Baileys Women's Prize LongList 2015

The longlist has just been announced! It's a fascinatingly diverse group of books for this year's Baileys Women's Prize. I correctly guessed the below eight out of the twenty correctly. Click on the books for links to my reviews.

Lissa Evans: Crooked Heart 
Xiaolu Guo: I Am China
Emma Healey: Elizabeth is Missing
Emily St. John Mandel: Station Eleven
Rachel Seiffert: The Walk Home
Ali Smith: How to be Both
Anne Tyler: A Spool of Blue Thread
Sarah Waters: The Paying Guests

I've read positive things about these seven books, but haven't read them yet. 
Rachel Cusk: Outline
Samantha Harvey: Dear Thief
Grace McCleen: The Offering
Sandra Newman: The Country of Ice Cream Star
Laline Paull: The Bees
Kamila Shamsie: A God in Every Stone
Sara Taylor: The Shore

These final five books I've not even heard of before.
Patricia Ferguson: Aren’t We Sisters?
Heather O’Neil: The Girl Who Was Saturday Night
Marie Phillips: The Table of Less Valued Knights
Jemma Wayne: After Before
PP Wong: The Life of a Banana

Although I'm disappointed some of my favourites such as Marilynne Robinson, Joyce Carol Oates and Rachel Joyce didn't make it on I am really happy with the choice of longlist. I'm especially pleased to see three of my top ten books from last year on the list: Waters, Smith & Seiffert. I love how prizes like this give me an extra push to get to books that have been in my TBR pile for a while and also give me books I probably would have never found otherwise. After getting high recommendations from other bloggers on Newman, Paull and Shamsie's novels I'm probably going to start with these. However, I'm looking forward to reading through the rest of the list in the upcoming weeks and conferring with the other members of the shadow panel of judges. 

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

I came to love Ishiguro’s writing when I was studying at university. Reading “The Unconsoled” I was astounded by the way he could stretch narrative to act like a dream in order to say so much about ambition, love, creativity and fear. I still think of it as one of my favourite novels. At the same time, I could understand why some people were put off by the book because of its lack of a totally coherent story. Perhaps if I first came upon it earlier or later in life I wouldn’t have been as dazzled. But, as it was, I became a committed fan and I especially appreciated the variations of story and subject he exhibited in his book of short stories “Nocturnes” – another book which received uneven responses. Since 1995, he’s only published a book about every five years so any new one comes as a major event for me and his legions of fans. On the day “The Buried Giant” was published, I was one of the first people queuing up to buy a copy.

One thing is for certain: Ishiguro never writes in the same style and this novel is no exception. This is a journey tale set in early Medieval Britain with fantastical elements. It focuses on an older couple who the narrator refers to as Beatrice and Axel. The two travel through the countryside trying to reunite with their son. It takes place in a post-Arthurian age where Britons and Saxons who had so recently been in heated conflict have now formed a somewhat peaceful co-habitation within the countryside. This is a revisionist mythical version of Britain’s history and one which Ishiguro only makes possible by having an unsettling mist cover the country to fog the memories of its inhabitants. King Arthur’s famed cousin and Knight of the Round Table Sir Gawain features in an elderly state wandering the land in search of purpose now that he’s lost his beloved king and is sworn to a solemn secret duty. The majority of the novel comprises of a sort-of quest to find a feared she-dragon with a group comprised of Sir Gawain, the older couple, a Saxon knight named Wiston and a boy rescued from ogres named Edwin. Their stories diverge in different ways as they encounter many other characters along the way. Each central character has his/her own secrets and forgotten past. As these are gradually uncovered we come to question the meaning of memory and how it impacts our relationships to our families, communities and sense of national identity.

The relationship between the old couple Beatrice and Axel is written about in such a tender way with Beatrice fretting about Axel’s welfare and Axel lovingly referring to her as “princess.” But an unsettling sense of foreboding hangs over their story as their pasts are so unclear to themselves. Without any good or bad memories all that’s left is their habits of togetherness. At one point Beatrice ponders: “I wonder if what we feel in our hearts today isn’t like these raindrops still falling on us from the soaked leaves above, even though the sky itself long stopped raining. I’m wondering if without our memories, there’s nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.” The novel draws into question whether love is something which becomes embedded within our identities or if it is a behaviour which fades away if there is no sense of a shared past. Joined with their encounters with distraught widows and boatmen who pose questions which challenge the strength of their love, there is a troubling question of whether their relationship will endure if they realize the truth about their past and the location of their son.

Perhaps relationships which function well can only do so if certain resentments and frustrations are forgotten. Equally many relationships can grow stale because of a fear of being alone after so long or turn into a habit too hard or difficult to break. At one point the old couple go to visit a wise elderly fascinating monk named Jonus who asks Beatrice: ‘Yet are you so certain, good mistress, you wish to be free of this mist? Is it not better some things remain hidden from our minds?’ Because, if you think constantly about all the niggling problems (small and large) you’ve had with your partner of many years, you’ll no doubt live in a state of perpetual anger at that person and yourself for staying with her/him. It’s only with forgiveness and letting go certain things from the past that anyone is able to maintain a relationship over a great span of time.

Ishiguro raises this problem to a societal level as well in his depiction of the relationship between Britons and Saxons. Sir Gawain likes to extol the virtues of King Arthur for bringing these disparate groups together to a point where they can co-exist in relative harmony. Yet, at what expense was this fellowship built and if the truth about crimes against humanity are known should reparations still be made even all these years later? Amidst speculation about why the mist is making everyone forget there comes another point of view: “The stranger thought it might be God himself had forgotten much from our pasts, events far distant, events of the same day. And if a thing is not in God’s mind, then what chance of it remaining in those of mortal men?” Rather than any celestial power, this got me thinking about the way national memory works. If things are not commemorated by state or taught in history there is a large chance it will fade from the public memory. Is this what helps civilization to continue reasonably peacefully or does it cause buried resentments to fester and go unresolved? In the novel, there is the question of whether the Britons and Saxons are still furtively planning to conquer each other. The knight Wiston ominously states: “When the hour’s too late for rescue, it’s still early enough for revenge.” When two large communities of people have been in such heated conflict it feels that a certain balance of forgetting and mindfulness is necessary. Otherwise the groups will constantly feel in opposition to each other and battles will frequently be rekindled. However, the novel opens up these questions with the threat of potential violence which once laid waste to the land lying buried just beneath the surface.

The novel includes an interesting approach to telling the story over the course of the book. Much of it has the tone of folklore with descriptions explaining directly to the reader the way society functioned at that time. There is a heavy amount of dialogue between Beatrice and Axel which reveals what they are like as people and how their relationship functions. Then there are some points which switch to first person accounts narrated by Sir Gawain or come from the point of view of the adolescent boy Edwin so we see their own motives and back stories which aren’t revealed when they are with the larger group. The last section of the book goes to another place entirely. This could come across as a hodgepodge of storytelling, but it gave me different access points for coming to a larger understanding about the collective history of these characters. There are naturally several characters or particular parts of the story which I would have liked a more complete picture of, but it felt like Ishiguro preferred to leave many of these intentionally mysterious.

It feels too soon to tell how I rate this novel against other books by Ishiguro that I’ve read or even if I feel like the novel was successful on its own or not. There is a haunting quality to the book which has left me with certain vivid images found in the story and it’s left me pondering the nature of memory. It’s interesting to compare this novel against recently published “The Chimes” which speculates upon a dystopian future where memory is also erased. These books call into question what role memory plays in the formation of identity and whether we are freer when we’re not weighted down by the positive and negative aspects of our past. Whatever conclusions can be made from reading “The Buried Giant”, it did make me feel like I was boy again being read a particularly engrossing bedtime story which felt emotionally real and just beyond my understanding.

Baileys Women's Prize LongList 2015 Predictions

Next week on March 10th the long list for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction will be announced. I’m always excited about this prize which celebrates female writers, but I’m particularly enthusiastic this year because I’ve been asked to be part of a shadow panel alongside other bloggers and authors who will be reading books listed for the prize and debating about who the winner should be. This has been organized by the fantastic blogger Naomi over at TheWritesofWomen. She has made a list of predictions here as has fellow-panelist Dan here.

