After Before by Jemma Wayne

The question of how to reconcile the past is at the centre of Jemma Wayne’s debut novel “After Before”. What’s fascinating about this book is the way the author approaches this dilemma through the lives of three very different kinds of women. Emily is a young, Rwandan-born woman living in England. She struggles to survive on low-paid work and lives in social housing. Having abandoned her real name Emilienne because English people have difficulty pronouncing it, she’s effectively invented herself anew and blocks out memories of her past as much as possible. Vera is another young woman who is a recently-converted Christian trying to live her life on the straight and narrow. During her early life she lived a more reckless existence that was freely-sexual and drug-fuelled. She desperately wants to be the kind of virtuous individual worthy of her extremely virtuous fiancé Luke, but she’s hampered by a horrific secret from her past. Luke’s mother Lynn is in her late 50s and recently been diagnosed as being in the advanced stages of a terminal cancer. She filters her disappointment about all the compromises she’s made in her life into her hidden passion for painting. The stories of these women’s lives twine around each other as they variously come together and change the way each woman understands her own past.

It’s interesting how Wayne effectively captures the way individuals maintain a constant narrative about their lives in the present. Vera likes to believe herself to be the protagonist of a larger story being viewed and commented upon: “If Vera’s life were a film, there would be a lot of voiceovers.” She’s making earnest efforts to become what she understands to be a better person, yet she can’t fully believe in her reformed self because of the hidden guilt she carries over the (moral and legal) crimes she believes she’s committed. Rather than seeking out the truth about the effect of her actions, she distances herself from her past and mentally self-flagellates herself which prevents her from becoming the person she really wants to be or have an authentic relationship with the man who has asked her to marry him.

Lynn has very conflicted feelings about her future daughter-in-law Vera. She’s particularly offended by the way her sons have decided she requires help in her house given her medical condition. Vera is elected to spend her days with her, yet all Lynn wants to do is foster her secret passion for painting which Vera’s presence prevents. There are incredibly socially-awkward scenes where the two women try to make conversation over civilized cups of tea. Painting is the way in which Lynn is trying to make up for lost time. She feels that she’s sacrificed any prospect of a career or making a cultural impact upon the world by spending her life raising two sons. No doubt many people can relate to the way Lynn feels proud of the family she’s nurtured, yet trapped by the domesticity of it. Looking back she hilariously decides that: “She should never have taken such joy in baking.” Although Lynn comes across initially as a venomous individual she’s gradually shown to be a woman with an enormous amount of compassion. Lynn reminded me very much of Elizabeth Strout’s character Olive Kitteridge. She’s someone who can be very hard and difficult on the outside. Yet, she harbours a tremendous kind of empathy and has an instinct for recognizing damaged individuals who need help. This is the case when Emily comes to care for her as part of a social home caring program after Lynn and Vera come into conflict with each other. Lynn senses that this girl has a difficult past which she is mentally blocking out.

Emily attempts to use her isolation and the anonymity of living in the city to forget the past. But simply coming to a new country and taking on a new identity doesn’t save someone from the physical and mental scars of experience. As the author astutely observes: “real rescue wasn’t possible simply by escaping a place. Memories weren’t rooted in the soil.” It’s heartbreaking the way that Emily tries to level out her life so she has no prospects for joy or sorrow in her life. She shuts herself out from possibility because “The good is only a reminder of the bad. The past is a reminder of what has been. She can only survive by not thinking. And therefore the not seeing has to be borne.” But when Emily can’t stop herself from encountering things which vividly recall incidents and people from her past she is jolted into an awareness of what she’s lived through. What she has survived through is terrifyingly awful and most readers will probably be aware of what is coming, yet it feels necessary to face this past as a way of progressing forward as a fully aware individual.

Interview with Jemma Wayne

One of the great qualities of reading fiction is that it allows you to access complex events from history on a very human level. When reading figures on the news or historical accounts about the upwards of a million people killed in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide it’s difficult to feel the full gravity of this catastrophic event. The author brings this mass conflict to a personal level where we read about Emily living a normal adolescent life in her Rwandan town. Like many young people, her attention is mostly taken up by her family, school, friends and the early burgeoning of romantic feelings. She is aware of the growing conflict between Hutu and Tutsi, but this is just another story which is talked about: “stories, the kind that hovered tauntingly on the brim of their consciousness but they would never truly see: like monsters, or landing on the moon, or America.” Because it has no effect upon her day to day life, this tension between ethnic groups is as unreal to her as any myth or well-reported global events. Therefore, when we read Emily’s memories about armed Hutu civilians and militia coming to her door the shock feels all the more real because her life is so relatable and close to our own. Most strikingly, there is not only the horror of being in the centre of such a perilous situation, but the devastating betrayal of seeing one’s friends and neighbours trying to kill you and your family. It makes for very distressing reading yet it is admirable the way the author so effectively situates the reader in Emily’s position to understand how she came to be so traumatized and distrustful of allowing people into her life.

