Trip to Japan

I’ve been somewhat quiet lately as I’ve been in Japan for the past two weeks. A big thank you to everyone on Twitter who gave me suggestions for Japanese authors to read. Based on these I went armed with a stack of appropriate literature. I only managed to read a few books as the jet lag didn’t hit me as badly as I expected it to do so didn’t have sleepless reading nights and I was too busy out having fun during the day to relax with a book. I had an amazing time and don’t want to annoyingly go on about everything I did and saw while there. But I will mention an interesting bookish observation:

Examples of some beautiful Japanese book covers

In Japanese subways people do a lot of reading, but almost all of their books have stylish protective book covers. I would normally find this annoying as it meant I couldn’t peek at the title someone sitting opposite me was reading, but since I can’t read the language it didn’t matter anyway. These covers were so beautiful and chic I sort of wish this custom would travel to the West. It reminded me of when I was a teenager and we were required to cover our school textbooks with covers to protect them for future years. We used ugly brown paper bags from the grocery store to cut up and cover our books, but the ones I saw in subways were gorgeous.

Reading Shūsaku Endō's 'Silence'

There are a zillion things to do in Japan and I’m sure I only scraped the surface. But I do want to point out one of the highlights for me which was visiting the island of Naoshima. This is an island which was rejuvenated when it became the location for a number of contemporary art museums. It is stunningly beautiful. We stayed at the Benesse House which has its own museums with lots of outdoor art. One of these sculptures is Yayoi Kusama’s iconic ‘Yellow Pumpkin.’ There are galleries which play upon your perceptions, a Monet room that you have to take your shoes off for and a museum which is campaigning to get a James Bond movie set on the island. It’s fascinating and beautiful and I’d really recommend visiting if you ever get to Japan.

Here I am running around and hugging the pumpkin at 5am.

When I have time I’ll get back with reviews on books I read including ‘The Housekeeper and the Professor’ by Yoko Ogawa, ‘The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea’ by Yukio Mishima, and ‘The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories.’

In the mean time, what have you been reading?

Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea

It astounds me when an author can create such a convincing voice for a character based on a real historical figure from an entirely different era - one which pays tribute to the real person, intellectually engages with the social politics of the day and makes that voice so compelling you want to hang upon every word she says. Debut author Gavin McCrea has done that with Lizzie Burns, a working-class woman of Irish descent who moved to London in 1870 with celebrated theorist Friedrich Engels. This was a time when Engels and Marx were engaged with founding a political philosophy which would change the world. McCrea is more concerned with the domestic side of this story. I don’t just mean the household duties and complex emotional bond between Lizzie and Friedrich – although the novel does deal meaningfully with these intricacies. What he’s created is a challenge to how the overarching ideals of this communist movement hold up when viewed through the lens of a woman with little means, bad lungs and a ferocious heart.

Lizzie has quite a complex attitude towards love and relationships. Part of her is highly conscious of the financial ramifications partnerships create. At the beginning of the novel she is vociferous on this point about practicality superseding love. Later she affirms that “I’ve seen enough of this world to know that most of us have to accept men we don’t feel for, and I’m not sure it’s for the worst in the end. A marriage of emotions can’t be lasting. It wouldn’t be healthful if it was.” Lizzie and Friedrich’s relationship is built largely upon an arrangement not entirely based on love. Friedrich is a wealthy heir to an industrial business. Lizzie keeps the house, manages the servants and runs errands for Friedrich. For Lizzie relationships are an exchange: financial and sexual. She states “A love with no interest does not exist. We always expect something for what we give.” Yet, as the novel goes on, her hardness of feeling yields to more intricately-shaded emotions and the desires she holds at bay come forth.

McCrea skilfully brings Lizzie to life through a sympathetic portrayal of her tightly-contained emotions and also through her physicality. Although feisty, she is not all hardness. She contemplates “I sometimes think that because my shoulders are wide and my waist doesn’t go in, that because my speaking holds its share of Irish, I’m taken for solid, when it’s tender I really am in broad light and with sober senses.” She is emotional and sensual. As well as enjoying pleasure with Friedrich, she also longs for other men. She has a glancing but powerful sexual attraction for a black musician she sees performing during an enforced retreat in Ramsgate. There is also a former lover that she shares a tumultuous past with and whose presence in her mind threatens to undo the order of her current arrangement. It’s with a jaded heart that she observes “Love buys cheap and seeks to sell at a higher price; our greed is for gain that lies outside our reach. We desire those who don’t desire us in return.” It’s tremendously moving the way Lizzie pays tribute to those desires which stir her the most while remaining loyal to the household she’s made.

