My Birthday Tradition

I turn 36 today. You know how there are particular books you’ve always wanted to read, but somehow never make the time for? Since I was a teenager, I’ve made it a birthday tradition to read a book that I’ve always wanted to get to but somehow never have. This is difficult since it needs to be short enough to be manageable and reliably well-regarded so as not to be disappointing. Of course, most years it takes me a number of days to get through the entire book. Sadly with work and adult life the days of being able to sit in all day doing nothing but reading are gone. When I turned 17 I think I spent the entire lonely day in my room reading Kobo Abe’s stark brutal novel “Woman in the Dunes.” It’s a fantastic book – though it left me feeling a little bleak.

However, upon waking up early this morning and on the way to work, I finally read “Alice in Wonderland.” I can’t think why this wasn’t on my shelf as a child as it would no doubt have made a terrific impact upon me. I think I would have loved the sheer creativity and terror and absurdity of it… and the illustrations if they were anything like the ones found in the fantastic hardback Bloomsbury edition I own with beautiful drawings by Mervyn Peake and an introduction from Will Self. Of course, I wouldn’t have picked up on the subtler aspects of this profound unsettling book at a young age. Alice’s struggle with identity is something we experience perpetually no matter how established we become in our lives: “Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!” Alice’s body rapidly transforms. She encounters horror and hilarity, as well as a plethora of personalities all consumed with their own peculiar obsessive preoccupations and egocentric desires – what a true depiction of encountering the world! All the while, Alice approaches every obstacle with a calm sense of logic while maintaining her integrity and desire for civility.

The book’s great lines and imagery are so embedded in the public imagination that even without having reading it I was, of course, already familiar with much of what the story and characters. When I first came to study in England in 1999 I excitedly sat in my first class (where our task was to translate prose text to theatrical text) and volunteered to be the first one to present the first assignment. The imposing lecturer turned and narrowed his eyes down upon me enquiring in a thunderous voice “Who are you?” and I was reminded immediately of the imperial caterpillar from “Alice.” The phrase “curiouser and curiouser” seems common parlance, at least here in England and especially amongst the learned well-to-do. The character of the outrageous anthropomorphic beings and the very spirit of Alice herself seem to be a part of everyday society. This book is an incredible imaginative feat and I’m glad to have finally experienced the original writing.

Since it’s my birthday I’m feeling a little sentimental and want to express my gratitude to everyone who reads this blog. I’m flattered people find value in my thoughts about books and I’ve enjoyed immensely all the communication I’ve had with readers through the blog. It’s a passion project of mine that I really pour my heart into so thank you for giving it your attention. I had a lovely time over the weekend when my boyfriend surprised me with an overnight trip to Cornwall. We drove through the spectacular countryside and I paid a visit to the Screech Owl Sanctuary. I have a particular fondness for owls and enjoyed meeting these curious creatures which included Boobook and Siberian Eagle owls. What beauties!

Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones

Saeed Jones’ debut book of poetry “Prelude to Bruise” reads like a complete narrative, but one which is constructed of intense glimmers of experience told in a lyrical way. The six sections of this book carry the reader through a journey of self-discovery. Most of the poems follow the story of “Boy” who in many instances is literally an adolescent/teenager. Even when the poems aren’t specifically about “Boy” much of the feeling is singed by the fire of his personality. By the end of the book, the label of “Boy” has taken on so many meanings and connotations – of naivety, of a wayward son, of social inferiority, of a racial expletive, of gay slang, of the submissive partner in sadomasochistic role play – that when, in the final poem, the boy emphatically denies this label it strikes an optimistic note. His real name remains private and unknown to the reader giving him a dignity and sense of selfhood which has thus far been denied him. This distinct personality finally steps out of the circumscribed role set by those around him.

It’s admirable the way Jones’ writing orchestrates an interplay between the imagination and reality. By blending images, a poem about friends play fighting while out for a swim suddenly takes on a serious tone of eroticism and violence. In ‘Drag’ the personality created through costume assumes a life of its own: “the dress begins to move without me.” This gradually yields to a deeper confusion of self and also revelation: “I don’t even know what I am in this dress.” In one of the final and longest poems in the book the boy is taken to shooting practice by his father and later this pretending might turn into real danger as the boy invades his parents’ bedroom while they are sleeping. There is the sense that we are both in the boy’s mind and in his spatial reality at the same time.

Jones writes forcefully about the power of desire and the dynamics of sexual discovery. Not only does he capture the all-consuming feeling of the act itself, but the emotions which fuel the before and after of it all. He describes how irrepressible sexual urges can physically take over the body: “I’ve got more hunger than my body can hold.” The boy learns the danger of his gaze when his focus on another boy’s muscular thighs and the gap in his shorts is rebuffed with verbal homophobic abuse. In ‘Kingdom of Trick, Kingdom of Drug’ the object of desire takes on the characteristics of a tree and the passion shared decorates it with weighty symbols in a way which is incredibly sensuous and moving. The title poem ‘Prelude to Bruise’ takes the reader into complex corners of desire with the representation of a kink-edged encounter. Through effective use of alliteration invoking words such as boy, black, boot, body, broke, bruise the author portrays the variegated emotions involved in hard play. He shows how sexual aggression can be shaded by racial politics and how sexual punishment can be simultaneously seductive and repulsive. Another poem effectively represents the post-coital tristesse which follows cruising: “I relearn my legs, mud-stained knees, and walk back to my burning house.” But in other poems there is also romantic hope as expressed in this beautiful line: “you are the first hour in a life without clocks.”

One of the most compelling and forceful poems for me is ‘Boy Found Inside a Wolf’ which is a sort of summation of Jones’ themes about fathers, violence and sex. Eroticism is implied by his use of line breakage and the double meaning of his verbs. But it is also heavily mixed with danger, threat and destruction. At the same time the poem radically imagines a father giving birth to his son. Paired with the other poems' commentary about the alternating tenderness and antagonism between father and son, this poem movingly represents a complicated layered familial relationship.

“Prelude to Bruise” confronts issues to do with race and sexuality in a way that challenges and changes the reader. More than this book’s engagement with identity politics, some of the poems it contains deal directly with instances of key political and historical significance. Creating a ghostly sense of unease, Jones describes the aftermath and repercussions of the tragic storms and flooding of New Orleans. In another poem dedicated to James Byrd Jr who was kidnapped and violently murdered by white supremacists in 1998, Jones vividly re-images the event with the imploring words “go back” reverberating significantly throughout the scene. Jones' invocation of these events shows how their meaning has both personal and broader long-term implications.

Each section of the book shows a different stage in the Boy’s development and evolution towards a more assertively individual sense of selfhood. Although some times this comes in the form of regression: “Run hard, look back, go back, owned.” But there is an awareness that one must always carry forth as is demonstrated by the warning line “If she retraces her steps, the footprints will eat her.” The final more distinctly prose-like poems take him mentally backward to deal with his relationship with his parents. This takes the book full circle. Some of the poetry shows direct influence from other writers such as Lucie Brock-Broido or Alexander Chee (one poem borrows a phrase from his daring novel Edinburgh). But Jones’ style is arrestingly fresh. His distinct voice is the thing which hooks you in this poetry which varies between different forms and methods of arrangement. (To borrow a phrase from a divine songstress) it’s a voice that plays tough as nails with his heart on his sleeve. Saeed Jones has created a radically different coming of age narrative distinctly his own through forceful, original poetry.

