What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell

So much of the greatest literature is made up of characters undone by desire. Most of it romantic and sexual. Desire that remains hidden or is revealed or explodes, that creates enlivening passion and that ultimately takes characters somewhere new or destroys them. Like in life, characters can be suddenly toppled by desire which can seemingly come out of nowhere and leaves them hanging upon a cliff edge. “What Belongs to You” is a love story about a man undone. But, more than that, it’s an ingenious exploration of the way desire causes seismic changes to our ever-evolving sense of identity. It shows how through desire a man is made to confront his past and decide how to carry on in the future. It asks how much of our relationships are based upon an exchange – emotional or monetary. It does all this through the engaging, sympathetic voice of an American expat living and teaching in Bulgaria and a rent boy he meets named Mitko. What on the surface appears like a simple story weaves into avenues of obsession, deep reflection and confrontations with stark reality. It’s an utterly arresting and deeply contemplative novel. It reads like the most intimate confession from a soul who has spent his life in hiding.

The nameless narrator descends into a cruising haunt beneath the National Palace of Culture. Here’s the perfect metaphor: the brazen lust that is concealed beneath the appearance of sophistication. There in the public toilets he meets Mitko who has the cheekiness, youthfulness, confidence and roguish good looks which bewitch this lonesome interloper. The narrator is verging on paunchy. He’s not old but aging. He lives so much in his mind “I felt that the best of me was words” that the tiresome labour needed to present himself like a peacock on the market doesn’t appeal. It’s more convenient to purchase sex. It begins as a standard financial agreement of money for sex attended by a heady mixture of excitement and shame. Greenwell describes the awkward mechanics of this encounter and how it’s in truth like every sexual encounter: “how helpless desire is outside its little theatre of heat, how ridiculous it becomes the moment it isn’t welcomed, even if that welcome is contrived.” Something about this boy in his early twenties and the connection they share makes this transaction develop into one which shakes the foundations of the narrator’s identity. The pair meet on several other occasions and questions arise about what motivates each of them. Is it lust, friendship or money? The tension reaches an untenable point and the two have a calamitous altercation which separates them.

The narrator is plunged at this stage of his story into the past. Here he describes in heart-aching detail his coming of age: the development which led to his estrangement from his country and family. Greenwell gives the most touching, incisive and searing account of a boy’s expulsion from his father’s affection. What begins with a naturally easy and affectionate physicality between the two is one day suddenly broken. The boy learns to hide his same-sex desire and when it inevitably comes out in the open he receives the condemnation which eviscerates his identity. He states: “As I listened to him say these things it was as though even as I laid claim to myself I found there was nothing to claim, nothing or next to nothing, as though I were dissolving and my tears were the outward sign of that dissolution.” All the characteristics which make up his essential self including his bond with family level out his sense of being and leave him with nothing. Yet, as he finds later when conversing with his half-sister (who is differently but equally damaged) there are unsavoury characteristics of the father which cling to them regardless of their socially broken lineage. “Even these desires, I thought as I listened to my sister, seemed to descend from my father like an inherited disease.” Here are Ibsen’s Ghosts which arise at the most unexpected times to plague the narrator who believes he sufficiently distanced himself from the past of his upbringing, but finds patterns of behaviour and compulsions affecting his present.

The National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria

There are more echoes of Ibsen in the final part of the book when Mitko unexpectedly returns. The narrator must deal with the consequences of this past relationship. It forces him to question again what he really desires and what we owe to those who we’ve given our heart to: “that obligation to others that sometimes seems so clear and sometimes disappears altogether, so that now we owe nothing, anything we give is too much, and now our debt is beyond all counting.” The part a loved one has played in the formation of the self is inestimable, yet not all relationships were made to continue. Those emotional debts are seldom repaid. The conflict Greenwell creates in this story touches upon all the insecurity, regret and longing we continuously carry for lost love.

“What Belongs to You” is so intriguing for the way it contains a lot of ambiguity, but also manages to pinpoint the centre at which desire both destroys and necessarily transforms us. To encounter another person and make a connection in such an intimate, personal, all-consuming way makes you radically confront your conception of yourself. You must ask who you are and what you want at the most fundamental level. And, if you can’t find an answer, you must live continuously in ruin – until the next object of desire or a deeper self-understanding offers an opportunity to build yourselves back up again. These tensions are played out through the meaningful relationship between the narrator and Mitko. I was very moved by this beautiful, disarming and perceptive novel.

Read an interview between Garth Greenwell and Jonathan Lee about "What Belongs to You" here: https://www.guernicamag.com/daily/accessing-the-ecstatic/

The Looking-Glass Sisters by Gøhril Gabrielsen (translated by John Irons)

I’m not sure what it was about “The Looking-Glass Sisters” which had me excited about it several months before Peirene Press even published it. Something about a story of two sisters in an old, dilapidated house that’s isolated in the far north of Norway captured my imagination. Reading it became an especially good experience because shortly after finishing the book I went to my first Peirene Press book club. This is held in London at Persephone’s lovely bookshop. It’s been ages since my own book club disbanded so it was a pleasure being able to discuss the book in detail over wine, cheese and biscuits with a group of clever fellow readers. This novel is particularly excellent for a book club because its filled with so much ambiguity and opinions about it varied wildly amongst our group.

The novel is narrated from the point of view of a disabled woman who is dependent on the care from her sister Ragna in everyday daily tasks from eating to bathing to dressing. It’s been this way their entire lives and the women are now middle-aged. Their parents died when they were teenagers; we never know how or why they died. The sisters’ routines filled with bickering feel wholeheartedly like they’ve been exhaustively enacted over a lifetime and you quickly get the sense of how intensely intertwined the existence of these sisters has become. It’s as if they are no longer two separate bodies: “Over the years, through conflicts and confrontations, we have shaped, kneaded and formed ourselves into a lopsided, distorted yet complete organism.” This is the most perfect description for the feeling of their co-dependency and echoes the eerie sense that one cannot exist without the other. They can’t escape each other any more than they can escape their own reflection when looking in a mirror.

Or so the narrator believes. One day Ragna disrupts the claustrophobic and solitary life they share by bringing home a rather gruff man Johan. Is he an agent of chaos that destroys their relationship or a partner that could be incorporated into the household if it weren’t for the narrator’s jealousy? The answer isn’t clear because the narrative is filtered so totally through the narrator’s subjective and frequently paranoid consciousness. Having never left the house and being trapped in the physically limited routines of her day, the narrator lives primarily in her imagination. There are echoes of Charlotte Bronte's mad woman in the attic as reimagined in Jean Rhys's novel and also Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper.' Her whole understanding of the world comes from her sister, the dusty standard education text books left from her early life and library books – which the narrator must badger Ragna to exchange. Indeed, she seems made up more of words and lives more in the mind than in her physically-limited body.

I bought my copy of this novel at my local farmer's market at which Peirene sometime have a beautiful book stall.

