Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile

Imagine staring at enormous fields of wilting sugar cane stalks and knowing your entire future depends on whether you can keep this crop alive. Single mother Charley faces this challenge after moving from California to a substantial farm in Saint Josephine, southern Louisiana which she’s inherited from her recently deceased father. She must rapidly learn the back-breaking business of harvesting sugar cane from scratch before her money and time run out or she’ll be destitute. The transition from the highly-mixed urban landscape of Los Angeles to this rural Southern town couldn’t be more dramatic. Not only must she adjust to a new livelihood with her adolescent girl Micah in tow but learn how to integrate into this different culture which is very parochial and stuck in its ways. Charley is both helped and hindered by the family who surround her as she struggles through a difficult year of re-establishing the farm as a viable business. “Queen Sugar” is a heart-felt novel primarily about overcoming painful guilt and accepting that forgiveness can open new opportunities for the future.

Running parallel to Charley’s narrative is the story of her half-brother Ralph Angel. He is also a single parent who arrives in Louisiana soon after Charley, but hasn’t been included in his father’s will. Since he’s nearly broke he resorts to shop lifting at times to even feed himself and his six year old son, Blue. Ralph Angel struggles with his pride, drug-use and resentment over being cut out of any inheritance; he’s what could be called the black sheep of the family. However, being the favoured child isn’t always positive. Charley feels the legacy she’s taken on is more often a curse than a blessing and she’s bewildered why her father traded his life savings for this remote farmland. Only when she learns the truth about her father’s youth in this rural Southern town does she understand what the farm really meant to him. By securing the business she can establish her and her family’s future. Also as a black woman, she can set an important precedent in a predominantly white male farming industry. Charley acknowledges that “you don’t move to a tiny Louisiana town, way out in the middle of nowhere, and expect life to be a stroll through the park; you couldn’t expect to be the only woman in an industry filled with men and not think someone would eventually say something stupid; you couldn’t ignore the long, dark, tortured history of Southern race relations, or pretend that everything would be fixed overnight… But you could be brave.” Demonstrating courage, tenacity and drawing upon the support of her family, Charley is determined to overcome the substantial challenges she faces in this town. However, farming is expensive and it all comes down to money.

The novel shows a complicated and dynamic portrait of racial politics. Outwardly ignorant demonstrations of racism don’t often appear, although it is still sometimes present especially amongst the established elite. However, there are more subtle layers which manifest in subsets of mixed race communities, within romantic relationships and amongst the presumptions of workers – there are migrant workers who’d be treated better by black employers but would prefer to work for white employers. This novel is unique in the way it shows how boundaries can be broken down by circumnavigating destructive conflict through patience and intelligently correcting the missteps people make when talking about race.

Natalie Baszile has a highly engaging fluid style of writing which sympathetically draws you into the lives of her characters. Through glimpsing their thoughts and reading their dialogue characters such as the deeply Christian grandmother Miss Honey come alive and feel like familiar family. Adolescent Micah’s personality is revealed more through her impetuous actions in a way which feels very realistic. While this novel shows a highly informed level of detail about the process of sugar caning, it’s not so much that the reader feels overwhelmed like they are reading a farming text book. At the centre of the book is a potent symbol: a small statue called The Cane Cutter which Charley has also inherited from her father. It’s emblematic of where her family came from, their determination to persevere and where they are going. It’s a way of acknowledging the past, learning from it and moving forward in a more fulfilling way. I admire the realistic way this novel deals with the real world problem of how money seems to rule our lives, but acknowledges that it is definitely not everything. Baszile writes: “there was so much more to life than just money. There were family and friends, there was good, satisfying work, and knowing you had a place on this earth where you were loved and there was nothing to prove.” Despite seemingly insurmountable challenges and difficulties that arise within communities and families, establishing a home should be the centrepiece and the greatest goal we can aspire to fully attain.

The Sacrifice by Joyce Carol Oates

Given the recent much-publicized protests in America about a series of unjustified killings of black individuals at the hands of white policemen, the subject of The Sacrifice couldn’t appear any more prescient. Yet, what Oates shows in her novel is that fear, ignorance and misunderstanding is a constant presence, and is the legacy of racial tension in American society carried throughout the years and multiple generations. The media highlights particular examples of the issue regularly, and this sparks movements of public outcry and protest seeking to gain justice and correct societal imbalances. The Sacrifice traces the way incidents like this transition from the particular to the emblematic; how people at the centre of the incident are turned from individuals into symbols and are made to surrender their unique complexities as human beings; and how facts can be obfuscated for the sake of a “bigger meaning” or to progress personal agendas. Oates has created a gripping, complex story largely inspired by the case of Tawana Brawley, a black teenage girl who was found by a grand jury to have falsely accused six white men of raping her. The Sacrifice memorializes the conflicts, both internal and external, of individuals whose subjective reality is subsumed by their public identity within a movement of social change. 

Read my full review on Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies: http://repository.usfca.edu/jcostudies/vol2/iss1/1/

Not Forgetting the Whale by John Ironmonger

The first thing that attracted me to reading John Ironmonger’s new novel “Not Forgetting the Whale” was its beautiful cover. Of course, that’s a shallow way to choose your next read, but the cover illustration of sea water cascading over a whale with a town in the distance is very striking. The story begins mysteriously enough with the residents of St Piran, a fictional Cornish village, who collectively remember and celebrate an event that occurred fifty years ago. A naked man washed ashore in the harbour of their small seaside village and a whale appeared in the water. The facts of this incident have been stretched and tangled throughout the generations and with multiple retellings. What was once a historical incident has been transformed into a myth with a meaning far beyond itself. This occurrence marked a large shift that occurred in society which nearly brought it to a frightening end: “Sometimes life could do this. It could draw a line. Beyond the line, life would say, nothing will ever be the same. The sun will rise tomorrow but it will rise onto a different world.” Yet this village continued on and thrived in a new form. What follows is a highly unusual and thoughtful story about the events which led to this post-apocalyptic point.

