Gorsky by Vesna Goldsworthy

It’s a bold enterprise to take a novel as renowned and loved as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and recast it in modern day London with Russian and Balkan characters. This is what Vesna Goldsworthy has done with her novel “Gorsky” but this isn’t merely an intellectual exercise. Rather, it’s a clever way of taking Fitzgerald’s critique of a certain milieu of 1920s American society based around decadence, social change and wild aspirations and overlaying it upon modern English society to see what close parallels can be made. Goldsworthy uses the same arrangement of characters to create a fated love story played out amidst the most outrageous excesses of capitalism. In doing so she creates an engaging and fascinating view of London today.

Nikolai or “Nick” works in a dilapidated bookstore in Chelsea, an affluent London neighbourhood that he’s nicknamed ‘Chelski’ because of the influx of millionaire foreigners buying up property within the area. As a well-educated immigrant outsider whose home and family were obliterated by war, he’s found a calm reclusive existence for himself in London where he spends his days reading and catering to the few customers who happen into the shop. But one day he becomes infatuated with a beautiful Russian woman named Natalia Summerscale who shows a keen interest in obscure art books. Delivering her literature to her, he ingratiates himself into Natalia’s affluent home and becomes acquainted with her rich husband Tom. At the same time, he finds cheap rent in a tiny cottage adjoining a Chelsea property that is undergoing a massive overhaul by the mysterious Russian oligarch Roman Gorsky. In the same way that Gatsby uses his supreme wealth to orchestrate ways to capture the heart of Daisy, Gorsky seeks to win Natalia after a lifetime of obsessing over her.

Nikolai observes the love triangle of Natalia, Gorsky and Tom play out to its inevitable fateful end. He is charged by Gorsky to curate a library of the rarest literature in the world for his elaborately-conceived new home/museum. It's like a bookish person's dream job! Subsequently, he's also swept into a world of excessive parties, privately-owned Greek isles and bad-acting high society. But he’s never fooled into thinking that this inconceivably wealthy arena holds the key to happiness. He observes “Everything around me… was harmoniously orchestrated, beautiful to look at, yet the cumulative effect was melancholy, as though some unquenchable thirst lurked at the heart of it all.” Indeed, most everyone he meets seems secretly prone to desperation and loneliness. Even among the upper-classes, a former gold medallist named Gery remarks how “It’s a cruel city. People do all sorts to survive. They deal, they steal. If they are men. If they are women, the sell their bodies.” Later Nikolai remarks that “I had never thought money shielded you from anything.” Gorsky is the most withdrawn and melancholy of them all because for all his billions and however much he’s desired by everyone he meets, he doesn’t have the love of his life.

One of the many rare manuscripts Gorsky acquires is Pushkin's poem of undying love for Anna Kern.

One of the best things about this novel is its comic and warmly-satirical physical descriptions of London. Winter is described as “months of slushy semifreddo” and a “dirty duvet of cloud covers the city.” Goldsworthy is also excellent at conveying the social layers of the city with its various ethnic neighbourhoods and how these have changed over time. She observes that “just behind the Serbian church, one of the many indistinguishable Victorian terraces that housed Caribbean immigrants in the 1950s, then the Spanish and Portuguese labourers from what were then impoverished Iberian dictatorships, and finally a wave of North Africans escaping Maghrebian politics and the grimness of French satellite towns.” It’s a dynamic portrait of how London is a city that experiences influxes of immigrants escaping particular political and social troubles. But she’s also careful to show the pitfalls and how “There is a cruel freedom about this city, the freedom of an entire world on the make.”

I was cautious about approaching this novel when Simon of Savidge Reads told me about its connection to Fitzgerald. As much as “Gatsby” is lauded as an American classic, it’s not one of my favourite books. However, there is something so vibrant and playful about “Gorsky” which makes this novel very readable. It's an original and compelling story in its own right. It shows how whether you come to London with no opportunities or every opportunity, fulfilment can never be reached through money alone.

