Green Glowing Skull by Gavin Corbett

Who are you? Are you the physical body you inhabit, the family/country you were born into or the person that you believe yourself to be? Trapped as you are in your own consciousness the boundaries between these states of being flow effortlessly from moment to moment. In other words “One day you’re yourself, the next you’re not quite.”  Traditional narratives construct stories that lead you through a character’s journey that often hint at the tensions between that character’s internal and external reality. Gavin Corbett breaks all those walls down in his novel “Green Glowing Skull” so the separate containers of identity all slosh into one riotous head fuck. It’s absolute chaos, but it’s also true.

I know that all sounds abstract, but it’s what I think the novel is really about. I’ll try to give an approximate summary of the story. An Irish man named Rickard Velily moves to New York City where he meets two older long-time Irish immigrants named Denny and Clive. The later was actually born as a woman named Jean Dotsy. There is a belief about Ireland that “The country’s gone to ruin and there’s no going back. The rot has set right in deep now.” Aidan Brown (nicknamed “Quicklime”) is a man who works for a charity seeking to convince “valued” Irish expats to return to their native land. He tries to target Clive who persistently resists his entreaties. Rickard, Denny and Clive form a tenor group singing folk songs that remind Irish expatriates of their homeland. Many of these expats meet in the city’s Cha Bum Kun clubhouse which supports Irish men freshly arrived in the city who are in need of housing. The historic clubhouse might be in its final days with a billion dollar offer on the table for the property which could give these men personal freedom, but also sever the ties to their native country. The story also contains wild shih tsu who prowl the city’s sewers like vermin, exploding heads and a man that turns himself into a bowling ball.

The overriding preoccupation of this entertaining and wild novel is national identity. In many ways it’s a familiar tale. Someone from Ireland moves to New York City. It’s a story that’s been told in many forms – even in recent great novels like “Brooklyn,” “Academy Street” and “We Are Not Ourselves.” Corbett resists traditional forms of narrative because he doesn’t want his protagonist to “feel like a tragic cabbage-scented character in a Irish rural drama.” Rather, the three main characters pursue their singing which conjures Ireland as a place more powerfully as a state of mind than a physical location. It’s stated that “It was a dream Ireland, yes, they both admitted, finally and without any provocation; but it was an Ireland that they once had been prepared to fight and die for to make real, just like those Young Irelanders.” Equally, the New York City that these immigrants come to is also a state of mind, something Rickard wanted to enter into after seeing it portrayed in his favourite film. The trouble is that the reality of either place doesn’t align with how people imagine it to be. People cast about desperately and without a home to call their country. They lose their heads.

Klein Blue IKB_191

There is also a sense in this novel that technology is changing our consciousness, the way we communicate and even the physical world. There is a coding underlying reality. Back in Ireland, Rickard worked for a company which harvested redundant text from the internet. “The world of information, he was told, was not just a paperless one but a wireless one now too. The medium was the air – even matter – itself; its bore limitless. Moving in three dimensions these days was to move through a fourth dimension, and for it to move through him.” There is a curious sense of synaesthesia which occurs when someone sees a string of nonsense lettering, numbers and symbols where that can instantly translate within the mind into a colour. Corbett also has a talent for combining humour and social observation with playfully-expressed nonsense. A colleague of Rickard’s enthusiastically decrees that “we stand on the threshold of a new conceptual framework for non-augmented non-experiential eventfulness.” This could be the nonsense speak of a corporate ethos, but here it’s revealed to be the gibberish it really is.

I have a particular fondness for absurdity in literature and I loved this novel. Some of my favourite books are Eugene Ionesco’s only novel “The Hermit” and Samuel Beckett’s novels which twist identity and time so that the physical world becomes wildly distorted and, consequently, a more accurate representation of the loose foundations of the stripped-down consciousness. Corbett’s writing unapologetically takes similar liberties disregarding what is realistic for what feels right. However, I often found in this novel that just when I felt I was being taken to the brink where I couldn’t comprehend what was happening at all, Corbett reeled me back in with absolutely tender and honest scenes. For instance, there is a section of dialogue between Denny and his wife where he says: “Do you know what is great about you? I can tell you things that I don’t tell myself.” This is such a romantic and true way of expressing how we reveal ourselves to those we love when we can’t even understand who we are, yet it doesn’t deviate from Corbett’s absurdist style.

“Green Glowing Skull” is a wholly-original, cleverly-filthy and entertaining novel that shifts your perspective of reality.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

A potential danger when reading novels is that we can become a passive audience. The narrative should be designed to lead us down the path of a story without giving all the answers. If you’re not questioning what’s being told or asking what’s missing from the tale, reading ceases to be a participatory experience. Too often in literature it’s the wives who are left by the wayside. It’s observed in this novel that “Women in narratives were always defined by their relations.” They become a prop within the narrative or part of the background to flesh out the meatier story of the husband. The atrocious thing about this isn’t just that the writer has failed to honour the psychological reality of the female characters, but that readers don’t always ask what the wives’ perspectives might be. Instead we can become complacent, receive what the author tells us about the heroic life of the man and wonder nothing more about their faithful wives. In “Fates and Furies” Lauren Groff gives us such a story and skewers it with an iron spear. She challenges the expectations of the reader and creates an invigoratingly new kind of novel about how the participants in a marriage are first and foremost individuals.