Joe is a man on the run. Under duress, this handsome 30 year old fled his life in London where he worked in a prestigious investment bank as a computer programmer. Joe was an instrumental part of developing a program which could predict the rise and fall of the stock market with reasonable reliability. However, the company’s director has designs on this program doing much more. When things reach a crisis point Joe drives off into the countryside to randomly wind up in isolated St Piran. Only one main road leads in and out of this quaint village with a population of just over three hundred residents. The village is composed of a cast of characters with their own entertaining quirks and idiosyncrasies. Life has a very different rhythm here from the fast-paced trading floor that Joe is used to: “Time. That’s what he was noticing. Time was moving at a different rate here.” The inhabitants don’t have much interest in news of the outside world because global events have little effect upon them. Little ever changes. In fact it’s remarked of one resident that “Demelza Trevarrick had lived sufficient years in St Piran to understand that the tranquillity of the village was almost geological in its permanence.” It seems nothing can affect the way of life for this tranquil place – until a deadly flu reaches Britain.

Thomas Hobbes

Ironmonger’s primary preoccupation in this novel is with the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and his emphasis on self-interested cooperation. A crucial test for the resiliency of any government is at a point of crisis where self interest becomes the central motivating factor over any (social or legal) laws because people’s survival is suddenly at stake. The author’s story presents how events might play out and offers a surprising avenue through which individuals can weather through the challenges which threaten to tear a society down to basics. One resident observes “‘A village,’ Martha Fishburne would say, ‘is more’n a row of houses. It’s a whole network of connections.’” Whether they like it or not catastrophic affairs of The State (what Hobbes characterized metaphorically as a monster) come to their doorsteps in quite a literal way as a whale washes ashore and the essentials (food, electricity, oil) of everyday life are cut off from them after the outbreak of a deadly flu. The decision on how to move forward for this group of individuals will determine if they are able to progress as a collective or if their lives will be, as the philosopher famously surmised, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Caught in the middle of this is Joe whose actions inadvertently inspire the people as a guiding force. The ramifications of his experiences help steer his own personal direction in life, overcoming his estranged family’s tumultuous past and rediscovering what he values most.

I really enjoyed Ironmonger’s cleverly constructed story. He has a very different approach to the apocalypse tale from Emily St John Mandel’s “Station Eleven” which I also read recently. “Not Forgetting the Whale” is more concerned with the way macro systems of society feed down into the micro. Harnessing together some of the most pressing global concerns which make us fear for our collective future, the author proposes a realistic way in which civilization can become unhinged with the loss of only a single, but ultimately essential, part. Rather than focus on the panic and gore which normally attends apocalyptic stories, Ironmonger chooses instead to concentrate on deeper thoughts about how human nature factors in the correlation between individual motivations and social organization. It’s an engaging tale which poignantly develops its deeper meanings as it progresses while the history of both Joe and the village are slowly revealed. “Not Forgetting the Whale” creates an entire world which made me reflect upon my own.

Listen to the opening extract from the novel here: https://soundcloud.com/orionbooks/not-forgetting-the-whale-by-john-ironmonger-read-by-david-thorpe

Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman

The stories in “Almost Famous Women” by Megan Mayhew Bergman stand out in my mind as some of the most exciting fiction in both content and style that I’ve read for some time. Here the author has chosen a group of women from history who have rubbed shoulders with fame or were associated with a celebrated person. Stories include fascinating figures such as conjoined twins Violet & Daisy, actress Butterfly McQueen, Alegra: the short-lived illegitimate daughter of Lord Byron, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sister Norma, black trumpet player Tiny Davis. She has fictionalized scenes from each of their lives in which she brings their unique and forgotten perspectives to the forefront. Almost every story is proceeded by a photo of the woman in question which adds a striking visual reference point grounding these fictional conjurings in docemented history. They are women who each showed tremendous talent and intelligence in the arts or sports, but for some reason they have been relegated to the footnotes of history.

These stories are so extraordinarily entertaining while also making bold statements about the plight of women in society at their time. The fact that many have fallen into obscurity says more about the way history is largely informed by a patriarchal agenda. Perhaps the author is also making a statement upon the valiant feminist mission which underlies this book when she comments in one story: “Maybe the world had been bad to its great and unusual women. Maybe there wasn’t a worthy place for the female hero to live out her golden years, to be celebrated as the men had been celebrated, to take from that celebration what she needed to survive.” In this book a select group of women are brilliantly and rightfully celebrated in all their complexity!

Many books of short fiction are made up of disparate pieces which the author has written over many years. It’s rare that a central concept unites a book of stories in the way of “Almost Famous Women.” One book which does bear a similar resemblance is Greg Johnson’s brilliant book of short stories “Last Encounter with the Enemy,” several of which I discuss in my review of his collection “Women I’ve Known,” in which he writes about fictional encounters in the lives of several great female authors. I’m also reminded of Joyce Carol Oates’ tremendous book of short stories “Wild Nights!” which fictionalizes the end of several famous authors’ lives. Short stories should, of course, stand independently, but it adds a level of complexity and poignancy when there are overarching themes connecting them in a collection. Although the stories in “Almost Famous Women” vary greatly, they do form a larger statement about these unique female lives which have mostly been forgotten and deserve to be given a voice.

What’s fascinating about Bergman’s technique is that, for the most part, she approaches her female subjects from the side. Except in a few stories where we are more or less centred in the perspective of the woman from history that the author has selected, most are narrated by or entrenched in the perspective of someone associated with these women. In one of my favourite stories ‘The Siege of Whale Cay’ the story is told from the mistress of cigar-smoking heiress M.B. “Joe” Carstairs who was known as the fastest woman on water because of her motorboat racing abilities. She purchased a Caribbean island to rule over and live out her eccentric lifestyle in relative seclusion. But her story unfolds through the perspective of Georgie, a woman who used to play a mermaid at an amusement park and who Carstairs has taken to the island to live as her mistress. Through Georgie we learn of Carstairs’ lavish soirées, affair with a famous actress and sometimes tyrannical nature informed partly by the trauma she endured during WWI.

