Best Reads of 2015 so far & Competition Winner

Wow, I now have a list of books that have all topped your lists so far this year! Thank you for all the suggestions and everyone who entered my competition to win a signed copy of “Mrs Engels” by Gavin McCrea. I put all your names in a box and pulled out the winner Poppy who suggested I read Jennifer Tseng’s “Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness” from Europa Editions. I have to say, it sounds like an excellent novel as it is all about a bookish librarian who has an affair with a younger man. Nice! I really look forward to reading it. Many other suggestions have perked my interest as well so don’t be surprised if I end up blogging about a book you tipped as your favourite of the year.

Reflecting back over the year so far since we're halfway through, here are ten books which have really stuck with me. Click on the covers below to read my reviews. Some upcoming books I can't wait to get stuck into are Hanya Yanagihara's "A Little Life", Paul Murray's "The Mark and the Void" and an upcoming childhood memoir from Joyce Carol Oates! Not to mention the flood of Green Carnation Prize entries which I'll be reading and discussing with my fellow judges soon.
What books are you hoping to read before the end of this year?
Any titles coming out in the later half of 2015 that you’re really anticipating?

The Ecliptic by Benjamin Wood

Being an artist isn’t like other professions. It’s not a livelihood where the primary motivation for devoting one’s labour to it is for money or status or the simple satisfaction of a job well done or even making the world a better place. Certainly these factors influence artists during their careers, but the act of creating art is about realizing a vision and making something meaningful. The path to inspiration is elusive. Benjamin Wood’s novel “The Ecliptic” questions what drives, galvanizes and motivates artists. The narrator Elspeth Conroy is stuck. She’s a painter who has received acclaim for her work, but the majority of her output feels like it falls short of saying anything profound. On a small island off the coast of Turkey there is an artists’ retreat for those who have lost their way in whatever discipline they pursue. It has a rigid code and rules designed to support them in finding their way back to inspiration. Elspeth has spent many years here, but does retreating from the world encourage the creation of real art or only drive her irretrievably further into herself?

At the retreat, Elspeth has become part of a tight-knit group of other artists who are architects, novelists and playwrights. They have daily comfortable routines while waiting for the muse to visit them again. One day a very young man arrives to join the colony and their ordered world is disrupted. What follows is an engrossing complex tale of artistic aspirations, tangled passion and the quest for meaning. Elspeth is one of those rare female protagonists who isn’t motivated by a desire for romance or success, but wants to create art in the purest sense. Her journey questions whether this is even possible. It deals with all the complicated factors which drive us to create and experience art, shedding light on the reasons why art can be the one thing which makes our difficult lives bearable.

The ecliptic is the apparent path of the Sun on the celestial sphere - something invisible Elspeth tries to realize in her art.

The author is good at wrong-footing you in this novel and avoiding cliché. A situation where a painter is eclipsed by his assistant could prompt scenes of deception and jealousy. Instead a gentle ceding to recognized talent is allowed and a surprising new camaraderie forms later on. A fast-talking art agent who would be presented as nothing but a caricature in many novels is presented in this story as having a surprisingly intuitive sensitive side. This is the kind of writing that sees the everyday humanity in people and that everyone is just stumbling along, trying to do their best and make something meaningful.

There are many compelling different perspectives given throughout the novel on the impact of art both for the artist and the public who consume it. At one point the playwright MacKinney reflects: “that’s the problem, isn’t it? Once your best story’s told, it can’t be told again. It makes you, then it ruins you.” Some speculate that everyone has one great story in them, but once this is realized in an artistic form does this mean the artist is defined and trapped by it? Once you know the story you want to tell in art it can be devastatingly complicated finding the right form to communicate it through. Can it be found through sheer persistence? At one point it’s posited that “doggedness in art is no substitute for inspiration.” But at another point it’s observed that “real inspiration turns up only when your invitation has expired.” There is no straightforward way of finding the muse which artists wax on about so poetically. With occasional asides from Elspeth that tell us the things that no art college teaches you, this novel considers the multifaceted ways in which art finds ways of expressing the inexpressible.

Benjamin Wood constructs his story carefully so that the past reflects meaningfully upon the present in Elspeth’s journey as an artist. All the while it has tremendous momentum and drive making it compulsively readable. The closest comparison I can make for Wood’s novel is Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” for the way in which it deals with high concepts about art in a way which is utterly unpretentious and tells a cracking good story at the same time. The ending has left me thinking hard about how we create and commune with art. “The Ecliptic” is a passionate, invigorating and expertly conceived novel.

The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton

There is something both enticing and terrifying about the way Rosamond Lupton’s thriller “The Quality of Silence” draws you ever northward into the bleak frozen wasteland of northern Alaska. It’s a place of beauty where the starry night sky is startlingly clear and the Aurora Borealis gives fantastic light shows, but there are also deadly cold temperatures and snow storms that obliterate the landscape. A mother and daughter journey into the arctic to search for the father who is a wildlife photographer that has gone missing. The incredibly remote village of Anaktue where he’s been based has been completely destroyed in a mysterious explosion and all of its inhabitants are found dead. The mother, Yasmin, who is an English astrophysicist received a clue that her husband is still living. Because the authorities have given up the search, she takes on the perilous task of finding him herself. Her daughter Ruby is deaf and Yasmin thinks it’s too dangerous to leave her with anyone she meets along the way. So they drive as far north as humanly possible into a snowy wilderness while being pursued by a mysterious threatening individual. This is a story which pulled me in with sympathetic characters I felt increasingly anxious for as their rescue mission became bone-chillingly dangerous.

