The Children’s Home by Charles Lambert

I had a somewhat alarming experience when reading “The Children’s Home” where I felt increasingly anxious as the story progresses. It’s a novel that accumulates a tremendous power in its surreal tone over time when reading it. I felt a shift in perspective as I became immersed in the dark fictional world Charles Lambert created in the story and this carried on into how I see the world around me. It inspires that special kind of disquiet where you start to question everything around you and these are uncomfortable questions that you aren’t sure you want answered.

The novel focuses on Morgan Fletcher who has barely ever ventured out from living in a palatial estate he’s inherited from his family. Morgan exists in virtual solitude except for a group of unseen servants who he has virtually no contact with because of his horrendous facial disfigurements which he’s ashamed of. He isn’t entirely sure where his family’s wealth came from, but he’s content to spend his days cataloguing the huge array of books stored in the property. Even though he claims not to read them his conception of himself is highly literary: “He imagined himself the dirty secret at the heart of the world, the overlooked madwoman raving in the attic of a house that occupied everything there was, each brick and pane and board, the wondering prince in the hair-filled mask of iron he had dreamt of as a boy.” In this way he comes to represent a sort of everyman, but one who is entirely estranged from a mysterious world which functions independently around him.

A new servant arrives named Engel who cooks for Morgan, but she eventually also takes on the role of child-minder as soon as young children start arriving at the house from unknown sources. Morgan takes them all in gladly because “It has never been a house that welcomed love… Not until now.” There are soon so many children he isn’t even certain how many there are. Their presence is welcome at first, but the intelligent children seem to have a mysterious purpose of their own and they lead Morgan into facing uncomfortable problems about this world that’s been consumed by war and greed. Together with Doctor Crane who first comes to treat a sick child and eventually lives at the house semi-permanently, Morgan is shown the secrets which dwell within his own house and the sinister factory managed by his domineering estranged sister.

This is an enigmatic novel imbued with haunting imagery that accumulates meaning over the course of the story. For instance, in an attic room there is a model of a pregnant woman in a box who is strangely life-like and was presumably used as a tool for medical research. She comes to represent issues of fertility, beauty and the future of civilization. This unnerving figure also makes an alarming counterpart to Morgan’s own vain and horrifically tyrannical mother who was plagued by a debilitating illness.

Morgan and Dr Crane engage in endless games of backgammon which Morgan always wins

It’s clever how the book embeds you so firmly in Morgan’s perspective of the world where he feels like a guilty participant, but also he’s utterly confused by what’s really happening and impotent to make any substantial change for the better. Isn’t this how most of us feel in the world? If we’re living in a middle class first-world society we’re bombarded by news stories of far-off tragedies and feel like we’re inextricably a part of damaging systems in which we benefit by receiving privilege and comfort. There is a guilt attached to this and a nibbling unconscious knowledge that we resist. It’s described of Morgan how “He’d never wanted to know, which is also a sort of knowing.” Morgan remarks to an eerily sophisticated boy named David how his family’s wealth came from dealing in power. He means in energy like oil and electricity, but it also takes on the meaning of power as influence and domination over society. Charles Lambert seems to be making sly critiques of capitalism in a subtly artistic way where lives are being crushed in a consumer system. There are also small nods to Marxism such as the female servant named Engel.

Reading this book I was reminded strongly of Paraic O’Donnell’s recent novel “The Maker of Swans” because of similarities in its setting, dreamlike logic and linguistic inventiveness. The experience of reading “The Children’s Home” is like watching a David Lynch film or staring at a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. Everything is seductively peaceful but has a sinister edge so that when you investigate it closely you see the unfathomable pain that was always there in plain view. In truth, Charles Lambert’s novel is entirely original and I’m just drawing upon references to other art works to give a sense of the journey you’re in for. This is highly compelling and invigorating writing.

Baileys Women’s Prize ShortList 2016

It was a pleasure getting to meet and chat to author Lisa McInerney at the event

After much speculation, the official Baileys Prize shortlist has been announced! As part of the Baileys Bearded Book Club duo, Simon and I had an excellent time at the shortlist announcement party at the Southbank Centre drinking Baileys cocktails while chatting with authors, journalists and booksellers.