Natalie Barney

Although this isn’t explored in the stories of this collection, Carstairs also had an affair with Dolly Wilde, the niece of Oscar Wilde. In fact, Dolly is given her own story in ‘Who Killed Dolly Wilde?’ which is also narrated from the perspective of someone close to Dolly rather than by Dolly herself. It follows the sad and slow demise of this flamboyant socialiser, writer and drug-addict despite the earnest attention and love of her friend/patron who narrates the story. The story about Romaine Brooks ‘Romaine Remains’ also has a connection here as both Dolly Wilde and Brooks are known to have had affairs with Natalie Barney, that famous woman who held court to some of the greatest writers and artists in early 20th century Paris. Therefore, it’s almost surprising not to see a story about Barney included in this story collection as well.

‘Romaine Remains’ focuses on the painter’s much later life when she is living as a cantankerous recluse. It’s told from the perspective of Mario, a young homosexual who works as the elderly Romaine’s carer and housekeeper. He’s fascinated by this woman’s extraordinary life but tortured by his impoverished state which requires him to be subject to both this difficult old artist and his domineering mother. It leads him to take control of the vulnerable woman he’s employed under stating “Power is a funny thing. Sometimes you can just take it.” His fervent desire to become an artist despite his circumstances suggests how both he and many of the women in this collection are prevented from realizing their full potential in part because of their strained economic circumstances.

Ernestine "Tiny" Davis

Running through each of these three stories is also a fascinating perspective on queer identity. It’s shown in very different manifestations through these characters’ individual perspectives. Sometimes compromises must be made in order to live the way they want to with their chosen same sex partner and sometimes they unapologetically/defiantly live the way that feels natural. Another story which touches upon a unique historical example of a homosexual figure is ‘Hell-Diving Women’ which conjures a period in time of The International Sweethearts of Rhythm who were the first integrated all women’s band in America. It’s told from the perspective of Ruby who was trumpet player Tiny Davis’s lover. Here the struggle this lesbian couple face is subsumed over more pressing overt concerns of racial intolerance the band experienced while touring under difficult situations.

Some stories have what feels like a more overt agenda to yank back a historical person’s integrity from what’s been (to date) a mostly male-dominated historical narrative. The story ‘A High-Grade Bitch Sits Down For Lunch’ is proceeded by a quote from Ernest Hemingway about aviator and memoirist Beryl Markham. Arguably, it’s because of Hemingway that Markham is still known at all. Yet he gave her a typically backhanded compliment praising her writing effusively while also denigrating her personally. What follows is a tender story about Markham living in hard-won independence in rural Kenya. She works to tame a horse for riding. The autonomy she forms within her existence here where she’s left her husband is very difficult, but there is a triumphant pleasure in it where she can exist without needing to pay heed to the opinions of men. What a satisfying way of rendering Hemingway’s arrogantly macho opinion insignificant!

In a departure from the other stories in the collection, the very short tale ‘The Internees’ unusually uses the collective voice to describe groups of women liberated from the Nazi internment camps in Bergen-Belsen. Last year I saw André Singer’s devastating documentary ‘Night Will Fall’ about the filming of the camps by Allied forces after their liberation and the political complications of making a complete documentary. In it there are testimonies and footage of women in the aftermath of being freed and their intense desire for clothes and make up to feel like themselves again. In Bergman’s story she resurrects these voices in a way which makes you consider the meaning of identity and femininity.

I feel like I could go on and on about the stories I’ve mentioned and many more which are contained in this book. That’s how provocative and thrilling they are! They make you want to rush online or to the library to research more about all of these fascinating women. One other story I was particularly struck by was ‘Hazel Eaton and the Wall of Death’ about a woman who performed dangerous motorcycle stunts in a carnival’s motordrome. I felt a personal connection to it since its set in the state of Maine where I grew up, although this story is set early in the 20th century. But I was also deeply moved by the philosophical query it raises about what makes a fulfilling existence. Bergman writes: “She was questioning then, as she does now: what makes you empty and what makes you full?” Questions and conundrums like this which prod at the centre of your being pop up throughout the stories in this book. The author’s great skill as a writer and a deep thinker are what make this fiction so compelling. Underlying the compelling stories Bergman creates out of these women resurrected from their nearly-forgotten place in history are much deeper meanings about life, identity and society.

A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White

Today is Edmund White's birthday and A Boy's Own Story has recently been reissued as an ebook by Open Media, so it seems fitting to celebrate this book today, one of the author's most famous novels. My thoughts below are something which I first posted in 2009 on the blog Chroma. For the original special Valentine's Day post, I gathered a group of authors such as Jackie Kay, David Plante, Sophie Mayer, Aaron Hamburger and JD Glass to comment on queer books they heart/ones that have influenced them the most. I still heart this novel and return to it occassionally to read passages which have particular resonance. Edmund has also produced a stunning body of work from the definitive biography of Jean Genet to historical novels such as Fanny: A Fiction (a personal favourite) and Hotel de Dream to great books of memoir such as My Lives and Inside a Pearl, which was published last year. Fans will be excited to hear that he finished a new novel just last week! But A Boy's Own Story will always remain an extremely special book.

Photo of me & Edmund in London, 2005

I read this novel as a teenager and discovered in White's beautifully rich prose an articulation of feelings I myself was struggling to understand. Speaking to other gay men and reading about people’s relationship to this book I’ve found that many have experienced the same thing reading this brilliant novel. It’s startling that a story so specific and entwined in it’s particular time and location can touch upon such universal feelings, taking on personal meaning to so many. It also felt brave and honest that the great betrayal at the end of the book doesn’t conform to a facile love story, but hints at impulses inherent to queer identity which have the power to divide us as much as bring us together.

The Room by Jonas Karlsson (translated by Neil Smith)

Have you ever worked alongside an oddball? Someone who has a markedly different way of dealing with people socially which makes your need to work alongside them somewhat uncomfortable? Most people have at some point. The pressurised environment of an office seems particularly prone to small personal clashes between people with different social techniques. The most striking example in my own memory is when an online marketing expert was recruited at my office. The directors asked him to spend a few minutes with all the employees so he could get an understanding for what they do. He took this as an opportunity to evaluate everyone’s workload and lecture them about how they should do their job better. Unsurprisingly, this made him few friends. He frequently spoke to people with an arrogant superior air - even when he was unquestionably in the wrong. Yet, he seemed baffled as to why he was socially alienated from everyone in the office. He didn’t last long at my company.