Needless to say, deafness is a terrible handicap - especially for a ten year old girl. Ruby has trouble socially because her mother insisted she enrol in a school with hearing children rather than be segregated into a special school. She must negotiate through a world designed for those who can hear and she must tolerate the way most people treat her differently – as someone to be ignored or pitied or talked down to. One of the most beautiful moments in the book is when Ruby strikes up a friendship with a kind truck driver named Adeeb who agrees to take her and Yasmin as far north as he can. The casual conversation they have about music draws Ruby into the kind of normality she’s so often excluded from because she’s labelled as different. Through this friendship, the special bond she has with her parents and from reading about Ruby’s own perspective we’re able to understand some of the extraordinary qualities she possesses. The silence she lives within gives her advantages and special knowledge the hearing world never even considers. Embedded within the very title of this novel is the understanding that deafness does not simply mean disability.

Along the way, Yasmin and Ruby witness a paraselene which are bright moon-like spots in the sky that appear only rarely alongside the actual moon in the arctic. Also known as mock moons.

I’ve written before about how tricky it is for an author to get a child’s voice right. See my review of Clair Cameron’s “The Bear” from last year. Lupton takes the best of both worlds in her novel by alternating her narrative between Ruby’s child voice and a more straight-forward omniscient narrator. This has a slightly jarring effect at first because it’s difficult for the reader to connect with any one voice. After some time it becomes more natural as scenes transition between the two perspectives giving both an inward and outward understanding of the action. Ruby’s voice veers dangerously close at times to a cloying sweetness, yet her perspective can also be wonderfully refreshing. Her thoughts on the division between her everyday and online identity feel especially pertinent for the newer generation: “It’s like there’s two worlds, the typed one, (like emails and Facebook and Twitter and bloggering) and then the ‘real’ one. So there are two me’s. And I’d like the real world to be the typed one because that’s where I can properly be me.” Ruby creates a unique voice for her Twitter profile to express the way words have a synaesthesia-like effect of creating sensations within her. It allows her an honesty and poetic beauty she cannot convey in her physical reality. These complexities make her a compelling and highly-endearing character.

The novel becomes effectively disjointed and surreal the further the pair travel into the snow and emptiness. It's as if their identities becomes stripped down alongside the frosty landscape. This had a hypnotic effect upon me as the atmospheric descriptions take on an increasingly surreal quality to coincide with the characters' mounting desperation and physical strain: "In our headlights there's huge sheets of snow, like shape-shifting ghosts haunting the road." Memories intrude upon the characters' consciousness so that the physical desolation of the landscape comes to represent feelings of aloneness in the world. The fight for survival is also one where the characters must solidify their connection to each other. Overlaying the chase that makes up the bulk of this story is a message about the environment.  “The Quality of Silence” is a gripping, mesmerising read. 

10 little-known LGBT books you should read if you haven’t

Three things prompted this post. It’s Pride in London today; Yesterday, the US Supreme Court ruled gay marriage is now legal nationwide; And I was recently named as a judge for the 2015 Green Carnation Prize. It’s a pretty fabulous time for all things LGBT. So to celebrate I want to shout out about ten novels by LGBT authors and about LGBT issues which I think deserve to be read more widely. What's amazing about these books are the range of queer experiences they explore, often tapping into areas I've never seen represented before. I should add that some of these are better known in the US. I wrote this post thinking about a UK audience.
Have you read any of these?
Do you have any LGBT books you’ve read which you think should be better known? Comment and let me know!

You Are Not the One by Vestal McIntyre
The short stories in this debut book exhibit a full spectrum of characters from a tender sensitive boy with a pet octopus to a young woman working in new media whose plans to acquire a new gay best friend backfire. McIntyre’s writing shows tremendous psychological insight into the mess people make of their lives. He’s also written an excellent novel called “Lake Overturn” which you’ll want to race to after experiencing the humour and intelligence of these stories.

The Repercussions by Catherine Hall
Only published last year, Hall’s tremendous novel about war and love spanning across a century deserves much more attention. She handles two equally compelling parallel narratives which come together in the end to deliver a tremendous emotional punch. It made me cry. It’s especially impressive how Hall writes about the genuine love that can develop between gay and straight individuals.

Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
This is a large family epic which is one of those reads you can’t help racing through despite its length. MacDonald’s writing is so compelling. Not only does she explore complex issues to do with sexuality but also race, religion and the arts all within a story that is absolutely enthralling and characters whose lives you experience through many stages.

Blue Boy by Rakesh Satyal
A sensitive adolescent boy named Kiran grows up in the suburbs of Cincinnati and believes himself to be the reincarnation of Krishna when he notices his skin starts glowing blue. This novel is so endearing and thoughtful it’s a coming of age tale like no other. It will make you want to laugh as often as it will make you cry while reading about Kiran's struggle to understand his burgeoning sexuality and grow into a new identity.

Trumpet by Jackie Kay
“Trumpet” tells the story of a fictional jazz performer named Joss Moody whose death reveals he lived his life as a man but was a biological woman. This beautifully written and powerful novel explores grief and the complexities of gender in a way so rare and wonderful it’s a book you’ll never forget. Kay writes tremendous short stories as well, but the story told in this novel is exceptionally special.