I predicted three out of the six titles correctly. It's in many ways a surprising list as two of the authors are Irish, three are American and only one author is English. Established former Booker Prize winner & genius Anne Enright takes a rightful place alongside last year's Booker shortlisted and highly controversial novel by Hanya Yanagihara, but I was particularly excited to see Lisa McInerney's strong debut on the list. Elizabeth McKenzie's novel strikes a rare balance of being both entertaining and very intelligent. To be honest, I didn't expect it to make the long or shortlist but I'm delighted it's done so. I finally read the extraordinarily creative and moving novel Ruby this weekend and it's fantastic this prize will help Cynthia Bond find more of a UK audience after being read widely through Oprah's influence in America. The wild card is Hannah Rothschild whose novel is one of the four on the longlist that I didn't have time to read before the shortlist's announcement.

If you haven’t yet read some or any of these titles here are my one sentence story summaries to give you a taste. Click on the title to see my full review. The 2016 Baileys Prize winner will be announced on June 8th with readings from all the shortlisted authors the day before at the Cadogan Hall. Which are you most interested in reading next?

The Green Road by Anne Enright is about a family who have been geographically split apart for many years and are drawn back together by a charismatic matriarch.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is an epic tale of the life-long consequences of abuse and the commitment of real friendship. This is one of the most controversial novels published in recent years.

The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney depicts several struggling individual lives in an economically depressed city’s violent underworld.

The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie is a slightly surreal take on a relationship between two people navigating their engagement and difficult families.

Ruby by Cynthia Bond depicts a community swayed by the power of religion and a resilient woman who won’t forget the children who have been lost.

The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild is the story of a love-lost woman thrust into the raucous high-end art world after discovering a long lost valuable painting.  

Listen to a podcast from The Readers where Simon and I discuss the Baileys Prize party and the shortlist:

Ruby by Cynthia Bond

If we’re lucky enough to be raised in a relatively peaceful and happy household we might believe that we’re the innocent inheritors of a well-meaning world. But, as we grow older, we learn the truth about current and past injustice. We slowly understand that our place in the world has to be earned or fought for and that our ancestors undoubtedly have blood on their hands. In Cynthia Bond’s novel, Ruby is a girl who has never had any such illusions of the world’s purity having been shown at an early age the wrath and domineering power of men. She’s a fantastically realized character: an intelligent and strong individual. Ruby also comes to embody all that’s wrong in her community – all the evil things which remain hidden from doe-eyed believers of purity. 

As a young woman Ruby escapes the suffocating confines and abuse of her small community in Texas to live under a different kind of oppression in New York City. But she eventually returns to the place of her birth to live a wretched existence on the fringes of the community where she can protectively foster the spirits of departed babies. Ephram is a man who knew her as a girl. He journeys across the town to bring her a White Lay Angel Cake. He wants to care for and protect Ruby who is shunned by the rest of the community – especially his church-driven and self-righteous sister Celia. However, Ruby has been transformed by the anger and lust of men. She cannot accept any traditionally virtuous path. Bond writes that “Those men were a part of the wheel of the world and helped it turn. The same wheel that Ruby knew would crush her every time she rose up to fight.” The author has an extraordinary way of turning the grim realities of the world she portrays into battling supernatural powers. The abuse and horror that people can inflict can be so extreme that they are transformed in the story into an actual demon or “Dybou” skulking and feeding upon those who have been smothered. This is an environment so saturated with superstition it spills out into the real world. It’s a community entrenched in its belief that those who wield power deserve to possess it. Ruby has learned to navigate this reality and stand outside of it. 

This is a novel populated by a wealth of fascinating and complexly written characters. Although Ruby and Ephram are the most prominent figures, the story winds back to the histories of their parents, extended family and those in the community around them. Ruby’s aunt Neva is a mixed-race strawberry blonde and blue eyed girl who becomes a married white man’s mistress who the community refuses to accept. Ephram’s father Omar (Reverend) Jennings survived a traumatic childhood to preach his sermon, lead a cult of men and inflict terrible abuse upon his wife who eventually goes insane. Ma Tante is a woman of Jamaican descent who lives on the outskirts of town and communes with the spirit world. Celia has raised her younger brother Ephram after they are left on their own, creates fantastic feasts of food and desires more than anything to be the church mother of her congregation. The stories of the novel’s many compelling characters combine to show how extremely brutal the world can be, but also how surprisingly virtuous and kind individuals can make a difference in changing it.