I’ve read so many fantastic novels by women in the past year it’s difficult to narrow down a list of what could be considered the best. The long list last year was 20 books strong so I’m giving a list of my 20 favourites below. Some of these books I loved so much I will be sorely disappointed if they aren’t on the list.

2015 Judges: Cathy Newman, Helen Dunmore, Shami Chakrabarti, Laura Bates and Grace Dent

Last year I was shocked to see that Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World which was one of my books of the year wasn’t on the long list. Equally this year I think Marilynne Robinson’s "Lila" and Joyce Carol Oates’ "The Sacrifice" are both brilliant and really must be listed. There are also some great novels by writers like Rachel Seiffert, Susan Barker, Catherine Hall and Lissa Evans which I feel haven’t had the recognition that they deserve. I’m aware there are many novels such as "Some Luck" by Jane Smiley, "Euphoria" by Lily King and "Outline" by Rachel Cusk that I haven’t yet read and I’m sure when the real list comes out I’ll be reading some of them. But, for now, here are my predictions. I'd like to note that after the shortlist was announced in 2014, I did successfully predict that Eimear McBride would win so watch this space for future posts and predictions!

Click on the titles below to read my thoughts about each of these great reads:

The Walk Home – Rachel Seiffert
Upstairs at the Party – Linda Grant
Elizabeth is Missing – Emma Healey
I Am China – Xiaolu Guo
The Incarnations – Susan Barker
House of Ashes – Monique Roffey
Thirst – Kerry Hudson
The Paying Guests – Sarah Waters
How to be Both – Ali Smith
The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy – Rachel Joyce
The Sacrifice – Joyce Carol Oates
Our Endless Numbered Days – Claire Fuller
The First Bad Man – Miranda July
The Chimes – Anna Smaill
A Spool of Blue Thread – Anne Tyler
The Repercussion – Catherine Hall
Academy Street – Mary Costello
Station Eleven – Emily St John Mandel
Crooked Heart – Lissa Evans
Lila – Marilynne Robinson

Have you read any of these books? Are there other books by female authors published in the last year you'd prefer to see on the list?

Satin Island by Tom McCarthy

Tom McCarthy is a writer who I find fascinating to read, but I don’t often enjoy his writing. In fact early on in “Satin Island” his narrator makes a proclamation which might as well be speaking directly to the reader: “events! If you want those, you’d best stop reading now.” McCarthy comes across more as an essayist than a novelist. The American cover for this book even plays upon the definition of it with words struck through like A Treatise, An Essay, A Report, A Manifesto, A Confession; the unimpeded declaration in the upper left corner insists that this book is A Novel, but I found it to be more like the other forms it claims not to be. That’s not to say there isn’t creativity to McCarthy’s cerebral treatises about the human condition and modern life informed by continental philosophy and post-modern literature. There is story here, but his fiction is definitely more firmly rooted in ideas. The only other book I’ve read by him is his novel “C” which I recall very little of except a particularly vivid séance scene which is revealed to be a total sham. In this new novel too there is a particularly fascinating section where a heretofore scantily-sketched female character named Madison comes to the forefront with an absurdly weird and meaningful story of her own. It’s the scene which I’ll probably take away with me and continue to mull over after having finished this novel where most of the other ponderous theorising will drip away.

The narrator U works at a company as a modern anthropologist where he sells to commercial enterprises their own narrative. He tells them stories about their customers’ relation to their products while borrowing heavily from concepts of structuralism and, in particular, his hero Claude Lévi-Strauss. This portrait of a corporate culture that likes to validate its marketing techniques with a vaneer of intellectualism is well observed. There is an arrogance to their task where the narrator believes “The world functioned, each day, because I’d put meaning back into it the day before.” I particularly appreciated the way U has a general lack of understanding about the multifarious work and developments which make his company successful. The company pioneers a new form of modern anthropology which they dub: “Present-tense anthropology; anthropology as way-of-life. That was it: Present-Tense Anthropology™; an anthropology that bathed in presence, and in nowness – bathed in it as in a deep, bubbling and nymph-saturated well.” The trademark symbol in the name seems particularly important as the driving factor behind all this “pure” research is profit-motivated rather than defining fundamental truth(s) about the culture. However, the narrator takes his profession seriously and sees himself as a scientist gathering clues about the modern age to feed into his larger project.

As a special assignment from his boss Peyman, the narrator’s real task at his company is to compile a great report which Peyman hopes should be “The Document, he said; the Book. The First and Last Word on our age.” Of course, this is an impossible task and no matter how vigorously the narrator follows several threads which he views as significant and make up the bulk of this novel: news of an oil spill, a crime of a sky diver whose tampered parachute never opened, the cancer which afflicts his colleague Petr or a vivid dream of a prosperous city paired with an island of refuse. Ultimately, his ambitious plans to compile a magnificent document crumble as the reader always knows they will from the moment he sits down at his magnificently cleared pristine desk. It seems appropriate that the novel begins with the narrator stuck in an airport. In this liminal space he is neither here nor there which neatly reflects his understanding about the influences which inform the news story which flicker across the screens he studies. Perspective influences all understanding so it’s an impossible task to collate “bundles of relations” into one objective point of view. Meaning remains hidden behind endless layers. All this amounts to narratives which we sell ourselves into believing we truly understand what is happening in the world and where we are going. As the narrator’s boss observes: “Everything, as Peyman said, may be a fiction – but the Future is the biggest shaggy-dog story of all.”

In his acknowledgements McCarthy explains that the gestation of this novel originated in a residency which he spent “projecting images of oil spills onto huge white walls and gazing at them for days on end.” The novel reads like a story formulated by someone who has spent a lot of time gazing at a wall and thinking hard about complicated matters. The narrator isn’t so much a protagonist who goes on a journey to be transformed, but a cipher through which the reader can be intellectually led from A to B to C. Presumably, since the narrator's name is abbreviated to the single letter U, the reader is meant to see himself mirrored there, but I saw little reflection of myself. The crucial difference between this novel and other novels of ideas such as Ali Smith's "Artful", JM Coetzee's "Elizabeth Costello", Joyce Carol Oates' "I'll Take You There" or any of WG Sebald's books is that these novels have an emotional crux which makes those ideas urgently relevant to the characters involved. The narrator is so emotionally removed from his quest that it feels he doesn't relate to the ideas he's contemplating other than to get his report into his boss. Personally, I like to feel more heart in the story I’m reading and I didn't find that throughout most of this novel. For the majority of the book, McCarthy is Serious with a capital S. A particular kind of masculine sense of humour exhibited in scenes such as one in a Frankfurt anthropology museum’s archive where Madison calls the narrator to arouse him with talk of “sex scenarios involving poles and savages” fell flat for me. However, the final scene does build to a touchingly climactic moment of indecision and haunting sense of loss. If you’re looking for thought-provoking intelligent debate, McCarthy has some serious and engaging things to say about modern life. But if you want to be swept up in an engaging story, there are plenty of other novels that are more satisfying.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

Don’t you love those moments when you are reading and the text seems to be speaking directly to your heart? Suddenly you’re so struck by the story that it feels like there can be nothing more important in the world than reading this book right now. I had that feeling consistently throughout reading “Lila.” I’ll make a feeble attempt to try to explain here why it struck me so deeply, but of course it’s impossible to summarize. Something about it must resonate in a deep way with my life right now and I feel so enriched for having read it. I was aware of this book when it came out last October, but for some reason I was wary of reading it. Marilynne Robinson is such a well-respected figure in the literary establishment and, while I read “Gilead” and remember appreciating it, it didn’t leave a lasting impression. But, sitting here now, reeling from having just finished reading this majestic, beautifully written novel I won’t be forgetting it anytime soon.

“Lila” begins with the story of a young girl who is poor, sickly and unwanted. She’s living in a house with a group of people who she most likely isn’t related to. The year at the start of the novel is never specified, but it’s probably around 1921 because there is a reference to The Crash several years later – something which doesn’t dramatically affect the people who have always been poor. When she contemplates the depression: “It was like one of those storms you might even sleep through, and then when you wake up in the morning everything’s ruined, or gone.” The girl is taken up by a woman with a scarred face who calls herself Doll. This woman values her in a way no one has ever cared for her before. She nurtures the girl back to health when she probably would have otherwise died unnoticed. The girl is dubbed Lila which is a name chosen by an old woman who the pair live with for a short amount of time. Her identity is gradually formed from scratch because she began with nothing.