There is a terrible insecurity overshadowing Lizzie’s relationship with Friedrich. The novel moves back and forth between their time in London and their past life in Manchester where Friedrich had a long relationship with Mary, a woman very close to both of them. Lizzie also suspects Friedrich of being a philanderer. With her wry awareness of the ways of men she accepts this but melancholically notes when she suspects him of keeping secrets “Is there a loneliness more lonely than mistrust?” Surely this is a sentiment anyone who mulls over their own suspicions while in a relationship can relate to. As the story shows, sometimes it’s these stormy thoughts which can be binding as well as damaging. McCrea presents the complicated motivations and variances of desire astonishingly well in this rich, engrossing story.

What I appreciated most in this novel are the astute observations about our human compulsion to envision multiple paths in life. Journeying into an established life in London with Friedrich at the novel’s beginning, Lizzie states “My heart feels faint, which can happen when you make the acquaintance of a real future to replace the what-might-be.” In this statement you can feel what alternatives in life Lizzie has sacrificed having taken decisive action and stuck with Friedrich. Yet she also acknowledges the element of chance in coming to certain places in life: “An animal, that’s what chance makes of me.” Although she lives in a highly civilized way, it gradually becomes clear how emotionally debased she feels because of the way fate has closed around her. As the novel progresses you learn how very different things might have been for her and Friedrich in Manchester if the wheel had spun another way.

Lizzie comes across a now-extinct quagga (half zebra, half donkey) in the zoo. Like this animal she is two halves of different things.

Friedrich Engels looms large in the history books as a thinker whose ideas went on to reshape much of our civilization in ways very different from how he and Karl Marx intended. This novel considers him from another angle because as Lizzie states “They call him a genius… Me, I can only know what I know, and that’s the man, the meat and bones of him.” In fact, we’re informed quite a lot about this man’s meat! There are also some stupendous descriptions of Marx: “whiskers like bramble on my face, his lips like dried-out sausage.” It’s in the flesh we’re made to really feel these men’s devotion to a cause which supersedes their own circumstances whilst being aware that these are men with faults and foibles which are all too human. In addition, we find out that Friedrich is someone that Lizzie underestimates in some crucial ways. Eleanor Marx, nicknamed Tussy, is also fascinatingly portrayed as an emotionally-fraught teenager – a somewhat sad foreshadowing of the tumultuous route her life would eventually take.

Before I started this novel I was entirely unaware of who Lizzie Burns was and after reading a few chapters I couldn’t resist looking on Wikipedia to get the outline of her life. In a way this spoiled part of the plot as McCrea is naturally faithful to following the thread of her real life. Several realizations are made as Lizzie’s past is gradually recounted. It obviously didn’t spoil the experience, but part of me wishes I had experienced it all knowing nothing and then read up more afterwards. This is just a small caution to any readers saying you might want to resist this impulse.

‘Mrs Engels’ is an absolutely engrossing read which has left a lasting impression with me. Taking a punt on new authors is a risky business, but Gavin McCrea’s story is so confidently told with humour and sympathy he’s clearly a masterful storyteller. I hope everyone reads this new author who has unearthed and given a voice to a fascinating woman from history.  

Jack of Spades by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates has considered the issues of authorship and identity at length in both her fiction and nonfiction. For several years, Oates published novels of psychological suspense which featured twins using the pseudonym Rosamond Smith and, later, three thrillers using the pseudonym Lauren Kelly. In an essay titled ‘Pseudonymous Selves’ from her nonfiction book (Woman) Writer Oates observed “It may be that, after a certain age, our instinct for anonymity is as powerful as that for identity; or, more precisely, for an erasure of the primary self in that another (hitherto undiscovered?) self may be released.” In Jack of Spades, Oates’ protagonist is a respected writer named Andrew J. Rush who has been dubbed by the press to be the “gentlemen’s Stephen King.” As a man in his fifties with an established literary reputation, Rush unleashes just such an undiscovered self by creating the pseudonym Jack of Spades. Using this name he has published several lurid thrillers that no one would associate with his more highbrow public self. As with all pseudonyms, the secret is difficult to maintain; when Rush’s hidden persona is under the threat of being revealed his life goes awry.