"she caught a supportive, conspiratorial wink from James Baldwin and felt, for a moment, seen and known by sparkling brilliance."

While the novel’s focus is on the all-black community of Liberty township, passages dip into Ruby’s experience in a rapidly changing Harlem and the emerging cultural renaissance. We’re given pleasurable glimpses of some of the prominent writers of the time like Allen Ginsberg and James Baldwin. The author is keenly attuned to some of the inherent contradictions that some people who hung upon this scene embodied: “The hip and the beat crowd pretended to pretend that skin color was a frock you donned for the evening.” More disturbingly, she writes a painful portrait of a whorehouse that Ruby comes to live in where women are made to feel they deserve to take whatever their male clients want to give them. She returns to her small community with more sophistication and resilience, but also more burdened by her experiences in the city.

It’s extremely clever how Cynthia Bond blends poignantly realistic detail with supernatural elements to say something new. “Ruby” is a beautifully written and powerful story.

Baileys Women’s Prize ShortList 2016 Predictions

Can you guess the author on my tshirt?

Phew! It’s been quite a marathon reading as much of the Baileys Prize longlist as I can, but I loved the challenge as I’ve read some great books published in the past year that I probably would have missed otherwise. The subjects and styles of the novels are so varied. From a heart wrenching account of a girl’s adolescence in the Croatian War of Independence in Sara Novic’s stunning novel to fascinating details of whaling in a small Australian town in Shirley Barrett’s novel to a tender burgeoning romance between a woman and an alien lizard in Becky Chambers’ fantastic scifi novel! And it got me to read my very first Kate Atkinson book. Now that I know why so many people love her I will definitely be reading more of her previous novels.

The best thing about this process has been all the bookish chat I’ve had about the longlisted books with people including Simon as part of the Baileys Bearded Book Club, the shadow panel organized by Naomi and many other great readers on Twitter, Goodreads, blogs and privately through emails. Thanks so much for sending your thoughts about the books on the list. It’s so interesting to hear how people have read these novels differently and how sharply opinions can divide. These responses have really helped me think about the books in a more complex way and I hope my posts have done the same for you or inspired you to pick up a book or two.

Here are my guesses for what six books will appear on the Baileys Prize shortlist which will be announced on the evening of Monday, April 11th. It’s a really tough decision! Please comment and let me know if you agree or if you are hoping to see other books from the longlist make it through.

Click on the titles below to read my full thoughts about each of these excellent novels.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah
The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney
The Green Road by Anne Enright
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah

I was sad to read this announcement today that the Guardian First Book Award will be ending after 17 years. Last year had a very strong longlist and the winner Physical by Andrew McMillan was one of my favourite books of 2015. I mention this because Petina Gappah’s first book “An Elegy for Easterly” was a book of short stories that won this prize in 2009. I haven’t yet read this book, but I’ve heard from many that it’s excellent. Now, her second book and first novel “The Book of Memory” is on the Baileys Prize longlist.

This novel has one of the most gripping and startling openings of any book I’ve read for a while. Gappah frames her novel as a letter being written by Mnemosyne or Memory from Chikurubi prison in Zimbabwe to an American journalist in Washington. The two shocking things which Memory immediately divulges are that at the age of 9 she was sold to a white man named Lloyd and, many years later, she was imprisoned after being accused of murdering him. Immediately my mind started making assumptions about both the circumstances surrounding this woman’s life and the politics of Zimbabwe.

Gappah does a very clever thing by twisting the reader’s expectations around and showing over the course of the novel how things are very different from how they first appear. This not only makes this book a suspenseful read, but challenges Western readers’ assumptions about how they read an African story. At one point, the character of Memory directly asks the reporter she’s writing to (but it’s also the author directly asking the reader) “And even you, probably conditioned to believe in the worst that can come out of darkest Africa, are asking yourself whether this really happened.” Like Memory in the course of her discovery for the truth about her family and past, as a reader I “made false assumptions” about the country and people I was reading about. This novel makes a powerful statement about how our memories function and how we can use memories to (sometimes falsely) interpret the world around us.