Names have a tenuous connection with the things they are attached to in this novel because the thing exists before a name was needed. It’s as if Robinson has absorbed Plato’s Cratylus dialogue and incorporated this argument about the relation between language and the things they signify into a story about a life. So, in a sense, Lila is entirely self-created making everything she learns and experiences feel fresh for the reader as well. We’re so accustomed to being called our names since childhood, it’s startling to think what it would be like to be unknown/unloved all your life. When Doll takes her on and they decide upon a name to call her: “That was the first time she ever thought about names. Turns out she was missing one all that time and hadn’t even noticed.” Lila’s wide-eyed practical approach to the world makes us question the way language impacts how we perceive everything around us.

“That credenza was the shape of a coffin, with little legs on it, and flowers of lighter-colored wood on the front of it, some of them peeling off, some of them gone, just the glue left. It was always locked.”

Lila may not be aware of the way most people understand and interpret the culture and society around them, but she is not stupid. Robinson reveals throughout the novel how Lila is capable of complex feeling and tremendous depth of thought. To represent someone so under-educated yet still in possession of such intelligence is a tremendously skilful and difficult challenge for a writer. Later, when Lila is a young woman, she meets and marries a much older man, the Reverend John Ames. Through him and their conversations about life and the bible, Lila’s brilliance really shines through: “She knew a little bit about existence. That was pretty well the only thing she knew about, and she had learned the word for it from him. It was like the United States of America – they had to call it something. The evening and the morning, sleeping and waking. Hunger and loneliness and weariness and still wanting more of it. Existence. Why do I bother? He couldn’t tell her that, either. But he knows, she could see it in him.” Through their exchanges about the meaning of life and referencing Lila’s brutal experience of the world, the novel reveals startlingly clear insights into fundamental questions about existence.

The story is told in a curiously circuitous way so that references are frequently made to events in the future or people from other areas of Lila’s life. Yet, Robinson carries the reader along with such skill I never felt disorientated. It’s known from early on that Lila will marry the Reverend, but the way in which they meet and come together is revealed only gradually. What’s so radical and thrilling about the way this relationship is presented is that, even though they are married and Lila has the first real stability in her life, it’s never perceived by the characters as something that will continue with certainty. Lila has always planned to save money to take a bus to California – an amorphous dream of another life she always carries with her. In beautifully touching and heart-wrenchingly tender scenes Lila and the Reverend openly discuss the possibility of her leaving and their separation. This uncertainty about their future gives insight into the ambivalence everyone feels about their own direction in life and relationships. Despite any declares of eternal devotions, relationships can be abruptly ended by either partner. But love is a declaration of hope. As Robinson states: “Wife is a prayer.” This creates suspense in the narrative as well as showing a deeper understanding of the complex psychology of the characters.

Lila’s journey in this novel is one in which she slowly formulates a certainty about her identity and right to be despite her impoverished and neglected origins. Robinson sums up brilliantly the way in which her existence has been like an imitation of a life: “Her name had the likeness of a name. She had the likeness of a woman, with hands but no face at all, since she never let herself see it. She had the likeness of a life, because she was all alone in it.” There is a frequent sense throughout that Lila possesses a deep loneliness because of the solitary necessity of relying only on herself and the hardened nature she’s acquired from growing up in desperate circumstances. It’s a constant presence that Lila feels: “She had told herself more than once not to call it loneliness, since it wasn’t any different from one year to the next, it was just how her body felt, like hungry or tired, except it was always there, always the same.” This complicated emotional state has been a part of her existence for so long it’s become something she even feels in her body.

Robinson reads an extract from Lila and takes questions.

I was greatly moved by the beautifully delicate way Robinson goes about evoking Lila’s deep sense of aloneness and how it naturally makes her want to stop herself from fully trusting or revealing herself to others. It’s resignedly observed “That’s one good thing about the way life is, that no one can know you if you don’t let them.” Thus Lila is very careful about committing herself to anyone or anything because she understands how transitory and untrustworthy life can be. She’s defensive even when she’s offered kindness because “That was loneliness. When you’re scalded, touch hurts, it makes no difference if it’s kindly meant.” It’s startling to me how complexly Robinson crafts her character delineating Lila’s thoughts, feelings and motivations with short poignant phrases that perfectly capture a state of being.

Lila’s journey is very specific, but Marilynne Robinson has an extraordinary capacity for making her story feel universal. I would normally be hesitant about a novel which contains so much dialogue with religious text, but there is nothing prescriptive or preaching in this novel. The character of Doll is adamantly against religion. Yet, it’s the way in which she and Lila’s husband, the Reverend, both exhibit a beautifully patient sense of kindness for no other reason than out of human decency which is truly inspiring. Gradually Lila feels inspired to show kindness herself. It’s what lifts what would otherwise be a terribly bleak novel out of the depths. As I mentioned before, I’ve read “Gilead” which is an epistolary novel from the Reverend Ames’ perspective so I was already somewhat familiar with his character, but I haven’t read Robinson’s follow-up novel “Home” which is about Reverend Robert Boughton (a close friend of Reverend Ames). I don’t feel it’s necessary to read either of these before reading “Lila” but there are references to Boughton which I’m sure would have more meaning if I had. Like Rachel Joyce’s extraordinary “The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy” which is a companion novel to her earlier book, “Lila” is powerful enough to stand on its own. It’s is a deeply profound novel full of uncompromising truth and human spirit which I’m sure I will return to again and again.

Stay Up With Me by Tom Barbash

Quite often I like to start the day reading a short story. Even if I’m knee-deep in a good novel it’s enjoyable to get a taste of an entirely new perspective that can be consumed in one sitting before going about my day or plunging back into reading a longer narrative. Sometimes the results can feel slight and forgettable. At other times I’m left reeling at the profundity of what I’ve just read and wanting more. Reading through the stories in Tom Barbash’s “Stay Up With Me” made me greedy. I wanted to put off going to work and stay in bed reading through the whole book. The stories are fantastically entertaining and moving in the way they effectively delineate a character’s complex life in a few short pages. His fiction uses a variety of narrative styles capturing a range of perspectives from divorced parents to con artists to teenage boys. Each story empathizes with where that character is in their life at that point in time to give you a refreshingly new perspective.

Many of the stories have to do with family dynamics. Several of the stories deal with a parent’s relationship with their child or a son’s relationship with his mother/father. Barbash captures the way that the wavering romances of family members can affect the rest of the family. In ‘The Women’ a son warily observes the large amount of women his father dates after his mother’s death. His father moves on in his life in a way that he cannot. In thinking of his mother’s passing he observes “When she was on her deathbed, I was still deciding who to be like, and who to rebel against, though I still had time to fail them both.” Because he doesn’t feel like he’s reached a point of success or failure in his life, it feels like his parents have raced forward into death or new relationships without him and left him behind. The story ‘The Break’ in many ways shows this same perspective from the opposite generation where a woman only referred to as “the mother” suspiciously witnesses her college-aged son philandering around with an older woman she considers to be low class. Her life as a divorced woman feels somewhat suspended where she’s resigned herself to believing there won’t be any further enjoyment for her whereas her son is just starting to find his. When thinking of her son “It occurred to the mother that he was better suited for enjoying the world than she was.” While the son is busily transforming into a new role in life as a man, she is trapped in the false belief that she can only be a mother. These stories show the way our identities as members of families can be a kind of trap if we don’t understand ourselves to be continuously evolving multi-faceted individuals.

Other stories detail the experiences of non-traditional family units. In ‘Howling at the Moon’ a character named Lou is introduced to his new family now that his mother is having a serious relationship with a man who has several older children. “It’s a funny thing to meet a group of people older than you and be told that they are your family, you will live with them and not hate them or ignore them or fall in love with them.” There is a haunting sense of possible alternate futures if family relations had worked out differently. His brother died in a car accident when they are very young and this underpins the sibling absence caused by the daughter whose room he inhabits while she’s in Paris. This story speaks so powerfully about grief, emotional distance between family members and the oddity of assimilating into pre-formed family units.