A man named Lancelot or “Lotto” struggles to succeed in life, but he's driven by an overwhelming conviction that he was destined for something great. Although he comes from a privileged background, Lotto experiences a difficult childhood. Groff has a particular talent for summing up great swaths of emotion with terse prose. She states: “The world was precarious, Lotto had learned. People could be subtracted from it with swift bad math.” He escapes from his troubled family life with teenage rebellion and a keen drive for sexual conquest – up until he meets Mathilde. Their spontaneous marriage provides a bedrock upon which he can build a career and realize his full potential.

Although Mathilde is always present in the narrative she hovers in the background and never gets a voice. But, with the second half of the novel, her story comes to the forefront and her life is (of course) much more complex than Lotto assumed it was. Both Lotto and Mathilde keep many secrets from each other. It's noted that “Marriage is made of lies. Kindly ones, mostly. Omissions.” Mostly this isn't done out of malice; overall their marriage is a successful and happy one. It's unusual to read about a couple who are married for so many years yet never lose their vigorous physical connection or break apart because of an affair. As a team they are well suited as Lotto harbours grand ambitions which Mathilde can support him in realizing. In turn, Lotto gives her stability and affection: things which she sorely lacked in her unusual and emotionally-deprived childhood. Even so, their long-term relationship isn't a happily ever after story. Chance plays a role in the highs and lows of their years together. Groff writes “There is no absolute anything. The gods love to fuck with us.”

Lauren Groff in conversation at Politics and Prose bookstore

The writing in this novel is so sharp and clever. I loved the astute observations Groff makes especially about the changes and transformations we make throughout our lives. When the very sociable couple find their circle of friends being whittled down over the years it's stated that “The ones who remained were heart wood, marrow.” This is such a beautiful way of summarizing how people that stay closest to us throughout our lives remain so because they are the people who feel vital. She's equally good at making observations about how the body changes over time. When Lotto looks down at himself one day in his middle age “He poked at the belly the size of a six-month-old baby glued to his midsection.” It's a comical way of describing how our bodies are things we inhabit our whole lives, but there is a curious distance between the way we feel we are and the way we physically appear in reality. Groff's wry humour amidst making pointed and often surprising observations makes this novel such a pleasure to read. She can take something as serious and personal as the loss of a dear loved one and comment upon the irrational behaviour that follows “What was grief but an extended tantrum to be salved by sex and candy?” The characters are handled sympathetically and their struggles feel so personal, but there is always a healthy level of objective distance taken.

There is a lot in this novel about the nature of storytelling itself. The characters are cast in dramas which subtly mimic mythic tales. Yet it feels so invigorating, new and relevant to our time period. There are tropes that are familiar, but “This isn’t Oliver Twist.” Long periods of Lotto's life are conveyed through the plays he writes. Mathilde's narrative is much more fragmented and skips around wildly between periods of her life – as is fitting for her mental state at the time we join her story. Groff could be speaking about her own impatience with traditional narratives when she writes in this novel “She was so tired of the old ways of telling stories, all those too-worn narrative paths, the familiar plot thickets, the fat social novels. She needed something messier, something sharper, something like a bomb going off.” For it's gripping richly-plotted drama and its deep understanding of the complexity of identity, “Fates and Furies” feels explosive.

High Dive by Jonathan Lee

Sometimes part of the pleasure of reading new fiction is coming to it with no preconceived notions or expectations. In the case of “High Dive” I hadn't even read a description of the plot despite it being published at the end of October. It was a book that was sent to me and I decided to plunge in without knowing anything about it. The novel begins with an incredibly chilling scene of a young man named Dan undergoing an initiation for joining the IRA in 1978. Then the story shifts to 1984 with a teenage girl named Freya and her father Philip or “Moose” who is the assistant general manager of The Grand Hotel in Brighton. I felt instantly gripped as I realized I had entered a story leading up to the infamous IRA bombing of the Conservative Party conference. I knew the incident came close to taking Margaret Thatcher's life, but beyond that I had little knowledge or understanding about the history of this attack other than it was a significant incident amidst The Troubles. Jonathan Lee fictionally creates characters surrounding the event including the perpetrator of the bombing who went under the alias Roy Walsh to sympathetically show both sides' stories and the emotional tension and political conflict leading to this horrendous bombing.

Since this is entirely a fictional story set within a historical event, even readers who are familiar with the people involved with the bombing in October 1984 won't know the fates of Lee's primary characters. There is a chilling atmosphere surrounding the otherwise normal and emotionally-engaging story of single father Philip, a one-time Olympic hopeful high diver, who plans to be promoted to full manager of the hotel and his daughter Freya who is struggling to realize who she is and what she wants in life. The father-daughter relationship is particularly poignant when Philip becomes ill and Freya finds herself getting annoyed by his illness. She is conscious that such a reaction is selfish, yet she can’t prevent herself from feeling it and acting out because of it.