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

A new Sarah Waters novel is always a cause for celebration. I’ve read three of her previous novels and loved the experience of each with “Fingersmith” topping the pile. But I think “The Paying Guests” may be my new favourite. Waters has that special ability as a writer of gripping you from the start. Even though there isn’t much action at the beginning of this new novel, I was totally entranced by the vividly-described characters and their suffocating sense of claustrophobia as they awkwardly learn to live together. And you know that with this author’s talented ability for writing a long sumptuously twisted plot that the action will come soon enough and boy when it starts it is totally gripping! It’s 1922. At a large well-to-do house in south-east London, spinster-ish Frances Wray and her aging mother anxiously await the arrival of their paying guests, The Barbers. Frances has redecorated some upstairs rooms to rent out to lodgers because they are a respectable family who have fallen on hard times. She lives alone with her mother since her father died of heart trouble and her two brothers died in the war. The too-large house has fallen into disrepair. As Frances’ mother admits: “It’s heart stopped… years ago.” They can’t afford servants. They can barely afford to keep the heat going to stay warm. They need an income of rent money. However, being a respectable family the neighbours refer to the Wray’s new lodgers as their paying guests.

Even though she’s only in her 20s Frances feels like she’s already past her prime spending her days making murky cups of cocoa for her mother and scrubbing the floors of the house. Her thoughts about her position in life are that she should “Be content with your 'role', that you are settling so nicely into, like an oyster digging its dumb way into the sea-bed.” In the past she’s not been so satisfied with such a modest role in life. Years ago she had an affair with a woman which was found out by her family and put to a stop. When Frances unexpectedly finds love again, the affair threatens to completely unhinge her life and the story takes a series of gripping unexpected turns.

What Waters is supremely accomplished at doing in her writing is detailing the psychological intricacies of romance, the ebb and flow of lust and the overriding indecisiveness of love. The awakening of passion, the heat of the moment and the stupefaction at when it goes are all described in utterly convincing scenes. It leads Frances to wonder at one point “if their passion had ever been real.” Although we like to believe that once we’ve found the love of our lives our feelings will remain constant but they always fluctuate. We can be clingy and possessive about a person one minute, then revolted and spiky towards them the next. In “The Paying Guests” Frances and her lover’s relationship undergoes unusually extreme tests as the plot develops and their circumstances drive them physically and emotionally apart.

Watch Sarah Waters discuss THE PAYING GUESTS

Lingering behind so many intense affairs in Waters’ novels is the suspicion that the other person may not genuinely love them back. This is true in any relationship, but particularly so in the times in which Waters writes about homosexual love. The fear of betrayal that could lead to exposure and shame exerts terrifying pressure on the binding which holds these unique relationships together. Frances is a woman unusual in her time in that she is confident about her sexual desires for women. She ardently wishes to settle down in an apartment of her own with the woman she loves. Ironically, Mrs Wray says to Frances at one point, “all I’ve ever wanted for you were such ordinary things: a husband, a home, a family of your own. Such ordinary, ordinary things.” These are the ordinary things that Frances so desperately wants as well with the small substitution of having a wife rather than a husband. Herein lies the real tragedy.

There are a great many things I’d like to discuss about this novel, but can’t because it would give too much about the plot away. But rest assured you’ll find the thrill of passion, criminal intrigue, drunken parties, nosey neighbours, snooping detectives and a heated courtroom battle – all played out against the magnificently rendered backdrop of post-WWI London. Waters is that rare kind of literary writer who creates thrillingly-told historical novels. “The Paying Guests” demonstrates how this writer is at the height of her powers. It’s a novel with real heart.

How To Be Both by Ali Smith - Interview with Myself

E1: What do you think of “How to be Both” by Ali Smith?

E2: It’s bloody brilliant! It’s all about a 15th century painter, Francesco del Cossa, who imagines a family looking at his paintings.

E1: Hmm… I think you’ve got it wrong – it’s about an adolescent girl George who imagines the life of del Cossa for a school project after seeing his painting.

E2: No, it’s definitely about del Cossa writing about his development as an artist. He explains how he learns from his stonemason father and the death of his mother. The way he mourns for his mother is one of the most devastating expressions of grief I think I’ve ever read about.

E1: George writes about del Cossa’s loss as a way of processing her own grief about her mother’s death. She’s steeped in memories of her mother and her mother’s curious fixation with this artist. She wants to give life to someone whose gallery summarises him with only a brief vague bio next to his artwork. This is Smith’s attempt to rectify this conundrum about the human condition: “Cause nobody’s the slightest idea who we are, or who we were, not even we ourselves”

E2: Maybe, but I think del Cossa imagines how people in the future will react to his work and see the value in it because he feels that he’s not being fairly compensated for the art he creates. He first learns the true value of his work when he visits a whorehouse where the prostitutes become enamoured with his drawings of them – and they also pay him by keeping his secret from his friend.

E1: What secret? The one between his legs?

E2: Uh-huh.

E1: George imagines this duality about del Cossa as a way of getting over her own stubborn ideas about people needing to be one gender or the other. She says to her mother: “Male or female? It can’t be both. It must be one or the other.” and her mother responded “Who says? Why must it?” One of the greatest lessons George’s mother imparted on her was to question the limitations we artificially impose upon people/things.

E2: Like how del Cossa learns from his mother about trees asking “how can I be seed or tree or both?”

E1: What’s Ali Smith’s obsession with trees anyway? She goes on about them all the time and in lots of her previous writing. People turn into trees. People fall in love with trees.

E2: I don’t know. Maybe something about the tension for the seed which is in between being and becoming. Or how trees grow in a seeming defiance of time? Or, here’s a word for you – dendrophiliac!

E1: Some freaky pictures come up when you Google that word! But I admire the way Smith writes about sexuality. She’s playful with it like it’s something that’s taken more seriously than it probably needs to be, but other people always make it serious because they want to define you and want you to define yourself and then you want to define yourself, but you don’t know what you are really until you find yourself with someone. The way she writes about George and her friend’s budding romance is so moving and honest and about something real but can’t be defined in words. Like how George writes things to her friend, but keeps deleting the messages she’s written because she “knew they were about the something real between them.”

E2: It’s Smith’s way of writing about how so much of our lives are made of the emotions which can’t be recorded. It’s mostly about the moments of joy and hope and fear and loneliness. The kind which aren’t represented accurately in Facebook updates or Tweets.

E1: I loved the way George’s mother rebukes her daughter’s compulsion to look up the answers to everything on the internet. Rather than everything having to be Wikipedia-defined she’d rather bask in the mystery of it all saying “It’s so nice. Not to have to know.”

E2: Yes, and the way del Cossa starts his section in the kind of explosively poetic style that you need to concentrate on. It demands the sort of careful attention no one gives most things anymore because they are so accustomed to the browsing-as-reading style used to search the internet.

E1: No, the style del Cossa writes in is further proof that George is the one writing about him. In his part he’s always using colons in between thoughts and that’s exactly what’s observed about George: “her habit of putting these 2 dots between clauses where a breath should come”

St Vincent Ferrer by Francesco del Cossa

E2: No, this is just another instance of the artist del Cossa imagining the girl looking at his paintings coming to life through his creation of her. It’s like that amazing moment early on in Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves” where the children spy on a woman writing in a garden. Woolf makes herself the author a figment of the children’s imagination, a part of the children’s story that they are telling themselves. George is the girl del Cossa has imagined and she escapes from his mind. It’s what artists do as he describes here: “A picture is most times just picture: but sometimes a picture is more: I looked at the faces in torchlight and I saw they were escapees: they’d broken free from me and from the wall that had made and held them and even from themselves.”