The Torturer’s Wife by Thomas Glave
This group of short stories is both political and personal. It explores specific instances of historical injustice where ordinary people are caught in terrible situations because of their politics, class, race and sexuality. Some of the stories also explore the less talked about troubles within the gay community in regards to self-hatred and prejudice against people who are HIV+. These stories are powerful and vibrantly alive.

Hotel de Dream by Edmund White
White is probably the most famous author on this list. Although many readers are familiar with his memoirist fiction, his historical novels are less well known. This novel takes an enticing nugget from history and creates a story around a rumour whose historical accuracy can never be verified. The author Stephen Crane was said to have written a novel about a boy prostitute which he later destroyed without publishing. Here White brings this tale alive with real heart and sophistication to make a compelling rich story about Crane's friendship with a forgotten queer boy who lived in the fringes of society.

Lost Girls by Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie
This graphic novel brings together three of literature’s most beloved female characters: Alice in Wonderland, Dorothy Gale and Wendy from Peter Pan. It transports them to the historically-specific point of an Austrian hotel in 1913. The women vary wildly in age but all discover new sides to their adult sexuality as they have various homosexual and heterosexual encounters with guests, staff... and each other! This book is not just a bawdy romp; it's a meaningful exploration of desire and identity created by an author and illustrator who are husband and wife in real life.

Send Me by Patrick Ryan
Ryan depicts a multi-layered view of a family in this novel composed of interlinked stories. Hopscotching through time, you see members of the family at different points which together make a complete picture of their complex relationships to each other. At the same time it explores individual struggle and a diversity of gay experience from an introverted gay son to an outgoing gay son with AIDS. It’s a memorable superb novel that shouldn’t be forgotten.

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee
This novel presents the life of a boy named Fee as if he were a mythic fox. He has a troubled teenage existence where sex is excruciatingly complex and suicide becomes a tantalizing prospect that hovers near. This novel has a special place in my heart as it is set in my home state of Maine. It was a tremendous debut which first appeared in 2002 and it’s exciting to know that Chee’s much-awaited second novel “The Queen of the Night” will appear early next year!

Beastings by Benjamin Myers

When a conflict is composed as perfectly as it is in “Beastings” no flourishes are needed. The prose in this novel are so pared down that the primary characters don’t even have names. A Girl races over the countryside in Northern England with a kidnapped baby. She is pursued by a Priest who has employed a Poacher with a dog to help track and find her. Instead of distancing you from the characters this anonymity makes you feel closer to the essential cores of these individuals. The Girl is a mute. Through her quiet actions and careful tending of the baby that she tries desperately to protect and care for her nature is revealed. The same is true in her pursuers whose perfectly pitched dialogue shows the sinister determination and self-righteousness of the drug-fuelled Priest as well as the down-to-earth humour and practicality of the Poacher. The chase becomes a battle of wills where the characters are driven to their breaking points until the thrilling climax is reached.

The Girl is someone who feels she comes from nothing and is nothing as she is an orphan raised by nuns and the Priest. But the responsibility of taking the child changes this: “without the child who relied upon her she did not know if she would exist any longer. So long as there was this responsibility – this bond – life had a purpose.” Her journey becomes as much about gradually acquiring a sense of self worth as well as protecting the baby she’s rescued from an abusive home. As the central characters travel through the country and towns, they encounter a range of fascinating individuals – some with generous spirits and others with more mixed motives. One of the most fascinating is a cave dwelling man named Tom Solomon who suggests that life can be lived separated from mainstream society. He muses: “Feels good to go feral from time to time though. Of course it does. Because you can’t feel lonely with nature as your companion.” Not only do these characters add momentum to the story, but their multifarious points of view suggest a building statement the author is making about society and ways of living.

Painting by Mary Cassatt. "Beastings" means the first milk secreted by the mammary glands.

Myers’ writing has a succinct clean beauty which draws you into this story. His language becomes more honed in and intense as the characters emotionally and physically break down during their arduous travels. When the Girl is in a particularly bad stretch without access to water she feels “Thirst like she had never known. A thirst to turn the world yellow. Make her eyeballs tingle and her throat scream. Lips crack. Teeth itch. Panic.” You feel the physical experience in these sharpened precise choices of words. It’s this bodily immersion in this chase which gripped me as I read. This exciting, nerve-wracking tale is also a heartfelt cry against moral hypocrisy of the worst kind. Although the Girl is reduced to clawing over the landscape for sustenance like an animal, it’s the authority figure that is revealed as the true primordial creature. As one character rebukes “You’re all at it you religious lot. Beast behaviour.”

One of the most powerful things that struck me about this novel was its unique take on the experience of survival. We who get to sit comfortably reading novels have survived in life when so many others have perished through circumstance and bad luck. Although life can be gruellingly difficult, there is a guilt attached with the bare fact of survival. At one point Myers writes “Think of your poor siblings next time you’re shedding those tears said the Sisters. Up there with those un-Godly beasts. Those wicked wicked people. No. You were the lucky one girl.” With this challenge the Girl courageously goes forth to survive on her own terms. She has been lucky to survive where others have not, but she will no longer compromise. Her trials to achieve true independence make for a powerful, gripping story. Falling into the stripped down and savage world of “Beastings” I was totally enthralled.

