Baileys Women's Prize LongList 2016

The Baileys Prize 2016 judges

The Baileys Prize Longlist for 2016 has been announced and I couldn’t be more excited! After all the speculation and looking through the tremendous novels published by women in the past year here are the twenty chosen novels. There are some familiar books I’ve already read, some I’ve seen mentioned multiple times and others I’ve never even heard of! I correctly predicted five books that appear on the list and there are many more I'm eagerly looking forward to reading.

I’m thrilled to see Anne Enright, Elizabeth McKenzie, Sara Novic, Elizabeth Strout and Hanya Hanagihari on this list as I've already read and hugely enjoyed their novels. I’ve seen promising reviews of the books by Atkinson, Barrett, Brooks and Rochester. Plus I’m particularly excited about reading Lisa McInerney's novel as I was really struck by her short story in the anthology The Long Gaze Back.

Now for the exciting bit of the Baileys Bearded Book Club! Simon and I will be reading all the longlisted novels and sharing our thoughts with you along the way. We would absolutely love if you read along with us. I'll also be reading books as part of a shadow panel where we'll be debating the books privately and choosing our own winner. Last year we correctly guessed the winner. Will we do it again this year?

But which novel to start with first? What are you most excited to read from this wonderful list?

The Green Road by Anne Enright

The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie

Girl at War by Sara Novic

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett

Ruby by Cynthia Bond

The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding by Jackie Copleton

Whispers Through a Megaphone by Rachel Elliott

The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah

Gorsky by Vesna Goldsworthy

The Anatomist’s Dream by Clio Gray

At Hawthorn Time by Melissa Harrison

Pleasantville by Attica Locke 

The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney

The House at the Edge of the World by Julia Rochester

The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild

The Baileys Prize shortlist will appear on April 11th and the winner will be announced on June 8th. Let's get reading!

Listen to a podcast from The Readers where Simon and I discuss why we love the prize and the longlist:

Visit to new Libreria Bookshop for World Book Day

It’s World Book Day so I thought what better way to celebrate than amble along to one of London’s most exciting new bookshops Libreria just off from Brick Lane in the trendy East End. It opened only a week ago. You’ll find it after passing by graffiti-covered walls and countless vintage clothes, artisan chocolate, restored furniture and vinyl shops. Oh yes, it’s that sort of uber trendy neighbourhood and the unusual “concept” style of the shop reflects its environment. It’s designed with soft lighting, reading cubby holes, soothing cover versions of songs playing and a printing press in the basement. No coffee is served and no phones are allowed – didn't I say trendy? The shelves branch out to enticingly display a superbly curated selection of books which seem to have been chosen as much for the books’ physical beauty as their compelling content. There are many titles by Vintage as well as some great independent presses like Fitzcarraldo editions, & Other Stories and Peirene Press. I asked if they stock Persephone titles and they said they had just spoken to them today about getting some in.

I spent a long while browsing their impressive range of titles. I even took time to hole up in a nook and flip through a book by the brilliant David Shrigley. They have two clearly marked sections for ‘Fiction’ and ‘Non-Fiction’. However, the rest of their sections are organized under eclectic subject matter such as ‘First Person’, ‘Enchantment for the Disenchanted’, ‘Despair and Redemption’, ‘Identity’ and ‘The City’. The fantastic book vlogger Jen Campbell helped advise and organize their stock. You can watch a video here of her talking about the shop with footage from the opening night where Jeanette Winterson (who owns a nearby grocer shop called Verde & Company) gave a touching speech. The staff told me that they plan to change these categories every few months to encourage a better browsing experience. No doubt this will be disorientating for some book shoppers, but I found it to be a fun experience similar to days long ago when I used to spend ages hunting around used bookshops.

The titles I finally settled on are “Excellent Women” by Barbara Pym and “A Whole Life” by Robert Seethaler. The Pym I chose because she’s an author I’ve never read but Thomas of the book blog Hogglestock speaks often about her with tremendous affection and Jacqui of the book blog JacquiWine’s Journal wrote an excellent review of it recently. It’s also a gorgeous Virago edition with a cover design by Orla Kiely with an introduction by Alexander McCall Smith! The Seethaler I chose because it’s a book published by Picador last year that received a lot of great press, made several people’s best books of the year and it also has a beautiful cover. It’s also enticingly short making it feel like the sort of book I’d like to spend a long lazy weekend day reading all in one go.

One thing to note is that after you buy books they stamp the inside title page with a Libreria insignia. I wasn’t asked if I wanted this and while I was happy for it to happen I imagine some readers who like to keep their books pristine might be disgruntled by having their brand new books branded before their eyes. 

Owen Jones

So if you live in London or happen to visit I would recommend a trip over to East End to have a look inside. There are also lots of tempting food vans nearby and I even passed by journalist, presenter and author Owen Jones as he was being filmed talking about Syria in the nearby food and shop Box Park. Yes, it’s all that uber uber trendy!

Simon over at SavidgeReads had the good idea to share some book suggestions in honour of World Book Day so here are my answers to these questions and I’d love to hear your answers in the comments as well!

Your favourite book:  
The Waves by Virginia Woolf. Here’s a video of me talking about it.

A recent reading highlight:
The Lonely City by Olivia Laing. It’s published today and it’s the sort of incredibly readable book I didn’t want to put down. I loved it.

A book people might not have heard of or read by really should have:
Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman. One of my favourite books last year. These inventive stories are so engaging, fun and draw you into the lives of slightly obscure women from the past.

A book which might get someone who doesn’t think they like reading back into books:
Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates. These short stories offer a wide range of styles and subject matter but are all sumptuous, compelling and gripping reads.

A book you can’t wait to read by a favourite author:
Barkskins by Annie Proulx. It’s published in June, but I have an advance copy. Some early praise hails it as her best book yet which is quite a high achievement!

Let me know your answers and what you did if you celebrated World Book Day in some way!

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

I always excitedly anticipate reading new books by Elizabeth Strout. I don’t know if this is because she writes powerful prose and striking characters with deep insight or if it’s because she often sets her stories in my home state of Maine so her narratives feel personally familiar and very real to me. Probably both. Whatever the case, her books are fantastic including her previous novel “The Burgess Boys” which came out a few years ago. Now she’s published a very different kind of novel “My Name is Lucy Barton”. It’s a pared-down short book narrated from Lucy’s perspective and, by this character’s own admission, she’s far from reliable and refuses to give the whole story. Through impressionistic passages we’re told about time she spent in the hospital “many years ago now” when her estranged mother visited her for several days. She meditates upon their conversations and other important moments from her life, but we don’t get the whole story – just haunting flashes of memories and meditative thoughts. They build to create a deeply-felt portrait of a life forged through perseverance and love.