“The Room” is a novel about a person named Bjorn who is very much like this and it’s narrated from his perspective. At one point he states: “They [people] think that as long as they do their best, everything will work out okay. You have to remind them. You have to show people like that what their shortcomings are.” The people Bjorn works with don’t enjoy how he arrogantly shows them this. He has a very regimental, strict attitude towards his work and work habits. Every fifty-five minutes he allows himself a few minutes break. It’s on one of these breaks he discovers a room near the office toilets. Inside the room is a perfectly ordered and ordinary unused office. Bjorn finds it comforting to spend time in this tranquil space. The only problem is that no one else can see it and all available evidence shows that the room doesn’t actually exist. When he’s inside the room, his co-workers only see him standing in the corridor staring at nothing with a totally detached manner. They remark: “‘It’s like you’re just not there.’” It’s like the room is a mental space Bjorn needs to gather his wits about him, but the narrative surreally plays with the question of whether this room has a tangible existence.

Because of the stark, plain language of the narrative and the preoccupation with Bjorn’s sense of self-consciousness, comparisons could be made between this novel and post-modernist writers like Samuel Beckett or Eugene Ionesco’s only novel “The Hermit” or existentialists like Knut Hamsun or Jean-Paul Sartre or Franz Kafka. Because of the office setting and the upset his small antisocial actions cause, this novel also has the feel of Merlville's "Bartleby, the Scrivner." Bjorn’s character has an anonymous feel similar to many characters created by these writers because we’re given so little background about him other than how he left his previous job because of difficulties he had with co-workers and a brief reference to being punched in grammar school. But this novel has a much lighter, brisk tone and its ideas don’t extend far enough into the cerebral thoughts of these writers to really merit comparison. Joshua Ferris’ office-set novel “Then We Came to the End” is a much more apt reference for “The Room” because it is concerned more with the social manners, career tactics and office politics it explores. Bjorn’s behaviour and some of the things he says to his co-workers is really outrageous. Because the reader is totally entrenched in his point of view it’s made to feel completely rational. But, of course, we can’t help thinking how angered we’d feel if someone said these things in our own offices.

A case could easily be made for Bjorn being diagnosed as a sociopath. Or perhaps he has tendencies similar to certain kinds of autism which make social interaction very difficult. No mental health diagnosis can be made because when Bjorn is directed to get treatment from a psychiatrist the bureaucracy he encounters dismisses him as not worth the time. Sometimes in the narrative Bjorn uses the second person speaking to “you” but the “you” could almost be himself he’s speaking to because Bjorn has a very intense internal dialogue with himself. He also feels a definite remove from other people where he believes he can see things more clear-sightedly than them because of his superior intellect: “I suddenly felt how lonely it is, constantly finding yourself the only person who can see the truth in this gullible world.” His removal from his workmates and strategic plans to ascend in rank sees him bring his office to a point of crisis. The ending is both thrilling and teasingly elusive in meaning.

The Morning and the Evening by Joan Williams

Since the holidays have just passed and we’re in the glum of winter, I was feeling somewhat nostalgic and in the mood to read something older so I decided upon this new Open Road reprint of Southern-writer Joan Williams’ 1961 novel “The Morning and the Evening.” Set in the small town of Marigold, Mississippi, it centres primarily around mentally disabled 40 year-old Jake who is abruptly left living alone to fend for himself. Moreover, it’s a portrait of the town focusing on different characters’ perspectives chapter by chapter. Jake, who is a mute, gets a few chapters devoted solely to him and, unsurprisingly, Williams’ narrates these sections in a more “poetic” voice which is nonetheless effective and moving: “he felt words inside him the way he felt music.” The novel captures the feel of small-town Southern life with evocative descriptions and distinctive characters such as an older woman quietly addicted to a (legal-at-the-time) form of liquid opium or a black man named Little T whose lifelong ambition is to catch a legendary elusive catfish. The book’s great power is the way in which it explores the tension people feel between being both an integral part of their community while also remaining essentially isolated.

The townsfolk who has known Jake all his life rally around to help him get by while he lives on his own until a misunderstanding causes Jake to lash out in a way that disturbs all of the residents. He’s committed to an insane asylum which, in this instance, happens to be well funded and a positive nurturing environment. It’s fascinating reading about the process by which a few members of the community go about having Jake sectioned. There are a number of legal hoops for them to go through, but it is frighteningly easy. An administrator at the institution remarks how this leads to many people being wrongly committed and it takes some time to get them out. Expecting a riotous environment a visitor finds the place more filled with people overwhelmed by their circumstances: “She’d never realized before it was nervous breakdowns that sent folks here.” This is a rather surprising representation of a mental institution in this time period. It’s a testament to how well-meaning some staff can be in wanting to rehabilitate the ill, but the novel makes a good case for more stringently regulated methods to deal with how people are institutionalized.

A photo of silver screen idol & the face of Wheaties cereal boxes Johnny Mack Brown is pinned to the wall in character Jud's room

The novel strikingly presents the way racial relations in this time period were handled in daily small town Southern life. There is a sense whereby people of colour for the most part live and work companionably alongside the white residents of the community, but only if the general understanding that they belong to another class is upheld. It’s understood among these white residents that the “worst boys” are ones who “took Negro girls as a lark and otherwise told impossible tales of their prowess with white ones.” When two people who are both married have an affair, it’s remarked that if the man’s wife were to find out what’s been going on she “wouldn’t care nearly so much if it was a Negro; she’d know it wasn’t somebody he was in love with.” At one point Little T presses slightly against the conventions: “For the heck of it only, he had not long ago referred to a white man, in public, by his first name. A white man, overhearing, had said, ‘Boy, I believe you mean Mister Bill, don’t you?’ The longstanding racial divide relies upon these small behavioural checks to uphold the way non-white residents are stationed below the white ones. Thereby this presents the insidious way racism can bear a smiling face as long as certain boundaries are maintained.

