities and how we communicate with each other. At one point the narrator states “in ten years, through countless California cruelties and slights against the blacks, the poor, the people of colour, like Proposition 8 and 187, the disappearance of social welfare, David Cronenberg’s Crash, and Dave Eggers’s do-gooder condescension, I hadn’t spoken a single word.” His opinions about this cultural and social environment come flooding out. This book is an explosive act by someone who wants to offer a wholly different point of view.

Hominy is an actor who is the last surviving member of The Little Rascals or Our Gang and spent his life playing stereotypical roles for black actors like waiters or servants. He's internalized his subservient roles so much that he craves to be a slave who is beaten: “I’m a slave. That’s who I am. It’s the role I was born to play. A slave who just happens to be an actor. But being black ain’t method acting.” One of the challenging things this novel does is question how black identity develops, how much is this identity inherent to the person or is it reflecting notions that society presents. 

It's compelling and horrifying watching episodes of The Little Rascals and wondering how we should read what were meant to be entertaining funny vignettes. They make me so uncomfortable, but as with many dodgy representations of race it makes you wonder if they should be erased, seen in a social/historical context or rewritten. There are references to classic American literature throughout this novel and a man who rewrites these book from a black perspective. From this we also start to question how race is represented in films, television and literature today. In what way is racial identity sometimes used as a prop in story lines – where a bad guy might be lazily designated as such simply by being a Mexican – as frequently occurs in the show Breaking Bad.

I think something Beatty is asking us to do is look more clearly at what is being shown to us. He's questioning how much we've really moved on from outdated representations and how much social progression has really occurred. At one point he writes: “That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book – that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.” It's really powerful how he presents this story which occurs in a kind of murky present that can question history because it's not strictly speaking a part of it. The real and surreal playfully blend together to create an entirely different picture of our society.

While I found all this really clever and it raised a lot of interesting ideas, I felt one of the downsides of this novel is that it's more concept than story. I could feel the author's anger, frustration and biting sense of humour. But these emotions didn't come organically from within the characters acting out a plot. The story is driven by artfully composed situations which are entertaining and fascinating to read about, but weren't enough to create a dramatic suspense to draw me into the heart of the tale. Instead I simply felt compelled by the range of references and challenging points of view the author put across. I think this is a really interesting choice to win the Booker prize, but I personally don't feel as emotionally attached to it as I did reading Levy's “Hot Milk” or Thien's “Don't Say We Have Nothing”. 

The Man Booker Prize 2016 Winner Prediction

This year’s Man Booker Prize shortlist is a really interesting and challenging group of novels. I’ve been particularly busy in the last few weeks but I have managed to read five out of the six books listed. I was totally engrossed by the twisted psychology and suspenseful plot of Ottessa Moshfegh’s “Eileen” and fascinated by the compelling portrait of manhood David Szalay created in his nine distinct stories about men’s lives in “All That Man Is”. Paul Beatty's "The Sellout" is an extraordinary satire that fearlessly, hilariously and cleverly gives a new perspective on racism in America. But I have to say, two of my favourite books I’ve read so far this year are Deborah Levy’s “Hot Milk” and Madeleine Thien’s “Do Not Say We Have Nothing”. Levy’s novel takes a brilliantly unique look at identity, family and sexuality. Thien’s novel is a complex, sophisticated story showing generations that struggle for personal freedom and creative expression. It’s difficult to choose, but I’m going to guess that “Do Not Say We Have Nothing” will win. I’ve even placed a bet at the bookies for it to win! I successfully predicted that “A Brief History of Seven Killings” would win the Booker last year so I’m hoping to collect this time as well when the winner is announced on the evening of Tuesday, October 25th! More excitingly, it will be great to follow all the bookish discussion around these compelling books that have been shortlisted.

All That Man Is by David Szalay

David Szalay has found an inventive way to portray the hearts and minds of men in this novel which follows nine distinct characters at certain points in their lives. From young aesthete/wallflower Simon who travels around Europe to savvy journalist Kristian on the brink of publishing a sensational piece about a high profile affair to elderly Tony who resides in Italy mulling over unexpressed desires with his adult daughter, the parts of this novel progress through stages in different men’s lives alighting upon commonalities and variations of experience. It felt to me like each part or short story could have been easily expanded into a novel in itself, but paired together they make a fascinating composite portrait which questions ideas about masculinity and life’s meaning. Towards the end especially, “All That Man Is” feels something like a Beckett play where the men’s common yearnings and regrets have accumulated together to sound like one voice crying out for all human experience.