At Hawthorn Time by Melissa Harrison

A worrying issue of any life-long relationship is that, after you’ve shared most of your lives together working and raising a family, there’s the risk that you could reach retirement and find yourself living with someone you can no longer connect with. There might have been a slow breakdown in the couple’s emotional or sexual connection. Silence about certain issues can heavily hang between the pair for so long that it turns into an insurmountable wall. The question of whether to stay together or go your separate ways at this late time in life must be a terrifying one. One of the most striking things about Melissa Harrison’s novel “At Hawthorn Time” is how well she writes about a husband and wife who reaches this uncertain state of being and the complex way they manage their existence together.

After running a successful business in London and raising two children, Kitty and Howard Talling move to the country. Kitty pursues her passion of landscape painting and Howard restores vintage wireless radios. Even though they live in relative harmony, they don’t share a bed at night and carefully avoid talking about certain topics. Their grown children will soon be visiting them for the first time, but the country house they’ve established for their twilight years isn’t the sort of home they imagined it would be. At one point Kitty finds “It was all so painful, so very painful, she thought: the gap between how things were and how they should be. And impossible to bridge.” It’s very moving how Harrison develops the story of this couple’s relationship showing the cracks in their marriage and intense dilemma of their situation.

Melissa Harrison discusses our relationship between the city and 'nature' 

However, this novel also centres on two other characters. Jack is a man who feels very connected with nature and the ancient paths through the countryside which have become overgrown. After being arrested for vagrancy, he drifts from village to village avoiding contact with people as much as possible, living off the land and doing odd farming jobs. There is also a nineteen year old boy named Jamie who comes from a farming family, but is trying to forge a path in life separate from his rural roots and come to terms with a neighbour's tragedy. The stories of Howard, Kitty, Jack and James come together in a horrendous accident that's described at the beginning of the book.

One of the most prominent features of this novel are the descriptions of nature and the seasons which head every chapter. The countryside and its elements play a prominent role. Harrison describes the struggle of farm life where profits are dwindling. She's also excellent at capturing the way working on the land becomes a part of a person's physical being: “with scything: once you had learned it your body would always know the motion.” In a delicately moving way the depictions of the land become layered with time and human experience to show how we are both a part of and separate from it. This is a beautifully written and composed novel whose meaning still feels elusive to me though it is evident that there is a lot to admire. I now really want to read other reviews and reactions to it to get a feel for connections I might have missed. If you've read this novel, I'd love to know your thoughts on it. 

The House at the Edge of the World by Julia Rochester

When I first started university I developed a real George Orwell fixation after discovering his writing encompassed so much more than his most famous novels “1984” and “Animal Farm”. I read through all his major publications in order and a favourite novel was “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”. This is the perfect book for cynical young adults who value high literature above all else and are frustrated by our money-obsessed society. Therefore, it’s not surprising that the group of rebellious young friends in Julia Rochester’s “The House at the Edge of the World” take this novel as their bible. The narrator Morwenna Venton and her twin brother Corwin come from a family that historically owned lots of land in their remote corner of England, but over the years it was sold off piece by piece until the family was left to subsist in a large house on a square of land near the ocean. The twins and their circle of friends plan to live lives of high ideals, but their reality is shaken when late one evening the Venton twins’ father John falls off a cliff while drunkenly pissing over the edge. The group becomes fractured and they settle into lives far different from the ones they dreamed about.

Morwenna finds a job restoring books in London and eventually meets a man named Ed who seems to share her principles. He’s on a mission to photograph CCTV cameras around the capital as an act of rebellion for the 1984-esque culture of surveillance. But she’s unable to settle into her job and relationship because she’s haunted by the image of her father falling off the cliff. Continuously drawn back to the family’s remote home, she and her brother delve further into what happened that fateful night. The case turns into a mystery which the twins are determined to solve. Through visits with old friends, their mother Valerie, her new husband Bob and the family’s reclusive and artistic patriarch Matthew, they uncover the dark truth about their father’s fate.

