A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman

It’s been some time since I’ve been instantly beguiled by writing as beautiful as Sarah Winman’s. There is a lush, enchanting way she uses language that lulled me and drew me into this strange other world she creates. A ninety year old woman named Marvellous Ways lives in a near-deserted town in Cornwall. She goes for nude swims every day and tells tales of how her mother was a mermaid. This all sounds very whimsical, but as the novel progresses it shows how it is grounded in a much more serious reality. It’s 1947 and the country is still recovering from two world wars: “The triumph of two years ago hadn’t gained access to wallets or purses or homes. People were poor and the city was crumbling.” A soldier named Francis Drake returns from France with a letter from a dying soldier that he promised to deliver. Marvellous and Drake strike up an unlikely friendship which feels something like the pairing in the film Harold and Maude. They tell each other stories, riffle through the past and establish a warm kinship.

One of the most fascinating characters is named Missy Hall, the romantic love of Drake’s life. She remained in London throughout the war and her perspective of surviving through the blitz is strange and new. She developed a deep friendship with a woman named Jeanie. Together they find liberation through the upheaval in society and explore new sexual experiences in the dark corners of bomb shelters. There is a blunt handling of the emotional repercussions of sexual encounters: “Shame’s shame no matter what perfume you spray on it.” When the war ends its back to reality and Missy finds it hard to readjust or slip into the pre-war relationship she started with Drake. It’s a shame she doesn’t appear throughout the entire novel.

The central character is, of course, Marvellous herself whose radical perspective frequently disarmed me. She’s someone who prizes the stripped-down simplicity of the world over heedless progress: “Some things are best left untouched, she said. Tides rise and tides fall. That is perfection enough.” She communes with inanimate objects which sounds fanciful but comes across as a deep, meaningful conversation she’s having with herself more than the world around her. Over the course of the novel, we learn about the three great loves of her life. Her first lover was a woman, but rather than dwelling upon trying to define sexuality its refreshing how she moves from that to relationships with men without ponderous reflection or attributing any meaning to it. She’s also someone dealing with dementia and her struggle with the loss of memory is meaningfully related.

From the cover, this isn’t the kind of book I’d normally pick up because the title and artwork make it seem frivolous. I was drawn to it more because of the endorsement from Patrick Gale whose writing I adore and respect. But there is something very interesting and meaningful going on in this novel. There are times when Winman’s writing does get too florid. While she’s mostly good at simultaneously giving the hard facts of reality alongside ornate musings upon life, there is a short section of wartime France which feels too fleeting and scantily-written to give the impact it needed. However, overall I was charmed by this novel and intrigued by Winman’s unique perspective of the world. “A Year of Marvellous Ways” is a refreshing read whose story I completely sank into.

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

Some books leave you reeling in astonishment and “A Brief History of Seven Killings” certainly does that. I feel like I've been startled awake and can still hear the multiplicity of voices contained in this novel. Marlon James creates several distinct narrators to tell the story surrounding an assault upon Bob Marley’s house on December 3, 1976 by unknown gunmen who attacked Marley, his wife, manager and band mates which left them seriously injured. This mysterious incident occurred two days before he was due to sing in a concert which was meant to inspire peace between two warring Jamaican political groups. Nevertheless, Marley performed at the concert as scheduled. This novel is told from the point of view of dons (or territorial/gang leaders), CIA agents, a journalist, gang members, a woman trying to escape Jamaica, a hit man and a deceased politician. It spans a decade and a half from 1976 to 1991. It is specifically about the Singer and Jamaican politics, but it’s also a fantastic exploration of identity (national, racial, gender, sexual, spiritual). This is a book that challenges your assumptions about who you think you are and how you see other people.

Although Marley is central to the story we never get his voice. As such, the characters talk about him and (in some cases) directly to him, but we don’t hear his point of view. This is important because, as the novel progresses, it becomes about much more than the incident and extends its meaning into the larger culture. The author could very well be revealing his mission for this novel when a character states at one point: “there’s a version of this story that’s not really about him, but about the people around him, the ones who come and go that might actually provide a bigger picture than me asking him why he smokes ganja.” In this way, Marley is mythologized in a way similar to what Gabriel García Márquez does in “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” where the murdered man central to the story becomes so filled with all the characters’ opinions about him that he ceases to be a physical man and becomes more of a symbol. At the same time, I felt incredibly anxious for and sympathetic towards Marley’s plight as he was caught in an overwhelming web of scheming and ideological battles. He was extremely vulnerable as one man observes: “Once you climb to the peak of the mountain, the whole world can take a shot.”