Lucy is a successful writer in NYC who grew up in a very impoverished family in Illinois. She has little or no contact with her father or two siblings. She’s been married twice with two daughters from her first marriage. Beyond this, the full trajectory of her life is uncertain. Where some stories told from the point of view of a narrator who insists on being vague like the woman at the centre of Rachel Cusk’s “Outline” might frustrate a reader for deliberately suppressing detail and withholding emotion, Lucy is compelling and relatable for how forthright she is with her feelings. Cusk’s novel makes the perfect contrast where her narrator refuses to give her name (until it slips out towards the end) but Strout’s narrator firmly declares her name in the title. However, the texture of Lucy’s identity is more elusive. The story of her life isn’t straightforward because life isn’t straightforward. Memory is amorphous. This novel is filled with words like ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’ and ‘I think.’ Little is concrete. What really gripped me along her journey was this desperate need I felt she had to convey something important about her life. Her scattered story builds to something deeply felt and triumphantly inspiring.

Lucy finds a mentor and teacher in a writer named Sarah Payne who tells her that “we all have only one story.” It’s that singularity that Lucy strives so hard to describe. But, of course, there isn’t any one truth to the past and I felt this is why Lucy grapples to tell it. She also refuses to surrender some details like the break from her first husband William: “This is not the story of my marriage… I cannot write the story of my marriage.” It could be that the dissolution of her marriage isn’t the point of why she’s writing. Or she might be reluctant to divulge what really happened because she won’t come out well. Whatever happened, it’s now in the past. She meaningfully states: “when you write a novel you get to rewrite it, but when you live with someone for twenty years, that is the novel, and you can never write that novel with anyone again!”

What she reports on instead is the important momentary details of what have shaped her identity. For instance, she has an intense engagement with literature that feeds her desire to write: “the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone.” All these details build toward a “ruthless” declaration of freedom from her past: “This is me, and I will not go where I can’t bear to go- to Amgash, Illinois- and I will not stay in a marriage when I don’t want to, and I will grab myself and hurl onward through life, blind as a bat, but on I go!” There is something beautifully liberating about this assertive cry of independence even though it involves cutting free from those you once loved. It’s an affirmation that you can create who you really want to be.

"Insulation nailed against the wall held a stuffing like pink cotton candy"

Strout has an unnerving knack for triggering bouts of nostalgia and reflection for me. In one section she describes seeing a house’s pink insulation and how overwhelmingly alluring it is, but she is warned off from ever touching it because of the danger of fibreglass. At another point she describes an early incident in her marriage where she tried to cook for her husband without knowing whether a clove of garlic meant the full bulb or only a sliver from it. I had this same experience as a precocious teen cooking a “fancy” meal for my friends. A recipe I made called for five cloves of garlic so I stood in a supermarket piling enormous bulbs of garlic into a shopping cart while my mother looked on disapprovingly. I know these images won’t resonant for everyone, but it’s striking to me how often Strout tugs at my memories making me recall and feel things I haven’t experienced in many years.

The universal feelings Strout taps more into are to do with strained family relations. Lucy longs for a love from her parents which they aren’t capable of giving or not, at least, in any overt way. She states that “Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.” Her awareness of her difference cuts her off from those around her. The emotional and financial depravity take their toll causing her to write “I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can’t even weep.” It’s interesting reading this so closely after reading Laing’s brilliant nonfiction book “The Lonely City” as Lucy is the embodiment of the kind of detached state of being that Laing describes so well. From her hospital bed, Lucy can see the Chrysler Building outside her window. It comes to stand like a beacon of all she’s come to stand for: a solid robust individual far from the desolate landscape of her upbringing.

Baileys Prize 2016 Longlist Predictions

The longlist for this year’s Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced in a week and I am so thrilled because this is one of my favourite book prizes. How fantastic that this award recognizing exceptional women’s writing has been running for 20 years!

I always strive to read as much of the longlist as possible but I’ll be following it especially closely this year because the Baileys Prize have sponsored my friend Simon of SavidgeReads and I to form the Baileys Bearded Book Club. And we want you to get involved! (You don’t need a beard or male appendage to join in!) We’ll be reading as much of the official longlist as possible. We’d love for you to read along, let us know your thoughts and share in the excitement!

As I did last year, I’ll also be joining the fabulous Naomi of TheWritesofWomen and several other great readers/book bloggers to form a shadow panel for this year’s Baileys Prize. We’ll be reading the official longlist and formulating our own shortlist/winner separate from the judges’ choices. I’m hoping for lots of great debate and discussion. With so many great new books written by women in the past year, I think this year’s longlist will be truly exceptional. FYI, only novels published in English between 1st April 2015 and 31st March 2016 are eligible.

Here is my wish list for the 20 books which I predict will be longlisted for this year’s prize. It’s primarily made up of novels I’ve read and loved. Click on the titles in the list to read my full thoughts about them. There are six books I’ve not reviewed yet or still have to read which I think have a good chance of making the list. As an aside, if anthologies of short fiction were eligible surely The Long Gaze Back would be listed. It’s an exceptional book collecting a selection of 200 years worth of great Irish women’s writing and was one of my favourite books last year.

Do you agree with my choices or are there others you think/hope will be listed?

Mr Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt
Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta
The Man Without a Shadow by Joyce Carol Oates
The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt by Tracy Farr
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon
The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
The Gap in Time by Jeanette Winterson
Sophie and the Sibyl by Patricia Duncker
Girl at War by Sara Novic
My Name is Lucy Barton – Elizabeth Strout
The Green Road by Anne Enright
Elemental – Amanda Curtin
Tender by Belinda McKeon
Hot Milk – Deborah Levy
The Seed Collectors – Scarlett Thomas
Martin John – Anakana Schofield
A God in Ruins – Kate Atkinson

The 2016 Baileys Prize official longlist will be announced on March 8th, the shortlist on April 11th and the winner on June 8th! Let's stay tuned and get reading!

The Lonely City by Olivia Laing

It’s difficult to write about books that affect me the most. Of course I was drawn to this non-fiction book because the title is so in line with my blog’s title. As well as being a platform for me to ponder what I’m reading, I like to think of this blog as an ongoing exploration on the conflicted relationship I have to literature – how it can make me feel so connected to our larger shared humanity. At the same time, it makes me physically alone and reading itself can serve as a self-imposed barrier to social interaction. Therefore, “The Lonely City” is exactly the kind of extended meditation on loneliness I crave to better inform me and expand my understanding of this condition. It’s a heavily researched book focusing on a choice selection of artists’ work and biographies to enhance Olivia Laing’s arguments about why we might frequently feel lonely, what loneliness means and how it’s a manifestation of living in society. This book is also highly personal with sections which are startlingly candid and touchingly vulnerable. In the same way that Helen Macdonald used an electric range of sources and personal experiences to broaden our understanding of grief in “H is for Hawk”, Laing uses fascinating research to inform a dynamic portrait of her intimate reality and make strong observations about loneliness. This made reading “The Lonely City” a deeply meaningful experience for me and made it a riveting book.

Laing concentrates on multiple visual artists such as Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Henry Darger and David Wojnarowicz to formulate a nuanced and compelling understanding of what loneliness means. Her interpretations of these artists’ creations is heavily informed from biographical information and how expressions of loneliness are reflected in the physical forms of their work. She conducted an extensive amount of research going through archives and conducting interviews to gain deeper insight into the struggles they faced. In doing so she makes a number of compelling connections between how similar difficulties can manifest differently through artistic expression. She also references studies from psychologists such as Frieda Fromm-Reichmann to inform her arguments and deepen an understanding of the feelings these artists processed and formulated into art.