The Weightless World by Anthony Trevelyan

What becomes of us when everything we think of as essential to our lives (job, partners, family, community) disappear and all we’re left with is hope? A person’s identity crumbles. He floats terrifyingly free and grasps for something solid. This is the issue at the heart of Anthony Trevelyan’s debut novel “The Weightless World.” It begins with the narrator Steven Strauss accompanying his boss Raymond Ess on a business journey to India. On a previous soul-searching trip, Raymond met a man who invented an anti-gravity machine and he struck a deal to acquire the rights. The potential of such a device is enormous, but is it real? Reality is something at play between Steven and Raymond along their journey because both have secrets. This journey isn’t what it seems and the life they must eventually return to in England will be radically different from what it was before. This becomes a mission on which everything is at stake.

Trevelyan has a very easy to read and engaging prose style. At first, his narrator Steven is totally consumed by managing his older and mentally-delicate boss. Gradually Steven reveals his own insecurities and strangely aggressive nature. During his journey the man he thinks he was unravels as revelations unfold. Steven’s identity is stripped down until he feels “my life was a soap bubble in the breeze, worthless, weightless” and he discovers what’s really important in his life. Their journey takes them to a remote location where the inventor of the anti-gravity machine Tarik Kundra has complicated reasons for remaining so reclusive.

Steven and Raymond’s Indian guide is a highly educated woman named Asha. Her character adds a complexity to the narrative because she questions the morality of the travellers’ mission and the way India is exploited in the modern world. At one point she confronts Steven saying “The whole place, the whole country. India disgusts you. Let me tell you, it disgusts me too. What is India but the world’s whore, the world’s favourite foreign fuck? So exotic, so authentic, so convenient, so easy…” The exploits and in-fighting of the expedition group lead to catastrophic results where it’s the people of the local community who suffer and fight back. Lurking in the background of this story is news of a bombing in Bangalore. There is a continuous theme that the needs of the Indian people are being subsumed in favour of foreign capitalist gain.

“The Weightless World” is a brisk comic-tragedy. The adventure undertaken by the narrator and his boss Ess lead to a surprising, contemplative and ultimately touching ending.

Read an article by the author about his inspiration for writing the novel here: http://curtisbrownbookgroup.co.uk/2015/06/08/the-scientist-a-blog-post-by-author-anthony-trevelyan/

June book recommendations with WeLoveThisBook

Gosh, when it rains it pours! I've been waiting to share two pieces of my exciting bookish news for weeks and both are released today. First the announcement of The Green Carnation Prize judges - of which I am one. Now, here is a video I recorded with the amazing intelligent Anna James from WeLoveThisBook.com where we discuss our top new publications for June.

Please forgive how stiff and nervous I seem. You see why I'm a blogger and not a vlogger. Too shy! I discuss novels Mrs Engels (which was out in May but I snuck it in), The Household Spirit and Tender. I'm totally intrigued by Judy Blume's novel for adults which Anna discusses as well.

Click on this link to comment below the WeLoveThisBook post for your chance to win the books we discuss: http://www.welovethisbook.com/features/june-favourites

The Green Carnation Prize - Judges Announced!

I’m thrilled to reveal that I will be a judge of this year’s Green Carnation Prize! The award has long been a favourite of mine as it celebrates LGBT writers. Since the prize is partnered with Foyles it gives a fantastic physical platform for books listed for the award as well as shining a spotlight on LGBT writers in all genres. I strongly believe it’s important for queer writers to have an award which raises attention for their work – not despite their status as an LGBT individual but because of it.

It’s especially exciting I’ll be working with a wonderful group of fellow judges – particularly our chair Niven Govinden whose novels I’ve read and highly respect. Also actress/model Sophie Ward who played Elizabeth Hardy in ‘Young Sherlock Holmes’ (a movie I watched obsessively as a child). Several years ago I was a judge of the Lambda awards for debut novels. I read so many fantastic new writers and books through the process including the brilliant winner “Blue Boy” by Rakesh Satyal. I’m certain we’ll discover some fantastic new books in the process and have some heated discussions about what we’re reading – hopefully with some cake involved! Stay tuned for future updates.

20 Great Opening Lines From Joyce Carol Oates’ Novels & Stories

Today is Joyce Carol Oates' birthday! As a way of paying tribute to my greatest inspiration here are a selection of first sentences from her writing. You can find past reviews I've written about her latest fiction here.

The opening lines from novels and stories by Joyce Carol Oates are sometimes startling, sometimes mordantly funny, sometimes ironic, sometimes gruesome, sometimes elegantly simple and sometimes questioningly philosophical. But they all have the ability to grip you and make you want to read more.

Mid-Year Competition - Win a signed copy of Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea

It’s hard to believe it but we’re nearly halfway through 2015 already! Thinking back on some of the best books I’ve read so far this year titles like Anne Enright’s “The Green Road”, Patrick Gale’s “A Place Called Winter”, Joyce Carol Oates' "The Sacrifice", Marilynne Robinson’s “Lila” and the short stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman “Almost Famous Women” are up there. But Gavin McCrea’s debut novel “Mrs Engels” has lingered in my mind more than most because of the power and originality of the central character Lizzie. She’s such a strong creation with a mesmerizing voice and the story is so engaging I’ve been recommending this novel to everyone. I feel so strongly about it I want to give you a chance to read it too!