As well as offering a wide range of perspectives on Marley, the novel also gives a fascinatingly complex understanding of race as viewed from the perspectives of multiple characters. There is the white journalist Alex Pierce who scoffs at white Americans who affect black sensibilities, but who can’t fully integrate into the society. Or the CIA man who observes that “Racism here is sour and sticky, but it goes down so smooth that you’re tempted to be racist with a Jamaican just to see if they would even get it.” Throughout the book there is an awareness of skin colour being a factor in social class depending on lightness or darkness. An enforcer and don, Josey Wales, states that “In Jamaica you have to make sure that you breed properly. Nice little light browning who not too dry up, so that your child will get good milk and have good hair.” These points of view bring to mind for me Chimamanda Adichie’s observation that race isn’t a genetic issue, but a social issue. There are conflicted levels of racism inherent to everyone’s point of view which are demonstrated by the way they interact with and think about others.

For a novel so dominated by a multiplicity of male perspectives, the female narrator Nina Burgess gives a refreshingly different take on women in this novel. She’s someone who I felt a tremendous level of sympathy with both for her yearnings and her need to escape her culture to create a new identity. Burgess exposes the sexism women must face in Jamaican society – how the threat of sexual violence is something which can go unreported and be overlooked by officials even if it is (as they may very well be the perpetrators.) It shows how fear of it can be a kind of torture: “I can’t imagine anything worse than waiting for a rape.” It’s shown how rape is used as another instrument of war and the quest for domination. Importantly, the novel also shows how stereotypes or expectations about the way women might be treated in Jamaica don’t always play out in the ways you’d expect in specific circumstances. Another female character who defies stereotypes is Griselda Blanco, a drug lord who is one of the toughest and most fearsome characters in the entire book.

At the same time, James gives a sympathetic understanding towards his male characters – even when they are ruthless killers. Many feel trapped by circumstance and cornered into taking certain actions based on what opportunities are available to them. Some experience a crisis of consciousness and develop or recess back into old habits of being. The character of Josey Wales meaningfully realizes that “When you come into the real truth about yourself, you realize that the only person equipped to handle it is you.” There aren’t avenues of support to encourage gang members out of the life they live. The horrific fact about the violence that many of the men engage with is that it is self-perpetuating and has no end: “The problem with proving something is that instead of leaving you alone people never stop giving new things to prove, harden things.” So the violence must escalate as the men feel they must maintain and protect their place within their social group.

Jamaica has a notoriously bad reputation for the way it treats its queer community. That rampant homophobia is reflected in this book where one of the most common insults casually doled out is “batty man.” This isn’t surprising and fully justified given that many of the voices are by macho tough men. What is surprising is that two of the voices (that of a complicated gang enforcer named Weeper and a dangerous hit man named John-John K) are men who actively have sex with other men. There is a level of acceptance for their actions by some gang members who acknowledge their different sexuality but overlook this fact because they don’t consider them “that” type of gay man. Equally there is a complex understanding of their own sexualities within each man’s narrative. They challenge stereotypes: “Don’t think the man getting fucked must be the bitch.” Bottoms can also be bad ass.

Watch Marlon James discuss his inspiration for writing this novel

In many ways, these two characters also hide their true natures as a means of surviving in their stridently heterosexual social groups. There is a level of self-consciousness where the men must “perform” a role and this reveals the fallible nature of our social identities. There is talk of male prostitutes being used and then killed to hide the shame of what happened. Only in New York City can Weeper establish a somewhat steady sexual relationship with another man on his own terms. Weeper and John-John K also have a fascinating dialogue about sexuality when they finally meet in a climactic scene which offers very different points of view rather than a singular outcast gay man’s voice. This is such a refreshing and challenging thing for a novel to do. It’s fascinating to consider how the author might also still be facing his own struggle with sexuality given that in the last sentence of the acknowledgements he warns his mother away from reading the fourth part of this novel which contains some very graphic gay sexual content.