Through several of the men’s stories there is a marked disconnect between how these characters confidently portray themselves publicly and the feelings of self-doubt they harbour privately. Szalay skilfully moves his narrative between these two spheres of experience to show dramatic points where the self-assured mask a man might wear crumbles. This sometimes happens in instances where an arrogant man is undone by desire like in the story of young slacker Bernard who finds himself seduced by both a mother and her daughter while on holiday in Cyprus. Or when social outcast Murray finds himself emotionally moved by a psychic who he nonetheless realizes must be a con-artist. Through this it is shown how men are compelled to maintain confident fronts both because of societal pressure to appear strong, but also out of an oftentimes unjustified personal pride.

As the novel progresses and the male protagonist of each new story become older there is an accumulating sense of the flow of time: how these men’s lives are caught up in details and misadventures which distract from their ideals and larger goals. Many of the younger men don’t give too much thought to this caught in their own admittedly false sense of their immortality: “this too shall pass. We don’t actually believe that, though, do we? We are unable to believe that our own world will pass.” The stories in the middle of the book are concerned mostly with professionals who are embroiled in the busyness of their professional ambitions and work life: “Life has become so dense, these last years. There is so much happening. Thing after thing. So little space. In the thick of life now. Too near to see it.” Their unquenchable drive for power, money and status leave them little time for reflection or valuing things which should matter more like caring for their family or maintaining a sense of integrity. This takes on a poignancy with the later stories where the men often feel they’ve not achieved what they really wanted and have little drive to continue. This is most touchingly realized in the story of wealthy iron baron Aleksandr who is living through the collapse of his mighty empire and seeks a little feeling of home with an employee.

Frenchman Bernard goes on a cringe-worthy cheap holiday to avoid any responsibilities

This book raised a lot of questions for me and gave me many conflicted feelings. I love how it exposes and satirizes how petty, selfish and short-sighted men can be which makes the reader question the idea of masculinity. But, at the same time, I kept thinking about the title and wondering ‘is this really all man is?’ There is little of the subtly about men which is so finely articulated in Andrew McMillan’s superb book of poetry “Physical”. Of course, the nine men in this novel certainly don’t represent all of mankind, nor do I think Szalay intends them to. Although there are some positive and humorous qualities about some of the men portrayed - with Balazs and Tony in particular demonstrating a sensitive side - they are overall quite nasty. Men can also be caring, compassionate and giving, but I think Szalay was more interested in exposing specific types of men and the inner lives they hide. It also shows how certain men perceive women and how women must navigate this male gaze. He does this in an accomplished way and its impressive how instantly I felt immersed in each part even though it was about an entirely new character in a different situation disconnected from all those before it (except for the final part).

“All That Man Is” is ultimately a fascinating and thought-provoking novel that leaves a lasting impressing.

Film Review: Toni Erdmann

It’s so rare that a comedy can last for over two and a half hours but still be funny. New film ‘Toni Erdmann’ by German director/writer Maren Ade achieves this by building in both a tender story of a father-daughter relationship and scenes which become increasingly surreal/bombastic as the story progresses. Big lumbering Winfried is a divorced retiree and notorious prankster amongst his friends and family. He often uses the corniest tricks like wearing goofy glasses, ratty wigs or crooked false teeth to elicit a weary chuckle from those around him. When his adult daughter Ines returns home for a brief visit, he sees how uptight she’s become. She constantly makes work calls, dresses conservatively and has little time for her father’s pranks. The emotional disconnect is palpable. When Ines goes back to Bucharest where she lives and works, Winfried follows her there. He inveigles his way into her private and work life using the pseudonym Toni Erdmann and pretending that he’s a quirky flatulent businessman/diplomat. A series of wildly funny, cringe-worthy and awkward scenes ensue as Ines tries to carry on despite his intrusions.

What is so charming and engaging about this set up are the fluctuations of power play which take place in this father-daughter relationship. Ines wants to be taken seriously and lives like how she believes an adult should. Her time is filled with trying to advance in her job by sucking up to clients, partying with friends/business contacts and belittling those who work beneath her. Toni arrives in her life like an agent of chaos showing how shallow and ridiculous her pursuits are. Equally, Ines tries to show her father how immature his behaviour is and attempts to prove what an adult she is by acting out sexually, taking drugs or playing the diva at a spa. These battles between family members who desperately try to prove something to each other feel very real and touching.