But I want to know about what books I’ve been missing out on. So let’s do a trade! You tell me about the book you’ve read this year which is your absolute favourite. I’ll select one comment as the winner to send Gavin McCrea’s novel to and before 2015 ends I’ll also read the winner's favourite book (it doesn’t need to be a new book published this year). Sound fun?

To win a signed copy of Mrs Engels comment on this post telling me what is the best book you’ve read so far this year. At the end of June the winner will be chosen through a very sophisticated selection process (I’ll pull a name out of a hat). Be sure to include your email or twitter handle so I can get in touch for your address to mail the book to you if you win. You can enter from anywhere in the world. Good luck!

All Involved by Ryan Gattis

When the Los Angeles riots occurred in April-May 1992 I was only a 13 year-old boy growing up in Maine. Living in the most extreme diagonally-opposite corner of America from where this was taking place it was difficult for me to make sense of the news footage of burning buildings, looting and violent arrests. Looking back on it, I’ve read accounts which have speculated how the court’s acquittal of officers involved in violently beating Rodney King during his arrest sparked six days of rioting in the city. A combination of timely social, economic and ethnic factors influence how such a decision can provoke citizens to openly rebel and tear apart their own community. I witnessed it myself here in London in August 2011 when a shooting by police sparked a series of riots across the country. It’s all very well theorizing about the horrendous events which occurred over those days in LA but what did it feel like? Ryan Gattis has skilfully created a novel which offers a range of voices from many different backgrounds as they navigate through their imploding city over the chaotic period of the Los Angeles riots. It’s a tremendously immersive experience which gives the reader a dynamic heart-felt understanding of individual points of view amidst the chaotic backdrop of a virtually lawless city.

The novel includes the voices of the working class, gangsters, a fireman, law enforcement, the homeless and other civilians who all range in ethnicity from Hispanic to Korean to White to African-American with many of mixed-racial backgrounds. How Gattis convincingly embodies all these different voices with their particular nuances of speech and slang is astounding. I had the pleasure of hearing Gattis read at Damian Barr’s literary salon on June 8th and it was so impressive how he inhabited the speech and character of the Mexican food van worker Ernesto as he tried to walk home after a hard day’s work. He empathises fully with other individuals who have entirely different backgrounds and experiences; in doing so he helps the reader to feel what they feel and understand why they make the choices they do. It’s his talent for paying tribute to a person’s humanity which makes reading this novel such a fully involving emotional experience. By including an enormous range of convincingly differentiated voices the reader acquires knowledge of the immense diversity of the city and an understanding for the points of view of characters who you might not ordinarily sympathize with.

There are multiple threads to the stories which run through these characters’ narratives. The main events we follow have nothing directly to do with people reacting to the verdict on Rodney King’s assailants, but people who use the disruption as an opportunity to settle old scores. The primary drive of the book is set in motion from what happens in the first chapter when Ernesto leaves a child’s party event catered by the taco truck he works for. It leads to subsequent instances of gang warfare which reverberates throughout the community. Causalities mount and bystanders are drawn into the fray. Our brief encounters with such a range of characters give us a fuller three-dimensional view of the cityscape as we encounter locations, people and experiences from different points of view. This is a tremendously effective way of bringing the story alive and widening an understanding of events rather than seeing them through one character’s perspective or a fully omniscient narrative.

Through these voices the reader encounters a range of people who draw you into their individualized understanding of the city’s history and the cultural/social distinctions which spur conflict. There is an armed teenage Korean-American boy who journeys through the neighbourhood with his father seeking to protect the Korean businesses which are under threat of looting and burning. We learn from a gangster who calls himself Lil Creeper that some outward appearances of ignorance are an act to pass undetected: “Life goes way better when people think you’re estupido. That’s a fact.” Through the voice of a seemingly cold-hearted killer we hear flickers of his humanity: “Bad things happen, they do, but when they do, they can be quick every time and it’s better for everybody.” We get details of how well trained some gang members are in matters of combat/military tactics/forensics/legal matters making any investigation or legislative justice virtually impossible. The reader hears how stealing and killing makes sense to gangsters just as it does for members of secret armed forces teams who illegally dole out justice in a shockingly reprehensible way by “Viewing our prospective targets neither as victims nor as people, but as unpunished criminals getting a dose of the only medicine they understand.” These multifarious perspectives make the seemingly senseless disorder and violence which America watches on TV news acquire a terrifying kind of sense.

By collecting this cacophony of fascinating voices, the reader also gradually develops a feeling for how Los Angeles is a character in itself. The riots don’t merely disrupt and transform it, but are a symptom of a sickness which has always lain dormant. One character remarks that “I’m staring at a war zone. In South Central. It’s like somebody packed up all the shit I been seeing in Lebanon almost my whole life, put it in a box, shipped it over, and opened up that chaos in my backyard.” Over the course of the novel a terrifying sense builds up that this thing called society is a lie and all that exists are isolated groups of people who live by their own rules rather than any governmental law. It’s Lord of the Flies in everyday life. The riots simply tear away the veil hiding the truth about how society really functions. Another character reflects that “there’s a hidden America inside the one we portray to the world, and only a small group of people ever actually see it. Some of us are locked into it by birth or geography, but the rest of us just work here.” These citizens feel disenfranchised from the society they live in and don’t see themselves in any idealized portrayals of it. It’s why individuals feel empowered emblazoning their name across the city in graffiti because “They say I exist.” Rather than being fearful of the sudden lawlessness of the riots, many people feel empowered “Cuz the world we live in’s completely flipped now. Up’s down. Down’s up. Bad is fucking good. And badges don’t mean shit. Cuz cops don’t get to own the city today. We do.” There is a feeling that some of these people are simply taking ownership of the city which always belonged to them. We also get a sense of the cyclical nature of social tensions within this city which inevitably lead to unchecked violence: “L.A. has a short fucking memory. It never learns nothing. And that’s what’s gonna kill this city. Watch. There’ll be another race riot in 2022. Or before, I dunno.” This foreboding sense that any order brought about will inevitably unravel again at some point leaves a lasting impression that the city’s disparate groups need to be connected together through forms of outreach to try to quell future violence.