Read my full review on Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies: http://repository.usfca.edu/jcostudies/vol2/iss1/4/

Baileys Women’s Prize ShortList 2015

After spending the last month reading as many of the twenty longlisted books for the Baileys Women’s Prize 2015 as I can, below are the official six shortlisted titles. I guessed 4 out of 6 correct. To be honest, I personally believe a few other books by writers like Newman, Taylor or Seiffert belong on this list more than Outline which is a fascinating book but not an emotionally-satisfying read for me. It’s been a pleasure being a part of the prize’s shadow panel to participate in discussions about each of these books. Reading concurrently with five other dedicated readers has been enjoyable and enlightening. Now the serious discussion (fighting) for the winner can begin! We’ll all be rereading these books in the coming weeks to then meet and decide upon our own champion.

Whichever book ultimately wins, I am so glad this prize has introduced me to a range of unique books I probably wouldn’t have read otherwise. From Laline Paull’s outrageously original The Bees to Jemma Wayne’s ambitious take on the aftershock of war in After Before to Rachel Cusk’s fascinating chorus of voices in Outline to Grace McCleen’s elegant portrayal of madness in The Offering to Marie Phillips’ hilarious Arthurian tale The Table of Less Valued Knights to Sandra Newman’s challenging mighty tome The Country of Ice Cream Star. In my opinion, book prizes help us notice great literature we might have missed and the Baileys Prize has offered up a lot of excellence this year.

Click on the images for my reviews of each title. (except for Kamila Shamsie which I haven't reviewed yet) Who do you think will win?

The Table of Less Valued Knights by Marie Phillips

I can’t remember when a book had me chuckling as much as “The Table of Less Valued Knights.” It made me wish I could shut the world out, curl up somewhere snug and read the whole thing in one go. Marie Phillips cleverly recreates an Arthurian landscape that sends up all the pomp of the famed Round Table by portraying fame-hungry knights, princesses that will do anything not to marry, an acne-riddled giant with parent issues, a blacksmith with a loyalty card scheme and a Lady of the Lake who is just working the job as a temp. After being shamed by an incident from his past, Sir Humphrey du Val can no longer sit with the most esteemed of Arthur’s knights and instead sits at another “less valued” table with the deposed, elderly and ineffectual knights. Although he technically isn’t allowed to take up quests, he seizes his chance to redeem himself when a damsel in distress shows up late one night looking for a knight to aid her in recovering her kidnapped fiancé. Alongside other knights seeking glory, they ride out on a quest with lots of comic misadventures along the way.

The quests which the knights valiantly set out upon are gradually revealed to be more complicated than they initially thought. Unlike mythic tales of Arthurian legend these are no simple 'good knight chases bad villain to rescue virgin maiden' tales. Phillips is consciously working against such simplification. It's observed at one point that “People think with their eyes, not with their minds, that’s the problem.” The novel satirizes the macho men who wish to dominate the narrative of history as pompous fools. A prince errant who schemes to control as many kingdoms as he can insists: “War is what men were made for! War and fucking. War and fucking and – no, just those two.” This is a man who could appear as a revered figure in a stately portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. Yet here he's shown to be a small-minded ruthless tyrant stomping his feet when he doesn't get his way. In this novel the people who emerge to shine are those with a more nuanced understanding of what both men and women are capable of.

Like a lot of Shakespearean comedy there is a hilarious dose of gender confusion. In order to escape detection a lady masquerades as a man. There is a man who likes to dress as a woman and prefers being called by a woman's name. Amidst all the swapping and mixing of gendered presentation there is also a questioning of roles. When a woman takes on a more assertive attitude Sir Humphrey “felt flustered, as if she were the knight and he were the maiden.” The political landscape is painted in a contemporary shade where traditionally-minded heterosexual majorities seek to oppress women and gays. Yet there are strong displays of opposition to this and a burgeoning consciousness of respect and flexibility. The effect of consciously eschewing historical accuracy for the pleasure of relatable sensibilities gives a more inclusive sense of history – as if we could actually inhabit and relate to this medieval carnival. It makes this novel a participatory joyous experience.

Baileys Women's Prize ShortList 2015 Predictions

The shortlist for the Baileys Prize 2015 will be announced next week. Since the longlist announcement, the shadow panel and I have been reading feverishly and discussing the books in earnest. Sometimes we’ve agreed and sometimes we’ve been surprisingly divided about these novels! With twenty books on the longlist there is a great diversity in subject and writing style. Phew, it's been a race to read as much as we can before the shortlist announcement!