E1: This is getting too confusing. I’m starting to feel like George “I’m so, so tired of what stories are meant to mean.”

E2: Anyway, I think Smith makes herself quite clear about her mission for this book when she writes that this novel is: “how to tell a story, but tell it more than one way at once, and tell another underneath it up-rising through the skin of it” But the question is how do people actually read a book like this?

E1: It’s a matter of where you start and end the story. But there is no right answer because everyone may start and end the story in different places without even realizing it. The book is tricky like that.

E2: I don’t think it matters where you begin and end. Just read it.

The Dog by Joseph O'Neill

As with every year, the release of the Booker longlist introduces me to authors I probably wouldn't have read otherwise. This is Joseph O'Neill's fourth published novel but I haven't read any of his previous work.

The narrator of “The Dog” gives up his life working in a US law firm to reside in Dubai. He’s employed by the wealthy Batros family as an individual they can trust. That trust involves coordinating the management of their wealth, but also making absurd arrangements for celebrities to appear at private events and monitoring the weight loss of a wayward nephew of the family. More than usefully putting his legal prowess to their affairs, the narrator spends most of his time trying to dodge responsibility like a modern version of Melville’s Bartleby. He wants to excuse himself from responsibility wafting away email enquiries with the standard response “NOT MY FORTE” and affixes ink stamps to any document he signs to make it more impersonal and have an officious distance from it. He muses about life in Dubai and reflects back on the disintegration of his relationship with his partner Jenn. Although he seems to be someone who thrives on being an alien in an alien land, he receives a stark reminder that he does not truly belong when he takes a moral stance and things go wrong in the Batros' company.

O’Neill’s unnamed narrator is obsessively ponderous. His frequent microscopic examination of the details of life whether it’s completing Sudoku puzzles or the daily exercise of running up a stairwell is very reminiscent of Nicholson Baker’s writing. Here the minutiae of behaviour is shone in a spotlight so that the absurdity of human foibles and the small tragedies of moment to moment existence is revealed. There are lines of rattling analytical detail which investigate with a fine-toothed comb the multitude of meanings behind things such as advertisements, Emirates’ law or a massage chair. For instance, when he receives treatment with a new foot care gel he reflects: “I’d been lulled into a soporific feeling of all going well in the world, of clever men and women in unseen laboratories toiling and tinkering and steadily solving our most disastrous mysteries, of benign systems gaining in efficiency, of our species progressively attaining a technical dimension of consciousness, of a deep and hitherto undisclosed algorithm of optimal human endeavour coming at last within the grasp of the good-doing intelligences of corporations and universities and governments and NGOs, of mankind’s most resilient intellectual/moral/economic foes being routed forever and the blockheads and bashibazouks and baboons running for the hills once and for all.” He extrapolates all this from simply getting softer, better-smelling feet. The point being that we're continually lulled into believing that each mark of civilization carries behind it the workings of a prosperous, well-ordered and just society. However, the narrator isn't convinced. He's wracked with guilt about the injust distribution of wealth leading him to chase anonymous, unseen cleaners down back corridors in a desperate attempt to tip them. The narrator's stubborn refusal to subsume himself within the order of larger systems becomes his undoing.

Mindful of the belief that the world is becoming a more homogenized place, I think what the author is trying to get at in this novel is the way individuals become increasingly dislocated and lost within it. The Dubai O'Neill writes about carries great symbolic weight as a kind of liminal space: “Dubai’s undeclared mission is to make itself indistinguishable from its airport.” It's a clean, stringently-ordered place, somewhere that people are always passing through. People are neither here nor there. The city contains a number of people who are Bidoon or “a stateless person, i.e., a person who is everywhere illegally present.” The environment of the city itself is always in a state of flux with frequent construction making it so disorientating cab drivers always get lost. Huge construction sites are sometimes left as nothing more than giant holes in the ground although the online presence of the project images show an ideal, complete building. The city's Westin hotel has the tagline “Between Being and Becoming.” Existence here is lived in the between. As such the narrator never feels an established sense of identity. The eponymous dog of the title refers to an animal that is not really welcome anywhere in Dubai and, in a sense, this is the kind of animal the narrator becomes.

The most potent symbol of our supposed connectedness as a global community is the internet. As such the narrator naturally turns to it for answer as he describes here: “I took it upon myself to visit websites dedicated to modern psychological advances and to drop in on discussion sites where, with an efficacy previously unavailable in the history in human endeavour, one might receive the benefit of the wisdom, experience and learning of a self-created global network or community of those most personally and ideally interested in humiliation, and in this way stand on the shoulders of a giant and, it followed, enjoy an unprecedented panorama of the subject. I cannot say that it turned out as I’d hoped.” Although the internet strives to be a utopian plain of encyclopaedic knowledge it is more often a jumble of unverified facts, poor logic, strident opinions and misdirected emotion. He eventually finds his name has been slandered online so that the top searches show a series of insults. Although the narrator purports not to engage in any social media, he comments on the unique way people engage within the medium: “They made common their feelings. They grew. They rooted for and bore sympathetic and useful witness to the others as, one by one, each made her or his way along life’s rocky path, facing en route the loneliness, discouragement and pain that are the inevitable and persistent highwaymen of our ways.” The result of interacting this way is far from ideal as evidenced by the way the narrator investigates the social media activities of a missing man named Ted Wilson. Outpourings of support lead to vicious defamatory campaigns from a stream of unnamed individuals when certain facts about Ted are made public. Here O'Neill shows that one's online existence is often a poor approximation of the way one actually lives.

The style of writing in “The Dog” matches this particular narrator. His particular kind of stream of consciousness results in a page of digressions that eventually collapse into a jumble of closing parenthesis. In other sections he accumulates a list which continuously refers back to earlier statements like a legal document. It’s an endless accumulation of questions and counterpoint arguments that leave him feeling discouraged rather than more self-aware. This style illuminates the systematic way people go about tackling any problems in modern life. The rapid accumulation of detail leads to a train of information which crashes at a point of no solution, a pile-up of information.

This is most often a comedic novel that also contemplates the meaning of dislocation in a modern global society and online communities. Early on the narrator becomes enthusiastic about diving where “Very few human ideas survive in this implacably sovereign element; one finds oneself in a world devoid not only of air but of symbols, which are of course a kind of air.” He's attracted to this underwater environment because everything means what it is here. Things aren't attached with sublimated messages. You can simply float. In an increasingly fast-paced, commercialized world O'Neill's narrator faces a kind of existential crisis. With a sense of melancholy he reflects: “It may be that most lives add up, in the end, to the sum of the mistakes that cannot be corrected.” If you were to form a crib sheet on the narrator of “The Dog” his life would look like a disaster, but the spirit he shows in his narrative reveals an individual desperately trying to sort and reason and make the right choices. It makes for a fascinating and funny read.