“All Involved” includes a lot of frank portrayals of assaults and destruction which can make it distressing to read. What’s brilliant about the way Gattis constructs his story is that after spending time inside the head of gangster and developing a sympathy for his point of view, your feelings about his being assaulted in a later section are very different from how they would be if you’d read about him without really knowing him. Moreover an impression is made of what lawlessness really looks like and how harm can come to individuals whether they think they are involved or not. It’s a stark reminder how “that’s this crazy life. It comes at you how it wants to, whether you’re ready or not, and sometimes it takes what it shouldn’t. Sometimes, that’s the only thing you can count on it doing – taking.” Even if we like to feel we’re living in a structured well-ordered society it can take surprisingly little for chaos to burst into your life. Rather than give a sense we should be perpetually uneasy about this, “All Involved” reinforces your faith in people’s ability to care for each other if the right connection can be found. This novel is a fantastic achievement with a mesmerising story and characters that leave a lasting impression.

Quicksand by Steve Toltz

The antihero of Steve Toltz’s second novel “Quicksand” is a man named Aldo Benjamin whose life is filled with one horrendous mishap following another. He instigates a series of ill-conceived business ideas which leave him impoverished, at various points in his life he’s accused of multiple serious crimes and he’s plagued by horrific health problems which leave him seriously debilitated. The novel begins with Aldo’s lifelong friend Liam explaining how he wants to capture this unfortunate man’s life in a meaningful literary work. This put me in mind of one of the greatest biographies I’ve ever read. The writer Stefan Zweig (whose own fiction has received a resurgence in the past several years) wrote a passionate and mesmerising biography of Honore de Balzac. Zweig was very much a man of high artistic ideals, but Balzac was a man that produced a bounty of inspired literature while seemingly only driven by a desire to become wealthy and establish a place in high society. Balzac attempted a series of get-rich quick schemes and returned to writing as a default to pay off his ever-mounting debts. There is something about a figure of evident genius who is hopelessly impaired by his own misdirected passion which makes him incredibly endearing. Liam observes that “the only people worth watching are those who have reached rock bottom and bounced off it, because they always bounce off into very strange orbits.” This is true of Aldo who is an inspired and original character.

For all the calamity that surrounds him, Aldo has unusual insight making statements which caught me off guard with his uncanny ability for cutting through the matrix of life and humorously overturning assumptions. He has a lot to say about sex and love. At one point “it occurred to me then that love is a decision, and the intensity of that love is more closely related to stubbornness than to genuine or spontaneous feeling.” Aldo hints at how our own desires for what we want can blind us to the person we actually have before us. He engages in long-term intense relationships with two different women, Stella and Mimi, at separate points in his life. These women are fascinating and complex themselves which is so refreshing to read in a narrative that is dominated by such a “male searching for meaning” voice. “Quicksand” also doesn’t shy away from giving a new perspective on difficult subjects such as rape and violence towards women. When his relationships fail Aldo frequents a particular house of prostitution to satisfy his urges and which he feels is safer (both emotionally and health-risk-wise) because he surmises that “Sex with people you like, or are infatuated with, or love, average citizens, that’s where the real danger is.” With his horrendous bad luck, this turns out not to be the case and he finds himself entangled in a morally and legally complex situation on one of his trips.

Aldo also makes grand statements about civilization and how our anxiety over our discontents can be filtered into disaster movies, but gives it an existentialist twist: “All those disaster movies have it wrong. I don’t think strangers do bond together in times of crisis, I think they resent each other’s unfamiliarity as the plane goes down and then burn together in awkward silence.” It’s a terrifying prospect to think that in that moment of greatest crisis our feelings of empathy would be superseded by standard self-centred emotions and social discomfort. Later when contemplating the end of civilization he envisions a gradual falling apart: “i don’t know anything other than that the greatest misconception about the apocalypse is that it is a sudden, brief event. it is not. it is slow. Grindingly slow. it goes for generations.” Aldo embodies a nihilistic perspective that oblivion is preferable to the continuation of life because he has experienced more disappointment and pain than the average person. The novel poignantly captures the terror of being struck down with a debilitating condition: “I hated being estranged from my own body, trapped in enemy territory.” His body becomes an antagonist. It’s with sour feeling that he observes how people respond to his illness. Because “Everyone looks on the bright side for you” Aldo is determined to only look on the dark side. Yet the narrative isn’t as bleak as you’d expect, but contains a lot of Woody Allen-like humour about the human condition such as “I can’t understand why masturbation is called self-abuse. It’s the only nice thing I’ve done for myself all week!”