Klaus Nomi - Simple Man

"Come now and take my hand
Now and forever, never to be lonely
Yes, I'm a simple man!
I do the best I can"

There’s a mesmerising way in which Laing’s engagement with art and artists leads on to more research and related research into other fascinating figures/artists such as Valerie Solanas, Peter Hujar, Billie Holiday, Klaus Nomi, Zoe Leonard, Jean-Michel Basquiat. They all reflect back on her focal subject and cast a different perspective on the sensation of being an outsider. The queer or racial minority status of many of her subjects and the way in which broader society has rejected them makes their deep-set feelings of aloneness and alienation highly understandable. They also serve as touchstones for Laing’s own feelings of not fitting into the majority or any neat classification of gender or sexuality: “I inhabited a space in the centre, which didn’t exist, except there I was.” Examples such as the famous gay cruising grounds of the piers in 1970s NYC serve as vibrant displays of freedom from social pressure to be in a monogamous couple or “to cuddle up, to couple off, to go like Noah’s animals two by two into a permanent container, sealed from the world.” Although men are frequently made to measure themselves against impossible masculine standards, women experience differently intense stresses to fit into a certain type leading Laing to state “God I was sick of carrying around a woman’s body, or rather everything that attaches to it.” Her observations about the general pressure towards conformity make her conclude that multiple forms of “structural injustice” induce feelings of loneliness and that loneliness is a collective experience rather than a singular one. In some form we all inhabit this state of mind, this city.

Growing up as a queer boy in the relatively rural state of Maine, I always had a keen sense of being outside the norm and often felt lonely. Moving to the city of Boston in my teenage years did little to assuage these feelings. While I met many like-minded people and had a range of experiences to broaden my sense of identity, I was made to feel more intensely isolated during a short period where I had nowhere to live. Bundling up against the cold and hunkering under a closed shopping centre’s light throughout the night, I read constantly to distract myself from the sleeplessness caused by living rough.

I always remember one evening when a guard patrolling the centre’s perimeter came upon me at 3am. Nervous I’d be ushered to move along I started to get up, but he just raised his hand and asked with genuine concern if I was alright. I huddled further into my coat and raised my book again assuring him I was fine. He lingered a moment and I could tell he wanted to ask more or offer some assistance, but I concentrated on my book deflecting any potential connection. There is a similar moment that Laing recounts when she’s reading at a train station and is approached by a man who is obviously desperate to strike up a friendly conversation. She avoided this contact and subsequently felt guilty about it. In the same way, although I was the one in need, I feel a lingering guilt that this man offered a connection in a lonely city and I shied away from it.

Reading can be a deeply enriching experience providing knowledge and extending our empathy to see the world through another individual’s perspective. However, it can also serve as a shield to avoid engaging with others even when a connection is what we desperately want. It’s also why participating in online interactions can be so much more seductive than making real life contact. As Laing writes about time she spent mostly online: “I wanted to be in contact and I wanted to retain my privacy, my private space.” It’s particularly fascinating how she concentrates upon examples from the rapidly changing landscape of the internet for how loneliness is both expressed and perpetuated through this medium. It proves how loneliness isn’t simply a question of being by yourself as opposed to being surrounded by others, but how the internal life become despondent, detached or separated from the external reality.

“The Lonely City” is a book that raises many deeply embedded and probably hidden feelings. It’s admirable not only for the sustained and studious lengths to which Laing probes the mystery of the common state of loneliness, but the way in which she bravely inserts herself into the question itself. Reading this book felt to me like engaging in the most personal and intense internal conversation – the kind you might only have with yourself sitting alone in a diner late at night staring through a window at all the distant lights.

Mr Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt

What makes reading novels such a rapturous experience for me is the way stories can connect the particular with the infinite. When an author uses the right form of telling to bring me on a character’s journey which becomes my own it’s tremendously liberating. I feel simultaneously free from myself and more capable of inhabiting my life. I don’t read novels for answers; I read to share in the mystery of being. Samantha Hunt’s powerful novel “Mr Splitfoot” raises many questions and leaves them magnificently suspended in the air. I finished reading it feeling enormously moved and pondering many issues of faith, family and meaning. It’s a beautiful tale told with precision and an accomplished feeling of symmetry.

“Mr Splitfoot” is the story of an orphaned girl named Ruth raised by a psychopathic “Father” who leads a ragtag foster home he calls ‘The Love of Christ!’ where “children are a rainbow of deformities.” From the age of five, Ruth shares a profound connection with a boy named Nat. The pair call themselves “sisters” and grow to be con-artists who claim to communicate with the dead for a fee. (The title character Mr Splitfoot is the fictional intermediary spirit Nat calls upon to speak to the dead.) Years later, Ruth’s niece Cora embarks on an extended journey by foot for an unknown destination. She is pregnant and longs for a connection with her mysterious aunt. Like many of us, she is addicted to using the internet through her phone and finds it hard to let it go: “I want to push little buttons quickly. I want information immediately. I want to post pictures of Ruth and me smiling in the sun. I want people to like me, like me, like me.” Yet, she temporary breaks from this for an ascetic life walking to better understand what she really wants, engage in a series of surprising adventures and discover a link to her aunt’s past.

One of the greatest things about this novel is Hunt’s radical redefinition of family. Characters aren’t locked into relationships with the groups they are born into, but choose their family based on their personalities and needs. There is something so disarming about a young boy and girl who call each other sisters, yet they radically make this word their own regardless of gender-distinctions. Equally, Cora comes to think of Ruth as the father of her baby. This feels like a way of breaking down traditional barriers so people aren't inhibited by the expectations of family roles and can become whatever they need to be.

It's particularly effective how Hunt describes the experience of pregnancy and how it changes the people around the expectant mother. Cora finds that “Now that my belly shows, I’m public property. Strangers speak to me all the time.” It's disturbing the way people project onto Cora all their own problems as if the fact of her pregnancy should permit a greater intimacy. It's touching the feelings Cora expresses while expecting her baby, that “Pregnancy is a locked door in my stomach, all the weight of life and death and still no way to know it.” It's as if this experience should naturally provide a number of answers about life to her, but she feels just as uncertain as she always has.

Ruth's sister Eleanor hears Linda Thompson singing while driving one day and is so moved she tracks down a copy of this song. 

The novel also says some profound things about how faith and fantasy equally play a part in our lives. Cults run throughout this book with their fanatic leaders' belief systems transparently based on their desire for money or power. Yet, Smith presents people's personal beliefs as something that naturally occur as a way of coping with life. One character named Sheresa remarks: “History holds up one side of our lives and fiction the other. Mother, father. Birth, death, and in between, that’s where you find religion. That’s where you find art, science, engineering. It’s where things get made from belief and memory.” It's through a constant interplay between fact and fiction that we find motivation to make decisions on how to proceed forward.

At times the way in which Hunt uses language reminded me of Ali Smith’s writing as she often plays on words’ double meanings. For instance, the word 'Comet' is used as a rock hurtling through outer space that a cult leader wishes will hit his followers that he can’t control and it’s also the name of a cleaning product an obsessive man uses as a drug. Both meanings of the word entwine in a surprising way to make an entirely new meaning. The style of writing is similar to Ali Smith as it often loops surreal experiences into scenes treating them as equally valid as mundane reality. The character of Cora also feels like a quintessential Smith character as she is often funny, curious and savvy. Yet, Hunt’s story has a much more American feel to it with its skilful presentation of individuals struggling with issues of identity amidst the influence of cults with extreme beliefs.