Read an interview with the author here: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/10/joseph-oneill-something-big-happens-post-9-11-novels

A Murakami Love-in: Launch of Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Year of Pilgrimage

Last night I went to The Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green to celebrate the publication of Haruki Murakami’s latest novel “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Year of Pilgrimage.” The night had the feeling of a pub lock-in with bookish folk all gathered together to bond over a shared appreciation of Murakami’s genius. The book couldn’t officially be released until midnight so the shop created a series of events centred on the author to last us until after the clock struck twelve when the book was given out. The shop was colourfully decked out with a fine spread of sushi and wine on offer. I frequently enjoy going to book events at the South Bank, but no one other than independent book shops can better convey such a warm passionate engagement with a new book’s release. This is an environment that can bring readers together and make them feel like family.

The Friday Project publisher and blogger (I love his blog Me And My Big Mouth), Scott Pack came on first to read the opening of the novel. Immediately we meet the central character who is a characteristically quirky Murakami outsider whose awkward standing in life is delineated by the author with savage grace. Pack went on to describe his relationship with Murakami, first as a passionate reader and leading on to the personal/professional relationship he’s had with the author after having interviewed him. His overriding pleasure in Murakami’s writing and respect for the man himself was palpable and set the tone beautifully for all the readers in the room who equally admire this writer. Pack also gave interesting background information about Murakami’s life and the reason why English translations appear so long after the original Japanese publication.  

Next, the writer Stuart Evers gave a “light hearted homage to the great man” in the form of a lecture about themes in his work. He gave a really insightful critique on Murakami’s style of writing and his theories as to why he constructs his stories in the manner he does. He pointed out how in English fiction there is often an extraordinary protagonist in an ordinary situation - whereas other world literature often portrays an ordinary protagonist in an extraordinary situation. Then he insightfully described how in many of Murkami’s books the protagonist makes himself out to be ordinary, but through his/her actions and thoughts emerges as someone quite extraordinary. I really appreciated how Evers challenged us to think more dynamically about how intelligently Murakami writes and why we respond to his writing in the way we do. Evers read Murakami’s near-perfect short story ‘On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning.’ He also planted a series of envelops in the audience which he had people open at random – each containing a major theme found in Murakami’s work including “animals”, “brands”, “non-fiction” and “ears” which he then expounded upon. Evers also wasn’t shy on being critical about certain Murkami publications which he doesn’t find as successful. This had a nice sobering effect – before everyone started to gush too much.

The evening ended with a screening of the film ‘I Hired a Contract Killer’ by one of Murakami’s favourite directors. However, I ducked out before it started. I had flown back in from a trip to Spain the night before which didn’t get in till 1AM and I was up in the morning to open my office early so it had been a long day for me and I was fading. But it was a really special bookshop event and I was glad to have made it there. This is the kind of event that reminds you reading can be a communal activity – not just the solitary experience we often feel it to be. 

I had quite an active holiday in Spain taking a kind of road trip across the north of it enjoying sophisticated Bilbao, fun-loving San Sebastian and seedy Sitges, but I got some good reading time in. Now I feel a little out of touch so I’m catching up on what people have been up to and what’s been happening here in London.

What have you been reading?

Have you ever been to a book event that has stood out as really special to you?

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Do you ever read a book and are so intensely involved with it that it feels like a whole year has gone by rather than just a few hours? That was my experience reading “H is for Hawk.” I only started it on Monday and have been totally engrossed reading it during every spare minute that I can find. I had started reading Maria Semple’s re-released novel “This One is Mine” and didn’t find it that engaging so I switched to this book. Since it’s all about falcons I wasn’t sure it was going to interest me. But almost immediately the author reveals it’s also about the death of her father and the grief of dealing with this fact. To tell the truth, Helen Macdonald’s writing is so graceful and clever (yet highly approachable) that I would be interested in any subject she writes about. There’s a tremendous immediacy and directness to it – probably because she often addresses the reader as “you.” In this memoir she makes meaningful connections between her experience trying to train a newly-acquired young goshawk, the process of grieving for her father and the fascinatingly sombre life and writings of T.H. White (famed author of “The Once and Future King”). They seem totally disparate subjects on the surface, but White also had a great affinity for hawks and wrote a book about his (bungled) experiences trying to train one. Macdonald writes about approximately a year of her life in relation to these three subjects and the result is something which is devastatingly powerful. She writes: “What happens to the mind after bereavement makes no sense until later.” In making a retrospective survey of this emotional time period she organizes her thoughts about her unique process for dealing with death and finds profound universal meaning.

After she receives the shocking news of her father’s death, Macdonald gradually turns inward and becomes something of a recluse. In reality, I doubt she was as introverted as she makes out in the book. Whenever she encounters people she may think vicious or antisocial thoughts, but then acts quite civil and nice to them. She decides to acquire a goshawk which she names Mabel. On first seeing the hawk emerge from the box she hilariously remarks: “She came out like a Victorian melodrama: a sort of madwoman in the attack.” Goshawks are notoriously more difficult to train than falcons – which are the only birds she’s trained before. You learn a lot about hawks in this memoir as Macdonald has an encyclopaedic knowledge of them and the noble bird is a surprisingly fascinating subject. She spends virtually all her time gradually gaining the bird’s trust and taking it for short journeys in the surrounding countryside to hunt game. Meanwhile she maintains only a minimum amount of social contact with friends and family. Her teaching job comes to an end and she puts off looking for more work or finding a new place to live. Bills pile up and she tries not to think about the speech she needs to write for her father’s funeral. She becomes entirely consumed with the present task of caring for her hawk: “I could no more imagine the future than a hawk could. I didn’t need a career. I didn’t want one.” This period of solitude leads to an intense passionate kinship with her hawk. She becomes accustomed to the smallest changes in Mabel’s movements and expressions which betray the hawk’s thought process. Touchingly, the pair even eventually play games together with scrunched up balls of paper. But it’s always a wild creature and accidents involving small injuries to Macdonald are frequent. The hawk is independently minded and, without the promise of immediate access to food, Macdonald is highly aware that her hawk could easily fly away and abandon her.

Egyptian God Horus

After such an intense amount of time together there is a curious blending of identity which takes place. Macdonald becomes like the hawk as the qualities she admires in it are ones she desires to have herself. She notes that “By skilfully training a hunting animal, by closely associating with it, by identifying with it, you might be allowed to experience all your vital, sincere desires, even your most bloodthirsty ones, in total innocence. You could be true to yourself.” Although the experience of the hunt is a gruesome one, Macdonald finds a spiritual satisfaction in this act of nature. The complex emotions concerning the loss of her father which simmer just below the surface can be released through this savage process. She comes to understand that “Some deep part of me was trying to rebuild itself, and its model was right there on my fist.”

“H is for Hawk” is a highly unusual and meaningful book. It also happens to have an extremely beautiful cover. As a personal aside, I particularly appreciated a section towards the end where she travels to my home state of Maine for Christmas. Although this book is primarily about English country life, this section felt like a personal gift and a window to my childhood of snow covered fields, hunting and lobster boats.

We all experience profound loss at some time in our lives. This book certainly isn’t prescriptive about how you should overcome this, but it’s strangely comforting learning about Macdonald’s unique strategy for surviving losing her father. I’m not likely to ever become a falconer, but I can definitely relate to this beautiful statement which encapsulates so much about heartache and loss: “What you do to your heart. You stand apart from yourself, as if your soul could be a migrant beast too, standing some way away from the horror, and looking fixedly at the sky.”