Morwenna gives her partner Ed an aspidistra plant - something that symbolized the common struggle for George Orwell

It’s interesting to read how the relationship between the narrator and her twin brother develops and changes over the course of the novel. Corwin is handsome, philanthropic and much adored - whereas the narrator Morwenna is more combative and difficult. People comment quite openly to her how they don’t like her and she’s not surprised by this. There is a shocking scene at a wedding where she confronts her mother and I love a good explosive scene at a wedding. But, as outwardly loved as Corwin is, it feels in some ways that Morwenna is more emotionally honest. She remarks how “Somewhere I had read that in a case of conjoined twins one tends to be stronger, sapping the other’s blood and organs. I wondered which of us was the parasite.” This relationship between close siblings goes into some dark territory and raises questions about how our personalities can be divided.

One of the most fascinating characters is their grandfather Matthew who for various reasons has shored up his life to the space around their house. His entire life he has been working on a single painting which represents their immediate surroundings and fills it with heavy symbolic imagery. In a fascinating way, his picture represents a mindset with an emotionally skewed sense of reality. Morwenna observes of Matthew that “In his world truth co-existed with invention, embellishment might be more truthful than fact, fact might be more magical than myth.” I enjoyed how his character raises challenging questions about whether a circumscribed life such as this hides someone from the world or helps them engage with it more meaningfully.

“The House at the Edge of the World” is a compelling, unique novel with a story that gains real momentum as it goes along. I appreciated how it explores issues of being an outsider in society and the dissolution of ideals as one grows older. It also has many meaningful things to say about relationships between friends and family.

I remember this book coming out last summer. I was drawn to the subject and beautiful cover, but didn’t get to reading it. I’m glad the Baileys Prize longlist prompted me take it up.

The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney

Looking at the Baileys Prize longlist, one of the novels I was most excited to see was by Lisa McInerney who I had read recently in the brilliant anthology of Irish women writers “The Long Gaze Back”. Her story 'Berghain' is full of spit and fire as it follows a young man's drug fuelled night out. It struck me as so forceful how she wrote from a male character's perspective about experiences not often explored in fiction. Her direct style and subject matter is reflected in this novel “The Glorious Heresies” about the lives of several struggling individuals in modern day Cork. At the beginning of the novel, we meet fifty-nine year old Maureen who has just murdered a man in her apartment. Her gangster son Jimmy calls upon his estranged old friend Tony to help him clean up the mess. Several people are drawn into this incident and its consequences reverberate through their lives over a number of years. At the heart of this novel is Tony's teenage son Ryan who struggles to find his place in this post-financial-crash Irish community. With powerful wit and insight, McInerney weaves a story of the underbelly of society exploring the ways these individuals are hampered by their country's social system and religious traditions.

There is a lot of bad behaviour in this novel and a good amount of cursing. Though the characters aren't excused from participating in folly that leads to violence, substance abuse and antisocial behaviour, the author shows how their choices are inhibited by the society they live in. A prostitute leans on drugs and alcohol to distract from the hate she receives from clients. A boy acts out at school because nobody notices the mental and physical abuse he receives from his father. A mother sets a church on fire many years after being forcefully separated from her baby born outside of wedlock. A single father commits heinous acts to protect the six children he struggles to raise and support.

Through Ryan we see how a boy with intelligence and artistic promise (he's a talented piano player) is slowly drawn into a life of crime and gang violence. He needs nurturing, but his development is perverted by abuse received from both men and women. His tenderly drawn relationship with his girlfriend is slowly warped. What's worse is that he's aware of his life falling into cliches so that “The predictability of his transformation hurt him terribly. He hated it.” Yet, as badly as he'd like to escape his circumstances he's unable to break out of them because of the relationships he's locked into and institutions like the court, school and church that fail to see how vulnerable he really is.

'Streets of Cork' photo by Donncha O Caoimh

Of course, as difficult as life is for the men in this book, life is even harder for women. It's explained how “they divide up the women into categories,” said Maureen. “The mammies. The bitches. The wives. The girlfriends. The whores. Women are all for it too, so long as they fall into the right class. They all look down on the whores. There but for the grace of God.” The prostitutes are at the bottom of the social ladder and suffer the most. The character of Tara Duane who used to be a prostitute is a particularly interesting character as someone who tries to be savvy and gain leverage in the community, but ultimately fails and participates in abusive behaviour as she's convinced of her own righteousness.