Frustrated with life, Aldo retreats to a beach where he struggles to surf

One of the fascinating things about this novel is its complex portrayal of a difficult friendship. Aldo and Liam have been friends most of their lives. Liam is a police constable and therefore called upon by Aldo to help him out of many different legal scraps. Hilariously, Liam only became an officer because he went to police academy as research for a novel. He abandoned the novel so decided he might as well become an officer. The relationship between the two men changes over the course of time and their bond shows itself to be robust whilst surprising events occur during the novel. The unique challenges each man faces form a special kind of bond as Liam observes: “We were friends who now had one extra thing in common: We were both at the end of our rope.” It’s difficult to portray a gradually evolving friendship in a novel. While it comes together at the end, Liam is almost completely lost in the second part of the novel where the narrative is completely handed over to Aldo who gives an extended testimony at one of his more serious legal trials.  For me, this is one of the weaker points of the novel particularly when Aldo converses with a totally anonymous voice which feels more like the author making thoughtful statements rather than something which would naturally come out of a character during the course of their journey. It’s still engaging but it detracts somewhat from the emotionally engaging elements of the plot. This is an issue which occurred towards the end of Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch” as well. The author’s compelling intelligence seems to take precedence over the pleasures of story. But, in both cases, I don’t think this detracts from the fact that these are extraordinary novels.

It’s admirable the way “Quicksand” eloquently describes many of the discontents we share through a compelling and forcefully original voice. The well-formed critiques of civilization and modern life are framed in such a way that you wonder why these things aren’t being asked all the time. Aldo has all the audacity and humorous force of thought equal to some of literature’s most unusual and memorable characters such as Ignatius J. Reilly of “A Confederacy of Dunces” or Jerome Corcoran in “What I Lived For.” It’s a book which reaches for profundity and quite often achieves it. I’m certain that “Quicksand” is a novel that will stick with me.

Baileys Prize Shadow Jury Winner

If you didn’t already know, I’ve been taking part in the Baileys Prize Shadow Jury this year. Along with five other passionate readers we made it our mission to read the twenty longlisted books, select our own shortlist and crown our own winner. We met over dinner and drinks for the long final debate during which each of the novels we shortlisted was discussed in detail – as well as several books we wished had been included on the judges’ original longlist. Personally, if Marilynne Robinson’s “Lila” had been listed for the prize I would have argued that it should have won.

Our own shortlist (slightly different from the official judges’ shortlist) included the books:

“Dear Thief” by Samantha Harvey
“The Country of Ice Cream Star” by Sandra Newman
“How to be Both” by Ali Smith
“The Shore” by Sara Taylor
“A Spool of Blue Thread” by Anne Tyler
“The Paying Guests” by Sarah Waters

I’m delighted to announce our selected champion is Ali Smith!

I’m very happy with this decision as “How to be Both” is the book I wanted to win and I think it’s the book which will actually win the Baileys Prize. However, part of me does feel regretful that we didn’t choose “The Country of Ice Cream Star” because this is a tremendously inventive and radical novel which does deserve more attention. As I discussed in my review, I think there are flaws but these are outweighed by the tremendous vision Newman had to create such a complex alternative future and original narrator. Nevertheless, “How to be Both” is a tremendous novel that deserves to be celebrated. I’ll have all my fingers and toes crossed for Ali Smith at the Baileys Prize award ceremony!

Check out the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction site for more info about the shortlist and a fun The Brilliant Woman’s Guide to a Very Modern Book Club. 

Who do you want to win? Are there other novels you wish had been on the Baileys Prize shortlist?

Tender by Belinda McKeon

Do you ever think back to the time when you were a young adult and cringe? So much awkwardness, embarrassment and self-consciousness. You tried so hard to instantly become the person you wanted to be. Do you remember meeting someone who seemed so revelatory and exciting you became totally fixated on them? You wanted to be with that person constantly and couldn’t stop thinking about them. I certainly remember experiencing all of this. “Tender” takes you back to that confused passion of youth with the story of Catherine, a young Irish woman at university during the 1990s. She becomes enamoured with a vibrant aspiring artist named James. He is also young and frustrated about life. He struggles with coming out and discovering his place in the world, but he and Catherine become attached to each other. Throughout a tumultuous relationship they slowly discover who they want to become and, more importantly, the kind of people they don’t want to turn into. Belinda McKeon takes you through this crucial transition into adulthood with a beautifully written story about art, friendship and love.

Who can say why we fall so desperately for someone? Perhaps that person has qualities you wish you had yourself or talents you can’t help admiring. Sometimes it’s possessing a boldness for living that you feel you might lack. James is forthright in his approach to the world. “He was saying aloud the stuff that, Catherine now realized, she had always thought you were meant to keep silent.” James challenges the world in a way Catherine never thought she could. This opens her eyes to possibilities she previously thought were closed to her. She finds herself ready to eschew all expectations for her future that her parents hold.

Photo of Ted Hughes by Cartier-Bresson from 1971 that Catherine studies

Catherine is very taken with poetry and Sylvia Plath in particular. She reads her writing and Ted Hughes. Their fateful relationship casts a sombre shadow upon the heated connection that arises between Catherine and James. There is a fascinating point in the book when the narrative suddenly shifts to a much more frantic account which stumbles through Catherine’s consciousness as she deals with the intensity of her own emotions. Cut off from the man who meant so much to her she’s trapped in a vicious kind of solitude: “She felt alone; or she felt, at least, the threat, the spectre, of her own aloneness.” Thwarted by a love which can’t be reciprocated she finds her existence is circumscribed leaving her without any meaningful connection to other people or to the future she thought she might inhabit.