The way in which these three women’s lives play out through their encounters with each other is oftentimes surprising. By doing so Wayne gives an interesting perspective on the way identity is a constantly shifting process of sifting between one’s past, self-perception and the way others perceive you. Emily most keenly feels a crisis over this where she wonders “What was she? The only thing she wanted to be was human, and sometimes she wasn’t even sure about that.” It’s through different levels of interaction and compassion that the characters in this novel come to a more resolute understanding of themselves and feel fully human. The author is tremendously sympathetic towards her characters and skilled at creating an involving story so the reader cares about them as well. However, there are a few occasions where the scenes feel stretched and overlong. And occasionally Wayne’s prose style goes slightly sour from unnecessary flourishes such a scene describing the water in Venice: “She and Luke bounce malleably between the two worlds of density and translucence.” But overall the author has a keen sense of distilling observations about human nature into artful and poignant sentences. There were many times I felt emotionally affected by the story of “After Before” and it’s an accomplished brave first novel.

A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale

How would you cope if you were suddenly cast out from your home, family and everything that’s familiar to start a new life from scratch in the wilderness? It’s a terrifying prospect for anyone. This is exactly the position author Patrick Gale’s great grandfather found himself in when, under the threat of disgrace; he was pressured into leaving his family and comfortable life as a gentleman in the UK to start anew as a pioneer farmer in rural Canada. In “A Place Called Winter” Gale fictionally recreates a heart-wrenching tale of tenacity in the face of the unknown using this very personal tale from his family’s history as inspiration. What I’ve always found so mesmerizing about Gale’s writing is how close he makes me feel to his central characters so that their struggles feel entwined with my own. Nowhere have the dilemmas which trouble his character felt more immediately real than in this new dramatic and intimate novel.

Harry Cane is a young man living at the turn of twentieth century London. He has a life of leisure as he subsists solely on the proceeds of his inheritance after his father’s early death. He’s a naturally shy man who suffers from an occasional stutter. But through his gregarious younger brother he meets a woman named Winifred who seems like a natural match that he can marry and settle down with. Things go along companionably for some time, but soon buried passions come to the surface. Gale movingly writes about the way both Harry and Winifred have desires which they’ve had to suppress due to social pressures. Harry believes he can negotiate his way around the scrutiny of the public to satisfy his needs, but when the truth about his actions is uncovered he’s strongly pressured into defecting from his comfortable life or face the social and legal ramifications of exposure.

Under the pretence of seeking his own fortune, Harry sets out for a rural area of Canada where pioneers are offered the chance of securing free land if they inhabit and farm it for three years. Here the story is set rapidly in motion as this vulnerable individual must forge a new life for himself. Practically overnight Harry goes from being an established person in society to a place where “he was an unregarded nothing.” It must take a lot of strength of character for someone who has lived a pampered existence to move to a new country and learn the physically arduous existence of farming. You might think one of the few benefits such a new life would involve is the freedom to live as one wants to in relative solitude. But faced with the dangerous elements of this new land, Harry relies more than ever on being accepted. He finds that “even in such a small and scattered community, it was better to be known a little than to be thought odd and avoided entirely.” The necessity to be a part of and accepted by a community demand that a person is subject to that society’s conventions – at least, on the surface.

Gale cleverly frames his story with descriptions of Harry’s life at a future point when he’s been detained in a psychiatric hospital. Fragments of his life in this institution are scattered throughout the book and it’s only in the later chapters of the book that the reader is made aware of how he ended up at this point. For some time, it feels as if there is no way Gale can reconcile the parallel narratives he’s created. But it’s ingenious the way the stories of Harry’s past and present come together in a way that is so unexpected it made me feverishly read the last seventy pages to find out what happens. Without giving any spoilers, it’s sufficient to say the ending is a tremendous and emotionally-arresting surprise.