One of the most profound and heartbreakingly poignant stories ‘Somebody’s Son’ depicts a pair of men who visit an old couple who own a farm in the Adirondacks. They try to use underhanded psychologically-manipulative tactics to get them to sell their property at a price substantially below what it is worth to developers. The increasing intimacy between one of the men named Randall and the old couple makes him into a kind of adopted son where the elderly couple have been neglected by their own children. It’s a tragic tale about the devious effect money has upon relationships. When it comes to commerce, caring and love simply become leverage for getting a better deal.

The stories are as equally forceful in their depictions about the complexities of romance. One of my favourite stories ‘Balloon Night’ is about a man named Timkin who throws an annual party in his upscale Manhattan apartment where people can watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons being inflated through the windows. His wife has just left him, but he continues with the celebrations regardless. Ironically he observes: “It was part of being a successful couple, he believed: the capacity to adapt.” Yet, Timkin finds it difficult to adapt now that his wife has left and pretends to the guests that she simply had to be away for work. The setting of the story gives an extremely meaningful perspective on his own life as he observes the party both from within and outside of the apartment. There is an ominous sense of doom as he watches it and struggles to accept his marriage might be over: “It felt like the moment in a movie before something terrible occurred, before the iceberg or the rogue wave. If only I could stop the film right here, he thought.”

Tom Barbash discusses his book Stay Up With Me and reads his story 'Somebody's Son'

Another powerful story which has a deceptively whimsical tone ‘How to Fall’ is narrated by a woman who hesitantly joins her female friend on a ski weekend for singles. The language in this story is much more casual and vernacularly-specific than the other stories. But its insights are no less meaningful in the way it depicts how she continuously thinks back to a past relationship she can’t let go. It touchingly shows the complex feelings experienced through being hurt by romance and learning to endure. Another difficult narrator tells the story in ‘Spectator’ where a man describes his relationship with a girl eighteen years younger than him. He realizes they probably wouldn’t be having an affair if she didn’t come from a hard background or had an abusive mother, yet he persists with the relationship despite how morally dubious it is or her evident desire to move on. Tragically he believes “Things weren’t perfect between us, but I thought being parents would ground us in a good way – rid us of the threat of possibility; I am not good when I have too many options.” His wish to create a new family unit on such a flimsy foundation speaks of the way he desires to trap himself in an idealized situation which is destined to fail.

Barbash uses different forms in certain stories to get his message across. For instance, in ‘Letters from the Academy’ an official from a tennis academy writes to the father of a sixteen year old student who he perceives to possess great potential. The story is only told in letter form where the man writing the letters becomes increasingly creepy and possessive about the boy in his charge. The story offers multiple twists while saying a lot about obsession and insecurity, yet I felt it could have been strengthened if the letters were dated so the reader could see how the transformation in tone is stretched over a defined time period.

The title story ‘Stay Up With Me’ is entirely different from the other stories in the way it wavers between reality and hallucination as it’s protagonist Henry dreams about his young life, difficult relationship and aspirations of becoming a screenplay writer. When describing the characters’ intimacy Barbash writes “They are fluent in each other’s faults and wounds and hypocrisies, and so sleeping together has the feel of sleeping with a failed part of themselves, like pornography with familiar dialogue.” This is one of the most striking things I’ve read about contemplating the rollicking interplay of emotions that can feed into sex and how intimacy can be indelibly tied with frustration.

Tom Barbash short fiction has appeared in many highly respected American publications. It’s fantastic that these meaningful stories have been collected into a single book rather than remain loose in various journals. His extraordinary talent is for giving a panoramic perspective of his narrators’ lives so both the past and possible future are spread around the present. His characters are touchingly presented as being caught in moments of time where their identity is wavering between transformation or becoming locked within an immutable form. “Stay Up With Me” gathers together an extremely robust group of complex impassioned stories.

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller

“Dates only make us aware of how numbered our days are, how much closer to death we are for each one we cross off.”

So declares a father to his eight year old daughter who he’s stolen away and taken to a remote cabin in a forest. From this point forward calendar time is obliterated. The two of them exist in isolation removed entirely from the rules of society. Their passports are destroyed. The girl Peggy is dubbed with the new name Punzel. Like the girl hidden away in the fairy tale, she's sheltered from any human contact but there is no secure tower here – just an expanse of wilderness. A self-sufficient life is meagre, hard and rough. She and her father James forage for food, set traps, reinforce their shelter and live by their wits. The only touch of civilization is a home-built soundless piano for Peggy to practice the music her mother used to play. James tells his daughter that her mother and everyone else in the world has died and that the land outside their boundaries has been obliterated. She believes him. Here they remain for many years.

The story of “Our Endless Numbered Days” is finely structured in chapters which alternate between a period of the late 70s/early 80s in the woods and 1985 when Peggy is reunited with her mother. So there is never any question about Peggy's survival, but the real mystery lies in why her father took her away and the series of traumatic events that occurred during this period of strict isolation. The novel contains several surprises which make it a thrilling read until the end. This is helped greatly by Fuller's assured talent for taking the reader to the edge of a very tense scene and leaving them hanging at the end of the chapter desperate to know what happens next. Often the proceeding chapter switches to another time period where the reverberating effects of Peggy's experience are acutely felt in more low key contemplative scenes.

It's very difficult to convincingly capture the voice and sensibility of young characters within a sophisticated narrative. I found Peggy's story believable because it's being told in retrospect from a time in her teenage years where she's trying to make sense of her life. Because of the emotional gravity of her experiences, she struggles to organize her memories into a cohesive story and make sense of them. Fable mixes with reality. Through the intense claustrophobia of the cabin space the imaginative blends into what's solid. So when she says that the angry father has turned into a ferocious bear or that she has transformed into a bird in hiding it feels literal rather than figurative. Peggy's doll Phyllis becomes a character in her own right, speaking because she's acting as a mouthpiece for the frightened girl's suppressed feelings and taking the role as her confidential companion. Amidst powerfully portraying Peggy's emotional reality the reader is acutely aware of what is actually going on because we can empathize with her harrowing experience.

A beautiful rendition of La campanella

Music is an important element that runs throughout the novel. Peggy's mother Ute is an accomplished pianist. Gradually over the period of the girl's separation the music of her childhood takes on a deeper resonance in her life acting as the touchstone to the girl's former existence and a wellspring through which she can creatively express herself. Liszt's technically difficult La Campanella is transformed through her imaginary replaying into something entirely her own.

The novel presents an extraordinary case where a girl's survival comes down to her own canny ability to imaginatively endure her father's extreme retreat from the world. It's compelling the way her distorted memories gradually unravel to reveal the shocking truth about what happened. Of course, she doesn't question her circumstances because as an impressionable child she trusts her father: “I slipped into it without thought, so that the life we lived – in an isolated cabin on a crust of land, with the rest of world simply wiped away like a damp cloth passed across a chalked board – became my unquestioned normality.” The meaning of survival itself is brought into question. Is it simply living/breathing or is it actively participating in the society around you? “Our Endless Numbered Days” is a gripping and powerfully-written debut novel.

The First Bad Man by Miranda July

I was entranced by Miranda July’s perspective of the world after watching her first full length film ‘Me and You and Everyone We Know.’ She has an extraordinary way of making you think about the meaning of language, the way people relate to each other, the absurdity of daily existence, the impersonality of modern life, the small hope found in artistic expression. It’s a view of the world which is entirely unique. It makes me question and it makes me laugh as much as it makes me feel blissfully disorientated. There is a danger of alienation because it makes reality so strange, yet because it approaches life from such a different point of view the sensations and feelings it evokes can resonate in unexpected ways not found in more traditional narratives. 

Her new novel “The First Bad Man” is narrated by a woman named Cheryl slightly older than July herself but who maintains a similarly revelatory perspective on life. Cheryl Glickman works for a company that produces instructional self-defence videos that also highlight the benefits of burning calories while fending off your attacker. She has an attachment to an older co-worker named Phillip. She’s convinced they’ve had romantic entanglements for several lives before this one, but Phillip is sexually obsessed by a sixteen year old girl. He persistently texts Cheryl requesting permission to engage with this girl sexually and continuously thwarts her desire for him. Cheryl maintains a scrupulous obsessive-compulsive routine for maintaining cleanliness in her house. This order is thrown into chaos when she takes in a wayward young woman named Clee who is in her early twenties and the daughter of her employers. The girl is slovenly, aggressive and highly sexually charged. Cheryl and Clee’s relationship changes a number of times over the course of the novel in ways that are fascinating, disturbing and surprising. In presenting this and other relationships the novel presents a radically distorted understanding of connections between friends, lovers and children that challenges our perceptions. It gives an understanding of how our sense of self morphs as we age and our relationships to other people change.