Using the judges' criteria I’ve come up with my own six shortlist choices. Four were clear favourites of mine. I mulled over five other books (each great in its own way) quite extensively trying to decide what other two should be on the shortlist. Finally, here are my choices in no particular order. It’ll be fascinating to see how accurately I’ve guessed the list and how my choices compare to those of my fellow judges on the shadow panel.

I have a clear favourite I want to win but I'm keeping my mouth shut for the time being. What books from the longlist do you think will appear on the shortlist? Who do you want to win? Please comment below! Also, links to my reviews for each book appear in the text below.

The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman
The Shore by Sara Taylor
How to Be Both by Ali Smith
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman

“The Country of Ice Cream Star” is written from the point of view of a 15 year old girl whose name is taken from a Friendly’s restaurant sign and set in a dystopian future where everyone is afflicted with a disease which the narrator refers to as posies. This affliction causes them to die around the age of 20. To be presented with a civilization of children makes me wonder how influenced author Sandra Newman was by “Lord of the Flies” – especially because at one point a character named Piglet appears. Ice Cream lives with children similar to herself and they call themselves Sengles. They inhabit a rural area in what was Massachusetts by hunting, stealing and “parlaying” mostly peaceably with neighbouring tribes. She feels that she “Ain’t be the hero of my mind. Ain’t even normal made.” Yet, motivated by the illness of her beloved brother Driver, she’s drawn into a quest to find a cure for her people’s terminal disease which eventually finds her raised to a deified status in New York City which is now called C. de las Marias and run by a new sect of Christianity. She becomes an instrumental part of a war which has been raging for some eighty years and destroyed much of civilization.  

To be honest, if I hadn’t agreed to be on the shadow jury for the Baileys Prize I would have given up reading “The Country of Ice Cream Star” about 100 pages into it. But I’m so glad I stuck with it and read to the end of this long novel. This is a very challenging read that inspires and frustrates in equal measure. It’s difficult not just for the unique voice of the narrator who speaks in a new kind of lyrical dialect which Newman says in an interview with Foyles that she “developed from African-American English.” It also features numerous fast-paced battle scenes. Action like this is difficult enough to capture in more standard kinds of fiction because a certain rhythm must be achieved in the narrative to effectively convey detail alongside key events. On top of all this action is a complicated new-world order that has an intricate social structure and political make-up. There is also a large cast of characters, most of whom I found difficult to keep track of because their names are more often like nick names than traditional names. Combining all these factors meant I often felt disorientated right up until the end. I was fascinated, but confused.

What really drew me along and kept me with it, was the assured power of Ice Cream’s voice. It’s playful, poetic and impressively consistent for such a long novel. Where I think this novel shines the most are in more private moments where she becomes more contemplative. Because they die so young, it’s necessary for the children to become sexually mature as soon as they go through puberty. She chillingly remarks at one point: “Be almost old. Ain’t like to get no enfant when I be sixteen or seventeen. They never going to know me. I can die before they talking words.” The pressure to continue the race so swiftly has created a fascinatingly compressed form of passion where the dynamics of love are more intensely felt. Speaking of her most intense affair: “Ain’t words for what this be. Be something make all honor small. No life nor honesty remain, and every strangeness, every stopping pain, become bellesse. We speaking words like love, like you, that ain’t mean nothing. Words waste in air. Nor ain’t knowledge of this losten hour, is gold you cannot see. Cannot find out what it been. Yet this blind thing be more real than life.” It’s a relatable kind of feeling when language breaks down because of the heat of the emotion that’s being experienced.

Newman captures so well how there is no time for fooling with tender kisses in times of war. Coupling is feverish and necessary, but there are also feelings seeping out the sides: “Can see his face exhilarate and need. Feel how his kiss will be, and how we struggle on the floor, our knifen-fist of loving war. Yo, tears come vicious to my eyes. Be like a death somehow, be like my love itself go weep.” It’s entirely appropriate that metaphors of sex are mixed with death because in this world the two are so closely paired together. Here she perfectly encapsulates the raw reality of a teenage sensibility in a world gone mad: “We cling together with no words, until our scary silence be another nakedness. Is loving with no fight, is helpless. Every touch be words insane – and be the only truthful words I known. Be like a perfect name.”