The narrator’s fantasies do get quite intense and graphic. They veer from the heatedly sexual to the repulsively scatological to the furiously suspicious as she believes Ragna and Johan are plotting to put her away in a care home. Again, it’s never clear whether these are her projections or if they occur in reality. I appreciated the occasional respite from the narrator’s frantic descriptions and thought process when Ragna interjects some dialogue that questions her sister’s logic. There are also occasional moments when you see some real fondness between the sisters. However, most of the time, their relationship is destructive and weighted under long-standing resentments.

“The Looking-Glass Sisters” is in many ways a mesmerizing read, but it’s also highly unsettling. It’s disturbing to think that intensely co-dependent relationships between family members can break down so severely and the disturbed areas a consciousness can drift to when a life is lived entirely in the imagination. There is a sense that the narrator’s psychology can parallel our own internal lives when we believe the world to be a certain way. Rather than the disabled sister it could very well be the author speaking to the reader towards the end of the book when she states this story has been about the sisters but “also about all of us who have lapsed into laziness and fantasizing, hidden away in a room closer to the sky than the earth.” Viewing the story from this perspective it does take on a much more personal meaning. It made me consider the way in which my own imagination works in tandem with reality and the amount of dependency I have on other people. This book left me thinking. Gabrielsen is a highly intriguing writer.

The Green Carnation Prize 2015 Shortlist

Recently, I met with my fellow judges in Foyles’ beautiful flagship store in London where we had an in-depth discussion on the twelve books we’d chosen for the Green Carnation longlist. It was difficult to whittle this stack down to a shortlist because they are such a diverse and interesting group we all heartily recommend. But, after much debate, (helped along with some slices of cake) I’m proud to announce we’ve come up with a shortlist of six books!

Here we have a novel that reaches across time to shake hands with George Eliot, a fictional reimagining of the author's great-grandfather's exile, a personal & urgent non-fiction account of the drug war that's torn our society apart, a multi-voiced tale from Jamaica that includes complex & original gay characters, a lively & entertaining narrator who provides an essential counter-point to the birth of Marxism and a personal & poetic memoir about family.

Sophie & The Sibyl by Patricia Duncker (Bloomsbury)
A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale (Hodder Books)
Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari (Bloomsbury)
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (One World)
Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea (Scribe)
Stammered Songbook by Erwin Mortier (Pushkin Press)

Click here to read more about the Green Carnation Prize’s history
Click here to find and purchase all the nominated books from Foyles

Have you read any of these books? What are you interested in reading from this list? Are there other books you’d have liked to see listed? Any thoughts on the list as a whole?

I would love to know your thoughts. It’s going to be a challenge choosing a winner from this fantastic group.

After the Parade by Lori Ostlund

It’s not often I come across a novel where my opinion of that book transforms so much over the course of reading it. By and large, I abide by the fifty page rule. If I’m not getting much out of the book by that point I put it aside. Yet some novels only reveal their logic and reasoning as the story becomes fully formed. I felt this way about Colm Toibin’s novel “Brooklyn” especially. It’s beautifully written, but I didn’t really see the point until towards the end when I was suddenly absolutely gripped and realized what a brilliant book it is. “After the Parade” begins with an arresting and original premise. As the book opens we meet a man in his early forties named Aaron leaving his partner Walter, an older man that he’s been in a relationship with for over twenty years. Aaron embarks from this point on a journey of self discovery into reconciling his own past and finding the strength to fearlessly create a different kind of future for himself.

Lori Ostlund is an engaging writer who creates lively, complex and deeply-sympathetic characters. More than anything, this is a book dedicated to outsiders. It pays tribute and memorializes the struggle of people who feel ostracized from mainstream society because they are different or, as one character perceives them, a “band of misfits.” There are characters who are overweight, queer, Jewish, stricken with long-term illnesses and foreign students learning English as a second language. But the novel doesn’t portray these characters in a way that is only interested in serving the plot. They are written as fully-rounded people who possess their own flaws and make their own mistakes. It also skilfully shows the way projections about people impact an individual’s own psychology about the way they see themselves: “Once people thought they knew you, it was almost impossible to change their minds, which meant that it was almost impossible to change yourself.” One of the most compelling characters and the person that changes the most is Aaron’s mother Dolores who seems at first to be rather meek housewife living under an abusive patriarchal figure, but who develops into a deeply complex, conflicted and compelling individual. I was driven to read more of this book because I found the characters so engaging.  

A vibrant and forceful character called Clarence keeps the spines of all his books turned inward. I tried this with my own shelf. The effect is unsettling.

What I found difficult about the process of reading this novel were the abrupt time shifts which occur so frequently throughout. Scenes move back and forth between the present, past and many points in between. Going back to Aaron’s earliest childhood the reader learns in pieces about traumatic events which divided his family and led him to form a relationship with Walter. It can be somewhat confusing to travel in your imagination over these constantly shifting landscapes in time. It made me long for a linear story about Aaron’s life and wonder why Ostlund didn’t compose the novel this way. It’s only later on in the novel that Aaron’s changing personality shows why these memories of the past are spread throughout the narrative. The past informs the present in some important ways so it can’t be composed in a straight line. The significance around events at the beginning take on a deeper, more nuanced meaning once the reader understands the way he eventually developed into a man who abandons a loving, supportive relationship. The way this novel is composed makes a bigger statement about individual responsibility and survival than if it had been written as a straightforward coming of age story.  

I won’t deny that part of what drew me to this novel was the personal connection I felt with its protagonist. Being a man in my late thirties, it’s easy for me to relate to Aaron. He’s at a point in his life where he feels like a full adult and independent from his experiences growing up, yet he still finds himself haunted by his upbringing and curious about how the repercussions of certain events still influence his current behaviour. However, I don’t think you need to have such personal parallels with Aaron to get just as much as I did out of this novel. It shows how we often like to blame others for the situation we’re in. At one point a character confronts Aaron stating “You wanted Walter to be wrong so you didn’t have to be, but there isn’t always one person who’s right and another who’s wrong. Sometimes – usually – it’s not that easy.” “After the Parade” demonstrates through its powerful story the way individuals grapple with the grey areas of life. Like all the characters in this heartfelt novel, we must negotiate with ourselves on a daily basis about how much we’re willing to compromise and whether we have the strength to fully face an uncertain future without fear.

Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume

When middle aged loner Ray comes across a notice for a dog up for adoption he impulsively acquires this one-eyed pet who quickly becomes his closest companion. The narrative is entirely composed of Ray speaking directly to this dog. He finds it easer to speak to his pet over people because “there’s no need for the weighing and measuring of words, no need to listen to the way they stand in the air after my voice has finished.” This sounds like it might become an achingly sentimental tale, but it turns into a deeply sobering, atmospheric, pain-ridden journey about Ray and his canine companion. It’s not often I’ll enjoy reading a book that withholds so much about its central character – for instance, I had issues with Rachel Cusk’s much-praised novel “Outline.” For the majority of “Spill Simmer Falter Wither” we know little about Ray’s past or circumstances. While learning to care and communicate with his dog, Ray reflects on life and the detritus surrounding him in his dilapidated home. When bits of the past come to the forefront they do so with shocking emotional force since the rest of the narrative is so sedate. The story builds to a sensitive depiction of a deeply lonely existence.