Memory’s story spills out rather chaotically in the beginning where recollections of the past swirl into others and wash into the deprived circumstances of her present in the women’s prison. This style feels only natural since she has been imprisoned for over two years and hasn’t had anyone sympathetic to talk to other than her lawyer Vernah. Memory is someone who has always stood out because she’s an albino making her “black but not black, white but not white”. This causes some people to assume that she is either cursed or capable of witchcraft. It also makes people uncertain what her race is. At several points she can actually see the shift in behaviour as a stranger approaches her from a distance assuming that she is white and then readjusts their attitude when they realize that she is black. The sense of alienation she feels causes her considerable emotional distress (as well as physical problems when she doesn’t have access to proper lotion and sun protection). However, this also gives her a somewhat objective viewpoint on the people around her because she doesn’t completely fit into either the social understanding of what it means to be black or have access to the privileges of what it means to be white in Zimbabwe.

"When my mother came back with candy cakes, she turned on the radiogram to play 'Bhutsu Mutandarikwa'

There are some really heartbreaking scenes as Memory describes the loss of some of her siblings and the brutal treatment she received at the hands of her dangerously unstable mother. She also describes the appalling conditions in the prison and the corrupt security guards who inflict upon the prisoners religious dogma or tedious stories about their domestic woes. Yet, as the novel progresses some of the guards become more nuanced with surprising hidden motives.

As a highly educated person and a keen reader, one of the most difficult things for Memory is not having access to any books while she’s in prison. When reading she “felt less afraid when I thought of all the other people who seemed to have had harder lives than mine. I disappeared completely to occupy the world of whatever book I was reading.” Given all the hardship she endures, it’s not surprising that she takes to reading as both a method of escape and a way to rise above the difficulty of her circumstances. Mixed in with Memory’s recollections of the many challenges she faces there is also a lot of humour such as a faux trial that several of the inmates stage within the prison or how one prisoner frequently fashions her hairstyles (rather unconvincingly) after celebrities.

“The Book of Memory” is such an engaging and skilfully-told novel. It’s both playful and very serious. Gappah paces the story so well posing certain mysteries which are only revealed within time as Memory goes about “laying out the threads that have pulled my life together, to see just where this one connects with that one or crosses with the other”. At the same time, she does something quite radical in subtly making the reader reassess their own knowledge and the assumptions we’re likely to make. It’s an impressive accomplishment.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Science fiction is a genre I very rarely read. That’s not to say I’m averse to reading it; I just feel like I’m unqualified to be writing about it as I have so few reference points to draw upon when discussing it. But this means that I’m especially delighted that the Baileys Prize longlist has brought Becky Chambers’ “The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet” to my attention because it was such a thoroughly engrossing, skilfully-written and enjoyable read. The novel primarily follows a journey of the spaceship The Wayfarer as it travels across the galaxy to create a new “tunnel” connecting a reclusive embattled civilization with an allied group of human and alien species. Rosemary is a human with a mysterious past who joins the closely connected crew. There are thrilling adventures, lucky escapes, tragic losses and hilarious escapades. But what really brings this novel alive are its vibrant characters who form complex relationships that speak meaningfully about building cross-cultural exchanges.

The crew encounter several kinds of aliens on their journey and Chambers carefully describes how they differ from humans and the other species that are part of the ship’s crew. Some of these aliens are friendly and others are adversarial. However, the contrasts between their culture and human culture made me think more complexly about the way we interact with each other both in interpersonal relationships and broader attitudes towards other races/cultures. The author is careful not to idealize any specific alien culture over others, but shows how each has its own specific qualities, problems and contradictions. There are inherited prejudices that everyone carries, but which individuals work to specifically overcome. It’s especially moving how the guilt of former generations plays out across two species who might hate each other. The character of a species called Grum that has been rendered almost extinct states how “We cannot blame ourselves for the wars our parents start. Sometimes the very best thing we can do is walk away.” This is a powerful statement about our ability to separate ourselves from the shameful actions of our forefathers to act independently in thought and action. The way in which the story of large scale conflicts between alien races plays out has a lot of parallels with how we relate to each other across national, religious, sexual and racial boundaries.