Most fascinating of all is Maureen who has strong independent opinions and exists in a privileged place as the protected mother of a feared gangster. As someone who has returned to Ireland after living in England for many years, she can see the corruption and hypocrisy from an outsider's perspective. She realizes she's made mistakes but she sees clearly how the church has hoarded power and abused its position. At one point she has this powerful confrontation in a confessional booth: “Oh, Father. I know I’m sorry. What about you? Bless me, Ireland, for I have sinned. Go on, boy. No wonder you say Holy God is brimming with the clemency; for how else would any of you bastards sleep at night?” She's someone who has entirely lost any faith in the church and its ability to heal: “there’s nothing there. No confessor, no penitent, no sin, no sacrament. Just actions to be burned away.” There is a strong disregard for the symbolic powers the church once possessed as in one scene where a runaway prostitute Georgie sniffs cocaine off a bible and observes that these books are “Mass produced and made of dead trees; there’s nothing special about them.” The ferocious anger for the way religion has failed to support people when they are at their most vulnerable is palpable throughout the book.

“The Glorious Heresies” is an energetic and dynamic story depicting members of society who aren't often given a voice. For this reason, McInerney's writing reminded me of books by Kerry Hudson and, for the way it depicts communities entrenched in violence it reminded me of the LA novel “All Involved”. It speaks of the challenges the current generation faces while showing an understanding of the weight and influence of the past. In fact, the past continuously bleeds into the present as a character named George observes “We’ve more history than we’re able for.” Instead of looking to the age-old institutions for support and inspiration the newer generation's experience is refracted through video games or popular TV shows like The Sopranos or The Walking Dead. McInerney writes powerfully about issues affecting us here and now. I felt drawn into her characters' lives and tremendously moved by this strikingly forceful novel.

The Inevitable Gift Shop: a memoir by other means by Will Eaves

Our consumption of books teaches us to think about them in neat categories. ‘Fiction’ is in one aisle. ‘Poetry’ in another. ‘Biographies’ and ‘Memoirs’ in another. We like to know what sort of reading experience we’re going to get. So there is something so disarming and refreshing to encounter a book like Will Eaves’ “The Inevitable Gift Shop” which so resolutely denies any kind of categorization. Much of this book feels deeply personal, but it is not confessional in the sense we’ve learned to expect from writers who shape and lay out their lives in a memoir. Rather, it’s a mixture of autobiographical anecdotes, poetry, micro-narratives, literary criticism and philosophical musings. In grouping these styles of writing within distinct sections, the book takes on a remarkable fluidity where different parts comment upon each other and a deeper, more complex understanding of a whole life is imaginatively constructed. In some peculiar way, I finished reading it feeling I knew everything about Will Eaves and nothing about him.

I had to take my time reading “The Inevitable Gift Shop” because it switches between forms of writing so quickly. The book gives an uncommon way of reading which I gradually grew accustomed to and eventually found enthralling. It’s also the kind of writing that arrests you and makes you slow down to appreciate the tightly compressed ideas as well as the associations Eaves forms between different sections. For instance, there is a poem called ‘The Crossings’ about a journey and a return which seems to play upon the earlier commentary about the nature of change in characters. One poem about a shooting game might refer back to an account of visiting a Fair with other boys. And another poem muses upon the nature of dark matter and our knowledge of the universe. This can usefully be connected to an account of how St Augustine and Luther’s thoughts about the emptiness in matter differed – despite their opinions predating scientific findings about how matter is mostly made of empty space at a subatomic level.