Ray’s persistent focus on the present leads to frequent emotionally-charged dreams which he describes in detail. His unwillingness to reflect back on the past is due to his steadfast choice to remain consciously ignorant about his own family life. He reasons that it is “better to be content with ignorance, I’ve always thought, than haunted by the truth.” Equally, he avoids any chance at difficult confrontations. So when his dog attacks another dog (and possibly a young child) Ray flees his own home with the dog rather than face having his pet confiscated by the authorities. The majority of the book is made up of his directionless travels, squatting in his car and the people/things he encounters on their journey. He fears being held to account for his dog’s actions just as he fears facing the truth about his family and his past so he wanders around the fringes of society, but always remains attentively observant.

This is a profoundly solemn novel. What redeems it from being bogged down in its own misery is the beauty of Baume’s writing and the tender depiction of Ray’s care for his dog. The author never sentimentalizes this relationship. There is a lot of detail about the grit and griminess of living (especially in the enclosed environment of a car.) Whenever Ray comes close to speculating that his dog might possess some deeper understanding, the reality of their situation and his dog’s instinctive reactions repositions their connection safely back in reality. There is something refreshing about the way Ray staunchly refuses to view his life through any kind of religious or cinematic perspective as a way of consoling himself that he belongs in the world. He remarks “No one is watching us. Nobody even knows where we are.” This is the bare, cold truth of reality when we have no loved ones, family connections, community or god. This is a man unafraid to acknowledge his extreme hermetic existence, find he has no place in the world and carry on living regardless. However, his guardianship of the dog over the course of a year gives his life new meaning and ultimately allows him to acknowledge and put his past to rest.

Montaigne by Stefan Zweig (translated by Will Stone)

Several years ago I read Zweig’s biography of Balzac and it remains one of the best biographies I’ve ever read. Balzac led an impassioned, rigorous and tragically bumbling life that is great fun to read about. But what was so gripping about this book was the tension between Zweig who was evidently a writer of high ideals and his subject Balzac who was a brilliantly gifted writer with frivolous values. Zweig was a man dedicated to art and a freedom of spirit. Balzac desired status and fortune and only wrote so prolifically to get himself out of the enormous debts he accrued through get-rich-quick schemes. Thus reading Zweig’s intense frustration at Balzac’s indifference to his obvious talent and foolish striving for material goods and pretentious society is incredibly compelling to read about. Zweig is a thoroughly subjective biographer who makes his opinions known in a way that works so well more than a biographer trying to present an objective portrait of a life. He sticks to the facts, but focuses on aspects of his subject’s personal history and the statements their work made which he deems important to our culture and that have the most relevance to where he was in his own life.

“Montaigne” is a biography which is almost more compelling for what it says about Zweig than it does about his subject. Translator Will Stone gives a thorough and intelligent introduction to this brief book which is more a sketch of Montaigne’s life than a comprehensive account. (His biography of Balzac was much more extensive.) Normally I get impatient with such introductions and want to get to the real text of the book I’ve bought. But Stone’s account gives vital information about where Zweig was in his life when he wrote about Montaigne and why he was so drawn to this subject at this point in his life. Zweig famously retreated to a house in Brazil to escape the increasing influence of Hitler’s rise to power and the authoritarian forces threatening Europe. Despairing about the state of the world, he and his wife committed suicide in 1942.

“What Montaigne seeks is his interior self… which Goethe labelled the ‘citadel’, where all access is prohibited… This citadel, which for Goethe was only symbolic, Montaigne erects with real stones, a lock and a key… the famous tower of Montaigne.”

This biography was written in the crucial year before this act and the psychological cracks show in the text. The first section of the biography is an impassioned account of Montaigne’s high ideals. The values which he believed Montaigne exhibited are ones which felt so crucially relevant to Zweig’s own life that he seized upon him as a subject for the highest reverence. Zweig feverishly states: “Only he whose soul is in turmoil, forced to live in an epoch where war, violence and ideological tyranny threaten the life of every individual, and the most precious substance in that life, the freedom of the soul, can know how much courage, sincerity and resolve are required to remain faithful to his inner self in these times of the herd’s rampancy.” It’s as if he’s leapt upon Montaigne as a life raft in a time where he felt hemmed in by the ideological forces of his time which threatened the civilization Zweig valued so highly.

Zweig focuses on only the most crucial facts of Montaigne’s life, those which are relevant to him, and skips over huge chunks. What he seizes upon is gold and wholly engaging. No doubt if Zweig had lived longer he would have written much more extensively about this famous essayist. I can feel very sympathetic to Montaigne’s abrupt removal from his family and public life in his late thirties since it’s the same age I’m at now. Montaigne retreated to a tower to study, read and write while blocking out the everyday distracting realties of the world as much as possible. As a great reader Montaigne felt “Books are my kingdom. And here I seek to reign as absolute lord.” It’s interesting the way that Montaigne’s life played out – because, of course, however much we try to completely retreat into books the world draws us back into it. Montaigne’s reading tastes suited Zweig perfectly as he remarks “Concerning Montaigne’s judgement on books I am 100 per cent in accordance.” Thus Zweig found in Montaigne an intellectual kinship across centuries and found strength to stand against the tyranny of his own time. More disturbingly, it’s possible that Montaigne’s reasoning might have heavily influenced Zweig’s own decision to end his own life. This can be intimated in the line: “the last freedom: in the face of death. Life hangs on the will of others, but death on our own will.”

This is such a fascinating book for what it says about both its biographer Stefan Zweig and its subject of Montaigne. I’m now inspired to go out and read more by both of these fascinating authors.

The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction – Best of the Best

The Women’s Prize for Fiction has turned twenty and to celebrate they are hosting a live event at the Piccadilly Theatre in London with past judges and readings by famous actors to debate books from the past 10 years and crown one as the “best of the best.” (They are only considering the past 10 winners because they had the same competition on the prize’s 10th anniversary.) Let me begin this post by stating the obvious. Each of these books is already a winner. These are all important novels that deserve to be celebrated – no matter my opinions about the quality of some over others. I’ve been a long-time fan of this prize and I revel in the opportunity to celebrate brilliant female authors. The point of this event and any prize is to debate and discuss books that deserve attention in a compassionate, caring and fun manner.

Choosing a favourite between these ten books is particularly hard because they are all so good. The only two out of these ten winners I haven’t read are “Home” by Marilynne Robinson and “The Road Home” by Rose Tremain. I need to rectify this as from reading Robinson’s novel “Lila” this year and Tremain’s book of short stories “The American Lover” last year, I admire how skilled and intelligent each of these novelists are so I should get to their prize-winning titles.

Maybe I should start by commenting on which books from the ten I liked the least or have stuck with me the least since reading them years ago. I remember Tea Obrecht’s “The Tiger’s Wife” to be a really imaginative and moving novel, but I can’t remember much detail about it. For me, the best fiction is that which makes a long-term impact where scenes or characters or quotes will stick with you for many years. Although I read Zadie Smith and Adichie’s novels years before Obrecht, I can still recall some things about these other novels better than “The Tiger’s Wife.” Perhaps if I were to revisit it I’d feel differently now.