One of the narrator's favourite salvaged food-stuffs was also one of my most-loved childhood meals

Curiously, standard English as we know it is a foreign language to Ice Cream. To her: “sleeper English. Some words comprehend, but nothing weave into a sentence meaning.” She feels as alienated by the English which has survived from the past as many of us are in the act of reading this novel. I wonder if this is making a commentary on the experience of different races living within Western society who have their own dialect and often find themselves separated from mainstream culture because of this. In quite a subtly powerful way this novel is very much about race. The surviving population of America is black with a scattering of white people who are referred to as roos. One of the most fantastically realized character, the insidious Anselm who is a high-ranking apostle in C. de las Marias remarks: “There are feelings about white people here. You could call it superstition, or you might just say it’s prejudice. Anyhow, it’s been a long and thorny history.” At another point it’s stated: “‘You don’t understand how whites are regarded here,’ Pedro say in teaching voice. ‘In our Bible, they’re described as hell’s offspring, a race of giant scorpions.’” The schism of race relations in America is still very much alive even in this future when the native white population has died out. Still invaders (in this case white Russians) come to dominate the black population by tricking them into taking up arms or becoming sexually enslaved in a way which eerily mixes elements of colonial history.

Clearly, this is a novel much more sophisticated and intelligent than any book jacket summary could convey. I wonder if this is part of the reason why this novel hasn’t been more widely read. Also, the basic elements which make up “The Country of Ice Cream Star” add up to sound like any of the slew of dystopian young-adult novels that currently saturate the market. This is most definitely a literary novel with fantastic ambition. It’s assuredly led by a confident and complex narrator unlike any that has been written before. This is a character willing to travel into the darkest places of life and do what is necessary to save the brother she loves. She ominously vows “If evil can save Driver; I will love all filth.” This novel gets very grimy and uncomfortable in the realisation of what a war run by teenagers would look like. Yet it also provides revelation in Ice Cream’s subtly of feeling and her comically irreverent take on the dominant establishment.

The Bees by Laline Paull

Laline Paull’s novel “The Bees” is the story of an ordinary low-level worker bee named Flora 717 and her extraordinary journey. It sounds like a dubious premise upon which to base a novel and I was sceptical at first. The concept felt to me to be too similar to the 1998 movie ‘Antz’ in which Woody Allen is the voice of an existentially-troubled worker ant who questions life’s meaning when you are an anonymous being amongst millions. The movie was a fun way to express aspects of human angst in an indirect way via anthropomorphism, but it didn’t give you much appreciation for the way consciousness must work differently amongst insects compared to humans. Paull’s novel does this by showing you the way Flora 717’s thoughts and feelings are inextricably tied to the collective hive. In doing so she creates a compelling tale which gives a fascinating perspective on social interaction, hierarchies in society and will likely spark a keen interest in melittology (the study of honey bees) that you never thought you’d have.

The author vividly captures the extraordinary way in which bees communicate not strictly through language but more through scents and chemicals. Information is communicated through their antennas and dances are performed to let other bees know where to locate the best places to collect pollen. There is also the “hive mind” which seems to be a sort of collective intelligence that lets the bees know how to act – especially in times of crisis when the hive is being invaded or there is an insidious illness. Don’t make the mistake in thinking that because this novel depicts the lives of honey makers it’s going to be cute. There are scenes of really gruelling savage horror when there is conflict between sects of the hive or rivalry or bees that need to be disposed of because they’ve lost their usefulness. The drones (male bees) are amusingly portrayed as swaggering, greedy and bullying. I particularly appreciated how the female majority which kowtow to them in a really sickening way when exposed to their masculinity take on a very different attitude towards them when these males lose their place amongst the hive.

Since the hive is a monarchy the queen is a figurehead worshiped by the masses but she also bears the largest practical use to the hive as she is the only one that lays eggs. Without her the population would rapidly diminish and collapse. It’s fascinating the way she is for the most part a benign presence whose dirty work is carried out by a sage elite class of the hive which also has the support of the militant ants. Paull impressively demonstrates the complex politics which go into maintaining power and keeping the masses in check with slogans and prayers. The only time I felt this didn’t work so well is in one section where the bees give a revised version of the holy prayer in praise of the queen bee which felt like a bit of a silly appropriation. There political conflicts with wasps and there are negotiations with spiders who have access to a more in-depth knowledge that bees don’t possess because of their limited life span; the payment needed for this information is also impressively horrific. The queen maintains a library with stories which aren’t understood by the bees but whose importance into play over the course of the hive’s life cycle.