It’s interesting that this book began as a short story which Williams grew into a novel. It makes sense that this is the way it was constructed as many of the towns people’s chapters could be taken in isolation. Usually only a few details, mostly pertaining to Jake, act as the line which connects all their stories. The way in which she captures the solitude people can feel amongst groups and Jake's idiosyncratic way of dealing with the world reminded me strongly of the much more recent novel The Thing About December by Donal Ryan which I read a year ago. Williams writing is often strikingly beautiful particularly when she portrays the atmosphere of Mississippi: “During the long, overgrown summer the citrus smell of mock orange had filled the air; now that languid smell was lost on an air crisp and sharp with the aroma of leaves beginning to dry.” Not only does she show a keen sensual awareness for the landscape but touchingly portrays the passage of time as experienced by the residents so familiar with the elements around them. This novel allowed me to live amongst all the most joyful aspects of this particular community while making me grateful (much like the character of Jud who quickly moves away when he’s old enough) that I don’t have to actually inhabit it any longer.

Updates

I may not be updating this blog as frequently as I have been because I'm working on my novel. This is the only mention I'll make of this as I'm self-consciously aware how contradictory it is to continuously go on social media and blogs discussing the writing you are apparently working on. There is even a hilarious/tragic Penguin book and twitter account dedicated to sending up writers who are apparently “working on my novel.”

The thing is I have a great opportunity. An editor at a major publisher has expressed an interest in a novel I've been writing for some time. He's gone out of his way to meet with me and edit my writing. Anyone who cynically says publishing houses are only filled with marketers looking to increase profits are wrong because there are editors with a true passion for writers/writing. This happened by chance and is unconnected with this blog. It came about as a side effect after a job interview I went for. Who knows if it will come to anything, but it'll be great motivation to carry on and write more. As you can probably tell from mentions I've made before about stories I've written being published and my heavy engagement with what I read that I like to write myself. I've been publishing my own fiction for years in literary reviews and anthologies. I had a short novel published with a small press that won a book award when I was fresh out of college.

I love reading and using this blog to better articulate how I feel about what I'm reading as well as connecting with other passionate readers. But between doing a full-time job, working as a massage therapist on weekends and working on my own writing I don't think I'll have as much time to read and write about what I'm reading. There will still be updates. Just not as many. Of course, if I could spend all my time reading and talking about books with people I would. I'm not paid for doing this blog; in fact, I pay to keep it. It's a pure passion project and I only write about books I'm interested in. But the new year is motivating me to get my priorities straight. This could be a great opportunity and I ought to go for it. No doubt I'll still be checking in with other blogs and hearing what others are reading. My already mile-high “to be read” pile will no doubt continue to grow exponentially. The great thing about books is that they'll always be there waiting to be read.

My Top 10 Books of 2014

In total I’ve read 86 books this year. Most of them were newly published novels. If you read my reviews, you’ll know how much I engaged with and got out of many of these books. Just because I’m picking ten to highlight here doesn’t mean I think many of the others aren’t great works in each of their own unique ways. There’s no way to really compare the inventive distinct voice of “A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing” with the refreshing perspective on WWII that “The Spring of Kasper Meier” gives or the majestic view of an extensive family in Calcutta that “The Lives of Others” provides. Still more difficult is to judge books of short stories against each other. While some stories in books like “All the Rage” or “The American Lover” or “The Best American Stories of 2014” could be counted amongst the most powerful things I’ve read this year, other stories in these books haven’t stuck with me as much. And, of course, browsing other best books of the year lists, I’m aware just how many other new much-lauded books I simply haven’t had time to read yet. I haven’t even read this year’s Booker prize winner. But I think winter is designed for cosy afternoons inside catching up with reading while drinking cups of tea.

The ten books I’m singling out here simply had a tremendous personal impact upon me. I’d gladly thrust copies into the hands of any reader and call them essential. Click on the titles to read my full thoughts on each.

Arctic Summer
A section of writer EM Forster’s life is fictionally mined by Galgut to reveal the power of a quiet life. It hit me like a punch in the face.

The Blazing World
What could be the most inventive and daring artistic hoax of the century forces us to question our assumptions about gender and the meaning of art.

The Walk Home
This short novel about a Glaswegian boy caught in the crossfire of ideological and family struggles deserves to be more widely read and remembered.

The Incarnations
Fantastically inventive and the most relentlessly entertaining book I’ve read all year, Barker’s novel of stories within stories subversively questions the meaning of identity.

H is for Hawk
This memoir about grief breaks the mould showing Macdonald’s very personal experience of managing her feelings through training a goshawk and exploring the life of writer TH White.

How to be Both
Smith is a revolutionary writer. Language is never a passive, dead thing in this author’s books. In this new novel her words perform gymnastics and make me want to do backward hand-springs.

The Paying Guests
No two love stories are the same. This novel gives us the tale of a most extraordinary affair that shows how we can be both generous and selfish in passion.

Lovely, Dark, Deep
Many books of short stories come across as uneven, but every tale in this collection stands out. Using an impressive arsenal of literary styles, Oates writes about people as far ranging as an unlikeable victim of cancer who won’t tell anyone about her illness and a viciously aggressive teenage boy writing about his death.

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy
Rachel Joyce’s literary sequel to her popular first novel, shows an elderly woman physically inhibited by her illness shining light on her lifetime of experiences like a prism reveals the entire spectrum of colours.

The Repercussions
Two disparate stories that are divided by a century come together in this tremendous and emotionally-enthralling novel about war, photography, sexuality and race.

My Top 10 New Films of 2014

This list may come across as if I’m trying to be a bit high brow. Believe me, I appreciate some good big budget movies like ‘Bad Neighbours’ which was utterly hilarious and the time-twisting action of ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ which was really entertaining. But when I think back on the many films I’ve watched this year these are the ten that made me think the most about them afterwards and made me want to watch them again to try to understand their meaning. They may not all be easy views - although there is much pleasure to be gained from all of them - but they are all powerful and haunting.

Gloria
I missed this film when it played at the London Film Festival last year so was thrilled to catch it upon its small release. Divorced 58-year old Gloria goes to singles bars in Santiago looking for love. She’s determined, free-minded and prone to overzealous passion. With a fantastic soundtrack following the ups and downs of her romance, this is an emotional and engaging film.