Recently, I went to see David Mitchell and Kazuo Ishiguro in conversation where they spent quite a while discussing ghosts (which are prevalent in Mitchell's most recent novel “Slade House”). They remarked on how ghost stories have the ability to tap into fears which lay dormant within people so their response to ghost stories seems to come naturally as if it's a story they already know. There is a fascinating and poignant conversation about ghost stories between Cora and her lover at the beginning of this novel which becomes a ghost story itself. The dead have such a presence in people's minds many of them are complicit in Ruth and Nat's cons because they want so badly to believe: “People who don’t believe in the dead are still affected by them.” It leads Cora to eventually remark that “every story is a ghost story, even mine.”

“Mr Splitfoot” is a deeply moving novel that creatively approaches many serious questions with flair and humour. I was totally captivated like a boy being told a ghost story late at night.

The Maker of Swans by Paraic O’Donnell

In the past year, I’ve been captivated by a series of impressive new books by Irish authors. There has been powerful fiction from debut authors like Danielle McLaughlin and Gavin McCrea as well as exciting new novels from established voices like Edna O’Brien, John Banville and Anne Enright. Not only have novels by writers such as Gavin Corbett, Belinda McKeon, Kevin Barry and Sara Baume delivered powerful stories, but these books meaningfully break form to fashion a new kind of writing. Paraic O’Donnell’s writing in “The Maker of Swans” is also resolutely its own thing. I wouldn’t exactly categorize it under that flabby moniker ‘experimental’ – nor would I categorize it as anything except a novel. A grand rural house presided over by a mysterious man may sound like a set up straight out of classic fiction, but the way O’Donnell tells it makes this story so strikingly compelling.

The master of the house is Mr Crowe who possesses rare indeterminate skills, a substantial library and a pen that once belonged to Shelley. He is attended to by a faithful butler named Eustace whose duties extend beyond that of a normal servant as is made clear in the novel’s dramatic opening. Mr Crowe arrives home very late after an evening of indulgence with a sultry singer in his car and a jealous man in pursuit. The jilted lover soon lies dead on the lawn and it’s up to Eustace to take care of the body. This is a tale of murder, kidnapping and mystery, but it’s more about art, language and literature. What sacrifice is needed to create a beautiful work of art? Do words have the power to really codify experience and the physical world? How do great books help us straddle the line between the conscious and unconscious? Is the life captured in art true or false? None of these questions are raised overtly within the story, but rise subtly within the narrative and the labyrinthine path it takes to a strangely unsettling climax.

Central to the story is a mute girl named Clara who (like many of the house’s residents) is seemingly ageless and lives there under Mr Crowe’s guardianship – although she is much closer to Eustace. She treads lightly between the real world and dreams making her an avid recorder of fantastical tales. Her abilities for recall are unparalleled making it is a favourite game in the household to pick any book from Mr Crowe’s large library and Clara will write down the opening lines from memory. This is how her passion for reading is described: “The books she loves most are those that seem somehow complete, their worlds proximate and habitable. There is an ease in entering those other lives, in feeling herself enclosed by another consciousness. It is strange, that unruptured intimacy, like possessing a second skin.” This is certainly anyone’s ideal reading experience!

Eustace keeps an orrery in his room which demonstrates the motions of the planets

The novel takes many divergent paths including a heartrending back story of Eustace’s origins and a tense section where Clara is incarcerated by a sinister figure named Nazaire and his ailing employer Dr Chastern. Yet, the story always circles back to Mr Crowe, his mysterious abilities and the seemingly sacred position he holds. Crowe is simultaneously a progenitor of the world’s best writing and the embodiment of fiction’s greatest characters from Mr. Rochester to John Silver to Ted Hughes’ trickster Crow. He’s rambunctious, lustful and charismatic. Both artist and muse he believes that we should “Never leave a void where something may be written.” It’s as if his ability to perfectly encapsulate the beauty of life can give meaning to all that is seemingly meaningless.  

The experience of reading “The Maker of Swans” is something like that hypnagogic state of consciousness where the familiar world is slightly bent and it feels like anything can happen. There appears to be an overriding logic although it never becomes clear. Unlike other cerebral writers such as David Mitchell who feel it’s necessary to show the mechanics behind their fantastical schematic landscapes, O’Donnell thankfully never lays out the nuts and bolts of his story. He is very good at creating intrigue so even if I didn’t understand what was happening I wanted to know what was going to happen next. What also drives the story are bursts of humour and some truly beautiful figurative writing where wet “cobbles have the muted gloss of eel skin.” This is a fantastically inventive novel that purposefully builds new paths for fiction and it’s also another fine example of the exciting new writing coming out of Ireland.

The Butcher’s Hook by Janet Ellis

During my teenage years some of my favourite books were big English classics like “Bleak House.” Partly told from the point of view of a female character named Esther, we follow her path of self discovery as she was born into a complicated situation in late-Georgian England. She is achingly modest in character while being capable of astute observations. (This led to a lot of criticism of Dickens’ taking on the voice of a female narrator.) Then there were other books like “Jane Eyre” which I came to quite late compared to most people, but I was completely enraptured following the trajectory of the tenacious narrator’s journey towards hard-won love. These are both great immersive tales, but a potential problem is how essentially “good” the narrators of these stories are no matter the obstacles presented to them. Both possess strong personal moral convictions which they adhere to even if it means sacrificing what they want most in life. Now, Janet Ellis has given us a tale set in Georgian London which possesses all the well-plotted intrigue and gritty reality of these great predecessors – yet Ellis’ heroine has a steely determination to break out of the constraints of her circumstances and get the man she wants at any cost.

Anne Jaccob is the canny and passionate narrator. She’s a nineteen year old girl from a prosperous family who are no strangers to bereavement. Anne’s mother has lost many babies in her quest to produce a healthy son – something her irascible father is determined to have. After Anne helped care for a baby brother throughout his infancy only to lose him at an early age, she carefully guards her heart from love even when her mother gives birth to a new baby sister. Grief has caused her to lose a crucial sense of empathy. However, her ardour is awakened with force when she meets a roguishly handsome and confident young butcher named Fub. The couple have a passionate physical and romantic affair. Anne ardently resolves to be with him despite a marriage her father arranges for her with a calculating and evocatively-named older man Mr Onions. She wittily manipulates those around her and isn’t afraid of resorting to brute force to be with her suave butcher boy.

This is a distinctly original novel of a young woman’s sexual awakening. Anne is someone who has been deeply emotionally damaged. The loss of her brother and the abuse she suffers at the hands of a particularly unsavoury family friend/teacher combine with all her teenage passion to make her a formidable individual. She is savvy enough to see the shortcomings of those around her and play them to her own advantage. Anne’s narrative is so vivid it invokes the sensory experience of the time period and the unsavoury habits of those around her. Yet, Ellis doesn’t cut short small insights a reader can make into other character’s internal struggles including the Jaccob family’s housekeeper, the baby’s nursemaid or even the strict father.