At times it does feel like a bit of a stretch that the character of Flora 717 who is born in the lowest social group can so rapidly rise up through different levels of the hive. Through demonstrations of a range of talents and the encouragement of other workers she participates in almost every aspect of the hive from cleaning waste to nursing eggs to attending the queen to making wax to gathering pollen to defending the hive from attackers. I assumed that the rigid social structures of the hive would prevent her from moving so freely amongst these different levels of workers, but it is true that worker bees can adopt a number of different responsibilities within a hive during their lives. But it does feel that there are some instances where the author is ushering her character through these layers of bee society simply to show the fascinating inner workings of a hive. The novel does give this validity by hinting that Flora 717’s sometimes rebellious behaviour is supported by secret dissenters in the ranks. Also, it didn’t really bother me as I felt myself so swept up in the sheer adventure of the story as complex politics play out amidst a year in the life of the hive.

Along with the thrill of the story, “The Bees” does give an interesting perspective on individual will versus the collective need. Those entrusted with directing the hive at times abuse their power out of self interest. It offers up numerous ways of looking at how the political philosophy of a monarchy versus that of democracy has different pros and cons. Flora 717 is a true royalist and worships as the other bees do, yet she is guided by an inner logic that isn’t self-servicing so much as directed by an interest in the survival of her kinfolk. Her role has a compelling trajectory when the bees’ carefully ordered society begins to break down. It’s also so refreshing to read a story that is all about a female-dominated society. This is a very creative, intelligent and entertaining novel which is a joy to read.

The Shore by Sara Taylor

What does looking at a family tree tell us? We see ourselves linked by blood lines to a group of names, but usually there is little else to connect us to lives from the distant past other than an assemblage of faded photographs, a few heirlooms and a smattering of oral history. Rather than treat a family tree as a certainty, Sara Taylor does something quite extraordinary in her novel “The Shore” whereby she presents a family’s history as if the outcome of a family line was not the inevitability we see so neatly graphed out at the beginning of this book. The author jumbles all the pieces of one sprawling family tree up together like a jigsaw puzzle and delivers two centuries worth of tales about individuals leaping backwards and forwards in time. This effect says something much more meaningful about the will of the individual and the meaning of family connections than a straightforward linear novel could ever say. This is a family saga like none other I’ve read before.

As much as this novel is about family it is also about the land and the way in which the environment is shaped and reborn with every succeeding generation. An isolated small group of islands off the coast of Virginia is the base from which the stories of each character branch out from and round back to. It’s fascinating to see how the perilous course of the family blood line also follows the near destitution of the island itself as the economic circumstances change over time. In one memorable scene a boy watches as the community’s church is floated across the river after it is sold off by the fading population. When first confronted with the family tree at the beginning of the novel you’re aware that there are two distinct branches of the tree stemming from a single fascinating matriarch named Medora. The conflicted identity of this fiercely independent woman reverberates down through the generations. One line lives under perilous and desperate circumstances while another is more firmly established and prosperous. This is a family that is comprised of con artists, rapists, murderers, drug sellers and witch doctors. It’s high drama. Their stories make for an enthralling and emotionally compelling read.

As well as giving the reader a fascinating variety of lively stories, the novel makes larger meaningful statements about the plight of women. There is a great deal of sexism and violence exhibited by the men in this novel especially among the economically disadvantaged members of the family. It’s noted that it seems to be a tragic inevitability of a male’s development that “something happens in the gap between boy and man to turn all that sweetness bitter. You wonder if it’s a necessary hardening, like a tree’s shedding of leaves as winter approaches.” Certainly not all the male characters in this novel are villains and there is a balanced, complex view of both sex and sexuality here. But many female characters’ suffering is perpetrated by men who seek to dominant them. 

One generation of the family ferments apples to produce brandy in defiance of Prohibition laws.

One of the most troubled and tragic characters named Ellie soberly remarks of her dangerous partner at one point: “He hates me and he wants me and he hates that he wants me.” As beset by some of the female characters become by their circumstances and the men they are with there is a knowledge gained from the next generation of women who take dramatic measures to ensure they aren’t entrapped by the same sexism that their mothers experienced. This effect is mirrored in both the start and end of the family line in a way which says something quite tragic about the persistent state whereby men will always try to control women despite the progression of society. Yet it also says something hopeful about the resilience and ingenuity with which bloodlines survive through the willpower of women.