Her
Set in a future that is more recognizable than filled with sci-fi fantasies, ‘Her’ is another film about a divorced individual looking for love. But in this film he finds it with a piece of artificial intelligence – a disconnected voice that adapts and changes as the system learns more about him. Like other AI stories problems arise when the computer becomes self aware, but this is more a story about the modern perils of digital relationships and misdirected expectations in love.

Stranger by the Lake
Part suspense story, part erotic gay film and part commentary about the danger of desire, ‘Stranger by the Lake’ is a French film that works equally well on many levels. Set on a nudist beach it’s about a man named Franck who frequently attends this gay cruising ground. What at first comes across as a simple story develops into a tale filled with psychological complexity. The idyllic playground morphs into a vicious battleground.

Under the Skin
Adapted with a heavy amount of changes from the novel by Michel Faber, this film imaginatively portrays a strange being in the form of Scarlett Johansson driving a van through the streets of Glasgow hunting for men. This film conveys so much about the warped nature of desire and the complex formation of identity. It features an incredibly creepy score by Mica Levi which I was lucky enough to see performed live at the Southbank Centre alongside the film’s screening.

Pride
It’s impossible to imagine that two groups as disparate as a loose gathering of London gay activists and striking miners from a small Welsh village coming together, but this really happened in 1984. I was hesitant about seeing this movie when its trailer made it look like a hokey feel-good comedy, but the film is entirely absorbing and emotional and inspiring. It’s also been a fantastic platform to raise awareness for Gay’s the Word bookshop which features heavily as a meeting spot in the film and is still going strong today.

The Imitation Game
This film is another impossible-but-true story about Alan Turing’s instrumental contribution to cracking the enigma code which no doubt massively helped win the second world war. This central story is bookended with the sad details of Turing’s troubled personal life including his early heartbreak and later persecution as a homosexual where he was chemically castrated under government mandate and driven to suicide. It’s an incredible story that memorializes a man who should have been celebrated but was tragically vilified. It made me cry.

Ida
It’s startling how spare and simple the dialogue in Ida is, yet how powerfully complex its meaning. Set in 1960s Poland, a young nun named Anna goes in search of what became of her family during the second world war. Paired with her spirited aunt Wanda they travel in search of terrible truths where the weight of history threatens to crush them. I was utterly astonished by this beautiful movie.

Two Days One Night
Over the past decade, the Belgian Dardenne brothers have made some of the most moving films about the downtrodden and forgotten. ‘Two Days One Night’ follows Sandra played by Marion Cotillard as a wife and mother who has been struggling with mental health issues. Because of complicated politics at the factory she works at, she’s been voted out of her job and this film shows her desperate journey to try to maintain her employment. So few films deal with the real hardship ordinary people experience trying to keep afloat during challenging circumstances. This film is by no means perfect, but it makes a great impact.

The Golden Dream
This Mexican film also highlights the struggles of ordinary people – in this case young migrants from Guatemala who journey to cross the border into the US. The challenges they encounter are surprising and terrifying. Small unexpected acts of kindness are enough to make you keep faith in the goodness of humanity. At the same time, the failings of institutions show how people in situations as disadvantaged as this can be preyed upon by groups of opportunists.

The Tribe
Daring, original and like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Click on the title to read fully what an impact this Ukrainian film about a boarding school for deaf children had on me.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

In surveying a wide variety of best book lists of the year, a book that has come up again and again is this novel by Jenny Offill. I’ve been wanting to read it since the summer when I noticed it sitting on a shelf in the new Foyles bookshop with its striking jigsaw cover. But seeing how highly valued it was by a wide range of people recently convinced me I should finally read it. I did so during one long afternoon on a plane while I was flying from London to Boston. I have to say reading on a plane does have a special sort of ethereal feel to it. Invariably when I read something good while flying it feels somewhat as if I’ve just had an intense hallucination. This novel is short enough that I could read the whole book during my journey. I’m glad I had that space to devote my full attention to it without the temptation to check email or social media in between chapters. It’s an intense peculiar novel that gives a fascinating perspective on relationships and life.

We aren’t told the narrator’s name and we’re not given the names of the main characters beyond their relationship to her like “husband” or “daughter.” Flashes of experiences are recounted. Disparate quotes and references are drawn in to produce thoughtful new perspectives. Wry commentary is made about how ego comes into play in all actions and especially when gauging our passion for those we’re closest to. Although images or thoughts seem to come out of nowhere at times they often pop up again later in the book to make more of an emotional impact. For instance, when describing a phrase from a particularly popular cat meme, the quote is reconfigured to hilarious and meaningful effect to describe her own existential yearning. It’s as if all the narrator has absorbed through life comes seeping out through her consciousness when it’s emotionally prescient. This makes the story feel very natural, but also can make it frustrating because so little is pinned down in specifics.

However, it seems to be an essential part of the narrator’s identity to be deliberately obtuse. She’s prickly and prone to dangerously self-destructive ways of thinking. As a counterpoint to the cosy vision of home life, she sharply observes that “The reason to have a home is to keep certain people in and everyone else out.” There is a severity here as if it were survival which is constantly at stake and not the standard wayward passions of love. Unsurprisingly, sticking to conventions of marriage with children isn’t for her. Her relationship becomes increasingly complicated as her own ambitions clash against the demands of family life. She adamantly refuses to subsume her own desire to achieve things though she comments that “Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition off like an expensive coat that no longer fits.” She fights to maintain her independence with mixed results because she refuses to build relationships that are built upon too many compromises.

This is a striking and original book with a powerful voice which is alternately devastating and hilarious. It’s so appropriate that a puzzle features on the cover as at the end I felt in a muddle about how to fit all the narrator’s experiences and references together. The narrator herself seems to have the same dilemma. Because of this it’s effectively unsettling and thought-provoking.

Why Books Are Like Family

I’ve been back at my family’s house in Maine this week for the holidays. It’s a particularly nostalgic visit as my parents are planning on moving house next year so it will be my last time being in the house I grew up in. I’ve also (to my horror) been asked to clear out the many boxes of books I’ve stored here which won’t fit in my apartment in London – which is already chock-full of books. Of course, I’ll save a few but the rest of my carefully acquired collection I’m giving to a good bookish friend who runs an antique and ebay-selling business with her husband.