The Smithfield meat market described dates from the 10th century

Ellis writes so well about that all-consuming infatuation we’ve all felt in first love. It’s not romanticized, but deeply physical and tied to a strident rejection of Anne’s circumstances. Anne comments that “We do not need pretty rainbows, Fub and I. We will not brush hands at a dance or exchange covert glances in the back of a carriage. That is a sugary romance, collapsing in brittle shards when you bite. Ours is as chewy as glue.” Even when it becomes clear that Fub isn’t invested in their future as a couple, Anne is stuck to her vision of their future together. This romance is ignited by disturbing forces which inspire Anne to take drastic action. It’s refreshing to read about a character set in this time period that is in many ways sympathetic, yet is also capable of horrifyingly monstrous acts. The drama escalates throughout the novel making it an increasingly gripping read as the story progresses.

Since I actually work near London’s historic Smithfield Market (which still functions as a meat market today), it was grimly fascinating being able to walk through it and imagine the setting of “The Butcher’s Hook” as the butchery where Fub works is close to this location. The brutality with which meat is carved into portioned and carried off reflects Anne’s savage spirit. Janet Ellis has created a fierce, memorable heroine and an inventive atmospheric story. It has all the richness of Dickensian detail and the modern flair of Sarah Waters. I also have to mention that the cover design and colour of this book is exceptionally beautiful.

Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift

This is Graham Swift’s tenth novel and I wonder if it’s a common occurrence that writers, particularly male writers, in their later years lean more towards a pared down prose style to only focus on what’s necessary. It’s been true most recently for Julian Barnes whose recent novel “The Noise of Time” is a very short book and it’s been the case for authors like Philip Roth, Ian McEwan and Don DeLillo. It may not mean anything, but I wonder if this trend has something to do with mature writers feeling less a need for the grand showmanship of an epic novel and finding more poignancy in tightly compressed stories. Whatever the reason, it’s worked for Barnes and it’s certainly worked for this tremendously gorgeous novel “Mothering Sunday.” In only 132 pages, Swift encapsulates a crucial day in the life of Jane Fairchild, an orphan maid at a grand country house who becomes a great writer.

The day in question is Mothering Sunday 1924. At a very elderly age Jane looks back on what happened over the course of this day when she was still young. In beautifully stark language Swift evokes the lingering pleasure and tension of an affair. Paul is a member of the gentry who has agreed to marry Miss Hobday, mostly for her family’s money. He’s due to meet both his family and his fiancée’s at a gathering scheduled two weeks before their marriage. Instead he enjoys an assignation in his bedroom with Jane before eventually leaving to join the party. Does he want to stay with Jane instead? Is he happy to marry Miss Hobday? Or is he merely fulfilling an obligation? These questions are suspended in the air as the afternoon drifts by and they enjoy each others’ bodies. What’s mesmerizing is the way that Swift circles back to the same images and moments between them over and over. Since this is a novel being told in retrospect this accurately mimics the way memory works where past events are frequently replayed in our minds from different angles with slight changes. It’s stated that “This was the great truth of life, that fact and fiction were always merging, interchanging.”

As the title suggests, one of the most fascinating concepts that Swift explores within this story is children and parenthood. Set after the First World War the sons of some of the established families within the area have been lost in battle. Photos of Paul’s brother poignantly remain in his room as he spends time with Jane. They are able to enjoy this time in his large residence alone because the staff have gone home to visit their mothers. Jane, being an orphan, has nowhere to go. However, it’s interesting that she views her parentless status as an advantage. It gives her the opportunity to entirely forge the path in life she wants rather than be hemmed in by the obligations and expectations of family. This is a novel partly about heritage, who owns the future and hence who controls the narrative of history. 

Me with Claire Fuller & Antonia Honeywell

The later part of this novel also turns much more into a discourse on the nature of language and writing. I know many people will find it predictable that this is another book about a writer writing about a writer. However, Swift raises very compelling ideas and makes meaningful observations which I felt so emotionally involved with because I was arrested by Jane’s distinct perspective and her situation. Geeky pleasures of the committed reader abound as well since Jane writes about the books that have influenced her, particularly Joseph Conrad, and her early discovery of reading in the library of her employer Mr Niven. She humorously observes that “It was what, she sometimes thought, libraries were for: for men to disappear into and be important in, even though they had disappeared.” Unlike the privileged class surrounding her in her early years, she actually reads and engages with the literature she finds in these private libraries and it turns her into a writer.

Since this is a book about a writer it seems appropriate that I met with the writers Antonia Honeywell (The Ship) and Claire Fuller (Our Endless Numbered Days) to discuss this new novel. We formed a sort of mini book club since we all discovered on Twitter that we’d been sent advance copies. It was an absolute pleasure getting their points of view about how the story played out and some of the novel’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s a book open to many different interpretations because I think Swift creates a number of intriguing ambiguities. I was somewhat trepidatious about starting “Mothering Sunday” as the only other book by Graham Swift I’ve read is “The Light of Day” which I didn’t really like. However, now I’m enthusiastic about going back to read his acclaimed novel “Waterland” and “Tomorrow” – which Antonia assures me is brilliant. “Mothering Sunday” begins somewhat unsteadily in a privileged world that feels a little too ‘Downton Abbey’ but it quickly becomes something much more profound and beautiful. I ended up completely loving it and wanting to immediately read it again.

The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee

Back in 2002, I read Alexander Chee's acclaimed first book “Edinburgh” - a novel that was equally engrossing for its strikingly original language as it was for being about a gay boy growing up in Maine (where I was also raised.) The protagonist Fee struggles to overcome his traumatic childhood and feels the story of his life is mingled with that of a mythic fox. Interestingly, although Chee's long-anticipated second novel “The Queen of the Night” is a huge departure from this first book, the narrator who calls herself Lilliet Berne also finds her identity paired with an animal – in this case a falcon which is an operatic singing voice that registers between a soprano and mezzo. The novel begins in 1882 when Lilliet is one of the most famous opera singers in Europe. At a lavish party she meets a writer who has produced a novel about a singer's life and he hopes that it will be turned into an opera which she will star in. Lilliet is shocked to find the story is her own. She fears that someone is secretly plotting to destroy her as the real story of her past and her difficult rise to fame is known only to a few.

The novel relates Lilliet’s quest to uncover who is behind this planned opera and tells the epic tale of her life. Along the way we get an intimate glimpse of the dramatic fall of the Second French Empire and the fascinating famous figures that shaped the events and fashion of the time. She interacts with artists and writers including Ivan Turgenev and George Sand - described as looking like an “old elf.” Two of the most interesting people at the novel’s centre are the Empress Eugenie who was exiled following the end of Napoleon III’s reign and the Comtesse de Castiglione who was Napoleon III’s mistress and a cunning figure of influence. Both were style icons of the time, wielded significant political power behind the scenes and were engaged in a fascinating rivalry. Fashion is at the heart of this novel where details of Lilliet’s dresses and concerns about appearances abound. It revels in the sumptuous detail from emerald jewellery to crystal-beaded silk satin bodices to powdered wigs. As well as providing a survey of how style reflects the culture of the time, this extended engagement with forms of presentation reflects the way Lilliet constantly works to reshape her identity in order to survive. Yet this can cause her difficulty when at points “I had confused myself with my disguise.” The clothes are an emblem of power. Lilliet strives to attain as much power as possible to free herself from the past, yet risks losing a connection to who she really is and what she really wants in the process.