Eaves expresses a suspicion towards critics of literature in different sections surmising that their judgements have more to do with their desire for authority and expressing their own egos. He emphasizes that it is “a common difficulty with heavily underlined opinion. We read or hear what the critics would have us believe. We do not necessarily know what they think.” Naturally this makes me anxious and highly self-conscious writing out my response to this book. Part of the wonderful experience of writing a blog rather than formalized reviews for mainstream publications is that my opinions are admittedly personal and subjective, but I wonder to what degree I’m seeking to simply validate my own point of view. The author raises questions about how we read. He also challenges you to wonder whether his assertions about how poetry should be read ought to be applied when reading his own poems. He made me question if his rigorous engagement with the wide variety of authors and books he references were meant to be taken as truth or a reflection of his own desire to be seen as an authority. This makes reading this book a usefully perplexing experience. I found it invigorating how it calls into question a reader’s complacency and offers different ways of engaging with literature.

In one section W.H. Auden is called a "dazzling weirdo"

I’m making this book sound quite severe and dry, but there is a lot of intentional humour here too - which suggests perhaps Eaves doesn’t expect us to take any of these ideas too seriously because they are, after all, just ideas. The semi-comic poem ‘The Lord is Listenin’ to Ya, Hallelujah’ is suffused with the sound of a trombone and suggests adopting a freeing Fellini-esque attitude “Live as though you were already dead and free to wander the brazen rooms of this honking solo”. A story about buying tortoises to teach a niece and nephew about death has hilariously cruel inadvertent consequences. In another section there is a wry observation about a bandaged manikin viewed in a window that looks like something out of Rocky Horror. One of the funniest sections is ‘A Likely Story’ which is a sort of interactive exercise in assessing your priorities, but the available options contain lots of deadpan humour about states of alienation in society. It’s pleasing that there are these injections of light hearted humour alongside some of the more serious points and considerations made throughout the book.

There are a few surprisingly candid references scattered throughout this book. For instance, a description of withdrawing from his mother because of her attitude towards homosexuality is paired with an account of her becoming socially withdrawn in school because of her accent. Sometimes it can feel like personal details are given in a teasing way. So the inflammatory declaration “I don’t miss you yet, because you’re still in the car” stands alone and is sandwiched between thoughts about the nature of voice and a consideration of point of view in “Madame Bovary”. Is Eaves reluctant to confess what’s really happening or should this slight detail be sufficient to convey the totality of a tumultuous relationship? It's worth noting that much of this book is poetry and some of the best poems feel as personal and moving as Mark Doty’s writing. So perhaps the author can be located here as much as in the narrative sections. Then again, all the literary criticism could be taken to reflect the author's inner life as well. If Ralph Waldo Emerson said "A man is what he thinks about all daylong" it could also be said that a man is what he reads all day long. Certainly, my intense involvement with what I'm reading feels like something extremely personal and intimate to me. 

The title is a reference to a guide’s remark of a tourist site in Iceland that there is an inevitable gift shop. For me, this image took on significance throughout suggesting that parts of our lives are parcelled up and offered up, but they serve only as imitations of the real thing. There isn’t any one account that can authentically convey a life. Perhaps our desire to know someone else by delving into their memoir looking for intimate details makes us little more than tourists. Of course, this isn’t a bad thing as long as we don’t confuse the representation of an experience with the real thing. I found this an absolutely fascinating, cerebral and original book that raised so many questions for me – not just about the content of what I was reading but how I was reading it.

Becoming a Waterstones blogger

I’ve been invited to join a group of book bloggers who post regular features about new books coming out every month. This is very exciting for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, when I moved to London in 2000 one of my favourite places to regularly visit was the Waterstones in Piccadilly Circus. This was the largest bookstore I’d ever been in and I spent countless hours browsing through their shelves. Plus they hold fantastic author readings and events. So it’s an honour to be recommending new books for their customers now.

Secondly, the group of people I’ll be posting alongside are some of my favourite book bloggers out there. These include Simon of SavidgeReads & TheReaders, Naomi of TheWritesOfWomen, Kim of ReadingMatters, Nina of NotesFromTheChair, Gav of GavReads & AnUnReliableReader and Kate of AdventuresWithWords. Read about their full bios in our Bloggers Introductions on the Waterstones Blog.

My first choice went up on the Waterstones site today and I picked Olivia Laing’s very moving The Lonely City. Today’s post also includes some great recommendations from Naomi.