It’s impressive how this film keeps you on your toes uncertain where it’s going next. Many scenes have the feeling of being improvised because of the thoroughly convincing performance from the actors who really look mystified about what’s happening or how to react when something highly unusual happens. I was surprised to learn from the Q&A with two of the actors at the London Film Festival screening I went to that the film was completely scripted and heavily rehearsed! Winfried (played by actor Peter Simonischek) gets a bewildered look in his eyes at certain points and holds his body as if he doesn’t know what he’s going to do next: continue the joke or fess up and go home. Also Ines (played by Sandra Hüller) maintains such a serious composure when faced with disruption that when she finally cracks at some points it feels wholly shocking. But also the script was obviously tightly written to make it feel like the characters were making spontaneous decisions.

I can’t express how involved the entire audience was at the screening I attended. There was a lot of audible laughter, gasps and winces at the outrageous scenes which gradually unfolded including karaoke to a Whitney Houston song, lewd acts with petits fours, a big hairy costume and a non-sexual naked office bonding party. ‘Toni Erdmann’ manages to be both genuinely heart-warming and brilliantly funny. I’ll be shocked if this film doesn’t get a best foreign language nomination at next year’s Oscars and it may well win the award. If you get a chance to see this film, I highly recommend it.

Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra (translated by Megan McDowell)

When I was in school I absolutely hated standardized tests. It seems melodramatic now but I simply could not focus on the dreary text and formalized questions. Often I ended up filling in the multiple choice answer sheet to make a pattern on the page rather than mark what I thought were the right answers. I wish now that I had just knuckled down and focused more but at the time that felt impossible. So it’s a delight coming across inventive Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra’s new book “Multiple Choice” which is based on the Chilean Academic Aptitude Test. He creatively plays with the test’s format to form micro-stories and oftentimes hilarious commentary on society, formalized education and the human condition. This is a brisk, short book but like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel you could easily spend ages thinking about the multiple combinations and outcomes you could make in each section.

Each section of the book is laid out like a standard multiple choice test where you are instructed to exclude a term, reorder a sentence, decide on how best to complete a sentence, eliminate certain sentences from the text or show your comprehension of a story. Yet, quite often the multiple choice responses are comical, sarcastic or slyly make subversive statements. Sometimes reordering the text creates radical new meanings which are in turns poetic/ironic/poignant or the possible answers create impossibilities as if completely mocking the idea of an exam. There’s a great deal of wordplay where in one section he writes “You try to go from the general to the specific, even if the general is General Pinochet.” The infamous military dictator Pinochet pops up several times in the text and some sections make a sharp critique Chilean society and the notoriously oppressive political system under his rule. These passages add a weightier feeling to the book as you can sense so strongly the strain of having lived under such a fearsome regime. (If you want to see a great documentary about the longlasting effecting of Pinochet’s dictatorship watch the powerful film Nostalgia for the Light.)

Many of the early sections are filled with only brief lines of text whose meanings are cryptic or suggest there could be much longer stories told. Frequently there are allusions to broken families or tempestuous relationships. One of the extended stories towards the end is about a man who won’t give or can’t remember his former wife’s name. It was quite shocking to learn in this story that Chile only legalized divorce in 2004. Another story is about a man who works variously as a chauffer and ghost writer for a politically conservative man who wins the lottery. The more extended texts are followed with possible interpretations of the text which are alternately funny or add another kind of meaning to them. It reminds me of Will Eaves’ powerful book “The Inevitable Gift Shop” which similarly suggests methods of reading while simultaneously creating an engaging story.

“Multiple Choice” is a richly rewarding and extremely funny book which so cleverly plays upon those standard school tests many of us dreaded taking.

Autumn by Ali Smith

Ali Smith is an author whose writing embodies absolute passion, invention and positivity – this is true despite her new novel “Autumn” beginning with the line “It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.” Because she is writing about the contemporary including this year’s recent significant referendum where the UK voted to leave theEuropean Union, this statement playing upon Dickens’ famous opening accurately reflects the political and social feeling for many people in this country. What Smith does in this novel is give a sense of perspective on this mood of all-encompassing gloom. She shows how while times might feel dire right now, it is simply a season in the turning of time. It’s the story of a young woman named Elisabeth Demand and her friendship with Daniel Gluck, an elderly man who lived through the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s. Together they debate ideas and create stories while witnessing the monumental changes happening in the society around them. Their exchanges are very different from the present popular mode of communication “which is a time of people saying stuff to each other and none of it actually ever becoming dialogue.” “Autumn” emphasizes the importance of art and literature as a means of communicating when dialogue between different factions of society comes to an end. In this way, this novel naturally follows on from Smith’s “Public Library”, a collection of wonderful short stories interspersed with real accounts of the personal and social importance of libraries and books for connecting people.