The Proof of Love by Catherine Hall

In anticipation of this year's Green Carnation Prize, I thought I'd read a novel I've been meaning to get to for quite a while and which won the prize in 2011. Catherine Hall's novel “The Proof of Love” takes place in the hot summer of 1976. Spencer, a Cambridge University student working on his doctorate in mathematics rides his bike to a rural farming town in north-west Cumbria. He makes an arrangement with a family to stay for the summer in a small outlying building on their property in exchange for providing free labour on the farm. Here we're given vivid details about the labour and sweat involved with this life including a terrifyingly scene where the men have to saw off the horns of a ram. At first Spencer sticks out like a sore thumb in this tightly-knit old-fashioned community. Gradually he becomes accepted, especially after a dramatic fire from which he emerges as a hero. However, he always remains an outsider. Local figures like a snobbish vicar who sees him as an intellectual equal or a bored housewife who tries to seduce him want to use him for their own means. Only the town eccentric, an older lady named Dorothy, and the daughter of the family Alice seem to have no designs on him and see him for the person he really is. Spencer himself remains elusive and evasive about his past, even to the reader for much of the book. He came to this place to leave himself behind. It's somewhere where “he could be somebody entirely different, someone with a certain future, rather than an awkward past.” Like anyone who tries to invent himself wholly anew, his past eventually catches up with him and Spencer has to admit to himself who he really is.

Song: "Yan Tan Tethera" Spencer learns this sheep counting rhyme/system traditionally used by shepherds in Northern England and earlier in other parts of England and the British Isles.

Hall does something in this novel which I haven't experienced since reading Colm Toibin's novel “Brooklyn.” The narrative is compelling and original and wholly enjoyable to read, but I spent much of the book wondering where it's really going. Then, at one point in “The Proof of Love” the dilemma of the protagonist hit me and I was gripped wondering how Spencer's story was going to resolve itself. This has to do with following a particular character's story as they grow and change, but whose past life is at odds with the person that they ideally want to become. Spencer is a man who has been hiding his sexuality, especially after an incident at his university for which he was shamed. Surprisingly he's able to find a man in this rural community who he strikes up a sexual and kind-of romantic relationship with. But this isn't just a novel with the oft-told story about a man struggling with his sexuality. It's about someone who is searching for true belonging in community. Beyond a desire for physical and emotional love from a partner, we also desire to be seen as equal and needed by those who live around us. This is something that's barely been written about in novels that have a gay theme and is, no doubt, one of the reasons why it was selected to win the Green Carnation Prize. Spencer seeks a love that recognizes him as someone wanted and valued for the person he truly is, someone who can give what no one else can.

What Hall captures beautifully is how familiar and comforting small-town life can be, but also how stultifying and rigid it is. Although figures like Mary, the mother of the family Spencer stays with, undoubtably belongs in the community and has a definite place she feels trapped by it. Many of the people in this small town can't ever realize their full potential because of the limited choices available to them. At first, Spencer wants to blend in with the herd and become just another farmer amongst them. He even imitates the local dialect in his speech. But the friendly (if guarded) community which embraces him can just as quickly turn on him when things go wrong. Spencer gradually realizes that he can't become someone totally different and that it might have been better to just be himself. The people who really love and value him do so because they see him, not the person he's trying to be. This is a wise and skilfully written novel that will sneak up on you and pull your heartstrings.  

New Journal Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Very exciting news!

Randy Souther, who maintains Celestrial Timepiece, the fantastic online resource devoted to Joyce Carol Oates' work, has started a new scholarly journal that focuses on "the writing of Joyce Carol Oates and related subjects, with the goal of advancing knowledge of and deepening the conversation about Oates's massive literary project."

I've written extensively about Oates' work before and my admiration of her creative genius so it's a great privilege to be a contributing editor on this new journal and write reviews for all of Oates' new work that is published in the future. It's especially exciting to be working alongside such distinguished academics and fans of Oates' writing.

To start with, I've written a review of Oates' novel "Marya: A Life" which was first published in 1986 and has recently been reissued by HarperCollins. This is a book which Oates described as "the most 'personal' of my novels" and whose protagonist somewhat represents a quintessential character in her writing. It's a lively, episodic, coming-of-age novel that I whole-heartedly recommend.

Read my review in Volume 1 here: http://repository.usfca.edu/jcostudies/vol1/iss1/

The Man Booker Prize 2014 Longlist

I’ve been a big fan of the Booker Prize ever since I first moved to London. Coming from America, we have big prizes, of course. But I never felt such a national respect and sense of occasion for a literary prize until coming here. Here is a book prize that is actually on the news. That is talked about in culture shows. That I’ve overheard people discussing on the tube. The prize has changed a lot in the past years. I do feel somewhat dismayed that it’s now open to America as well as it doesn’t seem necessary. But I’m still excited about it.  Given that this year the Booker Prize is open to any book written in English it felt near impossible to make any predictions about what books might be on the long list so I haven’t made one rather than rooting for an author here and there on twitter. So here is the long list with links to my reviews for the two that I’ve read.

How to be Both - Ali Smith

J - Howard Jacobson

The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell

Us - David Nicholls

The Lives of Others - Neel Mukherjee

The Wake - Paul Kingsnorth

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour - Joshua Ferris

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler

The Blazing World - Siri Hustvedt

Orfeo - Richard Powers

The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan

The Dog - Joseph O’Neill

History of the Rain - Niall Williams

Personally I'm sad not to see Susan Barker, Monique Roffey, Linda Grant, Emma Healey, Rachel Seiffert or Damon Galgut on the list. And it's surprising not to see Sarah Waters listed given how much positive feedback about her new novel I've been hearing. But I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the longlisted books before the winner is announced on Tuesday, October 14th.

Given that there are only three women on the longlist it's not surprising a debate has been sparked on the gender imbalance. This issue is a complicated one and it's being explored here on Naomi's blog: http://thewritesofwoman.wordpress.com/2014/07/23/the-man-booker-prize-longlist-2014-where-are-the-women/ Do read through and consider the comments as well.

The Incarnations by Susan Barker

Back in 2010, I went on my first trip to China for a couple of weeks to stay with friends in Beijing and explore the countryside. I was fascinated by the huge amount of people, the crowded streets, the strangers who latched onto me and took photographs (being tall & bearded I really stood out), amazing monuments, smog-yellow sky, the evident disparity between the poor & wealthy and the sense of a civilization that was both ancient and newly made. All over Beijing construction was taking place. Jet-lagged at 3AM I sat looking out of the window of our high apartment at the construction workers out in the distance building more enormous towers and the sparks of their machinery shining in the night. It felt impossible to fully comprehend this enormous, diverse, beautiful, problematic, ever-changing country even if I were to spend the rest of my life there. One of the amazing things about Susan Barker’s novel “The Incarnations” is that she manages to compress selected events throughout China’s long history and run a string through them so you follow a sense of the country’s progression via uniquely personal perspectives. Of course, this isn’t a comprehensive account of China’s history. It’s more, as Barker writes: “The chained beast of history is breaking loose.” What this novel does is give the reader a sense of this country’s transformations and the way time has gradually shaped the complex national body that exists today.