The Countess of Castiglione who sat for many portraits which capture her elaborate costumes & her distinct elusive personality.

The story of “The Queen of the Night” is filled with all the high-pitched melodrama of an opera and Chee reveals in an afterward how the storyline is based on Mozart’s The Magic Flute. What’s fascinating is the way he combines all the dramatic plots and exaggerated emotion of this art form with the subtly of psychological insight that can only be accomplished in a long fictional narrative. There’s the wild adventure and sensational tale of a woman who utilizes her talent for singing and ingenuity to rise out of desolate impoverished circumstances to sit at the centre of society. A ruby gift from an emperor, the colourful diversity of circus life, the intrigue of a high society house of pleasure, a hot air balloon escape, assignations in secret rooms, shocking murder, the collapse of one society and the birth of a new society all feature. It leads Lilliet to reflect that “my whole life had become the opera.” So much action threaded through this condensed and personal history does at points threaten to spin the story out of control. As fantastical as it all seems, the novel does give a framework to the lives of many extraordinary real life people who lived in extraordinary times. But at its centre is always the heartfelt voice of an individual desperately seeking to assert her independence, fully realize love’s potential and practice her artistry amongst those who only seek to possess and use her.

Lilliet uses the rumour of a superstitious curse to escape playing an opera role selected for her and there is a lot of speculation throughout the book about how fate and destiny may shape her story. She ponders how “A singer learned her roles for life – your repertoire was a library of fates held close, like the gowns in this closet, yours until your voice failed.” There is ultimately nothing predetermined about life except for the choices we make and the opportunities we embrace or reject. Lilliet’s great turning point comes when she enters into the tutelage of a famed voice teacher named Pauline. Here she utilizes the potential for achieving the greatness which her talent can give her. For me, it’s a quote from of a giant named Ernesto at the circus that reverberates throughout this novel when he says “We’re none of us made right for this world. But we’re still here, aren’t we?” In embracing what makes her different, Lilliet achieves success and finds her true place.

During the seige of the Paris Commune balloons were used to transport mail and help key people escape.

It’s also in the training school in Baden-Baden under Pauline’s guidance that the narrative comes vibrantly alive. The process of leaning to discipline and master her voice is recounted in fascinatingly realistic detail. The experience of Lilliet’s reality is also intensely felt in her performances when emerging on the stage we see from her point of view how she “couldn't see these men and women as the limelights burned, only the smooth seashell walls of the Comique and the gaps where the boxes were, like the sockets in a skull, a depthless dark from the moment the curtain went up.” She performs for the audience just as she does for the people she encounters in her life – enchanting them with her talent but unable to fully see their motives or the circumstances of her own situation until it is too late. 

The novel’s title takes on multiple meanings over the course of the story. The Queen of the Night is a role in an opera which is so difficult that it might break her voice. It’s also the position of a prostitute as explained by the madam who states “This is a profession; you are performers. These men, they entrust us with their most secret fantasies, and we, we keep that trust – they rule the day, we rule the night.” More than recounting the exploits of the most famous figures from history, this is a novel dedicated to those who played behind the scenes and steered major events in ways which aren’t recounted in the history books. They are the ones who played an equally important part in shaping the culture we live in today.

I was frequently enthralled reading “The Queen of the Night” just for the pleasure of its luscious detail and the finely-honed beauty of Chee’s writing. This is a novel with thrilling adventure, intriguing insight and tremendous scope that brings a dramatic period of history fully to life.

Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta

When we’re young we can have a simplified vision of the future. If we’re lucky enough to live with a loving family what more is there to hope for? But, as we grow, change comes both from outside forces and internal changes – neither of which we can control. Eleven year old Ijeoma dreams of living in a castle with her adoring parents, but she’s awakened to brutal reality in 1968 when her home in Ojoto, Nigeria is ravaged by a civil war that splinters her family apart. What follows is a highly original and moving coming of age story about the way she must adjust to the new environment around her and reconcile her homosexual feelings with the conservative religious attitudes of her community. More than this, “Under the Udala Trees” shows how we inevitably make damaging compromises in our lives which at a certain point become untenable: “There’s a way in which life takes us along for a ride and we begin to think that our destinies are not in fact up to us.” However, the story shows that with strength of character we can assert what we really want in life and make a place for ourselves in the communities we were born into.

It’s refreshing and surprising how I initially thought this novel was going to be primarily about war, but it turns into a much more personal story about a woman’s struggle with her sexuality. The civil war has a huge effect on Ijeoma’s life, but this book is more about the conflict homosexuals face in a country where it is dangerous and criminal to be openly gay. When the bodies of gay men that have been beaten to death in a homophobic attack are discovered it’s stated: “We called the police. They couldn’t even be bothered to do anything, not even to take the bodies away. ‘Let them rot like the faggots they are,’ one of the officers said.” This is a society where expressions of same-sex desire are cornered into the shadows. Her ardently religious mother Adaora tries to teach Ijeoma interpretations of the bible which she believes support how God thinks homosexuals are an “abomination.” This is something Ijeoma can’t help question as well as objecting to how the bible shows only a singular point of view: “Just because the Bible recorded one specific thread of events, one specific history, why did that have to invalidate or discredit all other threads, all other histories?” There is a multiplicity of perspectives and stories which have been winnowed out from history and religious texts. Ijeoma creatively integrates aspects of stories and local fables passed down by her family to establish her own understanding of the world.

Fela Kuti's ‘Shakara Oloje’ plays in a secret gay disco held in a church at night.

In addition to some devastating scenes, what makes this such a heartrending story is the way Ijeoma is forced to question her own nature because of the pressures from those around her. It’s a common feeling for any closeted person to at some point think like her: “I did want to be normal. I did want to lead a normal life. I did want to have a life where I didn’t have to constantly worry about being found out.” This inevitably leads to bitter compromises. But what’s surprising and uplifting about this novel are the opportunities Ijeoma does discover to meet people and have experiences which do allow her to explore her natural feelings. Even though “Sometimes we get confused about what happiness really means” the story offers a hopeful message about how we can better realize our desires in life from rare people that we meet.  It also shows how others can surprisingly change with time, love and patience.

I know some details of the Biafran War that took place in the late 1960s from historical programs and films I’ve seen or novels I’ve read which focus on this conflict. Adichie’s tremendous novel “Half of a Yellow Sun” which deservedly won the recent Baileys Prize ‘Best of the Best’ is an obvious point of reference. However, before reading “Under the Udala Trees” I hadn’t come across any story of this war or Nigeria itself that comes from a homosexual perspective and bears witness to the ongoing conflict faced by LGBT citizens in this country. In an author’s note at the end of this book Okparanta records how a 2012 survey found Nigeria to be the second-most-religious country surveyed and a new law passed by the president in 2014 criminalizes same-sex relationships and support of such relationships. Narrow-minded interpretations of religious texts are often at the root and used to justify this discrimination. However, it’s very surprising and encouraging to read how Chinelo Okparanta’s offers a hopeful strategy for reconciliations between religion and LGBT communities. By encouraging a shift to less rigid readings of the bible, religion can better respect the changing social spectrum of individuals in our society. There is a way that religion can move with the times rather than the times trying to fit itself into dogmatic translations of religion. This novel offers a significant message that urges integration over separatism (which would inevitably lead to more conflict).