Another aspect of Smith’s positivity is the way in which her stories often involve charismatic and intelligent young people. Many like to moan about the coming generation by claiming they are aimless and lazy, but Smith frequently shows a real optimism and respect for her adolescent characters who are relentlessly inquisitive and creatively engage with the world. This novel moves backwards and forwards in time, recalling the occasions in Elisabeth’s youth when she first got to know her neighbour Daniel. Her mother Wendy is sceptical about this friendship, worries Daniel might have some ulterior motives and speculates that he is gay. Elisabeth astutely observes in response to this that “if he is… then he's not just gay. He's not just one thing or another. Nobody is. Not even you.” This is a continuation of an idea brilliantly realized in Smith’s last novel “How to Be Both” where characters weren’t necessarily one thing or another. In the imaginative and funny stories Elisabeth creates with Daniel they play upon this assertion showing the ever-changing and fluid nature of people, societies, language and the environment around them.

In opposition to the playfulness of this dialogue between the pair are the institutions which seek to hem in and pigeonhole people. In the present day Elisabeth tries to get a passport application put through the post office, but she’s told on multiple occasions after waiting in a long numbered queue that her photos and the head on her shoulders doesn’t meet required specifications. These scenes make a funny critique of the way our society frequently puts people through tedious regimented processes instead of giving individual attention. But it also takes a worrying look at the notion of citizenship during a time when who you are and where you came from will come under scrutiny as our government dictates who does and does not belong in our country. Furthermore, these scenes highlight how policies focused on classification and exclusion trickle down into the public consciousness causing factions and divisions within communities.

Pauline Boty

Elisabeth becomes fascinated by the little-known artist Pauline Boty who was Britain’s only female painter working in the Pop art movement of the late 1950s. As someone who studied Pop art in college and had a passionate interest in Andy Warhol, I feel ashamed not to have known about this artist before reading “Autumn”. Boty challenged conventional notions of representation and gender in both her art and life. She tragically died of cancer before she was thirty, but would no doubt have been better remembered and left a more substantial legacy had she lived and continued with her imaginative work. Through viewing her art work and studying her life, Elisabeth finds a way to engage with the creative ideas Boty set forth and applies them to how she questions and views the present time. In one memorable scene it leads her walking; she follows fields of cow parsley to land designated as private and encounters a man who tries to stop her using regimental language. This causes a disruptive crisis between the individual and the natural world.

One of the funniest parts of this frequently playful/funny novel is a section where Daniel and Elisabeth discuss a story about someone who disguises himself as a tree and becomes embroiled in a battle. Smith has written in the past about people’s connections to trees or transformation into trees. There’s a great tradition of metamorphosis in literature – everything from Homer’s “The Odyssey” to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” – both of which this novel makes sly references to throughout. As well as being an entertaining and lively exchange between the two characters this mutually-created tale says something very moving about people’s connection to nature. It also highlights the connection between language and books, the way our words are inscribed upon paper and how there isn’t a separation between our ideas and the world around us. Also, their story which at first seems humorously abstract turns very personal for Daniel in a moving way. Smith is a master at catching the reader off guard with passages that are deeply emotional.

Smith plans for “Autumn” to be the first in a quartet of novels all named after the seasons. It’ll be fascinating to see how the books play out together and how much more we’ll discover about Daniel’s troubled past. At the start of the novel he washes up on a shore in a way that is reminiscent of Shakespeare's "The Tempest". I suspect Smith has more to say about the parallels between the changes happening in society now and what Daniel witnessed growing up. He makes a beautiful statement in this novel when he tells Elisabeth “always try to welcome people into the home of your story.” This is a hopeful cry for inclusivity and diversity against the current political movement towards shutting down borders. It’s a plea to really see all the people around us and acknowledge that they are part of our lives and our communities rather than shutting them out or pretending they don’t exist. “Autumn” triumphantly shows how our stories don’t belong to us alone but are part of a larger narrative of humanity and the time we live in. 