The thing which makes this novel especially moving is the way Gale writes about the different ways people were inhibited within society at that time from expressing how they really wanted to live. By considering the diversity of people institutionalized in the mental hospital these issues are brought into sharp focus. This facility isn’t inhabited only by patients with debilitating mental illnesses, but by people who don’t fit the mould dictated by society. There are interesting parallels found here with the mental institution described in the novel “The Morning and the Evening” by Joan Williams which I read recently. Stressed and abused housewives are labelled as “insane” as are transvestites and homosexuals. Native Americans are corralled into specific areas and pressured into not integrating with the farmers who settle around them. Intelligent women who simply have no desire to marry are outcast as are women who are raped or abused. Gale shows the way in which those who don’t conform are persecuted and more importantly the impact this has on how these individuals understand their own identities. It’s remarked that “When a thing has always been forbidden and must live in darkness and silence, it’s hard to know how it might be, if allowed to thrive.” When people are pressured into suppressing aspects of their identities they don’t even know how instinctual behaviour will manifest if allowed to be expressed openly.

Gale delicately portrays how his protagonist Harry struggles to establish a life for himself when forced to abandon everything that’s familiar. Alongside his newfound awareness for how to make a living off from the land, Harry’s psychology changes so that he better understands his own desires and what he wants in order to find true fulfilment. It’s a struggle most people face in less dramatic circumstances and without having to be ousted from everything they call home. Reading about Gale’s carefully rendered portrayal of the time makes me thankful for the considerable freedoms I have to express myself and openly search for what I really want in life. Filled with joy, humour and sorrow, this book probes into what gives us our humanity. In short, “A Place Called Winter” is a novel with a tremendous amount of heart.

Wolf, Wolf by Eben Venter

Anxiety over the “right” way to be a man is something many men face. Pressure is frequently placed upon men to continue a legacy for the family by taking on the father’s business and creating progeny to carry on the family name and bloodline. This is something that the central character of Mattie in “Wolf, Wolf” by Eben Venter has refused to do. Rather than joining his father’s successful motorcar business, he’s spent his twenties travelling, engaging in sexual escapades and indulging in narcotics. When the novel begins he’s back at his father’s home in South Africa where he’s become his Pa’s primary care-giver. His terminally ill father has lost his sight and his physical health is rapidly declining due to the chemo-therapy he’s been receiving. Before his Pa dies, Matt wants to prove to him that he can be a responsible man with a successful business of his own. His father is a committed Christian and disapproves of Matt’s homosexuality and his relationship with a teacher named Jack. Matt needs his father’s financial backing to get his plan to establish a healthy food stall. With each man wanting the other to compromise their beliefs about what a man should be, father and son are embroiled in a battle of will.

Venter writes about family relations with great sensitivity and insight. In particular, the connection between father and son feels very heartfelt. Matt tenderly cares for his father during the elderly man’s severe illness, yet becomes too possessive about it and wants to assume all the responsibility over other members of his family. He admires a certain kind of manliness he sees in his father’s character and even in his signature: “It’s pure, that’s what it is. It is masculinity, the essence of it, that engenders such a signature.” Yet, he instinctually knows that this isn’t the same kind of man he could or would want to become. The father Bennie appreciates his son and dearly wants to support him to establish himself. At the same time, he’s torn apart by knowing “Our bloodline stops with you, Mattie… I suppose that’s the will of the Lord, I don’t want to kick against it. But let me tell you this today, Mattie, it’s a bitter pill for Pa to swallow.” As the novel progresses, you question whether the caring and support they show each other is genuine or if each man is motivated by the desire to be the dominant one to assert how masculinity is defined.

The novel also presents a unique representation of a long-term gay relationship. Through no real fault of his own, Jack encounters trouble at the school he teaches at which causes him to lose both his position and residence. He secretly takes up living with Matt at his father’s house and plays a game where he hides under a wolf mask to disguise his presence. This game takes on a weightier kind of symbolic meaning as the novel progresses – where men who are counter to the mainstream become the threat which lies in wait outside of the house or society in general. Matt and Jack’s relationship has its own difficulties as their intimacy flounders due to Matt’s addiction to porn. Rather than confront the issue by speaking directly to each other, Jack takes the issue up with friends by posting public messages on Facebook. Throughout the narrative we get the projections of his consciousness in these messages rather than reading his unmediated voice. Similarly we’re given the messages Matt’s father records on tape for his son where he speaks with a confessional sincerity he can’t use with Matt in person. It’s a complex way of presenting ongoing emotionally-stilted relationships between men.