Books I'm giving away

Going through these treasures makes me consider why we develop such an emotional attachment to books. They are just paper, but they also feel like friends or family. Is this because with fiction we can feel so close to the characters found inside as we’re privy to their innermost secrets, thoughts and the events of their lives? Or because the ideas of the authors can sound so in sync with our own? There are certainly many books I’ve felt this with growing up. I’ve identified with a wide range of disparate characters over the years. I felt this early in life reading about Shea, a sole descendant of a great fighter, in the fantasy novel “The Sword of Shannara.” As a teenager I hoped I could become the thrifty, clever and enduring character of Úrsula Iguarán in Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” In college I sympathized deeply with uncertain Delia Grinstead in Anne Tyler’s “Ladder of Years.” In Eugene Ionesco’s only novel “The Hermit” the existential fears of the protagonist whose consciousness moves inwardly like a logarithmic spiral became my own. I wanted to approach life with the same determined logical process that detective-hero Xavier Kilgarvan takes in Oates’ novel “Mysteries of Winterthurn.” These are characters that became a part of me – that I both aspired to be like and learned from.

There are also many books I’ve acquired over the years which I haven’t read yet, but which seem to me to contain great potential. They are books whose meaning is more than just what’s written inside but the ideas I think it might contain. Since I haven’t actually read them yet, they exist for now as projections of the books I imagine them to be and the wiser person I hope to be once I have read them. Like relatives who you never actually speak to, you know that they are there waiting in case you want/need them.

Books are a physical presence in our lives. They sit on the shelf or piled by the bed or stay packed in a rucksack when we travel “just in case we need something to read.” They have a distinct smell. Their covers have a satisfying texture and weight. Used books sometimes have sentences underlined or old ticket stubs tucked between the pages. New books have a satisfying crispness like they are an important cultural document which will last forever. You glance at these objects and your mind connects fleetingly with what they contain. Your heart feels connected.

Of course, I’m only getting so ponderous and reflective about books because getting rid of so many (most of which I acquired in my university years) is making me sentimental. But I think it’s meaningful the way bookworms have such a precious attachment to their own personal libraries. They are more than just objects in our lives, but things we’ve spent some serious alone time with. Getting rid of them feels like sending granny to the old folks’ home when you know you’ll probably never see her again.

Have you ever had to make a painful book purge? Do you have some books you’ll refuse to ever part with?

Thunderstruck by Elizabeth McCracken

I’ve read such positive reviews of Elizabeth McCracken’s fiction and enjoy her engaging Twitter account so much, that I’ve been very eager to read her writing for quite some time. “Thunderstruck” is a collection of short stories which is vibrantly alive and demands the reader’s attention. If I were to hazard a comparison, her fiction is as inventive as AL Kennedy’s whose story collection All the Rage I reviewed earlier this year. It’s a cliché but the language and metaphors McCracken uses are really so refreshing that they make the reader re-view the world. There is also an absurdist tinge to her fiction (informed no doubt from authors like Ionesco who is referenced in one story) which is a form of writing that really thrills me. The stories are full of engaging, quirky characters who chaotically navigate through the narratives in ways which surprise and left me thinking about their meaning long after.

Many of the stories contain an unsettling edge as if chaos and violence lurks beneath the surface of ordinary physical objects. A suitcase falling over is likened to an animal collapsing in death. “Rubber bands in every drawer and braceleting every doorknob – why were old rubber bands so upsetting?” The physical world is imbued with feelings giving it a life of its own. Animals are also burdened by the sensibilities of humans who keep them. The emotional life of fish is speculated upon as thus: “if the fish were unhappy, we couldn’t tell. Maybe they wept in the terrible privacy of their tank.” In the mercenary environment of these narratives there is no subliminal desire for the characters. Everything is brought to the forefront by the narrator in a way that is both bewitching and startling. An uptight children’s librarian aggressively confronts the innocent sibling of a suspected murderer. A grandmother has an overwhelming urge to bite children. A mother wishes her daughter had died from a head injury rather than see her live incapacitated. Here the world is stripped down of façade. It’s raw and as fun-filled as it is fatal.

At the same time, there is a tremendous humour to this writing that often shades into the macabre. It celebrates the ridiculous of how strangely our desires pull us to do things we don’t understand. It assiduously points out the gravitational pull of the frivolous and petty over the profound. Often in these stories the ego feeds into people’s reactions to events – especially events that shouldn’t be about them like someone dying or helping an abandoned boy try to find his mother who has disappeared. The writing shows how we are terminally invested in narratives of our own making. McCracken delights in playing with language as well. Meaning is stretched out so metaphors sometimes become the reality in these characters' lives. The narrative voice can slide between stances of being totally objective to the collective "we" to being firmly entrenched in a character’s consciousness to speaking directly to “you” the reader. Although this sometimes jars, it shows the world view presented to be malleable and open to multiple perspectives and interpretations. Is what you’re being told the author’s perspective, a character’s or your own? It can be read in multiple ways. And this, like all great writing, makes you want to read it again and again.

The Martian by Andy Weir

To start out with, I have to make a confession that I’m a bit of an outer space geek. I’m not that into Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. What I’m more excited by are factual books and programs about space. One of my favourite before-bed activities is to read an oversized book someone bought me about the universe or watch the excellent BBC 1999 miniseries The Planets which provides a well-documented history of space travel. Ever since a holiday I took to Death Valley where I got to ride in a convertible with the top down and stare at the crystal-clear star-filled night sky I’ve been entranced by the stranger-than-fiction fact of the universe. So ever since hearing about Andy Weir’s massively popular novel “The Martian” described as a Robinson Crusoe story on Mars I’ve wanted to read it – especially since I actually read “Robinson Crusoe” earlier this summer. This novel is a true phenomenon as it was originally self-published, topped the Amazon bestseller list through a swiftly growing fan base and has since become a huge best-seller that’s edged into lots of top books of 2014 lists. It’s also being made into a film starring Matt Damon which is due to be released late in 2015. With all this hype, I was expecting a meditative story about man’s isolation in the universe as well as a riveting adventurous tale. I found the book to be entirely about the later.