I do remember certain scenes and characters from A.M. Homes “May We Be Forgiven” and, while there were aspects of it I admired, overall I didn’t think it worked totally as a novel. I’ve written about this novel on the blog before and I still believe that Homes' style of writing makes her a better short story writer than a novelist. When Homes book won in 2013, I had been hoping Barbara Kingsolver’s novel “Flight Behaviour” would have won instead. Again, perhaps if I were to read the novel again my opinion would change.

It’s interesting that the winners for the past two years have been quite edgy, experimental novels. In “A Girl is a Half-formed Thing” Eimear McBride creates her own form of narrative that seeps out somewhere from the sub-regions of consciousness. It’s not speech or straightforward thoughts or an outside perspective, but the deep inner language of experience mixed with memory. Equally, Ali Smith is the triumphant trickster of language (as her new short story collection “Public Library” I reviewed yesterday again shows) and in “How To Be Both” she uses a specific form to get at subjects few other writers can. Not only does she make us question the multi-levelled meanings of words, but the construction under which we read since the book can be read from back to front or front to back. Plus it’s fun! It gets people talking and asking: which way did you read it around?

Barbara Kingsolver’s “The Lacuna” had me from the opening of the book. A boy likes to spend his days doing nothing but reading and snorkelling in the sea. This is my ultimate dream life! What follows is such a winding, beautifully-plotted novel with richly fascinating figures from history like Frida Kahlo, Leon Trotsky and J. Edgar Hoover who highlight some of the most important ideological struggles in the past century. This is a big novel that I was swept away by and didn’t want to end. Madeline Miller’s “The Song of Achilles” is simply a gorgeous novel taking two mythological figures and creating for them a male-male love affair which is poignant and fully realistic. This is such a passionate, tragic and beautiful story which I totally fell for.

However, if I’m forced to pick one Best I think it would have to be Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Half of a Yellow Sun.” It’s a phenomenally epic novel that I believe to be one of the best novels about both love and war written in the past ten… twenty… however many years. The writing is precise. The scenes are vivid and memorable. The characters are lively where each one possesses complex, personal points of view. It gives the world a totally different perspective on a national tragedy by showing specific aspects of the civil war in Nigeria in the 60s as well as making universal statements about the victims of war. I was mesmerized reading it and finished feeling shaken by the story. It’s a classic. Tomorrow I’ll be fascinated to see if the judges agree with my choice.

So those are my thoughts about these novels. What do you think? Which would you choose as your best out of the ten?

Kate Mosse gives a fantastic summary of the prize’s history and the reason why it’s so important to have a fiction prize for women here.

Past judges have come back to discuss each book in turn on BBC’s Women’s Hour here.

The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction site has a comprehensive reading guide for all ten winners here.

Public Library and other stories by Ali Smith

We’re getting to a point where a library isn’t a library anymore. As Ali Smith humorously discovers in the opening of her new book of short stories, a building in central London marked library is now more likely to be a private members’ club that is focused on lists of cocktails rather than sharing literature. Despite the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act in the UK which states local councils are under a legal obligation to provide library services, over ten percent of the libraries in this country are under threat of closure. We’re told there isn’t enough money for libraries; we’re told banks need the money more. Campaigns have been afoot across the country to save these vital cultural institutions. This book is a way of weaving together the way in which literature is a physical part of our everyday lives. Interspersed with the stylistically-daring short stories in this collection are testimonies about our personal relationships with libraries by people ranging from authors such as Helen Oyeyemi, Kate Atkinson, Kamila Shamsie, Miriam Toews and Jackie Kay to fabulous, passionate people in publishing like Anna Ridley and Anna James. Libraries make authors and publishers who make more books which in turn make more libraries and authors and publishers. Ali Smith’s “Public Library” is a vibrant, loving tribute to libraries, our passion for books and how they are an integral part of our communities.

In several stories there are seemingly closed systems which the characters struggle against. One narrator tries to convince a newspaper that he’s still alive after they publish a false story about his death – twice! Another narrator argues with a credit card company that she never purchased a plane ticket which has appeared on her statement. One narrator speaks on the phone with a doctor’s office about the tree which is growing out of her/his chest until the important things being said fade into the background and there is just the beauty of the blossoming tree. There is a lot of drifting away from the trivial everydayness of the world and rigid ways in which people can limit language. Drawn by thoughts of poetry, fiction and song characters walk away from important meetings, important people, important places. Literature draws them into the imagination, into the unknown because you never know what you’ll find between the covers of a book. If you crack a book open there may even be poetry sewn into its spine. People lose themselves in books (as the title of one story states) to take them to “The art of elsewhere.”

As clever and as sophisticated as Ali Smith’s stories are, they always pay close attention to the importance of human relationships so the characters feel immediate and real. They have arguments, misunderstandings, money worries and jealousy. The voices of these characters shine through. It feels like it could be Smith herself stating her writing mission when one character remarks: “I want it to be about voice, not image, because everything’s image these days and I have a feeling we’re getting further and further away from human voices.” It’s amazing the way Smith is able to make her characters feel so familiar even though in many cases the protagonists remain nameless and sometimes we don’t even know their gender. They speak intimately about grief, fear and love in a way that draws you into their experience and you can absorb it into your own life.

There is also so much lively humour in this book. There’s confusion between D.H. Lawrence and DHL “The deliveryman.” There is a boy/girl who pleads to pay for a new toaster with flowers. There is a character whose partner is so engaged with Katherine Mansfield’s life and writing that she becomes like an ex-wife between them. There is wordplay: it’s explained that a girl whose father is in and out of prison “from time to time, did time.” It’s as if Ali Smith can peel open words to consider their origins and the way they are commonly used to then blend them into her narrative and conversations between characters to give them whole new meanings.

Most importantly, “Public Library” shows the way literature is a part of our consciousness, shaping and moulding who we are and influencing our actions. It’s not abstract or separate from our everyday lives. It’s physical. Smith shows that long dead authors themselves are still a solid presence in the world. D.H. Lawrence’s ashes could be scattered anywhere. Remnants of Katharine Mansfield are a part of the wings of planes. The records and recorders of our culture don’t hang in an ethereal way above our lives; we interact with them every day. These stories make the world feel refreshing and new. They draw you back into life. They make you want to run to your nearest library.

Since this book is filled with so many moving personal statements about what libraries mean to us, I’m going to give my own…

In 1999, I left my small college in Vermont (which is close to a town called Norwich) in order to live for several months in Norwich, England. I went as part of a study abroad programme, but really I made the hasty decision to leave the US after the breakdown of a relationship. What can be more satisfying than casually mentioning to your former lover who has left you: “Oh, didn’t you know? I’m moving to England.”

Arriving at the stark concrete University of East Anglia campus which is surrounded by fields with rabbits and Shetland ponies, I was suddenly on my own and I had no idea what I was doing there. I found out there was something called a Union Pub & Bar where members of my student residential building took me to drink and socialize. I didn’t like to drink (at that time) and I could never hear what people were saying over the loud music. Soon I made a hasty retreat to the large library on campus.