Throughout the narrative Cheryl’s perspective of the world colours the story so thoroughly it’s as if the drone hum of normality were entirely obliterated. Her understanding precedes any conventional collective delineation of day to day life so that “my internal voice was much louder than most people’s. And incessant.” The reader is immersed in this worldview where everything is recognizable but slightly off kilter. Cheryl’s view of existence clashes with other characters’ perceptions making many of her encounters awkward. It’s as if there is a tussle between Cheryl’s internal reality and the one experienced by everyone else outside of her sphere of being. The effect can be very funny as well as painful. At times the humour runs risk of being callous. For instance, there is a scene where she gets some Ethiopian food which she decides to discard: “I put it on the curb for a homeless person. An Ethiopian homeless person would be especially delighted. What a heartbreaking thought, encountering your native food in this way.” But I believe this sort of observation highlights how we can be so thoroughly selfish we are blinkered to recognizing the integrity of other people’s existence. This is also shown in Cheryl’s uncomfortable relationship with a man who comes to garden in her backyard every week and who she believes to be homeless, but turns out to be something quite different. Her assumptions challenge the reader’s own assumptions. It makes us aware of how rooted we are in our limited reality. Cheryl becomes so frustrated with this that she “imagined shooting an old dog, an old faithful dog, because that’s what I was to myself.” But it’s her encounters with other people which challenge her and push her into taking on new roles in life and broadening her empathy.

The narrator makes some startling observations about gender and how women are perceived in society. As a woman in her early-mid forties she’s highly aware that men of her age are still perceived as virile where she is only seen to be aging. Cheryl observes: “That’s the problem with men my age, I’m somehow older than them.” This sort of contradiction points out the fallacy of assumptions we make. She also makes witty and discomfoting observations about the way women can relate to each other. In one scene Cheryl objects to her female colleague bringing a child into work. “She gave me a betrayed look, because she’s a working mom, feminism, etc. I gave her the same look back, because I’m a woman in a senior position, she’s taking advantage, feminism, etc.” This sort of standoff marks a clash of understanding in how women should assert themselves and where the meaning of social causes can be skewered by personal objectives.

There is a surprising shift in the novel when Cheryl takes on the role of motherhood with a child she hasn’t given birth to. Suddenly there is a more serious gravity to the story. Throughout her life she has perceived a child spirit that she has named Kubelko who has been waiting for her to mother. She perceives this presence in many babies she encounters. When she finally discovers the child who she can raise as her own her frighteningly closed off world opens up to include another. It’s a kind of cataclysm which prompts her to assert her individuality and right to be.

This novel marks a fascinating change and evolved method for portraying experience from the films and stories by Miranda July that I’ve seen/read before. What I admire about her as an artist is the way she questions reality at every moment where most people are comfortable shrugging their shoulders and not worrying about it. Yet her perception doesn’t have the kind of angst which would make it feel too eye-rollingly moody because it’s cognizant of the humour and farce of it all. Her writing is reminiscent of the twisted desire and mania found in Jane Bowles' “Two Serious Ladies.” It has touches of the existential discomfort found in Jean Rhys’ early novels. It can be alarming and so different some people dismissively think of her writing as quirky. But there are emotional truths here which can jostle your perceptions of the world and make it feel refreshingly new. “The First Bad Man” is both entertaining and enlightening in the way it challenges you and makes you think.

Books, Boys and the Box Office

Anyone else noticed a disturbing new trend in recent Hollywood films? Consider ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ and ‘The Boy Next Door.’ The female protagonists of both of these movies are intelligent women who like to read and are seduced by Ken-doll cut outs who gift books.

In ‘Fifty Shades’ Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) is an English lit major on the brink of graduating when she encounters billionaire tycoon bachelor Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). During the course of his disturbingly relentless pursuit of Anastasia, Christian presents her with a gift of first editions of Thomas Hardy novels – the author that she claims inspired her passion for literature.

           In ‘The Boy Next Door’ Claire Peterson (Jennifer Lopez) is a single mother who teaches literature and loves nothing more than snuggling up with a good book until hunky boy toy Noah Sandborn (Ryan Guzman) moves in next door. While trying to charm his way into her household, Noah oh-so-casually offers Claire a first edition of The Iliad – never mind how utterly illogical this is. Watch this video clip to see the absurdity of this scene. Also, this movie has hilariously caused “The Iliad, first edition” to top the search terms at AbeBooks.

The message seems to be that well-read ladies can be wooed into dangerous affairs with men as long as those men have six packs and rare editions of books. I'm not saying a good body and books aren't attractive qualities, but it's the consequences as played out in these films which are alarming. Obviously these movies are trash (highly lucrative trash) and most people go to see them for fun. Of course, the content is laughable. The body images presented can only make everyone feel that they shouldn’t waste a minute reading because they should be on the cross trainer at the gym. The stories pretend to contain dramatic moral issues as an excuse for soft-core sex scenes.

What’s annoying is that Hollywood producers/executives are presenting a world where seemingly unapproachable smart women can be goaded into raunchy seduction with a whiff of musty old books. Do they really think women are that gullible? Are they really saying that a woman’s engagement with literature is just filler till the masculine totty next door comes knocking on her door? That rather than thinking about job prospects or a post-graduate degree after graduation a bookish girl will spend all her time making notations on a sexual contract from a business magnate?

It’s an insult to suggest that every woman, no matter how book smart, is really just a fool without good sense. More disturbingly they insinuate that when spinsterish women (Anastasia is a virgin and divorced Claire shuns dating) capitulate to passion, the story dictates that they must be punished. And why oh why do they have to use books as lubricant in their icky plots about seduction?

In the Beginning Was the Sea by Tomás González (translated by Frank Wynne)

I haven’t felt this ambivalent about a novel for a long time. I generally get to a point fifty pages into a novel or halfway through where I pause to consider what I’m getting out of this book. If the answer is nothing I generally put it aside. I wouldn’t throw it out because there are novels I’ve come back to years later and become captivated by after dismissing them on a first reading. Books that don’t grip my imagination more often bore me than offend me. But reading González’s “In the Beginning Was the Sea” I had to patiently consider the intentions behind what I was reading. The trouble is the tone of this narrative about a couple named Elena and J. who move to a rural area in Colombia, a small farm by the sea to live a more wholesome artistically-pure existence by eschewing the materialism of the big city. Immediately they are out of their element. We’re given descriptions of the repulsive sights and smells of the local rustic population. The focal point of this story is undoubtedly Elena and J. but the narrative isn’t in their voices. So do these judgemental descriptions belong to the author, the characters or some faceless narrator in between? This question felt like a vital one to me in determining whether this novel was essentially abhorrent or not.

Let me give you an example of some of the many descriptions of characters viewed only fleetingly in this novel: “Julito’s wife was fat – unsurprisingly – and surly.” It’s a distasteful and limited amount of information to give about a character, but it’s the pompous dismissive “unsurprisingly” which really grates in my mind. Who made the assumption about her character here? Is it J., the narrator or the author? Perhaps these opinions could be counterbalanced if Julito’s wife were granted some integrity later in the novel, but she’s never given this. Even when any praise is given to characters it’s done in a backhanded way such as this passage about a fisherman named Salomon: “Though taciturn and physically unremarkable, he seemed to have an extraordinary talent.” The overriding feeling of this voice we’re reading is someone who fundamentally dislikes people. J. and Elena are not immune to such critiques either, but the novel is dedicated to rendering their grand mission as a noble – if fatally-foolish and tragic enterprise – whereas the rural population they live amongst are considered simply repulsive. Later on J. engages in an affair with a local man’s wife who “was an abysmally stupid and sensual woman, a warm mass of listless, voluptuous flesh.” Although he’s disgusted by her, he’s aroused enough to screw her. No doubt these protagonists from a privileged background refuse to grant the people around them human respect, but I don’t want the author trying to convince me that such a narrow-minded, sneering perspective of people is the only one that exists.