My brief thoughts on the Waterstones blog: https://www.waterstones.com/blog/waterstones-bloggers-the-lonely-city-the-living-and-more

Read my extended review here: http://lonesomereader.com/blog/2016/2/26/the-lonely-city-by-olivia-laing

So check in regularly at the Waterstones blog to see what we’re all recommending and buy books from this fantastic bookstore.

Elemental by Amanda Curtin

“Elemental” is a sweeping historical novel that spans seventy years, multiple generations and two continents. But the story is primarily concentrated through the warmly-engaging and Scottish voice of Meggie Tulloch. It’s the early 1970s and, late in her life, Meggie realizes she has little time left so decides to write down the story of her early years for her granddaughter Laura. However, some things are difficult to tell, particularly family secrets that have been buried for many decades. But she feels it’s vitally important for her granddaughter to understand where she came from. She explains “The story of where you come from is real, as real as memory can ever be, and not so easy as fairytales.” Her tale shows the ways in which we inherit different aspects of our ancestors’ lives - not only their physical traits and characteristics of their personality but the hard battle for survival. 

Tunnelling back through time Meggie reveals how she was once a red-headed hearty daughter of a rural traditional fishing family in the early 1900s. Her adolescent life is evoked with vivid detail so much that you can feel the tremendous claustrophobia of living in a small village governed by superstition with a tyrannical grandfather and sparse resources. Despite showing great intelligence and finding an early passion for books (including the poetry of Emily Dickinson), it was difficult for a girl at that time to find any independence or further education. So she becomes a herring girl and builds a life of her own through brutally hard labour and determination by working alongside groups of women who gutted the fish which were brought in by men who sailed the seas around the British Isles.

There is something so beautifully tender about the way Meggie reveals the past by writing in a familiar voice directly to her granddaughter who she affectionately calls “lambsie”. Emotion wells to the surface in the process of recounting a past of poverty, lost loved ones, first romance, wartime hardship and the nervous excitement of eventually setting off from Scotland for a new life in Australia. The directness of communication makes it all feel so present and real as if she’s speaking in front of you. Inevitably, she begins to muse upon the nature of memory itself. How random it can seem what remains and what doesn’t so that she thinks “how strange it is that sometimes we manage almost to erase the memory of pain to spare ourselves, and other times it’s as though we’ve taken to it with a polishing cloth.” It seems to me true how some hurt we’ve experienced in our lives is pushed away and forgotten while other pain still feels so immediate.

One of the most effective things about this novel is the way relationships are shown to change over time. Initially Meggie idolizes her older sister Kitty and eagerly follows in her footsteps living the life of a herring girl. But gradually the relationship changes as her sister encounters challenges and hardships. Equally, the initial tender love affair she has with her husband Magnus morphs into something so different in the many years that pass and after he’s drawn into war. She describes how “Each day it grew, the pile of things we could not say to each other because too much time had passed now.” It seems a sad fact of relationships – not just with lovers, but friends as well – that the longer things are left unsaid the greater the silence and distance grows between people. It makes Meggie’s magnanimous gesture of earnestly trying to communicate her life story to a granddaughter who she’s lost touch with all the more heart-warming.

Herring girls of the early 20th century

Late in the novel, the narrative abruptly shifts from Meggie to her granddaughter Laura and Laura’s daughter-in-law. The stories of their immediate problems seem disorientating and confusing at first after spending so many pages in Meggie’s confident voice, but gradually their added stories take on greater significance which pushes the novel into new realms and draws the later generations back to Meggie’s beginnings.

Growing up in coastal Maine, a lot of the first paid work I did was at a seafood restaurant where I had to wade through piles of seafood, preparing it and burning my hands over fryer vats cooking it. Of course, my pain was nowhere close to the degree which Meggie suffered working as a herring girl. But, even though the location was different, I felt I could really visualize, smell and even taste the coastal life that Amanda Curtain so skilfully renders in believable detail. It feels like “Elemental” belongs in the tradition of great Victorian literature like Thomas Hardy. Yet there is something so refreshing in the voice and sensibility of the narrator which feels relevant and new even though she belongs to another century.

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.