There on the quiet floors filled with books my friend Carolyn and I played games like “who can find the gaudiest-looking book in the library” and there she introduced me to the first book I read by Joyce Carol Oates who would go on to be my favourite author. There I discovered a much-battered old edition of a book containing two holograph drafts of Virginia Woolf’s novel “The Waves” where you can see copies of the actual words crossed-out and additions she made in the margins when writing it. There I watched a black and white VHS recording of an interview between Lorna Sage, Malcolm Bradbury and Iris Murdoch who all smoked throughout the discussion making the screen appear like a hazy intellectual fantasy set in heaven.

There I sat in the library one dreary lonely afternoon taking notes and plotting the key points of a literary graph I planned to mark the years of key publications by modernist authors so I could physically see where they intersected. It wasn’t a class project – just a fun thing to put on the wall in my little dorm room. I was excited to find that T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” came out the same year as Virginia Woolf’s “Jacob’s Room” and the same year as D.H. Lawrence’s “Aaron’s Rod” and the same year as James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” And there, surrounded by my reference books and poster board and ruler and pencils and mess of notes, a man who I’d go on to live with and love for the next sixteen years approached me and said with an amused grin, “Hi, aren’t we in the same creative writing class? What on Earth are you doing?”

The Curator by Jacques Strauss

This is the third new book from South Africa that I’ve read this year and it’s rather startling to discover common themes between all of them. SJ Naude’s book of stories “The Alphabet of Birds” describes a variety of characters’ estrangement from South Africa where they seek to build a new life elsewhere or struggle against seemingly insolvable social systems within their own country. Eben Venter’s “Wolf Wolf” follows the plight of a son seeking to prove he can be financially independent from his dying father. There are issues of alienation, insecurity, masculinity and severe family strife in both. These themes are also strongly represented in Jacques Strauss’ novel “The Curator.” The chapters in this novel alternate between a rural South African town of Barberton in 1976 and the more urbanized environment of Pretoria in 1996. We primarily follow Werner Deyer who is calculating, sexually-repressed and dangerously angry, but seeks to find an expression of something intangible in art through a copy of Salvador Dali’s representation of Christ and later in the house of a victim of a brutal childhood attack who now obsessively paints scenes of that attack. The reasons why Werner is like this gradually unfold over the course of this frequently disturbing, but gripping novel. The novel also powerfully deals with racial attitudes in South Africa, sexual molestation and the breakdown of family.

I didn’t think there could be a book published this year with content as disturbing as “A Little Life,” but in some ways I feel that “The Curator” is even darker. Of course, they deal with difficult issues in a very different way, but let me explain why I found reading certain aspects of this novel even more harrowing.

Firstly, the deadly violence in “The Curator” is directed between family members in a way which is terrifyingly insidious. Werner’s family hears news of a nearby farmer who shot his entire family before shooting himself. Werner’s father Hendrik fixates upon this story and has fantasies of dispensing with his own family – even going so far to employing a maid who witnessed the family attack and finds himself becoming sexually obsessed with her. Twenty years later, Werner becomes fixated on killing his father Hendrik who is now severely disabled after an anonymous attack. The author skilfully shows the way violence percolates in the closed environment of the home: “This is how it started. Before you knew it, you were hitting and beating and kicking and shooting everything in sight to make things okay again.”

Secondly, like “A Little Life,” this novel also deals with sexual molestation, but we’re shown this from the perspectives of both the abuser and the abused. Steyn is a man who works on the Deyer’s property and drinks heavily after leaving his family. He takes advantage of the adolescent Werner and seems to disturbingly believe that we are cognizant of acts of desire even at a young age: “If there is one thing we are born knowing about, it is sex.” Steyn eventually moves on to taking advantage of Werner’s younger brother Marius which makes Werner very jealous for the attention he’s no longer receiving. It’s unsettling the way this book shows how the desire for affection, especially for vulnerable children who aren’t receiving any love from their parents, can become dependent on adult sexual predators.

Finally, “The Curator” shows the pernicious long-term racism that occurs from longstanding social divisions. The white characters in this novel show an extremely derogatory attitude towards the majority of black people they encounter. There is also a class division between white people who live with certain privileges and poor white people who are viewed as no better than “kaffirs” (a contemptuous term for a black Africans). In one scene the mother of the family Petronella is disgusted by how dirty a neighbouring white girl has become so she aggressively bathes her: “she wanted to wash away the kaffir, so that everything was wholesome and normal.” There is a strong desire shown to keep the races separate. These divisions are rigorously reinforced through social pressure and there is a strong sense throughout the book that the characters fear crossing these racial boundaries. The novel also demonstrates what a heavily dominant and repressive force men make in this society. Petronella feels so belittled over time that she pleads that “I want to be treated like a human being.”

'Christ of St John of the Cross' by Salvador Dali

It feels as if there is something stirring in the political and social atmosphere in South Africa at this time which is provoking authors to create such compelling new novels with similarly frustrated characters who perpetually feel like outsiders. These authors have something important to say which is different from the most prominent South African writers who are globally well known. At one point in this novel Werner thinks he’ll pretend to be a writer when staying at a hotel and looking at a Scandinavian family he muses: “Those two stern-looking adults and their beautiful offspring probably have a lively interest in post-colonial literature; would want to discuss Coetzee and Gordimer and Lessing. He imagines having dinner with the family. He could tell them how he grew up not far from here and how those early years still exert a significant force on his work. In what way? They would ask. Oh, you know, the politics, but also the land. There is something, he would say, about this place that is unforgiving.” Jacques Strauss makes a powerful statement with this story about the “unforgiving” aspect of South African society where some issues are suppressed causing people to explode into violent action.

Having enumerated all the ways “The Curator” deals with such hard issues, you may be scared away from it. But I think this is an absolutely striking, original and skilfully written book that you won’t regret reading. It gave me such fascinating insights into a culture and conflicted consciousness so different from my own. By honestly representing and discussing issues raised in such a powerful novel, Jacques Strauss is bearing witness to the violence that can erupt in a repressed society.

The Blue Guitar by John Banville

When John Self wrote on his blog about Benjamin Wood’s novel “The Ecliptic” (a novel that I also greatly admired and wrote about here), he noted how novelists have a curious appeal towards writing about visual artists as there have been a string of books about them recently. And here is another by the great John Banville! Perhaps writers like to focus on visual artists because they sometimes imagine it would be easier to grapple with the tactile challenge of creating a painting rather than the literary challenges of writing. In Banville’s new novel his narrator moans “How treacherous language is, more slippery even than paint.” Interestingly, Banville previously wrote a novel called “Eclipse” whose title sounds so similar to Wood’s novel, but whose meanings differ sharply. The only book by Banville I’ve read previously is his Booker Prize winning “The Sea” which is about a retired art historian. “The Blue Guitar” is written from the perspective of a retired artist Oliver Orme or, as he jokingly refers to himself, a painter who lives as if he was dead: “Rigor artis.” The novel is similar to Wood’s “The Ecliptic” in that they are both largely about a crisis in the artistic process whereby these successful artists haven’t been able to create any new work in some time. But where Wood’s protagonist Elspeth ardently seeks to rediscover her muse, Oliver has resolutely given up painting and retreated to his previously abandoned home to mull over his life and make connections. His story is a tragedy which keeps brightly bobbing along in a sea of melancholy because of the verve and humour of his narrative voice. The admirable precision and revelatory turns of phrase used in Banville’s writing entertain while he makes fascinating insights about life, our relationship to the physical world and his protagonist’s insistently self-justified kleptomania.