J. drinks a phenomenal amount of an alcohol called aguardiente in this novel.

The narrative is muddled by the intentions of Elena and J. If you’re worried about reading spoilers here you really shouldn’t be because the book never makes any mystery about what a tragic enterprise it is that they embark on. Throughout the book we’re given flashes forward to how it all ends. The couple move to their new life to become farmers and merchants because they have an idealized notion about the nobility of the working class. The novel records the painful process of these notions being demystified as their business flops and people they hire fail them. J. sinks into alcoholism while Elena makes an enemy of everyone in the village. What seemed at first like paradise turns into a nightmare. Such naivety does seem ripe for satire – yet, I don’t believe it should be done at the expense of people who have resided in one place all their lives and are simply going about their day. Very late in the novel it’s remarked that J. “thought back to the time when he considered a pretentious critic at some literary magazine more truthful, more important than a taxi driver and his family washing their car and bathing in a cold, rocky stream.” If he really considers their existence as dignified, the narrator grants all these peripheral characters precious little dignity.

This novel was originally published in 1983. González has gone on to become a well-respected novelist in Colombia and is slowly gaining more global recognition. I don’t normally read reviews of novels I’m blogging about until after writing my own thoughts because I don’t want my opinion to be swayed. But this novel had me so confused I had a look at a few. I learned from this review in the Independent that the novel was inspired by González’s own brother who embarked on an identical kind of tragic enterprise. Knowing how close to home it’s subject and themes were to the novelist makes the question of narrative tone even murkier. Surely the author could not help feeling critical of the protagonists as well as the rural population – some of whose actions led to his brother’s destitution and death. That’s not to say I think people of disadvantaged socio-economic groups should be idealized or the actions of specific individuals shouldn’t be open to criticism. But how to take descriptions which sneer so openly at people? Normally readers look to literature for a sense of empathy. Though we may dislike or condemn some characters’ actions, we generally want to understand their point of view. “In the Beginning Was the Sea” resists such openings for sympathy by presenting blunt opinions and a world of discordant, closed points of view. By the end of the novel, I was somewhat beguiled by the removed and severe nature of the story. Yet I also found myself wanting more compassion to assuage the cruelty of this version of reality.

The Fish Ladder by Katharine Norbury

Who are you and where do you belong? Most people get through day to day life secure in the knowledge that they have a home and loved ones waiting for them. But some people can be perpetually hounded by these questions as if their place within the world was uncertain. Even if we're told that we're loved and wanted it's difficult to believe. So we wander through city roads or hike in the countryside as if marking the solidity of the environment around us could fix our being in the world. Life feels too ephemeral and our place within the world feels volatile. This is why the character of Rhoda in Virginia Woolf's novel “The Waves” continuously knocks on objects reassuring herself that they are fixed. People find a security in rambling. Walking through a landscape there is a comfort to seeing and feeling it there all around you because you understand that you too are a physical presence within it. While moving through the world we can also move through our minds to sort through the memories and stories we carry which make us who we are.

Katharine Norbury's candid memoir records her expedition to trace a river to its source.  Like the central metaphor of a fish ladder this isn't a straightforward start to finish journey. There are pools of experience along the way which hold her. The primary impetus for making this trek is the miscarriage of her unborn child. This raises questions of legacy. She was adopted at a young age and cared for, but has no knowledge of her birth parents. With her adoptive father's death, the critical illness of her mother and her own diagnosis with cancer, life is understood to be incredibly fragile. She has a wonderfully supportive husband and friends. But, in terms of blood ties, she and her adolescent daughter Evie exist in a circumscribed genealogical pond. Since Norbury is acutely aware of this she seeks to discover who her birth mother is like she seeks the source from which a river flows. The result is an emotional journey which reassesses the meaning of belonging.

The writing in this book is absolutely stunning. Norbury's figurative language recasts the landscapes of Spain, Wales and Scotland so they feel invigoratingly fresh and alive. She imbues physical place with her own being – all the memories and possibilities of what might have been: “The rest I left on the shore; a life I could have known, but never did, its myriad possibilities suspended.” Alongside the author’s observations about the world around her she references a diverse and relevant range of poetry from the likes of R.S. Thomas, John Donne and Dylan Thomas; prose writers such as C.S. Lewis, Wilkie Collins, Isak Dinesen and John Cheever; classical texts such as “The Mabinogion”, “The Odyssey of Homer”, local mythology and the myth of Persephone. Quotes from these texts add an informed understanding of how her touching expeditions and experiences are a part of the fabric of history and place. Even the lyrics of ‘Over the Rainbow’ which the author hums occasionally during her walks take on an added level of poignancy. But the overriding texts which inform this memoir are Neil M Gunn’s “Highland River” and “The Well at the World’s End” which literally inform the travels she takes. His spirited desire to connect with nature also influences the way in which Norbury interacts with and lyrically interprets the world around her.

Norbury and her daughter visit Antony Gormley's art installation: 'Another Place' at Crosby beach.

So beautiful are her passages about the environment she holidays in or walks through you could almost miss the dangerous hint of menace underlying much of it as she sorts through her emotions and the past. Like stepping into a covered sinkhole suddenly you can find yourself enveloped in the heartbreaking centre of her pressing dilemmas. The facts of these hit the reader with their stark truth such as this passage about her husband: “The argument that had railed over the baby, the possibility of the baby, the things that had been said, that could not now be unsaid lay between us like a badly made rope bridge upon which I dared not trust my weight.” The turmoil of a couple who experience the loss of an unborn child is sensitively handled. The only other book I can think of that has approached this subject with as much meaning is Niven Govinden’s powerful novel “Black Bread White Beer”. A sense of mourning is keenly felt as a persistent undercurrent in Norbury’s day to day life. Alongside encounters with beauty, joy and disappointment “I carried my dead in a net, a clattering catch of bones, of promise, of might-have-been.” The potential for possible alternative futures if loved ones had lived is deeply felt in all experience.

Family is key factor in understanding who we are. Norbury elegantly describes this: “Genealogy allows us to construct our identities from our own myths and legends, to know who we are, and where we have come from. Or we can use the stories as a starting point from where we might like to go, a legacy to be built on or rebelled against.” Without this foundation it’s difficult to build a story of one’s own. The author addresses not only the emotionally fraught experience of an adoptee trying to connect with the family she was born into, but also the logical complications with doing so. The surprising results of her discoveries are both devastating and inspiringly hopeful.

It’s natural to compare this memoir about grief with last year’s multi-award winning brilliant book “H is for Hawk” about a woman dealing with the loss of her father. However, Norbury’s sensitive account is entirely distinctive. The writing is much more poetic and quick-shifting – more rooted in myth - in comparison to Macdonald’s rigorously-intellectual and regimental prose. Macdonald remains intensely confined and solitary with the goshawk she trains whereas Norbury attempts to assuage despair through walking, searching and striving to connect with the environment and others. Norbury’s book presents a landscape heavily ensconced in a lineage within which she is struggling to understand her place due to her circumstances and the fettered nature of her bloodline. Of course, both books give equally valid perspectives, but I’m just trying to make the point that they are rather different in their approach and conclusions. 

This book stands on its own as a powerful account of human experience. However, it will also no doubt give people who have experienced similar life challenges a touchstone of understanding and mental avenues through which they can process their feelings. Norbury doesn’t just deal with the riotous emotions which accompany her journey, but also the blunt reality of financial strain and emotional tension within a relationship that accompany severe loss and physical illness. This touching and elegantly-constructed memoir is an impressive story that needed to be told.

The Chimes by Anna Smaill

I’ve read a couple of fascinating dystopian novels published recently: “Station Eleven” and “Not Forgetting the Whale.” Both use a dark forecast of the future to say something meaningful about the present in unique ways and not necessarily in a political fashion, as most dystopian fiction tends to do. This is true with “The Chimes” as well, but it is an extraordinarily different kind of novel. It presents a recognizable, but distorted version of London at some point after a catastrophic event. Familiar streets and landmarks still exist but many names have been recast with phonetically-spelled playful names such as Batter Sea, Dog Isle, Mill Wall or South Walk Bridge.  It’s a time when the written word has been outlawed with communication occurring primarily through music. New memories cannot be created and the minds of ordinary citizens are perpetually wiped clean by a daily musical ritual. All experience has been distilled to the resounding tradition of OneStory. The result is a nightmarish world where creativity and personality has been squashed into a monotonous constant.