It’s astounding to me a novel can encompass so many different voices and do so in a way that is entirely convincing, but also beautifully written. Some of the most lyrical writing is that of the deceased politician Sir Arthur Jennings who oversees the spanning interstices of time between sections. One of the most striking lines which I keep musing upon comes from the journalist looking upon the ghetto thinking “Beauty has infinite range but so does wretchedness…”  However, some of the most forceful, terrifying and hypnotically-written passages that flood your mind like a river are by the young gang members rapt in the heat of drug-fuelled violence. This novel builds voices in layers giving a complex understanding of our culture in a way that only a novel can. Interestingly, it uses multiple narrators to create a polyphonic perspective of a place and time surrounding a specific incident that's very similar to Ryan Gattis’ “All Involved”. I was also struck how one plot-line of the book sees a caregiver get attached to an older man who loses his short-term memories every day which is a story that is superficially similar to Yoko Ogawa's "The Housekeeper and the Professor" which I read earlier this year. Of course, James' novel is very different from these books in content, but I think it's a positive thing when great books remind you of other great books.

It is commendable Marlon James engages with this period of Jamaican history and culture in such a complex and intelligent way. Perhaps he felt the need to answer his own challenge set by his character Tristan Phillips who suggests: “Maybe somebody should put all of this craziness together, because no Jamaican going do it. No Jamaican can do it, brother, either we too close or somebody going stop we.” This is a view of Jamaica that only this author could give, yet its meanings extend so far beyond the boundaries of that country and the individual voices it contains. It is a long read, but it becomes utterly mesmerizing. As an enticement to stick with it, you should know that the significance of this novel’s title and the killings it references isn’t revealed until near the end. “A Brief History of Seven Killings” is a novel I feel like I could go on and on about. I’ve only just touched on some of the fascinating themes and ideas this book brings up. It’s better if I just write you should definitely read it and end here.

Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cumming

Reading a celebrity’s memoir isn’t usually my sort of thing. But this book actually has very little to do with being a celebrity. Alan Cumming’s extraordinarily complex and difficult family story is reason enough to read this memoir without the need for salacious Hollywood gossip (of which there is very little in this book). “Not My Father’s Son” is primarily about Cumming’s incredibly problematic relationship with his estranged father and overcoming the horrendous abuse he and his brother experienced as children. However, it is because of his fame that he was able to participate in the program Who do you think you are? where celebrities get to trace their heritage and uncover hidden facts about their family. In this book we’re given his personal take on discovering more information about his mysterious maternal grandfather who was a war hero and whose life came to a shocking end. What was going on between his immediate family while this was being filmed is even more extraordinary than what happened in this television program. There are events and revelations in Cumming’s life happening simultaneously while the show is made with bizarre connections linking the past and present.

This memoir turns into a kind of thriller as it progresses because of the anticipation of what family details will be revealed. It moves back and forth in time from Cumming’s childhood and budding acting career to the time of filming the TV show. Interspersed are family photographs which become particularly poignant as more of the story is revealed. Cumming’s complex story naturally raises questions about the meaning of family and how much genetics determines who we are. It also meaningfully conveys strategies for dealing with the aftermath of abuse. I found the story in “Not My Father’s Son” extremely moving. It’s about survival, identity and what really makes people family.

The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray

I’ve been really looking forward to reading “The Mark and the Void.” There’s been what I think of as “rumblings” about it for some time including mentions on Twitter and in the press (both very positive and very negative reviews). Now that Booker predictions are already being made it’s tipped by some as a strong contender. References to it have made blips on my radar and, after receiving enough blips, I was sufficiently intrigued to put it at the top of my TBR pile. At one point I was chatting with two authors I really respect and both enthusiastically praised Murray and this new novel so I became determined to read it. Now I wonder if it’s one of those tragic cases of a book receiving too much hype because my overall response to this novel is something of a shrug.

It’s a fun idea which Murray self-consciously outlines at the start. A banker with hidden depths of spirit meets a writer who turns out to be a shallow charlatan. This combo yields thoughtful passages about the banking crisis in Ireland and observations about the interplay of art and life. French banker Claude uses his background in philosophy to assess the meaning of value for things and people in the modern world. It’s observed that “Life and the living of it have, for the first time in history, become separate. In recording our own reality – that is, in simultaneously experiencing and deferring experience – we pass from the actual into the virtual.” At the same time, the writer Paul makes a foil to Claude’s search for meaning in the modern malaise by seeking to exploit these foibles with his schemes to get rich. So he seeks to use our desire for intimate personal connections in real life filtered through the safety of virtual arenas to create a website Hotwaitress.com where you can be served by actual waitresses while knowing a profuse amount of personal details about their lives.