The bulk of this novel concerns Oliver’s love entanglements, particularly his secret affair with his friend’s wife Polly. They have heated encounters in the artist’s studio, but soon their love affair descends into the farcical where Oliver finds himself squatting in Polly’s childhood home while her father makes awkward conversation and her mother suffers from the onset of dementia. Yet still Oliver lusts and curses “What a shameless cullion it is, the libido.” Meanwhile, he is estranged from his wife whose care for him died with their three year old daughter Olivia. Banville makes meaningful observations about the stretch and pull of love and love affairs over time. He uses powerfully descriptive language to describe the pinch of its attendant emotions: “Is there anything more overwhelming than the sudden onset of jealousy? It rolls over one inexorably, like lava, boiling and smoking.” It won’t be surprising to the reader that his affairs end badly and he admits his own actions have a sort of tragic inevitability. Although he knows what the outcome will be he states with resignation that “One does what one does, and blunders bleeding out of the china shop.” He retreats even more into thoughts of the past no matter how hard he tries to resist it. Although the novel begins with him declaring himself to be like the Greek God Autolycus, he shows through his blundering actions how he feels barely human. He mentally laments to his lover: “I was no god, dear Polly; I was hardly a man.” It’s satisfying how Oliver’s deceptions turn out to fool no one as the women in his life: Polly, his wife and his sister all eventually reveal how aware they are of the shortcomings he believes he’s kept hidden.

Banville describes Polly as sitting like Dürer's engraving 'Melencolia'

It’s Oliver’s sense of being removed from reality which makes his digressions about existence so compelling and so relatable. He states that “world is resistant, it lives turned away from us, in blithe communion with itself. World won’t let us in.” His strategy to connect with other people and physical objects is to steal. His sense of relentless acquisition is a way to connect and finally dispel his feelings of exclusion. He states that “My aim in the art of thieving, as it was in the art of painting, is the absorption of the world into self.” The final long-abandoned artwork he only half finished contained an abstract image which could be the blue guitar of the title or another object entirely. In it he tried to represent the “formless tension floating in the darkness inside my skull” but ultimately he fails to do so. This makes him lose his mojo for creating art. So he resigns himself to a singular life, but finds his position as an outsider somewhat advantageous to better comprehend the grand nexus of existence. As much as he likes to present his revelations, he relishes undermining them even more. He remarks: “How dull and dulling they can be, these sudden insights. Better not to have them, perhaps, and cleave to a primordial bumpkinhood.”

It’s difficult not to feel at times Oliver’s voice becoming like that of a Beckett character as occasionally his thoughts are interrupted on the page. He’s pulled out of his mental process by reality in a way that slaps him into the present and exposes the weary triviality of his search for meaning. The question about whether you’re prepared to go along with his musings depends on how compelling you find the narrator’s voice. For much of it I was bewitched, but in one instance I was yanked out of the pleasure of his abstract meditations due to an unfortunate choice of words. There is a speculative description of the planet’s destruction where “Terrible tides… drowning small brown folk in their tens of thousands” struck me as having all the empathy for humanity that a Hollywood disaster movie would have for a third world society it might blithely destroy in a cutaway scene. Otherwise, I found his self-obsessed reflections and examinations of his state of being comforting like some of Beckett’s best prose.

We Don't Know What We're Doing by Thomas Morris

The title is certainly a statement that rings true. However hard we try to order our lives and find meaning we’re all just stumbling around ardently making plans and searching for connections, but mostly bumping into things. The stories in Thomas Morris’ debut collection feature characters that are highly relatable. They are driven more by impulse than strategic plans which makes them often feel dislocated or caught in between stages of life in a way similar to Ann Beattie’s stories in her recent book “The State We’re In.” Morris’ characters feel they should be progressing onto something else, but they don’t know what that something else is. The protagonists of each story vary widely in gender, sexuality and socio-economic status featuring people ranging from a young woman devoid of nostalgia who returns home for Christmas to a twice-widowed elderly man trying to arrange a date for the Big Cheese festival. They all live a precarious existence in the Welsh town of Caerphilly. Some story collections have recurring characters, but other than thematic connections there is little that links these stories except for the town itself and a sweet pond (where some seagulls masquerade as ducks in order to be fed). Although Morris demonstrates a wide range of narrative techniques in these stories, what connects them is the strength of voice, humorous appreciation for the buffoonery of existence and a tender awareness of how we’re driven through life with a confused sense of desperation.

Given the relatively rural Welsh setting for these tales, it’s unsurprising that the stories primarily concern white characters for whom racial difference is something of a curiosity. A couple in one story find a connection over wishing they had a black friend. In another story a man’s sister suffering from a kind of mental break down makes friends with a Japanese woman who she practically smothers. The story ‘All the Boys’ features a group of men on a stag-do in Ireland who dress up as potatoes with the groom dragged up in Riverdance attire. Their crass exaggeration of national identity is so over the top it’s knowingly ridiculous, cringe-worthy and wholly believable – as are the persistent homophobic insinuations made about one of the friends who is overtly concerned about style and appearance when really it’s another more boisterously masculine man that is hiding his true sexuality. These representations of provincial characters show how they have a muddled attitude towards difference, but they still maintain an innate carefully-rendered humanity making them worthy of empathy rather than repulsion.

I always feel a deep sympathy with literature that deals with economic hardship so I appreciated how some of the stories dealt with characters who struggle with issues around employment. In particular, ‘Clap Hands’ features a single mother stuck in a system with frustratingly little chance of full time work and the story ‘How Sad, How Lovely” is narrated from the perspective of an unemployed man surviving on little food and fewer prospects. Morris gives a moving sense of the attendant feelings of low self esteem, defeatism and desperation that can come from being deprived of steady working lives. There is a sympathetic understanding that these are unique individuals who have been cornered out by circumstance and simply don’t fit into a system where they can thrive in the way that they should.

“this house, these rooms, this phone, these voices – you know they should mean more to you, but they don't. It's like the opposite of deja vu.” from 'Fugue'

A fascinating habit for many characters in these stories is their persistent flair for masquerade. A woman wears a Natalie Portman mask when entering into an affair with her neighbour. A young woman believes her parents to be aliens under their skin. A passing couple are dressed as a knight and maiden. There are the aforementioned gulls pretending to be ducks. It’s as if these characters in their desperation at the perceived limitations of their own lives seek to escape into other beings. In one story a character remarks that “there are times when I can't bear to be in this skin of mine, times when I get so low that the smallest demands seem impossible.” In frustration, many characters seek to shed their skin whether it’s masking themselves as someone else or plunging into situations outside their own experience. This includes having affairs, engaging in public wrestling matches with women or running off on a drunken, drug-fuelled binge during the holidays. The characters are trying to wriggle out of their own skin and claim a new identity.