On 12 October 1984, the IRA carried out the most audacious terrorist attack in its history. Programme about the Brighting bombing.

Alongside this, Lee writes with great empathy about Irish Dan whose father was killed in a skirmish with police when he was an adolescent and who wants to make a radical change to end British rule in Ireland. He hides his activities from his mother and this secret plays out unspoken between them in a dramatic way. His charismatic and terrifying mentor Dawson eloquently summarizes the power imbalance between the two nations and how they had locked horns in conflict: “History clears away the blood, records the results, but that doesn’t mean the blood wasn’t there. An Ireland occupied by the Brits will never be free. An Ireland unfree will never be at peace.” There is a strong sense that the rhetoric of the time and the history books since haven’t recorded the full extent of the damage and death caused by the English oppression. In vivid, emotional scenes you’re made to feel the anger and outrage of the Irish Republicans and their desperate need to strike back against Thatcher: “Thatcher might govern in her own tight circle but she’s no right to power here, none at all. She’s queen of nothing, and we’ll treat her with the same respect she’s granted us. Let her taste a little bit of equality.” Lee shows the way these boiling tensions might have led to such desperate acts, laying out the battling ideologies at play and how people can justify acts of terror to themselves in order to make a grander statement and force change.

Although rooted in history, this is a novel that speaks very much about familiar issues we deal with today. Deadly political divisions. Wars of terror. Innocent victims. “High Dive” is a heart-wrenching drama that cleverly shows how the intensely personal becomes political and the war to dominate the narrative of history.

The Green Carnation Prize 2015 Winner

Reading and judging the many submissions for The Green Carnation Prize was one of the toughest things I’ve done this year, but it’s also been one of the most fulfilling. Championing new writing is important to me and I’m grateful for this platform that raises awareness of some of the best LGBT authors working today. Meeting with the judges was like participating in the most rigorous and enjoyable book club ever. We discussed the books from many angles. Since this is a prize open to books in every genre it felt particularly difficult to compare them against each other. Also, it sounds like a cliché, but the short list was particularly strong. When we went into our final meeting to select a winner I truly felt any of these six accomplished books could win.

This year there was an added challenge to the selection process. We began reading submission in July, but during the course of the judging process Marlon James’ “A Brief History of Seven Killings” won the Booker Prize – one of the most high profile book prizes in the UK. It’d be impossible to ignore the weight of this phenomenon where James’ long, complicated novel rose from relative obscurity to one of the most talked about books of the year. It also filled the shop front windows of many bookstores. Is it really right to award another book prize to a novel that’s become so high profile? Wouldn’t it be better to raise awareness for a foreign author like Erwin Mortier, an incredibly impressive debut author like Gavin McCrea, an established author that has stayed true to his subject matter like Patrick Gale or an accomplished literary trickster like Patricia Duncker (all of whom deserve to be more widely read)? But the prize isn’t about the author or the social landscape of publishing, it’s about the book.

“Sophie & The Sibyl” and “Mrs Engels” did stand out as particularly skilful accomplishments. Duncker’s novel is an engrossing tale told with humour, intelligence and pays tribute to one of the greatest writers in English literature. McCrea’s literary drag act of a book gives voice to a woman who was a footnote in the history books and creates a story which can be read in relation to many of the most pressing issues today – everything from the recent global recession to gay marriage.

But, when the judges sat down to talk long and hard over all the shortlist, the book that stood out as a shining masterpiece was “A Brief History of Seven Killings.” This is a challenging novel. No doubt. And I’m sure many people who bought a copy after it won the Booker didn’t finish reading it. I hope that with this award people decide to go back and read it again – if for no other reason than to enjoy two of the most original gay characters to appear in a novel for years.

Holding the crystal shard of a prize

Something many people probably haven’t considered about this novel is what a brave challenge it is to include such characters and explicit gay sex scenes. This novel centres around Bob Marley, one of the most celebrated figures in Jamaican history. While it goes past this extraordinary event surrounding the icon singer also considering many aspects of the drug trade, political & gang warfare and relations between the US & Jamaica, the fact it includes compelling openly gay characters will make it difficult for many people in Jamaica to accept. James has talked about this in a recent interview with Jeanette Winterson in the Guardian where he stated: “In this book, there’s a gay sex scene. And I thought the scene was important, because experiencing sex from a character was the only way he could accept any level of his queerness, which is why it is a blow-by-blow sex scene. The Jamaicans weren’t happy.”

Aside from any politics or book prizes, this novel is simply a stunning accomplishment that everyone should read.

Loop of Jade by Sarah Howe

At just sixty pages, “Loop of Jade” is a strong slender book of poetry. I had an odd experience reading it over a number of days as I found myself occasionally flipping to the back to see how many more poems awaited and every time I checked it felt like there were more. It was as if they were continuing to multiply or that the book was growing a tail to extend out further and further. I think this is because poetry, and particularly Howe's evocative poetry, has the effect of levelling time. The past, present and future can be experienced together. Even though many of the poems in this book obviously come from a very specific personal place, the weighty themes of identity and particularly society's diminishment of women are universal. There is a feeling in the language used that what has come before is coming again, that our patterns of thought and that our memories too spin round and round, that we live and travel in ever widening and continuous circles. This is informed poetry with something important to say.