The book starts in the middle of the action with astronaut Mark Watney suddenly finding himself stranded on Mars when the crew of the Ares 3 mission are forced to evacuate because of a large dust storm. He’s been slightly injured but able to secure himself in a small habitat that’s been set up on the planet. However, the other crew members of his mission assume he died from his accident so continue on their journey back to Earth and Mark has no ability to contact NASA to let them know about his predicament. All he has on this barren dusty planet is the relatively small habitat, a short supply of food, exploration equipment that’s been left behind and a few potatoes. How to get out alive? The novel is about Mark’s struggle to survive. It’s made up of alternate first person accounts by Mark logging in diary entries (Mark emphatically declares “I might die, but damn it, someone will know what I had to say.”) and passages about what’s happening on Earth and in the mission’s space ship.

There are some good, tense moments in this novel. However, after a while, it came across as a bit repetitive despite an impressive array of new obstacles that are put in Mark’s way. I got slightly bored through parts of it where the structural formula of each section starts to read like science – science – dilemma – scientific solution. It was a bit like watching an episode of Star Trek Enterprise where the viewer is presented with a seemingly impossible technical problem which is swiftly solved at the end of the show with a scientific solution that could never have been foreseen by us dumb civilians. Worried about freezing cold oxygen and nitrogen coming out of your regulator? Use the 1500 watts of heat from a buried lump of plutonium to constantly reheat the air. Duh! I’m being a bit harsh as it is all quite clever and I’m sure Weir did a massive about of research. All the science mumbo jumbo is made palatable for readers because Mark dumbs down the language and maintains a jocular tone in his diary entries. His tone gets a bit hokey at times, but is entertaining.

Less successful are the scenes between NASA technicians, publicity staff and mission crew members. Many exchanges occur with somewhat stilted dialogue and, although there was some character development between these people back on Earth, I didn’t care much about these characters. While Mark struggles with maintaining basics like eating and breathing, a media storm whips up on Earth where all of civilization wonders how Mark will survive. Although I realize NASA was under pressure because of this to help rescue Mark I did start to wonder: how much is it costing to save one man who willingly took this high-risk job? Not only is there the money which no doubt could have gone to helping thousands of lives on Earth. A Chinese scientist also remarks upon the mission to rescue Mark that “The operation is a net loss for mankind’s knowledge” as other important scientific space mission are abandoned in order to aid Mark’s retrieval. Mark himself acknowledges that attempts to save him must have cost “hundreds of millions of dollars.” I know the reader is supposed to be gripped and root for Mark’s survival, but even though he’s a nice guy I couldn’t help wondering if all that sacrifice is really worth it. It makes Weir’s overarching statement about the inherent goodness of humanity and the innate desire to help our fellow man falls a bit flat.

The Schiaparelli Crater on Mars

For a book that takes place on another planet and in outer space, there is very little description about what any of these extraordinary locations look like. However, Weir is good at describing Mark’s gradual physical breakdown from living on the Martian territory and the cringe-worthy smells that arise from breathing re-circulated air in a confined space that allows precious few bathing opportunities. Apart from the extremely occasional observation about the environment: “I never realized how utterly silent Mars is. It’s a desert world with practically no atmosphere to convey sound” all of Mark’s entries on Mars are about the minutiae of the science and technology he has at hand. Granted, he had already been on Mars for his mission before the book started so perhaps he was no longer awe-struck and he’s more consumed with immediate survival. However, he admits to having long periods of down time which he primarily spends watching old episodes of the show Three’s Company he found on another astronaut’s hard drive or reading pulp novels. He’s more reflective about these bits of ephemera than the condition of being stranded on another planet. Even when he has moments to appreciate the spectacular nature of his location such as this moment when he reaches a crater: “I got up to the rim, and damn, it’s a beautiful sight. From my high vantage point, I got a stunning panorama” there is no further description offered. He might as well be a tourist describing the view over the Grand Canyon. Granted, his character is a scientist not an artist, writer or philosopher. However, I would guess most scientists that pursue space travel so rigorously do so because they harbour underlying questions about the meaning of our existence in such a big empty universe. Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco is startlingly eloquent when pondering the meaning of humanity and the cosmos. Personally I would have enjoyed Mark’s narrative more if he were more than just a dry-natured, straightforward goofy guy.

This is where this novel diverges sharply from “Robinson Crusoe.” For all of Defoe’s questionable insights into human nature, at least he spends some time contemplating a man’s existential position when physically cut off from the rest of humanity. To be honest, the 1964 film Robinson Crusoe on Mars is even more intellectually searching with long passage of time devoted to Paul Mantee’s looking at wonder at the alien landscape and experiencing a piteous sense of isolation. Also, the film poster of a spaceman in a torn suit clutching a near naked man is much more appealing and enjoyably kitsch than the cover of “The Martian” but that just shows my personal taste.

Although I was expecting somewhat more of a literary novel, this book is not much more than a well-conceived straightforward thriller as it’s all about the plot rather than showing any reflective insight about life or doing anything interesting with language. Weir has a background in computer science and that very much comes across in his writing style. That’s totally fine as parts were thrilling and the novel gives a thoroughly convincing (at least from my extremely limited knowledge of science and technology) account of the logistics of trying to live on Mars as well as launching a wild NASA rescue mission. I just want a bit more from the novels I read and it felt like the author avoided any opportunities there were to bring alive the awe-inspiring fact of outer space or describe what must have been a visually spectacular place. In other words, I feel like this book is passive entertainment but in no way enriching. However, I am excited about seeing the upcoming film. With such a massive budget it will no doubt be spectacular and thrilling and actually show the beauty of space.

My short story 'Making Tea in the Dark'

Image from outside the Admiral Duncan, a gay pub in Soho on April 30, 1999 after the explosion.

I wrote a short story called 'Making Tea in the Dark' which references the 1999 London nail bombings. These were a series of three explosions targeted at minority groups which were organised by a militant neo-nazi sympathiser named David Copeland. I created a fictional victim of the attacks and the story follows his mother as she deals with conflicted feelings of isolation, anger and grief. I'm pleased this story has now been published in The Wells Street Journal. On Thursday I read the story aloud at the University of Westminster. You can read it online here: http://thewellsstreetjournalsubmit.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/making-tea-in-the-dark-by-eric-karl-anderson/