Wang is a humble cab driver in Beijing trying to support his wife Yida and their adolescent daughter Echo. Yida works as a massage therapist (something which instantly connected me to her character since I do this as well). Wang unexpectedly receives strange letters from an anonymous writer who informs him they’ve known each other in several past lives. He’s given accounts of their different incarnations and the various dramatic experiences they’ve had together. Interspersed with these letters is the account of Wang’s own troubled past and strained circumstances. His eccentric mother was committed to a mental hospital when he was young. His tyrannical successful-in-business father is ashamed of him. His fantastically monstrous stepmother Lin Hong weaves a spider’s web around them all so that she finally rules the family. Wang has a troubled affair with a hairdresser named Zeng who was once his lover. Desperate to discover who is sending these letters to him, Wang’s life collapses into disorder as his past threatens to overwhelm him.

It feels like it should be too disruptive being jarred out of the story in the present to be drawn into entirely different stories about the past. But somehow they work as self contained tales that also illuminate aspects about the central characters involved. I think this is because they are narrated in the second person so the narrator is always speaking to “you.” This “you” is both a specific person from the past such as eunuch in an imperial palace in 632 AD, a crafty scarred slave named Tiger in 1213, a virginal concubine in 1542, a British cultural explorer in 1836 or a loyal Maoist of the School of Revolutionary Girls in 1966. But the “you” is also always Wang so it feels like the essence of this character is always with us as is the mysterious narrator who we don’t meet fully until the end of the book. It’s a clever narrative trick that Barker plays. As well as providing snapshots of great ages in China’s immense past it allows the author to play with notions of gender, sexuality and race. A single character can flip between being a young girl in one story to a middle-aged man in another story. As the genders of the narrator and Wang switch throughout the ages so do they engage in sexual relations with each other that are gay, lesbian and heterosexual. As I discussed in my thoughts on Ali Smith’s tremendous novel “Artful” (and other writings by Smith), when the second person is used in this way it creates a sort of utopian plain where conventional notions about identity can be deconstructed through the power of language. As far as I’m aware, other than Smith and Barker, only Virginia Woolf has done this as successfully in her radical novel “Orlando.” (Jeanette Winterson made a somewhat less successful attempt at this in her novel “Written on the Body”) But Barker doesn’t self-consciously transform our understanding of gender. Questions about the meaning of man/woman linger in the back of the reader’s mind as they are drawn into fantastically engaging individual stories presented throughout the novel.

Some of the most memorable and idiosyncratic characters in the novel appear in these stories which take place in the past. For instance, there is a fiercely feisty survivor sorceress, a bawdy whorehouse matron named Madam Plum Blossom, a sadistic Emperor named Jiajing, a rapist pirate ship captain and a merciless Red army interrogator named Long March. These stories are full of scandal, war, blood and sex which make them come vibrantly alive and allow the author to indulge in the richness of adventure which is a counterpoint to the more realistic recognizable environment found in Wang’s tribulations of the present time. In the story from the 1800s it’s stated “The Scourge was a black-hearted ship, and evil the stuff of everyday.” This is an example of how Barker conjures a mood and time period through her diverse use of language and narrative style not appropriate for the present day storyline. In this way the author shows a fantastic elasticity in her story telling ability to ground you in whatever period in history she takes you to next.

By giving us the stories of two characters that are reincarnated continuously throughout history, Barker creates an epically romantic tale. It’s as if the pair is destined to always be entangled with each other’s lives throughout history, but never peacefully come together because of the circumstances of whatever time they are born into. The anonymous narrator makes an observation about the nature of their relationship in a letter to Wang: “Fate sets us against each other… Fate condemns us to bring about the other’s downfall. To blaze like fiery meteors as we crash into each other’s stratosphere, then incinerate to heat and dust.” Rather than create a confusing jumble of personalities, the accumulation of all these individual lives the pair have lived build to a universal message about love and its deranged manifestations. “The Incarnations” is a daring, provocative and relentlessly entertaining novel.

House of Ashes by Monique Roffey

“If words and prayers had no effect, then it was time to use the body.”

On the fictional island of Sans Amen in the Caribbean there is a small commune of men organized by a charismatic leader who are fed up with the current government. They believe the democratically elected prime minister is corrupt and they are ready to take action. Armed with smuggled weaponry, they split into groups to raid the imposing House which is the seat of government and also the local television station. A bookish, thoughtful man named Ashes is among them for complicated personal reasons. With head-spinning intensity, we follow him as the approximately one hundred men (many of whom are boys under eighteen) sneak up to the House with guns and storm inside shooting guards and civilians as they go. The prime minister and heads of state are seized. “House of Ashes” depicts a coup d'état. It's terrifying. With it's complicated and harrowing history of colonialism, this is something which has occurred frequently to governments in the Caribbean. On the island of Haiti alone the government has been overthrown in this way twenty-five times since 1806. This history of frequent violent upheaval is summarized by a character at one point in the novel: “‘Is like we Caribbean people mess up real good every time we try this thing called revolution… Is like it too simple. Or like it too good to be true. Every time the liberators become oppressors.’” When people are oppressed, feel powerless and think that there can be no more debate things get violent.

I first read Monique Roffey's novel “The White Woman on the Green Bicycle” years ago and was struck by the delicate way she interlaces the personal with the political in her storytelling. In this new novel she expertly does the same, but focuses on one big violent political event and the consequences of such calamitous action. Many of the boys involved come from impoverished backgrounds and are easily swayed by the didactic teachings of the commune's Leader. They are banded together through desperation more than natural kinship which has created a tight and particular kind of camaraderie: “They weren’t friends; they weren’t associates or colleagues either; they were brothers.” The novel focuses particularly on one boy nicknamed Breeze who has street smarts but doesn't understand what a prime minister is. The story switches perspectives between Ashes who storms the government without even knowing how to load a gun and Aspartame Garland, a female minister for environmental affairs. Over a period of six days the insurgents inhabit the House surrounded by the stalwart army outside.

Roffey balances her story showing with equal validity the perspectives of a variety of people involved from the strong-willed prime minister to a passionate and experienced military revolutionary named Greg Mason who believes “Money is power; corporations are the new colonisers.” Having left his wife and children behind to join in the insurgency, Ashes has deep dilemmas about the meaning of this action. Through this extreme event people's true nature's emerge with all their complicated pasts and core beliefs: “In this madhouse everyone was showing himself or herself.” One character who shows tremendous spirit and arrives in the narrative like a rocket is a cleaning lady named Mrs Gonzales. She demonstrates a memorable tenacity and acts as a voice of a common person who works hard and isn't deluded by grandiose visions of utopian ideology.

The leatherback sea turtle which returns to Sans Amen to lay its eggs takes on a symbolic value in the novel

Although the stories of the characters involved are engagingly particular and personal, Roffey is skilful in incorporating the larger political and historical issues which have built up to this hostile takeover. “When the colonisers left, a popular people’s government were voted in and for almost thirty years they had simply replicated the mistakes and greed of the British. It was as if they had caught something, like a flu or a cold, except the thing they caught was corruption.” The oppressive rule of colonisers has created a legacy of distrust and greed. Above the great government House created under Queen Victoria's reign hangs a great dragon. Ashes hilariously remarks: “The Queen and the dragon were some kind of team.” The individuals involved in this violent uprising and the government officials who are captured are all motivated by particular systems of thought and inherited ideas which influence their actions. There is the striking observation that “Politics was about darkness, about reaction, about… ego. It had something to do with a blindness rather than seeing.” A successful politician might triumph more from what they tactically don't know than what they do. There is also the insidious suggestion that darker/sinister motives from particular people have influenced this revolution. Roffey shows the full complexity of such a dramatic societal change.