Some of this writing such as the devastating poem ‘Tame’ have a more narrative or fairy tale feel. Here the value of female life and freedom is superseded by their perceived economic value. The poem 'Islands' is in a similar style yet has a more coming of age structure and surprises with lines of brutal reality that hit like a hammer: “She said she saved me from the refuse heap, from being eaten by the dogs with other scraps.” In the extended title poem ‘Loop of Jade’ micro-poems seem embedded within the larger poem which is composed of the stories told by a mother. There is an intensely felt gap between the experience between the mother and narrator: “myself a waving spot, unseen, on the furthest shore.” Yet there is a sense of continuation and connection between generations in the inherited “loop” which serves as a talisman forming a physical connection to the past and possible future.

There are poems here about love affairs and the act of creativity as well as strong poetry about identity and the question of place. This repeated phrase in 'Crossing from Guangdong' takes on great profundity: “Something sets us looking for a place.” The inclusion of multiple languages in the excellent poem 'Others' pays tributes to the blend of cultures and skin itself through generations. One of the strongest themes of this collection is the treatment of women in a patriarchal society. This is particularly true in China, but in the west as well. The institutionalized way in which women are valued below men so that we become blind to the ways in which this occurs. It seems to me that the intention of many of these poems are to sharpen our focus on how this works. One poem gives a perfect metaphor for this shift in point of view: “like at a put-off optician’s trip, when you realise how long you’ve been seeing things wrongly.”

Howe intelligently reexamines attitudes about gender in classical figures. In ‘Sirens’ she traces the disfigurement of women through literature that makes them into strange creatures because of a fear of desire: “for lust brings with it many monsters.” Later the same scrutiny is put to the Sphinx and the dividing line between genders. She also takes on Shakespeare stating in one poem that “On the heath, Lear assumes all ragged madmen share ungrateful daughters.”

This powerful poetry affirms the need of books to widen our view of history to include points of view which have no voice. There is a striking statement about the dominant political forces which have seized the narrative of history, but are mindful of the alternative narratives they've suppressed: “In their dreams, our long-lost books nightly buckle & char.” There is also much playfulness and humour to be found in this book which mentions Michael Flatley in one poem and where folklore mixes with research on Wikipedia. Howe demonstrates how she is in dialogue with many other poets as well referencing authors as varied as Theodore Roethke, Homer, Horace, Ezra Pound and Peter Streckfus. The most startling and beautiful thing about Sarah Howe's poems are the way she uses colours and shading to form images in the mind so I felt like I'd spent a long time gazing at paintings rather than simply reading.

Sarah Howe is one of the writers shortlisted for The Sunday Times/Peter Fraser and Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award. The winner will be announced this month. I'm so glad this excellent prize has introduced me to Howe's writing. 

Read an interview with Sarah Howe here.

The Lost Landscape by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates has written an extraordinary number of exceptional novels, short stories, poems and plays. When she has written in her own unmediated voice it has usually been in the form of book reviews, essays, or extended non-fiction on subjects such as boxing or artists. Rarely does she write directly about her own personal life or development as a writer, with the notable exception of her memoir A Widow's Story (2011) about the death of her husband Raymond Smith, told mostly in journal form. So it’s surprising and exciting that Oates has assembled various pieces of autobiographical writing to form this memoir about her childhood, The Lost Landscape.

The book is organized in roughly chronological order from Oates’s earliest youth to the death of her parents in their old age. In one of the earliest sections Oates makes the stylistically-radical choice of narrating from the perspective of her pet “Happy Chicken.” This is a highly playful and entertaining way of approaching the largely impressionistic memories she has of her earliest youth. However, this chapter also hints at the formation of some of Oates’s most primal beliefs about the way gender roles and social relationships are played out in this tender portrait of family life. As with much of Oates’s great literature, some of the most ardent power struggles in society are played out in micro form—in this case through the example of rural farming life.

Oates recollects powerful episodes about a neighboring family called the Judds. Unlike the relatively happy family unit found in Oates’s household, the Judds were hampered by issues of alcoholism, spousal abuse, and severe poverty. Of course, at the time, these issues were not labelled as such. An attentive reader will see in this family and the Judd’s daughter who was Oates’s friend characteristics and conflicts found in much of the author’s fiction. Oates points out that “they tell us everything about ourselves and even the telling, the exposure, is a kind of radical cutting, an inscription in the flesh.” The struggles and hardships of this specific family stand for something universal about the human condition. By witnessing and empathizing with such struggle we are changed and indelibly marked.

There is a confessional aspect to some chapters which concern enduring personal mysteries or things not often talked about among Oates’s family. This includes an account of a college friend who was plagued by destructive insecurities and eventually committed suicide. The lingering pain is felt in Oates's emphatic connection to her lost friend: “You are as much myself as another. You are myself.” The sense of being a twin or the lucky half of a single being is felt even more intensely in the heartbreaking chapter about Oates’s much younger and severely-autistic sister Lynn. This doubling is even more evident because the sisters possess such physical similarities and were born on the same day of the year. Oates reflects how her sister is “A mirror-self, just subtly distorted. Sistertwin, separated by eighteen years.” One could make connections between these autobiographical passages and Oates’s frequent preoccupation with twins in her writing. More broadly, these feelings of empathy with those who are so similar to the author herself but who experienced a different fate reinforce Oates’s message throughout her writing that our existence is so often determined by mere chance.