Read an interview I conducted with Ali about "Autumn": https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/in-conversation/interviews/2016/oct/ali-smith-on-autumn/

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

The narrator of "Eileen" is so painfully introverted and isolated in her thoughts I felt instantly on edge and utterly compelled by her story. As a now elderly woman, Eileen recounts a week in her life back in 1964 when she was a young woman who lived a very claustrophobic life with her alcoholic widower father. At that time she was friendless, worked in a correctional facility for young offenders and spent her free time on booze runs for her father or in the attic reading issues of National Geographic. Although she was secretly plotting to run away from her small New England town, the arrival of an attractive new staff member named Rebecca creates a dynamic tension that changes everything. Filled with squeamish descriptions of Eileen’s extremely self conscious physical and mental state, this sinister novel builds to a dramatic conclusion

The narrator of this novel reminded me slightly of “The Looking-Glass Sisters” because she’s so overwhelmingly uncomfortable in her own skin and lives in an isolated damaged household. Eileen is so acutely embarrassed by her own physical being that she even states “Having to breathe was an embarrassment in itself.” She has a heightened awareness of the smells and functions of her body. With so much disdain for her own being it’s no wonder she doesn’t have the self confidence to make any friends, let alone find a relationship. She has a romantic obsession for a man and frequently lingers outside his house. Eileen is equally critical and vile about other people as she is about herself. The comments she makes about her colleagues are frequently vicious and perverse. In an understated way she claims: “Looking back I’d say I was barely civilised. There was a reason I worked at the prison, after all. I wasn’t exactly a pleasant person.”

The only close relationship she has is with her father a man who drinks copious amounts of gin each day, protectively clings to his gun from his days in the police force and treats Eileen with abominable disdain. Eileen came back to live with him when her mother grew gravely ill, but since her mother’s death continued to stay with him far longer than she should have. Her beautiful and more confident sister Joanie left quite some time ago. Eileen skulks through life hiding her emotional state behind what she terms her “death mask” and flails about within her twisted fantasies. Throughout the novel I felt we were meant to question how truthful Eileen is being with the reader because it’s about a period in her life so far in the past. Also, she’s quite cagey with certain details. For instance, she never names this town of her youth referring to it cryptically as X-ville.

Frequently there are descriptions of the threat of icicles hanging from the roof of the house which Eileen imagines killing her or her father.

Eileen is so determinedly unlikeable that she’s actually quite fun to read about. I enjoyed her indulgent descriptions of repulsion for almost everything and everyone around her. It’s quite fun reading about someone living so firmly within her own rules that she shoplifts, creates teasing questionnaires for the mothers of the imprisoned delinquents and engages in other antisocial behaviour. Sometimes she’s flat out bitchy like in her judgement of one woman where she states “Her lipstick was a cheap insincere fuchsia.” In her disdain for the human condition she also explores a dark side of humanity from a highly unique angle. For instance, she feels that “Violence was just another function of the body, no less unusual than sweating or vomiting. It sat on the same shelf as sexual intercourse. The two got mixed up quite often, it seemed.” Anyone from the outside looking in on her situation would probably disagree and understand how a toxic situation has created a very damaged individual. But these strident opinions and alarming situations feel quite natural for Eileen because it’s all she’s known.

Hovering in the background is the knowledge that something very sinister has occurred, but the reader doesn’t fully understand the situation until towards the end of the novel. I enjoyed how Ottessa Moshfegh builds this tension with creepy descriptions and teasing passages which gradually build up an alarming amount of dread. Eileen is someone who only lives by her own moral code and it’s alarming to discover from her that “I didn’t believe in heaven, but I did believe in hell.” The consequences of her particular belief system create an atmosphere of tension which makes for compulsive reading. “Eileen” is a wickedly unsettling and mesmerising novel.

Film Review: Moonlight

I always look forward to the London Film Festival as it’s a great chance to see upcoming movies which might not be released for some time (or not ever get a general release). However, because the London Literature Festival is happening during the same two week period it means I’m particularly busy with events booked every evening. Last night I had to leave a discussion with Margaret Atwood right before she finished a Q&A with the audience so I could make the start of ‘Moonlight’ but I’m so glad I didn’t miss this extraordinary film!

‘Moonlight’ is the second full-length film from director Barry Jenkins and it’s based on the play ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue’ by Tarell Alvin McCraney. It’s the story of a boy named Chiron told in three stages of his life (and his character is played by three different actors). Growing up in a rough Miami neighbourhood, he’s frequently bullied and often fights with his single mother who is a crack addict. However, he finds mentors in local drug dealer Juan (Mahershala Ali) and Teresa (Janelle Monae) who care for the boy – not for any sinister reason but only because they see a vulnerable young man who needs help. Their refuge can’t protect him from the increasingly violent bullying he experiences growing into his teenage years. Eventually the abuse becomes so intolerable he reaches a boiling point and it turns him into someone very different from the introverted boy he once was.