“House of Ashes” portrays in vivid detail and with heart-racing intensity the bloody consequences of what a coup d'état must feel like. There is sheer physical strain of enduring depravation and terror for multiple days. Emotions run high as the body is run down. I was totally gripped and nervous to know what the outcome would be. The novel builds to a climactic conclusion for the revolution and the plays out further towards a surprising ending that will make you want to quickly read on till the last page. This is a book that makes an impact upon you subconsciously so that it's cumulative meaning is only felt when you've put it down.

The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham

It seems prescient that Michael Cunningham chose to title his new novel after the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. This story is fresh in the public’s imagination after the monumentally successful and brilliantly realized recent Disney film ‘Frozen’ very loosely based on the same tale. Of course, Cunningham’s novel has little to do with the story except inflect it with metaphorical notions about magic and distorted perspectives. I absolutely loved Cunningham’s novel “The Hours” and I think the film was one of the most successful book-to-movie adaptations ever. His other books didn’t make as great an impact with me, but I will always be willing to give him another try.

“The Snow Queen” opens with a character named Barrett walking through a snowy November evening in 2004 in Central Park and sees a hazy blue cloud that he understands to be some kind of manifestation of the eye of god. Here’s a problem - one I didn’t think about until reading Thomas at My Porch’s blog post about why he quit reading this novel. It didn’t actually snow in NYC on that evening. I can understand readers’ frustration when novelists don’t get historical facts right. However, it doesn’t ruin the enjoyment I find in a novel. I figure that if the guy is seeing the eye of god in the sky we can also stretch our imaginations to believing it snowed on that day as well. I could get into a long argument here about what history really is. Don’t historians also distort the past by choosing to omit facts? Don’t even documentary film makers change our perspective on a particular time in history through their editing? And no, I don’t believe novelists have license to rewrite history simply because they labour in the territory of make-believe. Writers should try to get historical details as accurate as possible and, in some cases, I think it’s highly dangerous to wilfully distort the past because it may colour people’s understanding of history. However, whether it snowed or not on a particular day in a particular place seems to me a minor fib by Cunningham in order to better serve his story and central metaphor. But I appreciate that some readers can't get past it.

If you’re concerned that Cunningham will overplay quasi-mystical questions about the meaning of being in this novel don’t be. Barrett may be convinced he's had an encounter with some celestial presence, but he isn't a blind believer or inclined to mysticism. At one point he gets some time alone with handsome Andrew, a man who has inhabited his sexual imagination for a long time, and Andrew speaks of his reverence for shamans. Rather than indulging in fantasies of pseudo-religious experience, Barrett recognizes this as a lot of hogwash and goes off Andrew immediately. Cunningham gives Barrett's inclination towards religious feeling the parallel of Alice in Wonderland – wandering through with a curious attitude. It’s fully acknowledged that it might all be as one character describes “wishful bullshit.”

What Cunningham is more concerned with is the crisis we all feel at a certain point of whether we haven’t let ourselves down or aren’t living up to our potential as human beings. Barrett and his brother Tyler both had very promising starts as teenagers, but they’ve been drifting through life and relying on each other a little too much. Barrett is a shop assistant who can’t keep a steady relationship with a man – a problem that’s described in achingly realistic detail. Tyler is an unsuccessful musician who cares for his fiancé Beth who is suffering from cancer. The brothers lean on each other’s support and through their mutual dependence aren’t able to achieve their goals in life. Cunningham beautifully sums up the translation of religious feeling to aspirations in life here: “We worship numberless gods or idols, but we all need raiment, we need to be the grandest possible versions of ourselves, we need to walk across the face of the earth with as much grace and beauty as we can muster before we're wrapped in our winding sheets, and returned.” He compresses a lot in this sentence about personal motivation and dignity and why we idolize examples of greatness.

I appreciated the depiction of the brothers in the story and their special relationship, but felt like Cunningham drifted at times in the middle of the book lingering too long on less interesting characters. For example, after at a New Year party we’re introduced to three new characters. At the end of the evening we’re given summaries of how their lives play out and then we don’t hear from them again. It seems unnecessary in a novel that is relatively short to try to fully capture a wide array of lives when he’s gone to the trouble of creating characters that are already compelling to read about. But what Cunningham does so well is write about the gentle tug and pull that goes in with egos in social interactions. Characters try to lay out plainly how they are feeling in the moment, but are also aware of the reactions of those around them. They anticipate response and modify what they are saying based on the individual they are dealing with. This captures the natural and largely self-conscious way people engage with each other. He also acknowledges the expectations we have for others: “People are more than you think they are. And they're less, as well. The trick lies in negotiating your way between the two.” Sometimes we’re too quick to judge other people. Equally, no matter how much you revere someone, they will inevitably disappoint you at some point.

Michael Cunningham reads and discusses The Snow Queen at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

I admire that Cunningham writes frankly about sexuality. Not just people of different sexualities, but the way desire infiltrates our experience practically moment to moment. It’s something not a lot of authors are prepared to do. But I did get a bit tired with the idolatry he frequently shows in this novel for the heterosexual man’s body. Straight characters Tyler and Andrew both have their bodies described in sensuous detail as being nearly Ken-doll perfect. He ramps up the sexual tension portraying moments of sexual possibility with hands brushing against each other or a casualness about the brothers bathing in front of each other (which slightly stretches believability). All this reverence for a certain kind of masculinity results in a little too much panting after the hetero guy. It should be noted that the only real graphic sex scene in the novel is a heterosexual one.

An observation I particularly appreciated is one made towards the end of the novel where a character feels like he’s being scammed for money. It’s noted by another character that: “'I think pretty much everybody who says he needs money really and truly needs money. Maybe not for the reasons he's telling you. But still.'” This is a really relatable detail, particularly for anyone who lives in a city and encounters beggars. There have been occasions when someone has knocked on my door or stopped me in the street reeling out a story that is not logically probable. What it clear and honest though is their need for money. It makes a real moral dilemma when trying to decide whether to be generous or not because here is a person before you genuinely desperate.

“The Snow Queen” is a highly readable novel that conveys a lot about the complexity of friendship and romantic relationships. I think Cunningham was stretching for some meaning between American politics and the desire to believe, but I didn’t entirely get the significance of it. Where he succeeds is in the humour and bare emotion found in human interaction. And I can’t help being amused by any literary writer that can be so bolshy about his literary predecessors as to state in his novel: “Boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Fuck you, F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

Thirst by Kerry Hudson

“Thirst” reveals a side of London not often seen. A Siberian woman named Alena is caught attempting to shoplift a pair of shoes by the store’s security man Dave. The reason why she tries to commit this act of robbery isn’t what you’d immediately expect. Dave forgives Alena despite the trouble it causes him with his superior. Seeing that Alena is in a distressed position he goes even further and allows her to stay in his small apartment until she can get back on her feet. What follows is an unlikely bond between two people who have experienced a lot of hardship in their lives. 