“Under the Udala Trees” is a novel that voices a forceful, inspiring and necessary perspective and reveals a country’s hidden stories. 

The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie

In the past several months I've been thinking a lot about how my parents have influenced who I am. It's only become evident after some time and distance while making my own life in adulthood how patterns of behaviour can be seen in relation to how I was raised and how I reacted to them. I don't want to ascribe blame for any of my shortcomings on my parents' actions. It's simply interesting to observe and try to understand how the alchemy of nature and nurture influence attitudes and values throughout life. This novel acutely observes how “A life could be spent like an apology – to prove you had been worth it.” I believe that if we don't frequently reflect on the way our families have made us who we are the self becomes wayward, acting out in reaction to the past rather than working to better realize who we are in the present.

“The Portable Veblen” is about a couple who meet and marry, but it's much more a story about families and how two people can forge lives of their own coming out of very difficult family situations. Veblen is a thirty year old woman who lives on the remote edges of Palo Alto working secretarial temp jobs to fund her passion for translating Norwegian literature and studying her namesake Thorstein Bunde Veblen, a Norwegian-American economist. She freely quotes William James and sees herself as a curious kind of “travelling scribe” recording the lives of those around her. She meets and quickly falls in love with Paul Vreeland, a thirty-five year old research scientist who is on the brink of discovering a revolutionary new method for relieving cranial swelling and brain damage from head trauma. They want to marry soon, but planning a wedding isn't simple with families like these.

Veblen's mother Melanie is a hypochondriac who seems to have a new chronic medical condition every day and has a fierce emotional attachment to her daughter. Melanie's husband Linus, Veblen's step-father, tiptoes around his wife trying not to upset her and caters to her frequent unreasonable whims. Veblen's father Rudgear has been living for years in a mental institution as he suffers from PTSD and barely recognizes his daughter on her infrequent visits. Because Veblen has needed to take on a caring role for both her parents she still clings to childish fantastical notions of fictional lands filled with animals. It means she talks to squirrels.

Paul was raised under very different circumstances where his anti-establishment parents lived in a type of commune that grows marijuana. When they aren't engaged in sessions of chemically-induced escapism, most of their care and attention goes to Paul's mentally disabled brother. This upbringing has in turn made Paul very independently-minded and ambitious to gain approval from the establishment. However, his aspirations to achieve recognition in medical technology and bring his device to fruition entangle him in a corrupt system that his parents were rightly suspicious of. Alongside the story of his evolving relationship with Veblen is a plot about a corrupt medical industry that values profit over people's health care.

Thorstein Bunde Veblen

There are many cringe-worthy tragicomic scenes in this book as the couple meet each other's families and try to navigate how they can successfully integrate them into the life they want to build together. Importantly, the author doesn't mock the parents in this book or make them targets of derision for the ways they may or may not have fucked up their children. McKenzie takes care to show how they are capable of catering to their children's wellbeing when it's really needed. There is a tenderness of feeling present amidst the chaos as Veblen declares at one point “But you love your family, what can you do.”

It's interesting how McKenzie can introduce surprising moments of self-reflection amidst her narrative. As the characters' lives teeter on the brink of losing all control she can suddenly stop and ask searching questions which probe how the past and family life might influence the way her characters relate to their partners: “Was it possible to love the contradictions in somebody? Was it all but impossible to find somebody without them? Had her mother made of her a ragged-edged shard without a fit?” There is an endearing feeling throughout this novel of desperately trying to make sense of one's life while facing the challenges of life and trying to forge honest meaningful relationships.

McKenzie also has a fascinating absurd slant on the world. The squirrel Veblen maintains an occasional dialogue with becomes an important character himself and bends the plot of the story. Interspersed with the text of the story are occasional photos depicting a variety of things that Veblen either sees or imagines which make the reader more immersed in her view of the world. There’s an intriguing urgency to this author’s narrative which is more concerned with what her characters are thinking and feeling moment to moment rather than creating an organized structure to their journey or finding a clear consistent focus. She allows for moments of pause such as this: “She relaxed and watched a family at a table nearby, the parents feeding the children, wiping their mouths, cleaning their hands, a father and mother and two children, the unit of them unsettling to her, though she couldn’t say why. She looked away, at an older man eating by himself, and that unsettled her too. She wasn’t sure how to live.” Rather than developing her characters, McKenzie allows them to wade in uncertainty in a way which is strikingly poignant and meaningfully blunt.

“The Portable Veblen” is a curious book in that it isn’t afraid to keep asking questions for which there can be no solutions. I felt really connected to the story because of that and enjoyed the humorous and relevant journey of psychological insight it took me on.

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon

I’ve been looking forward to reading “The Trouble with Goats and Sheep” for a long time. Authors such as Rachel Joyce, Sarah Winman and James Hannah whose books I’ve loved reading over the past couple of years endorsed Cannon’s novel. Added to this is the fact that Joanna Cannon received support in writing this, her first novel, from the WoMentoring Project (a programme that matches mentors from the publishing industry with talented new female writers) which was set up by Kerry Hudson – another author whose books I love. So a lot of build-up was attached to this novel! Part of me was nervous that this would be a book with prose so polished the story would come across as cold. However, the pleasure of reading a debut author is that you never know what the writing will be like until you get into the thick of it. Rather than something overtly showy, I was delighted to discover that “The Trouble with Goats and Sheep” is awash with the subtle delights of relatable human stories and inventive writing that is rich with emotion. At its centre is the intriguing story of a neighbourhood mystery which two intrepid adolescent girls are determined to solve.

During a relentless heat wave in the summer of 1976, a woman named Mrs Creasy goes missing from her house in the avenue of an ordinary British town. Ten year old Gracie and her delicate bespectacled friend Tilly visit the local vicar about the matter which has the neighbourhood buzzing with worry. The vicar has delivered a sermon where he quotes scripture about people being divided into those who deserve eternal punishment and those who deserve eternal life – like a shepherd who separates the goats from the sheep. What the girls correctly guess is that it’s not always so easy to tell who belongs in what group. Life is filled with lots of moral ambiguity and appearances can be deceiving: that’s the trouble. This is certainly the case in this avenue filled with characters who all harbour secrets and private lives unknown to their neighbours.

The story plays out something like a ‘whodunnit’ as the stories in each numbered house are revealed and the tangle of their connections to Mrs Creasy becomes clear. Layered on top of the story of her disappearance is a tale from a decade earlier where the neighbours united against a local outcast with disastrous consequences. A socially-awkward and mysterious man named Walter Bishop was accused of a serious crime. The courts acquitted him, but he remained guilty in the hearts of his neighbours who still scorn him. One resident puts it like this: “There are decent people,” said Mrs. Roper, “and then there are the weird ones, the ones who don’t belong. The ones who cause the rest of us problems.” Even though some people find it harder to fit in (or be allowed to fit in) with others, this novel shows how everyone is equally complex and equally fearful of being cast out. Groups have a tendency to target and vilify those who are superficially unusual in an effort to hide their own hidden peculiarities or their own misdeeds. 