Once you become familiar with the world-view of “The Chimes” the plot is fairly straightforward. A young man named Simon Wythern arrives in London without any concrete knowledge of where he’s come from or what he should do apart from a vague mission set by his mother to locate a woman who runs a market stall. He survives in the city by joining a gang who scavenge through the tunnels of London to find materials to trade. Leading the roving pact is a semi-blind young man named Lucien who takes Simon into his confidence. Together they set out to uncover the truth about the authoritative system which rules over them and discover how to utilize Simon’s natural gift for recovering memories. The language in the novel is as jarringly new as Eimear McBride's “A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing” and set in a London as fantastical as Susanna Clarke's masterful “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.” So it takes some time to become accustomed to the rhythm of reading “The Chimes’” narrative. However, the rewards are well worth the effort as it makes the experience more thrillingly immersive. It’s like your way of thinking has been temporarily reprogrammed to see this alternative reality that Smaill has created. The result is that you might view the real world from a new perspective. I found it affected both my dreams and the way I thought about my own memories.

"Between river and city, between water and air. There are letters of white code painted across it that speak in letters I cannot read. ENTRY TO THE TRAITOR'S GATE, they say."

The novel prompts many questions about our relationship with memory and the past. The only sure way the characters can remember an incident is when they transfer their memories into physical objects. This isn’t so different from the way in which we hoard photographs, letters or objects as touchstones which mentally transport us back to people and places of the past. But there is also body memory. This is formed more from habit or connection between body and place. So which memories are important enough to keep? This issue is raised in the narrative: “What is it that tells you to make a memory? I can't say. Something that sits raised and raw against the skin of the day. Something that presses you.” Certain experiences trigger something inside us which we intuitively know is fundamental to letting us grow and adapt better to the world we live in. Memories of these experiences have practical use. But other memories are based in emotion and subject to creative distortion. “The Chimes” also prompts the question of whether the memories we hoard and cling to like the characters in this novel really amount to anything more than tattered relics?

There is also the issue of collective memories – the stories which are told and retold which help us to define ourselves as a culture. At one point two characters have this conversation:

“'What do you think made certain memories important?'

'Those that were bigger than single stories. That told people something about themselves in this time, about where they were and why.'”

This is when the personal transforms into the emblematic because one person’s story says something crucial about where our civilization came from and where it’s going. Details might change with each telling, but the kernel of an idea remains. The novel also raises more philosophical questions about human nature such as: are memories the things which define identity or are there inherent characteristics within each of us that make us individual? There is nothing overtly epistemological about this novel’s story, but these issues hover lightly in the background due to the way the story is set up.

I noted down a short glossary of musical terms to help better understand reading The Chimes

Finding deeper meaning in novels doesn’t amount to much if you aren’t engaged with the characters in the story and “The Chimes” has a fascinating variety of personalities. Pact member Clare is a compellingly tough self-harming individual. An eccentric old woman named Mary offers surprising insights. The most crucial relationship in the book is between Simon and Lucien. The meaning of their connection changes over the course of their journey and develops into something touchingly romantic. This is handled with great care. I commend the way that the issue of their love affair isn’t to do with the fact that they are two young men, but that they are people from radically different socio-economic backgrounds. Through feeling invested in their relationship, I was also drawn more into the trajectory of the story and made me desperate to know how it all ends. The climax of the novel takes the reader somewhere unexpected with a satisfying twist.

I don’t think there are any fully formed conclusions the reader is meant to take away from travelling through this totalitarian version of the future. But I think “The Chimes” does present a caution about imposing strict homogeneous rules about the arts. The beauty of art is found in the strength of individual voices; dictating that every voice must strictly adhere to certain structures for that expression to have meaning is inimical to art. It’s admirable that this author’s first novel creates an alternate world which is so fully formed and substantial. This is an example of a writer who is drawing upon her strengths to create a new novel form with its own structure and rules. Smaill utilizes her background in music and violin performance as well as her finely-honed poetic voice to create a cohesive language with which to tell her story. I have no musical training or technical knowledge of the subject, yet by the end of the book I not only understood the musical terms through which the characters communicate but felt like I could almost hear the sounds of their world. To have such an impact on the way a reader thinks makes “The Chimes” an impressive accomplishment. 

Sequels in Literature

It’s been heartening to see the buzz of excitement around the announcement a few days ago about Harper Lee’s new book “Go Set A Watchman” coming out this year. Like so many people, I loved reading “To Kill A Mockingbird” when I was a teen and, although there was no sign of this novel ever going away, how great that there is now a renewed interest in the original book which many people will no doubt read for the first time or reread. Who knows what the quality of it will be like, but it will be fascinating nonetheless. It’s had me thinking about sequels in literature.

It often feels like sequels of classics that come out many years after a book has been published and are written by another author are just looking to make easy money. I'm not talking about Harper Lee obviously who apparently wrote this book before “To Kill A Mockingbird.” As most people only think of sequels in terms of films these days, it’s interesting to note that there has been a long tradition of sequels in literature. I only know this because my boyfriend published an academic book last year titled “The Hollywood Sequel: History & Form, 1911-2010” by Dr Stuart Henderson. Obviously, I highly recommend it. Even as a non-film studies person it’s a fascinating and entertaining read about Hollywood. In an early chapter, it also discusses how many classic and 19th/20th century authors wrote sequels to their books.

The cash in sequel books I'm referring to are novels like “Scarlett” by Alexandra Ripley whose story followed from "Gone with the Wind." I'm not writing with total authority here because I haven't read “Scarlett” (but watched the tv series). Most reviewers were very critical of the book. As far as storyline, it seemed so preposterous and out of character with how Scarlett was in the original book - would she really go to Ireland?

One of my favourite literary prequels would have to be Jean Rhys’ “Wide Sargasso Sea” which tells the story of the famous “mad woman in the attic” from Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” as a girl growing up on a Caribbean island and how she came to be the mysterious woman in Bronte’s novel. Having been born on the island of Dominica herself, this novel succeeds so well I think because its invested so much with the author’s own identity and personal history (not literally but her emotional experience). It also gives voice to a character that was marginalized – not necessarily by Bronte – but by the restrictions of the plot as laid out in “Jane Eyre.”

A recent example of a brilliant literary sequel is Rachel Joyce's “The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessey” which came out in the autumn last year and is a sequel to “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.” I think it succeeds because it was written by the same author and, though it has lots of references to the first book, it stands on its own and could be read without having read the first book.

Another good example of a literary sequel is JM Coetzee's novel “Foe” which is his sequel to Daniel Defoe's “Robinson Crusoe”. I read both of these while staying on a Greek island last year. Even though this was written many years later and by another author it too succeeds because Coetzee uses the story as a commentary on women and race as represented (or not represented) in Defoe’s text. It’s more like a dialogue. While it was a fascinating read and contemplates the form of writing itself, I don’t think it stands on its own as a satisfying story. While “Robinson Crusoe” stands as an iconic figure in our culture today, it’s probably not well known that Crusoe himself wrote a sequel titled “The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.” I haven’t read it but can only guess it’s not as much interest as the original since it’s now virtually forgotten.  

I’ve been trying to think of other sequel books. Do you know of any particularly bad or good ones? Or do you have any favourites?

Second Life by SJ Watson

I think SJ Watson’s new novel “Second Life” has one of the best teaser blurbs I’ve read in a long time:

“She loves her husband. She's obsessed by a stranger. She's a devoted mother. She's prepared to lose everything. She knows what she's doing. She's out of control. She's innocent. She's guilty as sin. She's living two lives. She might lose both.”

What a succinct and enticing way to draw a reader in!