“Wolf, Wolf” is ultimately a tragic take on the way dominant ideas about masculinity can overshadow the feeling between a father and son. Looming over Matt’s relationship with his Pa is “an arrogance as hard and cold as an old, old mountain; orthodoxy elevated over love.” This novel has a fascinating perspective on what being a man means and how men can be filled with such contradictory behaviour. As Matt’s father observes “Men are such odd creatures… A man is a strange thing.” It’s also a multi-layered portrait of a new South Africa with its own particular difficulties to do with class, religious and racial differences. This is a strikingly original novel that has an unsettling, haunting effect.

The A to Z of You and Me by James Hannah

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the way novels are structured and if too rigid a structure can be detrimental to a reader’s experience. Sometimes when reading a novel once you see you’re being drawn along a particular path the author has created it can feel too heavy-handed or predictable. However, debut novel “The A to Z of You and Me” by James Hannah feels to me like an excellent case where the author’s clear structure fits perfectly with his subject and the trajectory of his story. Ivo is only forty years old, but he’s now living in a hospice due to complications of diabetes and kidney failure. He knows that he probably won’t recover. In order to help distract him from this fact and “keep the old brain cells ticking over”, a colourfully-spoken and encouraging nurse named Sheila gives him a game to play where he has to think of a part of the body for each letter of the alphabet. In the process of doing so, Ivo has memory associations with each part he names which encourages him to recall the past, deal with his guilt and mentally converse with his former girlfriend Mia. The result is a beautiful-composed representation of one man’s sadly-interrupted life conveyed through fragmented memories that are both highly comic and tragic.

Although the reader knows what letter will come next throughout the novel, some letters receive multiple words with short or extensive connections attached to them. Despite sometimes anticipating what body part he might name to go with certain letters, I was thoroughly immersed in Ivo’s story because of the surprising shifts between past and present. While Ivo struggles with the onset of debilitating symptoms associated with his illness as he’s confined in his hospice bed, he recalls aspects of his life ranging from very early childhood to his courtship with the woman he loves to his problems with substance abuse. In this critical point of his life he observes “There’s not many times when all things fall away and you start to see yourself for what you are, but that’s what I’m feeling now.” His condition gives tremendous focus to what’s important in life and sharpens his understanding of how he came to this point. The reader is cleverly led through several mysteries which are hinted at within the glimpses we’re given of his past; this creates suspense drawing you along and making this novel a compulsive, fast read.

I have to stress that although Ivo’s condition is tragic and the book explores many dark aspects of life, Hannah maintains a tremendous lightness of touch and gives brilliant humorous moments which lift this novel out of being a morose read. There are multiple funny descriptions of body parts and banter between the characters as well as more sophisticated amusing observations. For instance, when describing the awkward call and response of habitual declarations of love he writes: “I always feel a bit defeated when I have to follow up with ‘I love you too’. It’s like the sequel to a film: I Love You and I Love You Too.” Hannah also captures a sort of absurdity about the human condition reminiscent of Beckett plays. In particular, sequences in the hospice play out in a dramatic form where Ivo is in a state like Winnie from Happy Days as he is confined to his bed making him acutely aware of the circumscribed environment surrounding him. Irritating lights outside his window come on and off. There is a female patient next door who emits frequent groans. He feels “lost in a world of regular hums, distant beeping, the periodic reheating of the coffee machine in the corridor, and that steady kazoo.” The reader is frequently made aware of all that he senses around him while his memories swirl in a vortex within him. All the while he is attended by the perky, wise and spirited Nurse Sheila who is warmly optimistic and tremendously caring. It elevates his game of naming body parts to a form of elegy which memorializes his experiences and the great love of his life.

Late at night Mia yarnbombs her neighbourhood hanging knitted hearts from trees

This novel is also a tragic romance. Although we’re made aware early on that Ivo is no longer with Mia we don’t know why until near the end of the book. The story of their courtship is depicted in refreshingly realistic detail which adeptly avoids ever becoming soppy. The connection between them happens quite quickly, but Ivo knows there is something special and real about their relationship when he doesn’t fall back upon old ways of describing his past and identity. He tells Mia about his father in a way he hasn’t a thousand times before so “It felt for the first time like I was telling it in a way that I wanted to tell it.” Serious trust and caring for someone inspires us to speak from the heart rather than falling back on rote descriptions of our lives. This sort of connection made me feel emotionally invested in it and tense to find out how their relationship played out. The way Ivo speaks directly to her in the narrative and the manner in which this lost love is conveyed in pithy short declarations such as “You’re everywhere. The memories of you, the shape of you” affectingly brings this romance to life. Other relationships within the novel are depicted with equal care – particularly Ivo’s antagonistic exchanges with his older sister Laura and how their connection changes due to traumatic experiences.