Some of the most endearing passages in this memoir are about Oates’s burgeoning love of books. One chapter memorializes her experience of first being given an illustrated copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by her grandmother, and in another chapter she recalls the excitement of receiving her first library card. Any lover of reading will connect to Oates’s impassioned discovery of literature. Even when she tried to decipher books beyond her understanding she states: “Stubbornly I read even when I had only a vague idea of what I was reading.” Part of the process of learning is humbling yourself before what you read, to argue with it and puzzle over the possible meanings. It’s reassuring to discover that like all students Oates struggled with some literature, but she also found it exhilarating as she eloquently describes here: “It was thrilling to undertake such bouts of reading, as in a plunge into unfathomable depths of the ocean; it was thrilling and also terrifying, for at such depths one could not easily breathe, and the more desperate one was to concentrate one’s thoughts, the more likely one’s thoughts were to break and scatter like panicked birds from a tree.” This intense engagement with literature sympathetically demonstrates why endeavouring to understand the world through books can be frustrating but can feel like the only thing an intellectually engaged person can do.

Oates raises questions about the nature of memory and the somewhat faulty medium of memoir writing to adequately represent the past. She states: “the effort of writing a memoir is so fraught with peril, and even its small successes ringed by melancholy. The fact is—We have forgotten most of our lives. All of our landscapes are soon lost in time.” Therefore, rather than constructed as a straightforward narrative, the memoir is based around Oates’s recollections of members of her family, particular incidents, or significant objects such as photographs or letters which provide a touchstone to the past. One of the most intriguing and significant chapters, “Headlights: The First Death,” recounts a childhood obsession with sneaking out of her house in the middle of the night to sit by a roadside watching the lights of passing cars. In this section she gives a powerful meditation on the state of being alone and an observer of the world with all its stories and mysteries: “I love it that our lives are not so crudely determined as some might wish them to be, but that we appear, and reappear, and again reappear, as unpredictably to ourselves as to those who would wish to oppress us.” This is a tremendously empowering statement about the strength we can find in such solitude regardless of how others may perceive us.

The Lost Landscape gives a powerful depiction of the author’s early life, yet it is also a meditation on the process of writing itself and hints at reasons for Oates’s ardent engagement with writing as a form of memorializing the past. She notes the quixotic nature of her drive to create stories: “It may be that the writer/artist is stimulated by childhood mysteries or that it is the childhood mysteries that stimulate the writer/artist. Sometimes in my writing, when I am most absorbed and fascinated, to the point of anxiety, I find myself imagining that what I am inventing is in some way ‘real’; if I can solve the mystery of the fiction, I will have solved a mystery of my life. That the mystery is never solved would seem to be the reason for the writer’s continuous effort to solve it—each story, each poem, each novel is a restatement of the quest to penetrate the mystery, tirelessly restated. The writer is the decipherer of clues—if by ‘clues’ is meant a broken and discontinuous subterranean narrative.” There’s no doubt that these episodes from Oates’s early life influenced her writing. In fact, there are direct references to some of her greatest novels such as them, I’ll Take You There, The Gravedigger’s Daughter, and the author’s most well-known short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Yet, more than any direct relation these experiences may bear on her writing, the author’s upbringing formed in her mind philosophical riddles about the nature of life. Oates’s ceaseless dedication to writing and her ever-evolving forms of storytelling demonstrate her continuous quest to probe and give a new slant to these unsolvable mysteries about identity and the past.

This review also appeared on Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies: http://repository.usfca.edu/jcostudies/vol2/iss1/7/

Everything is Teeth by Evie Wyld & Joe Sumner

Much of Evie Wyld's fiction has an unmistakeable feeling of menace as if there is something dangerous lurking unseen in the background just out of sight. This is felt most intensely in her novel “All the Birds, Singing” where someone or something unknown is savagely killing the sheep on a woman’s farm. In this graphic memoir she writes of her family life, growing up in Australia and her enduring fascination with sharks. Using stark pared-down language Wyld creates a mood where reality intersects with mounting feelings of fear, particularly a fear of death. However, sharks are not the monster enemy. They are gradually shown to be more the victims – killed by humans out of fear. They are a presence in the girl's imagination as comforting in their constant attendance as they are horrifying. The exquisite, expressive and haunting drawings imaginatively bring the story to life. Humans are cartoonish figures while images of the sharks or other sea inhabitants are drawn in a hyper-realistic way.

“Everything is Teeth” refers to the surface of a shark's skin which can be like sandpaper so swimmers who simply rub up against a shark feel their skin being cut as if by teeth. The title is given an even more layered complex meaning as the story progresses. When the girl eventually re-enters the water after receiving a jellyfish wound “The salt chews on my stings.” There is a sharp distinction created between the areas of habitation above the water and below. When this line is crossed it can result in injury or death. The savage way in which humans are shown to survive or fight against the threat we face when crossing this boundary between land and sea indicates how we are hampered by fear. This is echoed in relationships between the family members and the girl’s vivid imagination about how they might die. There are important messages here about learning to live with fear as well as maintaining respect for animals and each other.