One thing I found particularly impressive about this novel is the way different relationships are handled. Several characters engage in romantic relationships with alien species – one human character even has a long term affair with a sentient AI system. Don’t worry, there are no cringe-worthy descriptions of human-alien sex scenes. Rather, the development of the relationships come across as wholly believable and emotionally poignant. Each couple face their own challenges in overcoming prejudice, practical challenges or dealing with culturally confusing differences. Although the way we humans relate to each other socially and sexually may feel “natural”, when viewed from an alien perspective it can seem quite bizarre. The author has a pleasurable way of poking fun at this at some points such as when one character named Sissix who comes from an Aandrisk race that resembles large lizards states about humans: “This was a people that had coupled themselves stupid.” There is also something quite radical in how a character named Kizzy makes occasional references about her two dads. The reason or story behind her same-sex parents is never explained (nor does it need to be), but is presented as something perfectly natural and is fully integrated into the story rather than being treated as an “issue”. This all speaks meaningfully about the way love ought to be respected over our fixed social and political ideas about how relationships should be.

Becky Chambers includes a touching message at the end of this novel encouraging people who have artistic urges not to become discouraged in trying to realize their vision. This is a debut novel whose creation was supported by a Kickstarter campaign and it was originally self published. It wouldn’t have come to prominence without the support of encouraging readers who felt moved by the story and message that Chambers makes. It’s a heart-warming testament to how communities of readers can make a difference. “The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet” is a dazzling read and it definitely makes me want to look out for more sci-fi reads in the future.

Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett

I enjoy it when novels clue me into fascinating new facts about the past. Shirley Barrett’s novel “Rush Oh!” takes place in the rural township of Eden in Australia. From a future point, Mary recounts the story of whaling season in the year 1908 so that her nephew can have a feeling for this defunct way of life. Her father George Davidson is a local hero as he leads whaling expeditions along the coast whenever they are spotted during their migration. What’s so interesting is that Barrett bases her story on a real arrangement where teams of men worked in conjunction with a group of local Killer whales. The Killer whales corralled blue, humpback or right whales into the bay so that the whalers could harpoon them. The Killer whales got to feast on the meat and the whalers took the rest of the carcass to use the blubber and bones. It’s a curious pact between men and beasts for a common cause. Barrett has brought to life a story about this rare arrangement which is filled with adventure and romance.

Mary is the eldest daughter of the Davidson family. She writes about the year 1908 because it was a time when the family’s fortunes began to turn since whales had become scarce. It’s also personally significant for her as that is when a strange former minister named John Beck comes to join the whale party and steals her heart. Having lost her mother many years ago it falls to her to organize the household and look after her younger brothers and sisters. Although I found the tales of the hunts for whales and details about the time period really engaging, something about Mary’s narration irritated me. She has what feels like a faux naivety and innocence that clashes with the brutal world around her. Her social awkwardness comes across as enduring and she has moments where she shows herself to be strong and capable. However, overall I found her mourning for her lost mother and romantic stirrings for John to be unconvincing. 

Skeleton of Killer whale that aided whalers in their hunts at the Eden Killer Whale Museum

It’s interesting how Mary turns the narrative into a kind of scrapbook including drawings she made of the whales and people involved as well as articles from the local newspaper. This combined with descriptions of the meagre food they ate and the arduous hunts for whales really brought the story to life. It's fascinating how the primary Killer whale Tom becomes a character himself with a distinct personality. There are also several excellent comic scenes in the novel including when Beck tries to deliver a sermon to whalers who won’t stop interrupting him or a gruesome tale of Uncle Aleck who submerges himself in a whale carcass as a cure for his rheumatism. But the narrative comes across as inconsistent when it follows the thoughts and feelings of men on the whaling expeditions which Mary wasn’t a part of and couldn’t have had any real knowledge of. She admits in certain scenes that “To be honest, I am not entirely sure if these were their exact words – I am reconstructing this conversation from an account given to me later by John Beck.” This a cumbersome way of getting around the fact that Barrett can’t show as much of the tale as she’d probably like to because the story is stuck in Mary’s perspective.