This is ridiculous and funny – the dark humour being that such sleazy disgusting websites do exist. Unfortunately, much of the humour in this novel feels quite broad and not all that haha. So periphery characters like Paul’s immigrant stripper wife who is also a well-educated literary theorist, protestors that dress like zombies and an artistic gay couple who slyly confess to adoring the musical Mamma Mia came across as a bit clunky to me because they’ve been inserted into scenes that read like situational comedy. It was difficult to feel much for them. There were some exceptions that show more of the shady reality of the world. For instance, Claude’s female co-worker Ish is put in the extremely uncomfortable situation where potential investors demand she get a lap dance at a gentlemen’s club (a situation she thankfully escapes). Her gradual disillusionment with her profession is effective, but she has a lovesickness for Claude which felt cloying. Probably the character I found most endearing was Paul’s young son Remington whose absurdist interjections provide a light relief.

All this might be okay if protagonists Claude and Paul succeeded as characters. Their relationship reminded me strongly of Stefan Zweig and his biography of Balzac. Like Claude, Zweig was devoted to the way art can elevate us out of the mire and pettiness of daily life. Yet he’s continuously frustrated because, like the character Paul, Balzac’s primary motivation was to get rich through ridiculous ploys which fail miserably and he only goes back to writing out of necessity to pay off debts. This tension makes for amusing interactions in “The Mark and the Void” but it’s a relationship so strained it comes across as unbelievable. If it weren’t for the author’s controlling hand Claude would certainly block Paul out of his life. Because their connection is the impetus for the story, they can’t be separated so the charade continues. Maybe that’s the point and, as the novel progresses, we’re made more and more self consciously aware of the limitations of novels. It’s stated that “The stories we read in books, what’s presented to us as being interesting – they have very little to do with real life as it’s lived today… People looking back over their lives, people having revelations, people discovering meaning. Meaning, that’s the big thing.” This condemnation of literature would seem to make the pursuit of reading fiction pointless because all the little insights we find within don’t offer any succour in reality. But if you take away the story there is little left to appreciate but clever artifice and I would have preferred to read a non-fiction book about the banking crisis in Ireland.

The trouble is that highlighting the characters and situation as a sort of post-modern construct means they never get much beyond that. It’s difficult to feel any heart. To be honest, there were long passages of this novel I found boring. This too is self consciously pointed out in the novel: “He’s boring, his life is boring, isn’t that the point? Isn’t that what makes his story true? He’s the modern man, he lives in his cocoon of numbers, he has everything anyone could want – or rather, he has enough money to buy anything anyone could want – yet his life is empty.” So the novel moves along giving details of the inner-workings of banking while the protagonists engage in a game of cat and mouse. I wanted more than that because I could feel real anger and frustration from the author about the financial crisis in Ireland. In one passage, seemingly out of nowhere, there is an extended searing critique of “the Irish, with their demon priests, their cellulite, their bus queues and beer bellies…” and later it’s remarked “the fact is that the Irish are at root a slave race.” This chastisement a man has for his own countrymen in relation to the economic disaster of his time is what I would be thrilled to read about – not a novel as an intellectual postmodern game-play. Anne Enright’s recent novel “The Green Road” did much more to capture the Irish in all their complexity and say something meaningful in the lead up to the housing bubble.

I don’t mean to condemn this novel because there are a lot of interesting things in it. The title itself takes on multiple meanings throughout the book. People target each other to exploit and use one another for empty monetary pursuits in a way that drains life of meaning so we’re left “swimming around in this void together.” An accusatory finger points from character to character to author to reader. “The Mark and the Void” made me wonder about the way we’re lulled into absenting ourselves from taking responsibility for participating in all of this. It has force and something to say; for me it just didn’t find the right framework to express it in or give me the fully immersive experience I want from a novel.

Devastation Road by Jason Hewitt

It may feel sometimes like WWII is a subject that has been so well documented and fictionalized we don’t want to hear about it anymore. However, in the last year I’ve read some gripping novels that give a surprisingly different perspective on the war by focusing on the struggles of individuals on the periphery. Some of these include Lissa Evan’s “Crooked Heart” about con-artists on the home front, Ben Fergusson’s “The Spring of Kasper Meier” about the plight of German citizens in post-war occupied Berlin and Audrey Magee’s “The Undertaking” about a wartime marriage of convenience which turns into a harrowing tale of loss. Jason Hewitt takes an even more radically new view of the war showing the days leading up to its end and the immediate aftermath. However, “Devastation Road” doesn’t simply recount the complicated historical details of this significant time. Instead we travel on a journey down an anonymous road that has been ravaged by the war. Owen wakes to find himself bedraggled and disorientated near a river that is awash with bodies and without any clear recollection of the past five years. During his travels through a devastated Eastern Europe he slowly regains an understanding of who he is and what led him to this critical moment. His odyssey illuminates the way war is above-all made up of individual struggle and the terrible choices people must make to survive.