It’s so rare to see a complex depiction of masculinity in films – particularly about African American men. ‘Moonlight’ skilfully portrays the way in which a man’s body changes as he grows, how emotions must often be suppressed or hidden in social groups and the struggle to understand and express his sexuality. It does this subtly through the expressions and gestures of the actors as the dialogue is often quite sparse. When Chiron does speak it’s more often about what’s left unsaid. There are a few particularly powerful moments when what he says is a true expression of what he feels. However, the words are difficult to form because he’s gone through such conflicted periods of emotional turmoil.

He’s given nicknames at different ages such as “Little” or “Black” and these labels ironically become appropriated as an integral part of his identity – both informing who he is and defining his place in the world. The film depicts the way men build muscles as armour. It shows how queer feelings are often first expressed only through circuitous routes and then can be wrapped in a vow of silence. It presents how agonizingly difficult it is to express love and forgiveness for a parent who has wronged her child so atrociously.

As complex and nuanced as the film treats the character of Chiron, it approaches the supporting characters with as much sensitivity and these actors give powerful performances. Though we don’t get their full stories we have a glancing awareness of their conflicts. His mother Paula (Naomie Harris) battles addiction and inner demons. Teresa (Janelle Monae) shows a humour and strength to raise others out of their difficult circumstances. Kevin (played by Jharrel Jerome as a teenager and Andre Holland as an adult) is conflicted between conforming to others’ expectations and asserting what he really wants. These characters portray a layered and dynamic community around Chiron.

Barry Jenkins, Trevante Rhodes, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Naomie Harris, Andre Holland, Mahershala Ali and singer Janelle Monae

I felt such a powerful connection to Chiron’s character even though his life and circumstances were so different from my own. There are some beautifully shot scenes where Chiron spends time at the beach looking out over the water. I think anyone can feel the familiarity of these moments gazing at the sea and seeing there the expanse of everything unexpressed within you. It was a special honour at the screening last night that so many of the cast and crew were there speaking so passionately about how deeply they believe in this film. ‘Moonlight’ gives a perspective that’s so needed in the world right now: a celebration of black bodies, queer desire and the buried emotions of men.

Holding by Graham Norton

It’s getting chillier here in London so I’ve been staying inside more reading Graham Norton’s first novel “Holding”. I was pleased to discover it’s a story about a small town mystery which hit exactly the right engaging tone that made me want to cosy up under a blanket with a cup of tea and keep reading until I found out what happened. The holding is predominantly about the secrets members of small Irish village Duneen withhold for twenty five years, but which are eventually brought into the open when buried human bones are uncovered at a building site. This is a place where nothing much happens: “Time didn’t pass in Duneen; it seeped away.” So a body being discovered is big news and gets all the local gossipmongers gabbing. At the centre of the novel is the village’s only policeman Sergeant PJ Collins – an overweight, oftentimes solitary man who touchingly discovers the value of being held himself over the course of the novel. This is a thrilling novel with a story that grips you and captivating quirky characters.

PJ Collins finds it difficult to lose weight when his elderly housekeeper Mrs Meany cooks him so many hearty meals. Norton sympathetically writes about PJ’s struggle with self image and his awareness of being laughed at by people, but being helpless to change himself because of the emotional comfort food provides him. When he has the chance to experience a real physical connection it’s tinged with a whole series of emotions because his identity is so tied to the extra weight which has been with him his whole life.

Norton explores the emotional complexity of a number of other relationships in the novel. Three aging sisters who live in one of the village’s finest old houses sounds like something out of a gothic tale. The author creates a really fascinating relationship between the three women and shows how their closeness is both a blessing and a burden. I particularly like the complex way Norton shows how different relationships can sometimes deteriorate. When commenting on the sisters’ parents he writes: “Some marriages combust, others die, and some just lie down like a wounded animal, defeated.” Also, there is the character of Brid Riordan who has become known in the village as someone who too often enjoys a tipple. As a wife and mother of two she’s particularly condemned for doing so. Yet, the author shows how her drinking has become an emotional crutch because of an early heartbreak and problems within her existing marriage.

The compelling hook which made me compulsively read this novel were the intriguing secrets which several characters hold close. It’s well paced so that the reader discovers there is not one mystery, but multiple ones going on in the background as Sergeant PJ Collins and the Detective Superintendent down from Cork investigate and question members of the village. It gradually builds to a dramatic conclusion. “Holding” was such a pleasure to read and it’s wonderful to discover that such an engaging TV presenter is also a talented writer.