The atmosphere created by the drawings and poignant text is utterly enthralling. There's an extraordinary drawing of her brother swimming where the water is swirling and the current looks like a mixture of eyes and faces. Oftentimes sharks linger in the background even when she’s on land as if they constantly circle the girl wherever she goes. While snuggled up on the sofa reading this book I felt my toes curl. I was reminded of a great short story in Jackie Kay’s collection “Why Don’t You Stop Talking” called ‘Shark! Shark!’ where a man nearing retirement has a growing fear of sharks despite living inland. Sharks make an easy metaphor for our fear of death, but the co-authors of this graphic memoir transform this into something more subtle and complex. This is a quick read, but it will linger with you.

Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness by Jennifer Tseng

“Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness” was recommended to me by Poppy in one of the comments on my June post about the best books of 2015 so far. The premise of this novel instantly grabbed me. A middle aged librarian falls for a young man who enters her library and they engage in an intense affair. For me libraries have always been spaces of sexual discovery as well locations for intellectual engagement and community support. Surely many pre-internet bookish teens first found out about sex and romance in the pages of library books. However, it’s also a physical meeting point where you might unexpectedly encounter someone with the possibility of romance. I discussed this at the launch of Ali Smith’s recent book "Public Library" and many people in the audience nodded sympathetically. Librarian Mayumi Saito has read countless novels about illicit affairs from “The Lover” to “Lolita.” Therefore she’s unusually aware about the pitfalls of giving into temptation. Yet she can’t resist the passion she feels for the seventeen-year-old boy she meets making this novel a moving and knowledgeable meditation on love in all its varieties.

Mayumi lives on a small island off the coast of Massachusetts with her husband Var and their young daughter Maria. Her marriage has become loveless leaving Mayumi feeling very lonely. When the young man (who she refuses to name throughout the novel) enters her library he gives her the imaginary possibility of romance that soon becomes an obsession. At first, reading about this is somewhat tedious like listening to a friend describing a continuous romantic fixation. As she acknowledges: “I alone felt the thrill” making it feel of little interest to anyone but herself. Where this novel really picks up is when the physical realization of this love affair sends her careening off into dangerous emotional territory.

There are frequent references to islands throughout this novel – both inhabiting a physical island and an island state of mind. Tseng brilliantly describes the transforming emotional state of Mayumi throughout the book. At first she finds “by reaching out to the young man, I had made myself an island.” This is a place of physical, emotional and sexual satisfaction like none she’s felt in years. But this is an affair with many layers of complexity because of the fact of her current marriage and the extreme age difference between the couple; she knows it must eventually end. This terrifies her in a way she aptly describes here: “The image of my small life without the young man was one of a library with its doors locked, or, simpler and more terrifying, that of a book with half its pages missing.” Her emotions are complicated by fear and guilt. Soon “the island of my mind was such a horror.” She has been irrevocably changed. Her reality is filled with the fear of discovery, the guilt of wronging both her lover and husband and the terror of losing this emotionally vital new part of her life. The novel continues into areas of experience which are unexpected and gripping.

An obvious parallel for this book is Zoe Heller’s “Notes on a Scandal” which follows the affair of a much younger man by a mature woman through a third party. Mayumi doesn’t shy from facing the reality of taking advantage of a man so young blithely acknowledging “In the end, I didn’t mind being a rapist so much as I expected.” There are very real potential legal complications of having sex with a seventeen year old. Added to this are even further levels of emotional complexity when Mayumi becomes friends with the boy’s mother Violet, a solitary individual struggling with her own feelings of dislocation.

I felt a nice twinge of recognition early on in the novel when Mayumi makes a reference to “the Mishima novel about a boy who spies on his mother’s lovemaking.” Having read “The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea” earlier this year I instantly knew this was the novel she was referring to. Don’t you love it when you instantly know the text being referred to by an author? This will no doubt happen to many people reading this novel as many classic books are referred to throughout the book. In addition to adding to the plot by drawing in a multitude of references to literary love affairs, this also gives pleasure to the reader who knows the central character is such a keen reader herself.

“Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness” is an intense and intimate novel which captures layers of emotion not often covered in the innumerable libraries of novels about tragic love affairs.

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien

The Syrian refugee crisis this year has made us aware more than ever of the plight of groups of people who have been displaced from their homes and who have to seek refuge in other countries. War, dictatorial oppression and religious extremism give some people no choice but to seek a life elsewhere. In “The Little Red Chairs” Edna O’Brien refers readers back to one of the greatest regional crises in recent history. During the Bosnian war thousands of people in Sarajevo lost their lives as the city was attacked by Serb forces between 1992 and 1995. Many of these people were civilians caught in the crossfire. In 2012 an installation of red chairs in the capital city commemorated the loss of these lives - the most heart-wrenching of all being the 643 little red chairs representing the slain children. It’s remarked in this novel that “there was a time when Sarajevo was thought to be the biggest issue in the world, but that time was no more.” O’Brien takes us back to this time via a circuitous route where the reverberations of war and the people displaced by it are given life in her dramatic and emotionally-complex story.