I couldn’t help comparing this novel to another book I read recently named “Elemental” which shares some striking parallels. “Elemental” is also the first person account of a woman recording her life’s story of working by the sea during the early 20th century. She’s recording this for a family member and the second half even takes place in Australia. Yet, there is tenderness and charm in the voice of “Elemental”’s narrator which I felt was lacking in Mary’s account in “Rush Oh!” I did enjoy the historical period and setting for this novel, but I wish Shirley Barrett had found another way or created a different character to get into the story.

The Anatomist’s Dream by Clio Gray

The emotional trauma of being an unwanted child is something that stays with people their whole lives. In Clio Gray’s “The Anatomist’s Dream” Philbert is born with a large deformity on his head. He’s wholly different from the perfect daughter his mother was hoping to give birth to and she instantly rejects him. His childhood is strangely haunted by the image of the girl that his mother wanted but didn’t get. She abandons him as does his father leaving him to the care of a kindly neighbour. When the neighbour grows ill she knows adolescent Philbert must find a new place to live. He meets a diminutive woman named Lita who is part of a travelling carnival/freakshow that is passing through town. Along with his pet pig Kroonk, Philbert finds a place he can really call home with these misfit performers and embarks on a series of journeys throughout war-torn Prussia in the mid-1800s.

Fiction that highlights the lives of extreme outsiders such as people with severe deformities or unusual conditions can provide an interesting commentary on how society reacts to difference. Angela Carter’s magisterial “Nights at the Circus” is the supreme example which uses fantastical elements to explore our attitudes towards women. “The Anatomist’s Dream” is focused much more on the personal meaning of fate. Philbert is a rejected outsider who might have been left to die if it weren’t for an individual’s kindness. Yet, he believes through his friend Kwert who is a “Teller of Signs” that he is fated for great things. Philbert’s condition makes him an unusually sensitive repository for the lives of those around him: “His head was a treasure trove of other people’s stories, a bottle into which the ships of their lives could be folded and stowed, as if he were a whirlpool at the centre of his universe, sucking in everything about him.” He finds himself tangled in the heart of a revolution that will change the political structure of Europe. The question the author explores is whether greatness is what we really want in life. She asks whether it’s better to be content living a humble life with those we love and who love us in return.

Where this novel really shines are in the connections Philbert makes with different unusual characters he meets during his travels. Upon joining the travelling fair, one of Philbert’s main duties is caring for a man named Hermann whose chronic skin condition requires constant attention. It has the effect of making his skin look like scales so he is touted as being a fish man and put on public display. The bond Philbert forms with him and several other people he meets on his journey felt very moving because of what he gives to them and what they freely give back. It shows how people can rise about the difficulties of their personal circumstance to support each other. I particularly liked how Gray explores the complicated way we want others near us, but not too close: “sometimes a person doesn’t want a crowd but doesn’t want to be alone either, just wants to know someone is there, not too far away in the darkness.” These subtly drawn feelings made me really care about the fates of these characters, but some of the action in the story which is the result of a revolutionary uprising complicates and distracts from the greater intimate moments in this novel.

I usually really like journey novels – “Don Quixote”, of course, being the classic. Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Buried Giant” or Marie Phillips' hilarious “The Table of Less Valued Knights” are more recent examples. The idea of centring a novel on an outsider who witnesses the monumental changes happening in the Prussian empire is an interesting experiment. However, Gray introduces a lot of peripheral characters and charges through scenes of violence so hurriedly I often found myself confused about what was happening. There is some sumptuous commentary on the complexity of political allegiances throughout. At one point Gray states: “The puppets of revolution are many and varied but every puppet needs its strings.” Allegiances are formed, people are deceived and whole swathes of the population are felled in the skirmishes. Whether people survive or fall is based on chance or a canny ability to evade being caught in the crossfire. This is all interesting, but the book feels at times overwhelmed by the magnitude of social change which lets down the array of fascinating characters it contains.