In all of our lives there is a constant tension between becoming the person you want to be and fully inhabiting who you are. Catherine is often caught in the interstices of life where she has a definite heritage and expectations for her future, but she constantly yearns for more. Consequently she’s frequently dissatisfied and struggles to understand her place in the world. She wonders “Was a reality something you arrived at, or something you made? Or something you just forced onto things?” Catherine tries to pack all of her yearnings (especially involving James) into the everyday reality she so dearly wants. But, because he has very different aspirations, she is often frustrated and disappointed with the shape of her current reality.

Inevitably, Catherine finds she can survive because there are other options in life which exist beyond what she can imagine. As we all learn with aging: “this is how it is. Time moves. It takes you with it. Life changes.” The novel “Tender” is a kind of memorial to that time in life when change was painful but necessary. Development isn’t just physical, but it’s a mental process of testing out possible selves and possible futures we want to inhabit. McKeon elegantly captures the joy of discovery, the pain of loss and the long difficult process of self-acceptance.

Girl at War by Sara Nović

Ana is an adolescent girl growing up in the city of Zagreb during a time of tumultuous change. One day the distinction between being Serbian and Croatian makes a big difference although “In school we’d been taught to ignore distinguishing ethnic factors, though it was easy enough to discern someone’s ancestry by their last name.” Narrating the story in her own voice she witnesses a growing edginess as neighbours start to turn on neighbours and friends upon friends. She hears the opinions about certain ethnicities and political allegiances when she goes to shops or school or watches television. For Ana and her close friend Luka, such distinctions are perplexing and absurd however the effects become immediately apparent when food/supply shortages occur and the air raids begin. She will only know in retrospect that she lived through the Croatian War of Independence.

Perhaps Ana would have lived through the war without feeling its effects so intensely if her parents were able to remain in Zagreb. As children do, Ana and her friends adjust to living in a time of war. They play fight amidst the signs of war and shelters which spring up all over the city. Of course war is made into a game by children who experience it because otherwise they would feel nothing but terrified the entire time. Although she adapts she is conscious this isn’t a standard childhood: “I thought of our war games and generator bike fights and wondered if the things I’d come to consider ordinary were not so normal after all.” She is aware that real danger exists, but she convinces herself it’s something she won’t experience: “I allowed myself into the fantasy I recognized as such even while my mind was still spinning it – that there in the flat, with my family, I was safe.” But Ana’s baby sister Rahela is seriously ill with a kidney problem. The limited medical resources left in Croatia can’t help her so the family must take her further afield and over borders where they run into trouble. Ana is forced into an entirely different kind of life which leaves her damaged and struggling to understand who she is now. After eventually becoming settled in America, Ana travels back to her native country to be able to consciously cope with her past and form a stronger sense of identity.

One of the most touching things in this moving and powerful novel are the ways in which language and literature play an essential part in Ana’s connection with her past. She reads books about war and the history of her country by writers such as W.G. Sebald and Rebecca West especially because “Reading was one of the only ways in which I allowed myself to think about the continent and country I’d left behind.” Dealing with her own experiences and past was too direct, but books give her a framework within which she can better understand how her own sense of national identity connects to the history of her people and individuals who have survived war. She learns that language itself is an essential part of that identity. She observes: “I used to think all languages were ciphers, that once you learned another’s alphabet you could convert foreign words back into your own, something recognizable. But the blood formed a pattern like a map to comprehension and I understood the differences all at once. I understood how one family could end up in the ground and another could be allowed to continue on its way, that the distinction between Serbs and Croats was much vaster than ways of writing letters.”

Cedevita is a sugary lemon Croatian vitamin drink distributed to children during the war as a public health initiative at first before becoming a popular soft drink in itself.

Partway through this novel I grew worried that it might be a book where the author is using a young female victim as a means of exploring a bleak difficult war history that most people don’t want to approach in raw facts. In other words, I thought it might be a case where the story is there to serve the author’s intention rather than the author being there to honour the story. But “Girl at War” proves itself to be a robust, complex novel which thoroughly immerses you in Ana’s journey. I grew to empathize and care for her struggle not just because of the circumstances she lived through, but the inner-conflicts she strives to overcome. Something which is revelatory and startling about this novel is the way in which Ana herself is not just a victim. Amidst her struggles in the war-torn countryside of Croatia she becomes a soldier. The stark reality of this is emphasized in how her experience isn’t symbolic: “When I thought of my own weapon I remembered not its existential power but its weight, heavy against my slight frame.” Such a visceral understanding of war continues throughout the book; the grander question of meaning only comes with her thoughtful reflections when she revisits her past.

The Yugoslavian civil war is a difficult subject to approach in fiction because it took place in parts and lasted for such a long time. “Girl at War” gives you a heartfelt, cleverly-written portrayal of one girl’s experience which shows that although there are horrendous, unquestionable crimes which occur in a layered, complex war such as this “in the end the guilt of one side did not prove the innocence of the other.” When it comes to the personal level survival is the imperative rather than allegiance or morality. Only in the aftermath of her experiences can Ana begin to make sense of what living through war has meant to her own notions of self. It’s a novel which transcends its circumstances to tell a story that has universal meaning.