James Hannah has really written an impressive debut. It’s particularly admirable the way this novel powerfully captures the visceral pain and fear of being in a hospice while being beset by severely debilitating ailments. I felt drawn into and affected by Ivo’s experiences in a way similar to how I felt reading Rachel Joyce’s “The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy”. There’s wisdom in Hannah’s depiction of the way we’re drawn at times towards self destruction and what’s bad for us (even when we know better). He writes: “Sometimes, you know, when you see the worst of everything lined up before you, you’ve just got to go for it. See how badly you can crash it.” By taking responsibility for his actions, Ivo is able to touchingly honour the love he shared with Mia. “The A to Z of You and Me” is a deeply moving story that skilfully depicts a complex spectrum of human emotion.

Ghosting by Jonathan Kemp

Despite its beautiful dark-gray cover with haunting silhouettes and suggestive title, “Ghosting” isn’t anything like your typical formulaic ghost story. This novel is more an elegiac tale of age-worn love, loss and a maverick quest for authentic selfhood. It begins creepily enough with the central character Grace, a 64 year old woman, glimpsing the ghost of her long-deceased first husband Pete. This encounter brings with it a flood of memories accompanied by unresolved emotions which have been mostly repressed since settling down to live a quiet life on a house boat with her second husband Gordon. Rather than being fully present in her daily life she’s merely going through the motions like “an impersonator of her own life.” Although Grace is spiritually strong her psychological state is somewhat fragile due to unusually traumatic incidents she’s lived through. Grace pursues the ghost of her first husband which leads to unusual new encounters and pushes her to make dramatic decisions about her life. This novel isn’t supernatural, but expresses the way in which our yearning for the past and hoping for a different future makes us dare to believe in something other than the mediocrity of our present life.

The narrative in this novel is linked very closely to Grace’s consciousness. She emotionally excavates her past through her encounters in the present trying to make sense of what she’s felt and better understand what she really desires. It gives a tremendously intimate feel to follow Grace’s logic as poignant touchstones in the present such as the sound of birds or the feeling of raindrops draw her back into the past to recall her courtship with Pete, their children and difficult marriage, the journey to Malaysia to join Pete when he was stationed there and grappling with her tempestuous daughter Hannah. Hampered by guilt, these memories oppress her so that she feels “My life. Only I feel like it happened without me, and I want it back so I can do it differently.” By confronting the mirror ghost-image of her husband who appears in the form of a charismatic gay performance artist Grace is able to reconcile her feelings about the past and escape the confines of her mental prison. This culminates in a particularly chilling moment reminiscent of Charlotte Perkins Gilman when Grace is left alone at a party in a slightly intoxicated state and senses a woman trapped in the wallpaper.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach where Grace and Pete first meet

More than most writers I can think of, Kemp is skilfully adept at capturing the intensity of feeling involved with desire and intimacy. I’m not necessarily referring to writing that is sexually frank, although he is able to vividly portray such scenes that convey this experience without tipping over into indulgence. What’s more impressive is the way he conveys the tenderness of touch and physical longing. At one point Grace ponders how she misses Pete “Not for sex, necessarily, though she did miss that – more a vague desire for arms around her and the nearness of a body.” As a woman who has been abused, there is a complexity of feeling involved in recalling moments of physical security alongside moments of physical pain. These emotions become linked to her feelings of self worth. In several poignant scenes Kemp describes how the sexual imagination spills into her present transforming how she sees the world and how physical contact yields a more assured sense of what she wants.  

Jonathan Kemp’s first novel “London Triptych” was an ambitious brilliant story of three gay men’s lives at very different points in a century. With "Ghosting" it’s fascinating reading this honed down style of storytelling which precisely depicts a single character’s floundering quest for a more authentic state of being. It has a more concentrated, personal feel to it. Despite dealing with many serious social and psychological issues there is an entertaining flow to the story as Grace disrupts her normal existence with trips to a flamboyant psychic or stumbles through a wild party of modern artists. I found it to be a highly sympathetic story which made me reflect upon my own past and what I want in life – a surprising thing considering how dissimilar my life is from Grace. But there are measures of feeling here which touch upon common experiences ranging from relationships to ambition in life. The assured writing style in “Ghosting” has a way of teasing you out of your shell.

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.