Grace likes to carve her name and the names of her friends into this delicious mousse-like dessert

It’s really original how this novel solidly creates in the reader’s mind a picture of a neighbourhood and the relationships between all its colourful residents. The author lays this out so clearly in the narrative that I felt like I could see a map in my mind where each house is positioned and how the inhabitants spend each day. Through short sharpened metaphors Cannon can invoke a rare feeling of understanding for another’s life. In one section she writes: “widowhood wore a beige cardigan and said very little.” This creates a powerful sense for the mixture of isolation, sadness and despondency this character feels. When Cannon hits these snippets which perfectly encapsulate a character the story really soars, but when the narrative gets too caught up in the minutiae of the neighbourhood interactions it can drag somewhat. However, what really drives the story and allows a three-dimensional understanding of the avenue are Grace and Tilly. This compelling and likeable duo trundle from neighbour to neighbour seeking clues for Mrs Creasy’s whereabouts - treated to plates of custard creams and bowls of angel delight along the way.

Grace is a strikingly precocious girl still discovering the ways her intentions don’t always meet her actions. This is eloquently described here: “I still hadn’t learned the power of words. How, once they have left your mouth, they have a breath and a life of their own. I had yet to realize that you no longer own them. I hadn’t learned that, once you have let them go, the words can then, in fact, become the owners of you.” This is a moving way of realizing how you have to take responsibility for what you say. In another part, Grace reveals herself to be a fellow bookworm from the pernickety way she organizes her shelves: “I had to run my finger down the spine of each book to check it was in its proper place and make sure they were all safe, before I could even think about doing anything else.” It’s endearing reading about Grace’s burgeoning awareness of her place in the world and the surprisingly central role she plays in this neighbourhood mystery.

Even though “The Trouble with Goats and Sheep” is a novel concentrating on a mystery set within one small neighbourhood, it stretches open to reveal many compellingly intricate stories of love and loss.

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

In 1936 a Russian man spends night after night sitting by the elevator of his building fully expecting to be taken away to be killed. Dmitri Dmitrievich is a successful composer whose work has been judged by an editorial as contravening the ideals of the Soviet Union. He wants to avoid trouble for his wife and young daughter who sleep nearby so waits outside his door with a packed suitcase. He’s made to live in a perpetual state of terror expecting secret police to seize him at any minute. Over years of intense scrutiny and being batted around by the ruling political powers, his immense talent and passion for his music is slowly twisted. It provokes questions about the meaning and value of art when it’s trampled on by the overriding political forces it’s created under. The novel is composed in triptych form capturing Dmitri’s feelings at three very different points of his life. Spaced in twelve year intervals it also makes a fascinating portrait of the Soviet Union at significantly different stages of its existence. Inspired by the real-life Russian composer Shastakovich, “The Noise of Time” asks how the pure intentions of music fare when played against the clamorous dogma of reigning ideologies.

One of the great challenges of reading any novel set in Russia is trying to keep track and comprehend the flurry of names which appear. Many people have triple-barrel names, each of which is intermittently used and sometimes variations of those names are used in place of the proper names. This simply poses a practical problem for a reader, but I’ve never found it really detracts from my enjoyment of a novel – especially when it’s as powerful and elegantly told as this one. My strategy is to keep a list of the primary characters while reading and, after a time, the story washes over me to a point where I know who is who. Another challenge is entering into Soviet Russia’s complex and extensive history of which I only have a bare bones understanding. I didn’t find this to be a problem though as long as you have a broad understanding of Communist Russian and Stalin’s life – who plays an integral part in the story. Really this is a novel about the fate of artists under the rule of tyrants. Its universal meaning can be strongly felt even if you don’t get some of the nuances of the world in which it is historically set.

Dmitrievich keeps on his bedside table a postcard of The Tribute Money by Titian – painting where the Romans try to bribe Christ for their own political motives.

One of the most fascinating sections is when Dmitri goes on a state-approved tour of America. He’s much lauded in other nations even if some of his work is still banned in his own country. The Soviet Union try to use him as a pawn to present their country as less oppressive and more open. But the effect of this ultimately fails: “Scrub, scrub, scrub, let’s wash away all this old Russianness and paint a shiny new Sovietness on top. But it never worked – the paint began to flake off almost as soon as it was applied. To be Russian was to be pessimistic; to be Soviet was to be optimistic.” Instead of being inspired by the “freedoms” supposedly found in the US and other western nations, Dmitri feels how they are both played and play into political forces which seek to suppress opposition to their power. He also hilariously notes about American journalists that “The fact that they couldn’t pronounce your name was your name’s fault, not theirs.” There is also quite a funny perspective given of the thinness of Picasso’s political convictions: “he knew Picasso for a bastard and a coward. How easy it was to be a Communist when you weren’t living under Communism!” Dmitri eventually finds himself unstoppably drawn into a system whichapplauds him as an idol for their own purposes “He swam in honours like a shrimp in shrimp-cocktail sauce” rather than an artist with an independent voice and spirit.

This novel made me question the degree to which my own creativity is guided under the society in which I live. Even if I don’t live within a country that seeks to directly shackle what’s created within its own dominant ideological beliefs, I’m guided and influenced by the media and popular beliefs of those around me. In this novel it’s observed how even good intentioned people are worn down by the fact of their survival because “conscience was always there to insist that more courage could have been shown.” Barnes explores the deep complexities and moral ambiguities involved in a lifetime under an oppressive regime. What survives through the gruelling circumstances under which it is created is the music: “Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.” But the novel asks how this might become perverted when the mind of the artist has been poisoned by a lifetime of compromise. “The Noise of Time” is a short intense novel of breathtaking scope and wisdom.

Listen to a wonderful interview with Julian Barnes by Sinéad Gleeson on The Book Show where they discuss “The Noise of Time”, the author’s bookshelf and his development as a writer: https://soundcloud.com/thebookshow/the-book-show-s3-1-16th-january-2016-at-home-with-julian-barnes

The Man Without a Shadow by Joyce Carol Oates

Strong love stories drive many of the greatest novels of all time, but the love story in The Man Without a Shadow is remarkably unusual and haunting. From this tale Joyce Carol Oates raises probing questions about the nature of love and the phenomenon of consciousness. Elihu Hoops - a charismatic man from a prominent wealthy family and ardent civil rights activist - experiences an acute inflammation of the brain in 1964 which causes him to lose all short-term memory. He is incapable of remembering anything new for more than seventy seconds. His condition can never be cured because of irreparable damage to the hippocampus area of his brain which is responsible for the formation of new memories. In the proceeding decades he’s regularly taken to a university’s research facility or “Memory Lab” where groups of neuroscientists engage him with tests to better understand the biological connection between the brain and memory. Even though this is for the betterment of society and human knowledge, the question lingers if Elihu is being exploited. One of the scientists Margot Sharpe builds an entire career out of working closely with the amnesiac. The connection she forms with him over a lifetime turns into a strikingly original romance.

Read my full review on Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies: http://repository.usfca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=jcostudies