In a small Irish town of Cloonoila a stranger arrives seeking shelter. This man who becomes an object of intense curiosity soon establishes himself in the town as Dr Vlad, a controversial healer practicing alternative medicine and sex therapy (a practice quickly censored by the disgruntled priesthood.) He’s a man who gradually integrates into the community as he’s desired by many lonely women and inspires friendship with his kindness. His vast learning and cultural interests charm many. Fidelma is a married woman who is most affected by the doctor as she craves a child her husband can’t (or won’t) give her. They engage in a love affair. However, Dr Vlad has a secret past which causes a cataclysmic shock in the community when it is revealed. Fidelma’s life is rocked where the events of the wider world flood into her own circumscribed reality leading to its total annihilation. Now this woman who was so established in her own community must seek refuge elsewhere. She embarks on a process of discovery both to better understand herself and the ever-changing world around her.

A memorial event of the Siege of Sarajevo's 20th anniversary. 11,541 empty chairs symbolized 11,541 victims of the war which were killed during the Siege of Sarajevo

More than any one person, this is a story that belongs to many different immigrants who have settled in Ireland or England. O’Brien gives us the voices of people who work in an array of difficult, low-paid jobs and meet in groups which try to help people who have been displaced, especially a group which supports women who’ve experienced horrendous levels of oppression. These voices burst vibrantly from the page and startle with the pure facts of their experience. We hear people who have escaped their circumstances and who are going through the process of building new lives. “They all carried memories and the essence of their first place, known only to them.” These voices aren’t meant to represent any political message, but show the world as a morally-complex landscape where sinister regimes have led to individual acts of desperation. It also shows how seductive it can be to oppress when you have been oppressed. Ultimately, the author presents how resilient people can be leading them to reinvent themselves and find new communities.

Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

The premise of Kevin Barry’s novel “Beatlebone” is irresistible. In 1978 John Lennon travels across Ireland trying to reach an island so he can scream. This is an island he purchased years ago hoping to establish an arts community there, but which has remained nothing but a weather-beaten desolate pile of rocks. Now the artistically-frustrated famous singer wants nothing more than to spend a few days there to practice his primal scream therapy he learned in California. But there’s a problem; Ireland gets in his way. His well-meaning philosophical driver takes him on his journey, but Lennon is diverted by the press which hounds him, drunken nights at the pub, a dog he dubs with the name Brian Wilson and a small new-age group living in an island’s dilapidated hotel who engage in a disturbingly confrontational practice called “the rants.” All the while Lennon craves nothing but solitude and to escape the newly popular sound of Kate Bush singing about her wily, windy moors. The sensational aspect of this tale gradually moves aside to reveal a deeply-effective meditation on the search for meaning. It’s also full of gutsy-good humour and some of the snappiest profanity-ridden dialogue you’ll ever read.

It’s fantastic the way Barry uses language to evoke place and the lives of his characters. His descriptive writing is so precise in conveying a particular mood. So, as Lennon and his driver are travelling along the coast at one point, we’re given the line “The seabirds hover watchfully with their mad eyes, all wingspan and homicide.” Its lines like this which heighten the mood and imaginatively draw the reader into a scene. The tone of the book also swings in sync with the emotional state of the characters so the narrative can go from stark realistic descriptions of Lennon’s quest to more fragmented parts when he comes under extreme distress. At one point the language breaks into a synesthetic rush matching Lennon’s state of mind: “the scent of the girls’ voices is on the air – their voices are coloured yellow and racing green.” There are many vibrant characters ranging from a drunken woman hilariously ranting in a pub to an emphatic guru trying to get John to emotionally open up. The dialogue is pitched so well that I felt like I could hear the characters in my head and picture the expressions on their faces perfectly.

John Lennon performing ‘Mother’ live

Amidst John’s quest to get to his island, Barry does something quite unusual a little over halfway through the book. He breaks for a while to speak directly to the reader about his research writing this novel and how he himself tried to emulate the experience he creates for Lennon in a cave. Patricia Duncker’s recent novel “Sophie & the Sibyl” uses a similar sort of authorial intrusion in her fictional narrative. It works differently in “Beatlebone” making Barry into more of a fictional character himself, but they both produce the similar effects of playfully breaking the fictional illusion and mixing the emotional tribulations of the author with the characters that they are writing about. Here Lennon’s artistic crisis in trying to produce meaningful new music is reflected in Barry’s struggle to write the novel he wants to. So towards the end it feels as if John’s speech about his new album could be coming from the author himself: “What’s it about? Fucking ultimately? It’s about what you’ve got to put yourself through to make anything worthwhile. It’s about going to the dark places and using what you find there.” The struggles of the artistic process are felt all the more dearly knowing Barry’s thoughts. I found that the interjection came at the perfect point in the narrative where the momentum of the journey was waning and it was enhanced by this dramatic shift.