The concluding story ‘Nos da’ is one of the most daring and poignant in the entire collection. It’s the only piece to break from reality to construct a place where life persists in another form after your initial life. Yet there is nothing ethereal about this space. It’s more of a workaday reality, but there is a wider and more solemn gap between experience and memory. Characters can peer in on their past by ordering edited videos or spy on loved ones from a past life in real time via paid-for video links. But, rather than being caught in the technical aspects of constructing this alternate reality, Morris cleverly slides into a fantastical realm to write meaningfully about our persistent attachment to what might have been and neglect towards available possibilities in life.

The diversity and range of voices on show in “We Don't Know What We're Doing” demonstrate how Thomas Morris is a unique and sensitive writer with a keen sense of the absurd. This exciting, funny and oftentimes dark collection of stories was a pleasure to read.

Artwash by Mel Evans

Whenever I go to an art exhibit I never think too much of the signs outside which proclaim who it was sponsored by or particularly notice the discreet (but prominent) logos of the companies included around the show. If I do ever consciously think about these things I’ve assumed two things. Firstly, a sponsor has given a large amount of money to support this exhibit so, even if they are a dodgy company, at least their money is going towards something good. Secondly, the presence of a sponsor’s branding doesn’t have any significant impact on how the art of that exhibit is perceived or interpreted. Reading Mel Evans’ book “Artwash” I’ve become conscious of the fallacy and danger of these assumptions. Drawing upon a large amount of historical research, investigations into the financial and power structures of cultural institutions, theoretical and critical theory and her own experiences working within Liberate Tate (an art collective that uses creative intervention for social change) demonstrations, Evans convincingly argues why artists and members of the public alike should challenge the insidious way petroleum conglomerates align themselves with artistic venues.

Evans focuses specifically on the group of Tate museums across the UK as an example of a cultural institution that has sanctioned a longstanding partnership with BP. She shows how it’s not a coincidence that the museum has maintained this company’s sponsorship despite criticism from the public as well as many public figures. Political influences have pressured these institutions into inviting such sponsorship and have seen prominent representatives of the organization become influential members of the museum’s board. You would assume that BP must donate a large amount of money to wield such influence, yet Evans shows that the company’s donations form only a very small percentage of the funds which allow the museum to continue. The benefits for BP far outweigh the benefits for Tate because of the social license the association creates for the company. This sponsorship is a form of “Artwash” to brush over the dramatically destructive effects oil companies have on both the natural environment and specific communities.

Watch Mel Evans discuss Artwash and her art activism.

When a company’s name and symbol are imprinted on a cultural institution or specific exhibits its presence is not benign. Evans argues how “Logos are architectural features, and are also powerful symbolic objects.” The association created between these logos and the artistic institution form both a conscious and subliminal impact upon viewers whose overall impression of the company becomes more positive. In some cases, it can also directly undermine the conscious intentions of the exhibits. More than the effect sponsorship directly has upon a viewer’s experience, Evans shows how “In each arena of curating and learning, it is evident that BP sponsorship has caused problems for Tate: from cognitive dissonance for audiences, to undermining the choices of curators, conflicting with learning programmes, and emerging unexpectedly as a bone of contention between artists and the gallery at events and in commissions.” An oil company’s sponsorship of cultural institutions undermines the creative expression and value of the art which is meant to reflect who we are as a fully cognizant and socially responsible society. 

The book begins with an account of a summer party held at the Tate in 2010 where the author and other members of Liberate Tate created a demonstration which meaningfully disrupted the party. It was a particularly potent expression as the party was held in part to mark twenty years of BP sponsorship. The party was occurring at the same time that the horrendous effects of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico were spiralling out of control. For one of the nation’s greatest cultural institutions to be celebrating a company that was creating such a monumentally negative impact upon the globe was the height of irony. Mel Evans’ book is a rallying cry for both artists and citizens to accept a more socially responsible role in how we consume and interpret the arts. We don’t all need to walk into museums and spill bags of oil to make a statement; we can make a change by being conscious of the impact sponsorship has on the arts and letting cultural institutions know what we think about the companies they choose to align themselves with. This book shows why it’s important we be more aware of the meaning of such corporate associations with the arts.

Landfalls by Naomi Williams

It’s difficult not to romanticize the period of history in the 18th century when countries sent ships out in an attempt to fully explore (and colonize) every mass of land around the globe. Conceptually, first world nations believe this was all about investigating new frontiers as if the world was covered in virgin soil to claim and conquer. These missions created many significant moments of connection between disparate civilizations which had long-lasting impact as we shifted towards a sense of globalization with all its positive and negative consequences. There was so much peril to these journeys and a sense of the unknown tied into them. Debut novelist Naomi Williams has an interesting tactic for approaching a specific expedition from history. Rather than focusing on the many months spent at sea, she concentrates only on the occasions when an expedition reached land and the interactions between sailors and the native inhabitants. Focusing on a broad spectrum of characters and using a variety of narrative techniques, Williams creates a riveting story that embraces the drama of global exploration while sympathetically highlighting the cultural clashes which occurred.

Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse

In 1785 two French ships set sail for a world-wide voyage to follow in the path of the famous captain James Cook. They aimed to further map little-explored areas of the globe, make scientific collections, establish trade routes and create political allies. Jean François Lapérouse led this mission which touched down in such far-reaching areas as South America, Alaska, California, Macau, Manila, Russia, Samoa and Australia before coming upon the Solomon Islands where both ships disappeared. The novel “Landfalls” brings this four year journey to life as the sailors touch these specific landing sites of the expedition. Sometimes the chapters focus on the perspective of engineers, naturalists or priests from the ship. Other times the reader sees events through the perspective of the inhabitants who meet them such as members of a Spanish colony or the native people of South Sea Islands. This gives the reader a multi-layers perspective where both the explorers and the explored appear at times as foreign entities that conflict with or adapt to each other’s different customs.

There are several particularly dramatic events which are brought fully to life such as a celebratory display for the Spanish in Chile, a tragedy that occurs in heavy currents on the coast of Alaska and the religious subjugation of the “neophytes” by Catholics in the Americas where severe punishment was inflicted upon the impious. Interestingly, the incident in Alaska is shown through both the perspective of a girl on shore who witnesses it and the crew suffering from the consequences afterwards. This gives a rounded perspective where you can see the naivety and misunderstanding on both sides. Another dynamically rounded point of view occurs when a series of letters by different people describe the plight of the kept wife of a particularly tyrannical and nasty official. The author gives careful focus at several points to the limitations imposed upon women at the time: “Names belong to men, while women belong to names.” However, she also takes time with the special bonds that can be formed between men on extended journeys. One of the most sustained and gripping accounts is concerning Barthelemy de Lesseps, a French translator who accompanied the sea voyage for two years before disembarking in Kamchatka. In order to return dispatches from the ships, he had to make a long and dangerous journey across northern Asia to get to St. Petersburg. This account is filled with sled dogs, perilous arctic conditions and a unique kinship Lesseps forms making it a particularly vivid chapter.

Watch Naomi Williams talk about her inspiration for Landfalls.