The trauma of war and a head injury have caused Owen to lose his short-term memory. At first this is a real struggle and he must write down what’s happening in order to remind himself what he experiences day by day and the fragmented memories which flash through his mind. He soon encounters a passionate Czech refugee named Janek who doesn’t speak English and a mysterious Polish woman named Irena who desperately wants to get rid of her baby. They accompany him on his journey trying to find people they have lost. Owen’s experiences and the way his life story gradually slots together cause him to entirely re-evaluate his identity. At one point Owen realises that “He was beginning to feel like a fugitive; or as if he had two lives running in parallel – the one he remembered and the one here and now.” This shows how our sense of self can become very thin and flexible, especially when challenged by something as traumatic as war. It causes people to both completely lose themselves or reinvent themselves as a necessary method of endurance.

Owen is a draughtsman helping to design planes for the war.

The story becomes both a thrilling and horrifying adventure as the truth is gradually revealed about the protagonists and the plight of people in the aftermath of war. With so many people displaced and communities’ infrastructure so broken, Owen wanders through a land of virtual chaos. We see how the war’s ending didn’t simply mean peace. The repercussions of the damage and continuing struggles of looting, fighting and rape persisted. A welfare officer remarks that “The war might as well still be raging for all the good the peace is doing us.” The way forward is uncertain. It’s compelling seeing how Hewitt’s characters adjust to this new environment by either triumphing or breaking down. Betrayal is a consistent theme in this novel where lovers, family and country are deceived out of necessity. The author explores the consequences of this in ways which are subtle and surprising. In particular, I found Irena’s character be extremely compelling as she is someone who felt thinly-drawn at first but her complicated story proves to be one of the most heart breaking.

It feels as if Jason Hewitt has taken the concept of Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road” and placed it in a historically specific time and place. Only through encounters and glimpses of the ravaged landscape do we piece together what has happened. While the physical and emotional damage of the war is real and painfully-felt, what’s in some ways equally disturbing is the way people’s sense of humanity has been so violently shaken. There are beautiful small acts of good will and terrifying scenes of vicious cruelty. “Devastation Road” takes you on a journey where you experience the extremes of war; you ultimately arrive somewhere that makes you very grateful for the gracious comfort of home.

Here is an article written by the author about displaced person's after WWII and the formation of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency which feature in this novel: http://www.historiamag.com/?page_id=1494

Your Father Sends His Love by Stuart Evers

Usually I take my time with books of short stories. I’ll maybe read one a day in the morning before work or read one aloud to my boyfriend in the evening to help him get to sleep (my voice is quiet & soothing: I could charm an angry lion to sleep) or pick up a book of stories on a restless afternoon to read only one and not go back to the book for a month. But the stories in “Your Father Sends His Love” made me greedy. I started with the first and I wanted another, then another and another like a bag of sweets. Stuart Evers has an uncanny ability for placing you right into a subtly dramatic situation so it feels so immediately real and entrancing. Many involve initially simple scenes such as a woman getting a tattoo, a father caring for his infant son during the weekend, a man consuming a bag of oranges. But you are quickly made aware there is more at stake here. Someone has a longstanding feud with his son, someone’s hope of a simple happy home has been shattered by larger circumstances, someone is channelling all their energy into an imaginary life. These diverse stories drew me in to challenge and entertain me so that I wanted to read them all immediately.

Family plays a crucial role in most of these stories. There is resentment which is dramatically played out as a self-destructive son extracts revenge on his egotistical father; a woman chides her husband’s occasional snack indulgences despite carrying on a hidden intense affair; a man develops a close friendship with his granddaughter where he gets her on his side against his son/her father. However, many of the stories also bravely feature the intensely tender and caring feelings between families which aren’t easily portrayed in fiction without giving me a toothache. A father defends his son from homophobic abuse; a mother seeks to honour the memory of her long-deceased sister; a man tries desperately to show how much he feels for his grieving best friend. These are meaningful and skilfully realized situations which made me care about these characters. It felt like their lives and relations expanded out far beyond the short space of a mere twenty odd pages.