I think any reader can empathize with Lennon’s drive for some solitude to reflect and make sense of how to progress further in the work he wants to do. The physical reality of the island isn’t ultimately what matters. It’s the emotional state of the person who journeys there and the radical confrontation with himself he must make in a lonely place where there is no one to answer to, no one to perform for and no reason to proceed other than to get out of the trap of his mind. Barry states with characteristic blunt humour: “The examined life turns out to be a pain in the stones. The only escape from yourself is to scream and fuck and make and do.” Sometimes we lose our momentum and purpose to continue forward in life. “Beatlebone” brilliantly and entertainingly explores a quest to find the way back to what we really want.

A Slanting of the Sun by Donal Ryan

Last year I read Donal Ryan’s novel “The Thing About December.” I was drawn in by the powerfully distinctive voice he’d created for the central character who is a sensitive loner. Some authors like Richard Ford or Anita Brookner are able to establish an engaging narrative voice which they repeat throughout multiple books and, while it may be consistently impressive, it doesn’t show much variation. I wondered if that would be the case with Ryan so I was somewhat hesitant to start this book of short stories. I was delighted to discover a rich array of characters throughout the many stories in this collection whose voices are all individually distinct. These characters range in age, class, sex and race to create a dynamic and layered portrayal of Irish life. It’s impressive that each story finds its own rhythm to relate a particular character’s point of view. We see the world through each character’s eyes as they see it. Brought together, the engaging voices in “A Slanting of the Sun” give a rich understanding of the world, tell a series of dramatically entertaining stories and honour the diversity of individual experience.

Since almost all of these stories are set in Ireland one of the most fascinating things about this collection is the sense of ebb and flow it portrays amongst the national population. There are characters with strong roots in Ireland who face the tough decision of whether to leave for London or Australia to seek out employment and a new life. Conversely, the story ‘Grace’ gives voice to a woman who left the Democratic Republic of the Congo under terrifying circumstances to find unofficial factory work and face a different kind of fear when riding the bus in Ireland. The story ‘Trouble’ portrays how certain groups of the population like Irish travellers face longstanding oppression and social stigma. Other stories like ‘Hanora Ryan, 1998’ show characters who live in the country as if time has stood still. In this story a woman recalls a man she admired and lost in WWI as if it were yesterday even though more than eighty years have passed. 

Many of the impassioned voices which narrate these stories seem to start in mid-flow so it’s only till you get through half their tale that you are able to sufficiently orientate yourself to the situation. I particularly enjoyed it when these stories made my sympathy unexpectedly switch away from the character narrating it once I grasped their full story. In ‘The Squad’ the narrator and his friends take the law into their own hands and find they must live with the consequences forever more. This movingly shows the useless life-destroying circular nature of violence: “All of naught, to naught, for naught, year upon year of moments, of time slowly marked, of silence filled with empty words.” The scale of injustices and crimes committed by protagonists vary from small instances of betrayal and theft like in ‘Losers Weepers’ to outrageous institutional abuse in ‘Nephthys and The Lark’ to horrific murder in ‘Retirement Do.’ These stories draw the reader in to really see the internal struggles of these difficult individuals giving you a more complicated understanding of situations which you might see more simplistically from a distanced outsiders’ perspective.

Listen to Donal Ryan read from the mysterious, chilling story 'From a Starless Night'

While I appreciated all of the stories in this collection, there are some which stand out as personal favourites. These stories in particular are impressive for the way they give a sense of the enormity of the universe and the place that particular life experiences have within it. The story ‘Sky’ is narrated by an aging, lonely man named William who is irreligious but doesn’t see the harm in sending his prayers up to the sky. He gets a computer in the hope of finding the nephew he lost touch with, but stuffs it in a closet and looks to the stars instead. ‘Ragnarok’ features a fairly average office worker who finds himself suddenly overwhelmed by emotion. In ‘Physiotherapy’ a woman recalls her life, the choices she made and creates a uniquely complex view of existence. This story also shows a breathtaking vision of how memory can make time into a fluid thing so all experience occurs simultaneously: “I’m seventy-seven and I’m twenty, my child is dead and he hasn’t yet been born.” The title story ‘A Slanting of the Sun’ shows a tremendously surprising instance of forgiveness and sense of kinship for someone who committed a horrendous crime. It’s also the story which closes this book and allows it to end with a hard-won, uplifting sensation.

I was struck many times throughout this book of short stories by the astounding beauty of certain sentences. It’s so accomplished how Donal Ryan can write from the points of view of characters with very different experiences and ways of speaking, but always draws upon language and phrasing which accurately pinpoints a subtly of feeling and pays tribute to the full complexity of human emotion. He can perfectly encapsulate a common feeling like the importance phones play in young people’s lives: “Her daughter’s world seemed compressed sometimes into the screen of that telephone; all of her tides turned at the pull of its gravity, her whole existence seemed wedded to it.” Or he can present a contradiction so that the character’s reasoning reflects his particular emotional state: “Cursed we are with health, my family, stout unfailing hearts, years to go till death for me.” All of it sings with a life-force which is enthralling and demands to be listened to.

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.