Most of the stories which comprise this novel are firmly fixed in the nitty-gritty of life concerning work, love and establishing a family. But some of the tales dip into the fantastic so one woman is haunted by the spectres of ghostly boys that both threaten and support her. In another tale we learn about a secret talent of the family line for controlling and altering the weather. Sometimes the style feels like Charlotte Bronte and other times it’s reminiscent of a more modern sensibility like what's found in David Mitchell's writing. The narrative voice varies more wildly as some chapters stay inside a character’s uniquely-voiced point of view while other chapters are narrated from a more even-handed impersonal distance. I didn’t feel this was always successful particularly in a chapter told in the second person which had some very effective passages but became quite confused. Part of me wishes Taylor maintained a constant narrative style throughout the novel as it would seem less chaotic and make it easier to follow. However, part of the fun of this book is trying to locate who you are following now based on the date given and names around the characters involved. A reader’s participation is required. The book ends with an entirely new style of narration and takes the story into a whole other kind of genre that adds a level of poignancy when looking back on that initial family tree.

The Offering by Grace McCleen

It’s challenging for an author to write a novel from the point of view of someone in a state of psychosis. There is the danger of romantically characterizing them as being simply misunderstood in their unique perspective of the world. Of course, sometimes this is true and people are institutionalized for the wrong reasons. Yet when representing it in fiction simulating their perspective runs the risk of seeming patronizing and disrespectful to the cruel reality of mental disability. It can easily run into “aren’t we all a bit wacky?” territory. Grace McCleen skilfully avoids doing this by writing her narrator Madeline as being canny and withholding to both the psychologist who treats her and the reader of this novel. In doing so, her character retains an essential integrity.

Madeline is a woman in her mid-thirties who has been in a mental infirmary for over twenty years. We first encounter her in the summer of 2010 where she’s looked upon with fear by the staff around her. It seems she’s committed a heinous crime, yet she seems unaware of any wrongdoing. The novel traces the months leading up to this point by showing her treatment under a doctor who tries to use hypnotism to get her to confront her past. But Madeline is a career patient who has learned to modify her answers when necessary and reveal only what she knows the doctor wants to hear. Interspersed with her sessions we’re given accounts of Madeline’s childhood through her memories and diary entries. When she was a girl her fundamentalist Christian parents move to an island where they hope to convert and save the population. But this horrendously backfires as they are treated with suspicion and shunned to the point where they become quite desperate to maintain a home and livelihood.

It’s touching the way Madeline naturally fears the other children on the island when they first move there and takes their silent observation of her as a damning judgement. She’s granted no chance for social interaction as she’s homeschooled by her mother. The lessons break down as her mother increasingly suffers from her own mental and physical problems leaving Madeline to formulate her own theories about the way her father’s religious ideas can be incorporated into the real world. In the places they move to there are leftover images of Christ and a statue of the Virgin which the father destroys because ‘We don’t need idols,’ my father said. ‘We’ve got the real thing.’ Madeline assimilates this belief about having a direct communication with God into the way she interacts with the nature around the farm they move to. She tragically misinterprets natural stages of human development as having religious significance and formulates her own beliefs about what God wants offered to please Him.

While I enjoyed the way McCleen develops her characters and elements of the storyline, there’s an intriguing plot point which I felt wasn’t really followed through with. When the family move to their farm a strange man suggests to them that a former owner who committed suicide on the property is still there. While I’m glad the novel didn’t turn into a kind of ghost story, it felt like this detail could have been incorporated more into Madeline’s increasingly skewed perspective of reality and the elements around her. What McCleen does most effectively is depict the deterioration of Madeline’s relationship with her mother and father. Communication breaks down as she slips increasingly into her own abstracted reality while they must face a slide into poverty which could leave them desolate.

This novel reminded me somewhat of Claire Fuller’s recent novel Our Endless Numbered Days because it shows the way a particularly fanatical parent can traumatically impact their adolescent offspring. In both books a child is removed from the social environment where they were exposed to a plethora of points of view and physically isolated so their perspective of the larger world is damagingly narrowed and their memories become distorted. Although these are extreme examples, both stories have universal meaning particularly because they show the way a dominant patriarchy both subtly and forcefully tries to psychologically enforce dogmatic rules upon women. In the case of “The Offering”, Madeline is subject to both her father’s stringent religion in adolescence and Doctor Lucas’ rigorous new psychological treatment. Both try to dictate to her how she should feel rather than inspire self expression.