Many of the central characters involved have amusing quirks and the author has a talent for playfully poking at their sometimes inflated sense of self importance or pretentions. These particularly come out when the hierarchical relationships between characters become clear. Some people must be tolerated over long periods of time within the confined space of the sailing vessels. At one point it’s amusingly remarked that “Who among us does not have the odd friend whose virtues we admire, but whom we do not wish to impose on others?” There is antagonism between some and tenderness between others. Some display a grudging tolerance and other crew members come into violent conflict with each other. It can be moving to see how relationships change over the course of many years and the impact caused when some explorers are lost. However, because the novel spans a long period of time and involves such an extensive cast, I did find it confusing at some points trying to keep track of everyone involved. Although there is a map of the expedition at the beginning of the novel it would have helped to also have a list of the characters with brief descriptions of each to refer back to. As a helpful note, many of the central cast in this novel are based on historically significant people who you can easily look up on Wikipedia for a quick reference to remind you who is who. Nevertheless, many personalities brought to life by the author stick out in my mind for their distinct character. It’s particularly moving how Williams ends the book and approaches the mystery of what happened to these two fated ships from history.

“Landfalls” is an original and engaging read that has a dynamic approach to history while stirring a sense of adventure.

Film Review: Chevalier

This year’s London Film Festival finished yesterday. I usually try to see several films in the festival and this year I saw eight. Almost every film was really good. Some highlights were ‘Tangerine’ which is a hilariously wild journey across Los Angeles driven by a jealous transsexual prostitute and her aspiring singer friend, ‘Son of Saul’ which is a dramatic and devastating account of a Hungarian-Jewish Sonderkommando prisoner in Auschwitz who is charged with burning the dead, and ‘Office’ which is a 3D Hong Kong musical about office politics and corporate overspending that includes the most stunningly beautiful film set. I also saw director Todd Haynes, screenwriter Phyllis Nagy and actresses Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett interviewed at BAFTA for the film ‘Carol.’ Everyone should go see this adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel “The Price of Salt” because it is one of the most beautiful and romantic films I’ve ever seen. The only disappointing film I saw was Terence Davies’ ‘Sunset Song’ which felt so artificial and tedious. However, one of my top highlights was a Greek film called ‘Chevalier.’

This film was directed and written by female filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, but is all about six men who spend approximately a week having a holiday on a yacht in the Aegean Sea. After the screening Tsangari told the audience she was initially inspired to make a film that involved men peeling each other’s skin off, but because this was too expensive she filmed the men as divers who at the beginning of the film emerge out of the water and peel each other’s wetsuits off. This brilliantly sets the tone of the movie as it is about the intense intimacy and competition between these male friends. Out of boredom and a friendly sense of rivalry, the men form a game to determine which of them is judged the best. The prize for the man who wins is to wear a victory Chevalier ring. However, their competitions are far from your standard games. Each man is judged on things such as how he sleeps, his heath based on blood tests, how fast he cleans, the size of his erection, how quickly he can build a flat-packed shelving unit or how well he lip syncs to a pop song. In the midst of these activities every man carries a notebook where he assiduously records the points being assigned to each man after performing some ridiculous activity.

Photo by Despina Spyrou

The series of competitions these men engage with hilariously send up masculinity and the male ego. There is a warm-hearted camaraderie where the men will occasionally console each other when they fail at activities while simultaneously judging them. At the same time it tells a compelling story where the relationships between the men are gradually revealed over the course of the film. Meanwhile, there are periodic announcements made in the yacht informing the men of the day’s weather or what they will be having for desert that evening. This creates the effect where the boat itself seems to be regulating and judging them in addition to the crew who make bets about which man will win. This film is such a compelling way of gently making fun of the construct of masculinity that reminds me of Andrew McMillan’s recent poetry collection “Physical” and Joyce Carol Oates’ novel “What I Lived For.” ‘Chevalier’ is also a highly enjoyable and thoughtful film to watch. It was awarded the Best Film Award at this year's BFI London Film Festival.

Deep Lane by Mark Doty

When reading the poems in “Deep Lane” I like to imagine that I’m lying on a patch of grass listening to the poet speaking about his life, relationships and thoughts about existence. Because that’s what the experience of reading this collection feels like. It’s intimate, immediate and suffused with a sense of being immersed in the natural world. But this isn’t a cosy idyllic space; there are worms and thorns and inclement weather warnings. It’s also not so serious. He comically stumbles into a grave. He locks himself out of his house – twice! These experiences are drawn in to suggest meaning, but are acknowledged at the same time to be meaningless. The title poem spreads itself throughout the book taking several different forms as Doty describes the process of gardening and the environment surrounding his home. It has the effect of creating a personal landscape which the reader can recline in to hear Doty’s beautifully articulated meditations and penetrating observations about the way our lives are guided by unruly desires.

The poet conjures a number of disarmingly haunting images throughout the book. For instance, in one poem it’s described how a boy runs in a figure eight pattern between gravestones. More than a comment upon the connection between new life and death, it felt to me that this was a strong symbolic representation of the way in which our consciousness can remain in a childish or naïve state throughout our lives. Although we can’t help being highly aware of our own mortality as we continue to age and experience loss, a sense of active innocence persists weaving us around death as a way of carrying on despite the inevitable. In another poem he describes a church as a “breathing cloud of stone” which creates an image that perfectly fits with the emotion of a specific significant moment when he commits to his relationship with another man. It’s similar to prayers which feel so substantial that it’s like they are physically real but are only, after all, just words.

“the skull-buzz drone singing cranial nerves”

For Doty nourishment in life is inextricably mixed with the toxic. In one poem he envisions himself as an extinct beast with “Mother’s milk in my belly and a little of her shit, too.” There is a sense of being stunted by what is meant to make us grow, but this fouled sustenance is a part of the ecstasy of living. As he remarks in the poem ‘Apparition’ “with intoxication, I am unregenerate.” And these notions are given a more emotionally weighty form in the poem ‘Crystal’ about intravenous drug use which describes altered consciousness and groping for an articulation of meaning beyond language. Here the injection of impurities is a necessarily dangerous path to a more profound sense of knowing and developing.

Doty is playfully conversant with both language and his influences. He remarks in an aside when describing a suicidal boy’s legs “(I want to spell long with two n’s, as Milton spelled dim with a double m to intensify the gloom of hell).” Elsewhere he likens an emotional connection with another to “The way that nothing in Vermeer has an edge.” Another poem is a more direct dialogue with Jackson Pollock’s artistic method and pondering its meaning in relation to the active change of the city around him. These references effortlessly draw in the ideas of predecessors while arguing, building upon and expanding them.

Rather than letting ideas float out too far into detached realms Doty draws them back into solid experience and the world around him. He shows an endearing pleasure in nature and animals noticing “goat yoga” or faded hydrangeas that are like “the very silks of Versailles.” Moving through this landscape he articulates how we are beings driven by desire, but that we are “taught by craving.” Although we are hampered by nostalgia for what is past, experience can never be fully recreated and so we “want all the harder.” But, in one of the most profound poems in this collection ‘Hungry Ghost,’ Doty poses a fascinating counter argument to the Buddhist notion of extinguishing desire to extinguish suffering. If desire persists beyond the mortal then there is a kind immortality but also a form of existential horror “to be ravenous, and lack a mouth.”

“Deep Lane” is an extremely thoughtful collection by a poet who can burrow into the personal and particular to discover revelations that feel universal.