One of the things that Evers does to make these stories feel so real is to capture the awkwardness of social interactions – sometimes with excruciating accuracy. In ‘Live From the Palladium’a boy tries to impress a girl he has a crush on with a joke he inherits from his mother only to bungle the thing up horribly. In ‘Charter Year, 1972’ while visiting a new family a man makes ominous suggestions that he’ll take prizes away from them unless they make public appearances. The story ‘Something Else to Say’ is structured in a way where mental lists of things to talk about are continuously made and nervously reshaped as a man meets his friend in a pub. Our social lives are filled with a clutter of trivialities which distract from larger and more crucial issues happening between us. These stories inventively portray how these interactions are played out while subtly hinting at the bigger emotions stirring beneath the surface.

An outstanding thing about the range of characters in these stories is how Evers represents diversity in way which is subtly woven into their very fabric. So there are characters across a range of races, nationalities and sexualities presented where identities are varied but they are first and foremost individuals. It’s a talent to do this in a way which doesn’t make difference into an issue, but includes it because it is simply the reality of the world. It’s something which should be happening more in fiction and Evers shows in these stories the right way it can be handled.  

Many of the stories have a Raymond Carver feel to them because of their realism and delicately balanced interactions between characters in poignant locations. For instance, a time-worn affair is played out between couples in a disused nuclear war bunker turned tourist attraction in ‘This Is Not a Test.’ However, Evers also shows a range of styles with the title story ‘Your Father Sends His Love’ feeling at times like a Samuel Beckett play or his story ‘Swarm’ which takes us into a world of virtual reality where people “link” for a price. Reading the stories all together, I could see the way each story adjusts the tone of voice and rhythm to more suitably match the differing subject matter. Evers does this in a way which makes each story feel unique while also giving the collection overall a satisfying cohesion.

This is simply excellent story telling. Eat them up in one greedy feast or, if you have more restraint than I do, enjoy reading them at a civilized pace.

The House in Smyrna by Tatiana Salem Levy (translated by Alison Entrekin)

How do you reconcile the national identity of your ancestors with the person you are today? The children of recent immigrants will most likely have a stronger sense of duality because they are exposed to their parents’ culture which was brought from somewhere else and that of the society which they’ve been raised in. The main characters in “The House in Smyrna” have an even more blended sense of self because their family has strong roots in Portugal, recent ties with Turkey and eventually moved to settle in Brazil. Rather than tell the story of how a child of immigrants embraces or rejects her various cultural influences, Tatiana Salem Levy does something radically new with her narrative by moving between characters and periods of time in brief image-driven sections. This creates an emotionally-charged story which blends disparate elements together to show how there can be no true cohesive sense of self.

The primary drive of this tale is a key left to a character whose grandfather tells her it is for the house he left in Smyrna, Turkey. Alongside her journey (which might be real or imagined) to seek out this ancestral home there are the stories of a man caring for his dying mother, a heated and tempestuous lovers’ relationship, the incarceration and abuse of a political dissident and a writer whose body is breaking down. This may sound like a lot to include in such a short novel. At first it can prove a bit confusing between these strands of narrative because few names are used. However, they quickly take on the characteristic of a unified voice searching and seeking out a place to call home. The narrator declares: “I was born in exile, and that’s why I am the way I am, without a homeland, without a name… I was born away from myself, away from my land – but, when it comes down to it, who am I? What land is mine?” This narrative embodies this sense of anonymity as a strategy for contemplating these insolvable dilemmas. Imagery is repeated throughout different sections making the experiences of the characters feel unified. Strong sensations of pleasure or pain are carried between one part and the next fusing them together. The line of time is subverted through these methods to suggest subtleties not available in traditional ways of storytelling.

Inevitably, this sometimes gave the disappointing effect of making me want to know more about the specifics of certain characters and their dilemmas. In particular, the sections about the brutality of the Brazilian military during the dictatorship feel like they deserve a wider space to deal with the complexities of the situation. However, the pointedly strong imagery which appears in some sections makes up for this consciously shortened style of storytelling. Scenes of grief, isolation, discovery, pleasure are rendered with impeccably-crafted prose making them strongly resonant. There are instances of sexual power play, the sense of exploration in a foreign country and the bitter sting of mourning which are depicted in a way that really transported me. The novel also includes some plot twists which give these tales a strikingly charged quality making the piles of detail you’d get in more traditional narratives feel superfluous.

“The House in Smyrna” is an emotional, startling novel that makes every sentence earn its place. As a narrator in the novel passionately declares: “If my writing doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t exist.” The intensity of writing here does feel as if the writer has shed her life into it. This is a book written by someone who is deeply concerned about the meaning of identity and finding a way to express the full complexity of it. It’s what makes this such a noble and intense novel.

Read an excellent interview with the author here: https://scribepublications.co.uk/explore/insights/tatiana-salem-levy-q-a/

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.