Accounts of Alena and Dave’s personal histories slip in between sections of the present-day narrative. This is handled so delicately it’s like one hand sliding over another revealing the layers of their lives. It also creates tension in the story as both of them have emerged from very bad situations and it makes you constantly wonder how they get to the point where they find each other. They create a strange sort of domestic bliss together, but when Alena’s past imposes itself upon the present they are abruptly torn apart and it’s only through a massive leap of faith on Dave’s part that they might find one another again. This is a love story. It’s one which is made up of two characters who have endured strife and disappointment, but need to find the courage to open up to one another for a chance at harmony.

It’s a known tale: an immigrant comes to a “developed” country and finds everything isn’t as rosy as the way they imagined it. Where this book departs is the pernicious way that Alena turns from the oppressed to the oppressor – or, at least, an instrument used to foster oppression. This produces a dark and twisted psychology. It shows the complex layers of a hidden underbelly of society that feeds on abuse, fear and secrecy. It’s only through a tremendous act of will that Alena is able to break free. She’s extremely vulnerable being lost in the giant organism of London and it’s only through chance that she meets with an act of kindness from Dave. A querulous outsider might view such an instant bond as unbelievable, but Hudson eloquently explains Dave’s reasoning like this: “He’d admit it, he was reckless. Blind to the danger of letting a strange stranger have everything of him. And though it was her ripe, warm beauty that had made it hard for him to think around her at first, it was all the rest that was the hook that snagged in his insides, never to be pulled out.” There can be something about a person which catches you and makes you take a chance on something you’d normally back away from.

There is more here than the romantic heart. What this novel is really about is the distance between ourselves and strangers – particularly in large cities and when travelling. What’s the right amount of empathy to show to strangers? Surely you can’t walk around with an open heart to everyone in need. You’d never get across the city. Never get to work on time. But if you walk around with a stony gaze you begin to feel inhuman, jaded, disconnected. Likewise this novel shows our own desperation for kindness when out of our element. Dave embarks on a long journey to an extremely remote part of Siberia where the smallest gesture of kindness can seem like a life raft. Of course, this book doesn’t offer a solution to this question of distance. How can there be one? But it does point out the reverberating effects of both large and small bits of kindness. Moreover it shows the way regret can pile up in the backs of our minds – haunted by instances where we wanted to reach out and didn’t. Hudson acknowledges that: “it is hard to live with the knowledge of certain things, let alone a knowledge that allowed you to imagine you could have done something to change things, to help someone you love.” “Thirst” reveals the best and the worst of humanity. It shows the way the world perpetually opens and closes to us and that there is an endless stream of possibilities. Whether you choose to only smile or hold out your hand or walk on by: opportunity goes both ways and there is always the potential of a connection.

I also loved Hudson's first novel which I wrote about at the end of last year here. She's one of the most creative literary voices in the UK right now. But, given Hudson's earlier title, I was hoping this new novel would be named something more elaborate like "The Thirsty Siberian Who Stole My Shoes, Ate All My IceCream & Barely Had Change for a Fiver." However, the brevity of her chosen title suits the subject matter perfectly.

The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski

I've been reading about Persephone Books for a long time. This is a publisher who (in their own words) “prints mainly neglected fiction and non-fiction by women, for women and about women.” Of course, I love books by women and think it's brilliant a publisher with this mission exists, but part of me still feels slightly transgressive stepping into this female domain. It's like when I was growing up in the US I often watched the TV channel Lifetime whose motto came up at every commercial break: 'Lifetime... television for women.' And I'd think guiltily 'Oh, this isn't meant for me' or 'what kind of man am I watching so much “women's” television?' But, who cares, right?

So I finally went to Persephone's shop in London on Lamb's Conduit Street which is only a 15 minute walk from where I work on weekdays. It's a beautiful outlet brimming with dove-grey covered books and tasteful furniture. I couldn't resist buying a few titles and one that caught my eye in particular was this short novel “The Victorian Chaise-Longue” by Marghanita Laski which was first published in 1953. Part of the initial appeal is that I love a chaise-longue and after reading what the novel is all about I was very curious to have a read. It tells the story of Melanie, a young mother who is recovering from tuberculosis. Since she's recovering she's allowed to move out of bed onto a chaise-longue in another room that has a view. Melanie is rather spoiled. She acts like a passive, “girlish” female and is treated like such by her husband and doctor. Cooing like a baby to the men around her, she seems rather glad to remain in her vegetative state with her own baby being entirely cared for by the nanny. She drifts off to sleep and awakens on the same piece of furniture many years earlier in Victorian times as a different but similarly named (Milly) woman. Milly is also an invalid suffering from consumption. Strangely, the consciousness of the women has blended so Melanie is aware of certain facts about Milly's life and can't verbally articulate the knowledge she's brought from the future. Here she is watched over and protected by Milly's sister and a doctor who is smitten by her. Melanie desperately tries to find a way to escape this condition and return to her own century and body. She thinks there must be a specific task she needs to accomplish for Milly and that she must uncover a pattern to liberate her from this body swap situation. The concept is like a blend of the television show 'Quantum Leap' and the movie 'The Matrix'. It's a brilliantly original and dark tale to have been first published in the early 50s.

Part of what Laski was trying to get at is the forbidden pleasure women can deny themselves or feel like they can't discuss. Melanie is haunted by a fuzzy memory of being pressed into the chaise longue by a man. Gradually, Melanie discovers that Milly has a taboo secret which has been kept from her sister. But this forbidden pleasure isn't just the erotic. Melanie observes: “I was in ecstasy as I fell asleep, ecstasy one experiences perhaps once, twice, half a dozen times, when to be human is no longer a lonely terror but a glory, when time is blotted out by perfection.” This notion of “ecstasy” is brought up over and over throughout the book. It's something wrapped up with the forbidden and slowly the concept turns into one more as a prelude to terror than blissful release.

Marghanita Laski was herself obviously a very intelligent and capable woman. So, in writing about a female character who is initially so simpering and passive, I think she must have been making a statement about the responsibility women owe to themselves not to defer to masculine/paternal attention to bolster their own self worth. Melanie experiences the full horror of what it is to be trapped in an era where if a woman clandestinely expressed her desires and was found out, she would be stigmatized and punished (as it becomes partly clear that Milly has been). In Melanie's own time of 1950s Britain there was still a lot of sexism obviously, but there were more opportunities for women to forge forward with a more enlightened social consciousness. It's stated at one point that “sin changes, you know, like fashion.” This notion of a shifting moral landscape hints that actions so badly stigmatized at one point of history won't necessarily be in another. We have a duty to assist humanity in it's progression. To lazily harken back to conservative social rules that inhibit people from becoming fully realized human beings is akin to death.

I love the way Laski plays so confidently with time in the narrative, taking the reader on such a fantastical journey in so few pages. This takes daring and it's to the book's credit that it chooses not to entangle itself too much in the hows and whys this occurred. Melanie is obviously mystified by what's happened to her and the narrative closely follows her perspective, but clearly Laski is reaching more for an artfully articulated social message than a sci-fi adventure here. The book (and Melanie) become compellingly philosophical as the story progresses. She observes: “Time may be going not in a straight line but in all directions and in no direction, and God may have changed the universe so that it is my body that lies here and no dream, or not my body and still a dream from which I shall be freed.” The story becomes somewhat Shakespearian in the interplay of high drama mixed with observations about the human condition. But brilliantly, even as the intellectual fervour of the novel amps up, so does the tension in the story. Melanie's desperation to escape being trapped in this other woman becomes frighteningly intense. The final pages are utterly gripping.