“The Offering” is a beautifully written novel which artfully combines different narrative elements which placed against each other offer a unique perspective on memory and belief. Perhaps the Proustian reference in the protagonist’s name is a bit unnecessary. But the novel has a clever way of pairing Madeline’s experiences in her diary against her recollections as an adult. As she observes at one point: “Memory is a strange thing. It doesn’t always retain what we think it will.” There is a fascinating compression of time and experience as the narrative becomes increasingly more hallucinatory. Grace McCleen has a talent for portraying a character that eludes being defined as a certain sort of person, but who nonetheless has convictions which she nobly upholds – however misconceived they may be. Madeline’s great crisis is that she’s not respected as an individual. More than gaining divine favour, Madeline’s offerings say more about the experience of giving oneself in love and experiencing disappointment. There’s a sad kind of resonance and ominous warning when Madeline realizes that “not all offerings are accepted, not all bargains honoured.”

Outline by Rachel Cusk

It’s unsettling and frustrating at first. Rachel Cusk’s novel “Outline” begins with a narrator (who remains nameless throughout most of the novel) taking a plane to Athens in order to teach a writing course. She strikes up a conversation with an older semi-wealthy man in the seat next to hers. Despite a long monologue where he divulges the most intimate details of his failed marriages, family strife and financial struggles, he is only referred to as her neighbour and continues being labelled as such throughout this novel even after several lunches and boat trips she takes with the man. The narrator also has a series of meetings with other teachers, writers and the students of her class where she prompts them to outline possible stories they could write. All the while personal details about the narrator remain largely unknown.

Why the aversion to giving her central characters names or filling in plot details about these characters’ lives in the present? Maybe it’s because the narrator senses that there is something inauthentic about this thing we call identity. When she plunges off a boat into the water she “felt that I could swim for miles, out into the ocean… it was an impulse I knew well, and I had learned that it was not the summons from a larger world I used to believe it to be. It was simply a desire to escape from what I had. The thread led nowhere, except into ever expanding wastes of anonymity.” So she is trying to lose herself. As fervently as she wishes to remain a mere sketch, the more ardently I wanted concrete details about her identity. We know she’s divorced and has estranged children. There are occasional flashes of personal memories like a beautiful description of being a child dozing in the back seat of her parents’ car while being driven home from the seaside. Larger issues in the narrator’s life remain unclear. She checks her phone as she’s tense about receiving approval on a loan, but we don’t know what it’s for exactly. The need for physical escape, money and anonymity are what she wants. The awareness of this is the tantalizing thing about her which will alternately frustrate and intrigue the reader throughout the experience of this novel.

Souvlaki is a recurring meal in the novel

There is a lot of pleasure to be had in this book. There is light and dark humour. For instance, in a scene where the narrator imagines falling off the boat driven by her neighbour she imagines becoming part of just another anecdote that he relates to his new neighbour on his next plane ride. She imagines him referring to the incident as “the full disaster” - the turn of phrase he uses to describe monumental tragedies in his life. The exchanges between her writing students are particularly funny and well observed. Potent symbols are scattered throughout the novel such as a photograph of a couple in a cafe outside the comfortable apartment she’s allowed to stay in while teaching. The couple are suspended in a pose of intimate conversation where a joke or anecdote is being shared and seems “terrifyingly real.” This couple suspended in a moment of exchange is repeated in different forms throughout many of the narrator’s experiences in the novel where people’s stories are told over drinks and meals of Greek food. The ceaseless, searching, self-justified speeches accumulate into a kind of yearning people have to give structure and meaning to their lives. Yet, once they’ve defined their personal histories into a certain shape they become frozen as in a photograph. 

I found myself highlighting many passages throughout the book as there are so many intriguing thoughts and clever observations to ponder. They range from thoughts about the writing process to the meaning of identity. “Outline” is predominantly a novel about ideas, but unlike Tom McCarthy’s recent “Satin Island” (which I somewhat harshly critiqued) I was mesmerized by it because of the way these thoughts are framed within the distinct identities of a revolving set of characters. The chorus of voices builds to a moving understanding of the tension between living one’s life in the moment and maintaining a frame around it like a constantly running narrative where you’re the protagonist in your own movie. The neighbour follows his passions through one disaster after another, steadily building the story of his life that he can relate to strangers he meets on airplanes. He remarks at one point that “I discovered that a life with no story was not, in the end, a life that I could live.” Yet this is the only kind of life that the narrator seems to want. She’s desperate to avoid the crisis the next teacher who comes to replace her in Athens experiences where a man made her into “a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank.” Through an immolation of the self the narrator (eventually referred to as Faye) achieves a defiant freedom to define her life as she pleases. The outline of who she is cannot be filled in by the interpretation of any listener within the story or reader of this novel.

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.