The tone is apt because this psychological-thriller is written in a similar fast-paced style narrated from the point of view of emotionally-torn Julia Plummer, a married photographer living with her husband Hugh and son Connor in London. Although they have a relatively cosy and happy life, it’s been rattled recently by Julia’s younger sister Kate who asks for custody of Connor. The teenage boy is really Kate’s son, but Julia and Hugh have cared for him since he was a baby because of Kate’s instability. In the novel’s opening we learn that Kate was murdered in Paris under mysterious circumstances. Julia used to have her own wild side before settling down. Partly as a way of dealing with her grief, she becomes entangled in an online romance which spills over into real life. Her stable life is threatened by the new secret second life she begins to lead while also searching for answers about her sister’s death.

Central to the story is the notion of parallel lives that people lead. Early in her adult life Julia spent some untamed years in Berlin where she had an intense affair with a man named Marcus and established a reputation as an artistic photographer. Her lifestyle spun out of control with tragic results, but finding Hugh and establishing a stable home life saved her. However, she still desires the undomesticated aspects of this earlier time which are realized within her affair. Sex isn’t usually only motivated by desire; factored into Julia’s experimentation are her insecurities, yearning to freely express herself or, as she admits at one point, “It’s the simple thrill of being wanted.” As is common in modern life, cybersex is a way for people to test out repressed aspects of their sexuality. It’s a common paranoid fear that you may end up chatting up online and then meeting in real life someone who turns out to be a psycho. While this rarely happens in reality, this novel is a thriller so it’s not possible for Julia to meet a decent man looking for fun or for her unleashed desires to stay in neat little compartments. Occasionally her lover becomes a bit too much of a comedy villain during the story. But what drives the narrative and makes it a compelling read are the true motivations and mounting mystery about the real identity of this charming, seductive rogue who enters her life.

We all operate on different levels of self-delusion in order to justify our actions and not be weighed down with guilt. This ranges from large lies like Julia’s initiating an affair in order to investigate clues to smaller lies like breaking her diet to eat chips because she thinks she deserves it. Throughout Julia’s narrative the reader learns about the different ways she’s deceiving herself so that while facts continuously come to light we question the reliability of what she’s telling us. Lies abound in this story and it adds a compelling complexity when the reader questions not only the characters she meets but the narrator herself.

This raises larger issues about the distinction between identity and self-presentation. At one point she observes that “we’re wearing masks, all of us, all the time. We’re presenting a face, a version of ourselves, to the world, to each other. We show a different face depending on who we’re with and what they expect of us. Even when we’re alone it’s just another mask, the version of ourselves we’d prefer to be.” This is another way of putting William James’ theory that people have a different self for every social situation that they participate in, but it adds a level of complexity about the way individuals choose to see a more idealized self when alone. As the different lives Julia leads between her husband and her lover become increasingly complicated, she herself is uncertain who she really is when alone.

A really poignant aspect of this novel is its depiction of Julia’s struggle with alcoholism. During her time in Berlin she developed an addiction to alcohol and drugs. Although she’s been sober for many years it’s still a struggle, especially in moments of stress. What Watson captures so well is the psychological steps the addict goes through when facing temptation. Rather than impulsively following the desire to drink when it comes up, Julia has learned to pause and think through the emotions which are making her want alcohol. By being conscious of this she can deal with these emotions in a way other than drinking. She’s also learned techniques for dealing with social situations that include drinking where she doesn’t need to divulge the nature of her illness. This representation of someone’s way of dealing daily with alcoholism felt very true to life and meaningful.

“Second Life” makes a gripping read in the skilled way it captures the moment to moment logic of its sympathetic narrator and drops well-timed suggestive hints which prompt the reader to experience pleasurable “ah-ha” moments of understanding. It also presents a complex understanding of sexuality when the distinction between fantasy and reality becomes blurred. While I was able to guess a couple of the twists along the way, it succeeds as a thriller by delivering a surprising ending which I didn’t see coming.

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

It's always felt to me that at the centre of Anne Tyler's novels about genteel middle class Baltimore life there is horrific fear. What if this life you've worked so hard for is something you wake up wanting to escape from? What if the people closest to you and the family you've known all your life turn out to be strangers? Tyler presents these insolvable dilemmas by following the daily life of her characters while also acknowledging the absurdity and uselessness of the questions. Of course there are a multitude of possibilities in life and we can't choose them all because we're caught in the unstoppable flow of time which necessarily limits the options we have. Even though we can spend our lives with people we're linked to by blood or marriage and we can know their habits, we cannot know what's truly in their hearts. In Tyler's fiction people can walk out the door one evening to become someone new or wake in the morning to see that their partner of forty years is someone they've always hated. It's this daily risk which makes the finely constructed domestic detail of her narratives both terrifying and thrilling.

In “A Spool of Blue Thread” she takes a new approach to this by writing a family saga which moves backwards through the generations. At the start we're introduced to the Whitshanks who live in the perfect suburban home. They have four adult children, but it's their third child Denny who is the wayward black sheep. He flashes in and out of family's life unable to settle. Unsurprisingly, it's the troubled child which gets the most attention and therefore draws resentment from his siblings. Tyler then shifts focus to the mother Abby. She writes about Abby and Red's uncomfortable transition from old age to elderly. The family rally together to decide how to care for their parents Red and Abby while still allowing them to maintain their independence. Finally the story moves back to the family's origin: Red's parents Junior and Linnie with their mysterious past. At the centre is the Whitshank family home, an idealized space built by Junior himself for a middle class family and gradually purchased for his own family. The home is passed through the generations as a symbol of self-creation, a quintessential American family who started with nothing and have formed a lineage with many branches.

This novel in triptych form reminds me of Gauguin's incredible painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? from the way it unpretentiously displays every stage of life and multiple generations. At the same time it quietly asks these fundamental questions about the nature of being. Tyler is also cleverly disentangling the myth of the idealized nuclear American family. On the surface, the Whitshanks give an impression of established stability. Yet, everything about them was acquired, if not exactly immorally, but on the sly. Junior schemed to purchase the family home from the Brills, the family he worked for. Red's sister Merrick connived to gain the wealthy husband her good friend intended to marry. A child who is suddenly made an orphan is taken into the Whitshank home and raised as one of their own without any formal adoption taking place. These are all things which the family have appropriated as aspirational accessories to present themselves to the world as who they want to be. The great tension in this novel is between becoming and being. Whether you have truly earned what's in your life or not, when do the people/things around you turn from a symbol of what you want to become into a fundamental part of who you are?

The impressive thing is how lightly Tyler addresses all these concerns in her writing. There is nothing ponderous about her narrative at all filling it with so much detail about the delicate balance of family relationship and the minutiae of daily life. She includes a good degree of humanity and humour into her prose. When recounting one of the two stories which are marked as vital to the family's oral history, Tyler writes of Junior: “In 1936, he fell in love with a house. No, first he must have fallen in love with his wife, because he was married by then.” This sort of wry observation has all the humorous qualities which you can recognize as characteristic of a tale endlessly retold over the dinner table. Only later in the novel does it take on a darker quality. There is a fine balance to the way the family narrates their own story in this novel and the facts of their history which are doled out by Tyler herself.

Many of Tyler's observations about her characters behaviour come across as true to life, things you can relate to yourself or things which you can recognize as similar to people you know. There is the odd occasion when she does slip. When describing in parentheses an example of one character's generosity of spirit she remarks: “(He traded his new bike for a kitten when Jeannie’s beloved cat died.)” It makes me wonder, what sort of transaction would estimate a bike as equivalent value to a kitten – animals which are notoriously given away for free when a family has a cat that's given birth? And even if a trade like this did take place what parent would allow their young boy to make it? Aside from some small quibbles I had at times, Tyler's characters come across as well-formed and relatable.

In this novel's best moments it has all the heft and pleasures of “To the Lighthouse.” Virginia Woolf was a writer who cherished the physical detail and small interactions of life because these tiny realities are the line of life. They add up to saying something substantial and meaningful about existence. “A Spool of Blue Thread” gives us a deep insight into the type of family you could live next door to. At the lake where the Whitshanks vacation every summer there is a family who rent a cabin adjacent to them. They see them every year, but never make contact. Instead they observe subtle changes about how the family grows and changes from a distance. The Whitshanks feel that their story is parallel to their own, but essentially unknown. Tyler's writing is about making that contact where polite society does not. In doing so, she shows all the passion and fear that is a part of every family life.