The Desmond Elliott Prize longlist

There’s a special pleasure in discovering a fresh and exciting new voice with an author’s first book, so I always particularly enjoy following the Desmond Elliott Prize which honours debut novels. The winner receives £10,000 – which to a first time novelist can give a huge boost to helping them through writing that notoriously difficult second novel. Last year’s winner was Claire Fuller whose novel Our Endless Numbered Days is a thrilling, emotional and beautifully written account of a girl’s abduction and long-term captivity with her father.

This year’s longlist has just been announced and it’s a particularly fantastic group of novels! I’ve read seven out of the ten books. It includes some of my favourites from last year such as Gavin McCrea’s brilliant Mrs Engels. Two on the list are also on this year’s Baileys Prize longlist. This is fitting because it’s a particularly strong list for female authors! Click on the titles below to read my full reviews of these books.

Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea
The Butcher's Hook by Janet Ellis
Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon
The Weightless World by Anthony Trevelyan
Disclaimer by Renée Knight
The Honours by Tim Clare
The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney
The House at the Edge of the World by Julia Rochester
Things We Have in Common by Tasha Kavanagh

It's particularly fun following The Desmond Elliott Prize on twitter because their popular #DiscoveraDebut hashtag generates great suggestions of new authors from a wide variety of people.

Have you read any of them? What are some of your favourite debut books?

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

I must admit that I was sent a copy of this novel a year ago, but it’s remained sitting patiently on my shelf begging to be picked up. I’ve never read Kate Atkinson before although I know how well-regarded she is so I was eager to read “A God in Ruins”. However, I was aware that it’s a kind-of sequel or companion novel to her previous book “Life After Life”. The geek in me likes to read things in order and I wanted to clear some time to get to the first before reading this second book. Taking on the challenge of reading the entire Baileys Prize longlist before the shortlist announcement has meant I don’t have this luxury. Simon of SavidgeReads and others have assured me it’s not necessary and that it even might be preferable to read them in reverse order. So I plunged in and was completely swept away by the strength of Atkinson’s writing. This is undoubtedly masterful storytelling and it is a tremendously powerful book.

The novel focuses primarily on the life of Teddy, a WWII bomber pilot. The story stretches from his early days living amongst many siblings at his family home Fox Corner to his late life as a grandfather. But the book doesn’t follow a linear line. Instead, it moves in scenes backwards and forwards in time drawing fascinating connections across decades. In early scenes details about the ultimate fate of a particular central character might be mentioned in a sentence’s subclause. This is similar to the way Virginia Woolf delivers news of Mrs Ramsay’s demise in “To the Lighthouse”. It can seem in someway shocking and cruel, but gives a powerful sense of the flow of time. Rather than spoiling the plot, it strongly adds to how you read a scene so you remain mindful of the way a life plays out even in the middle of that scene’s action. This works particularly well when reading about the various crews during scenes of wartime air fights. Knowing how some will perish or grow to an old age makes their individual characters come more vibrantly alive and the action feel very moving. It’s not easy to write good fast-paced action sequences like plane crashes because reading is so much slower than watching a film. But Atkinson handles this action admirably well!

I do love it when a novel’s title takes on added poignancy as the story goes on. Atkinson uses metaphors for how the fights between aircrafts in the war make them like gods in battle. Much later, Teddy’s grandson finds during his religious practices that each individual is like a god. Although Teddy survives to an old age (we know this from the beginning) he can’t stop the demise of his own body, the fates of those he loves or the troubles his daughter and her children encounter later on. The layering of time in this novel makes poignant statements about the meaning and long-lasting impact of war. Its remarked how “As you got older and time went on, you realized that the distinction between truth and fiction didn’t really matter because eventually everything disappeared into the soupy amnesiac mess of history. Personal or political, it made no difference.” Truth changes its meaning when it transforms into the anecdotes and stories Teddy tells his grandchildren. He frequently feels conflicted and guilty over the fact that some of the bombing was over civilian populations. Atkinson shows through this the complexity, cruelty and long-term effects of war.

Something I felt conflicted about when reading this novel was the way Atkinson handles Teddy’s daughter Viola and her first husband Dominic. In their early adulthood they are hippies, wildly rebelling against their parents’ conservative lifestyles and live on a commune in the 70s. They are relentlessly selfish, hypocritical, vile and dangerously reckless. While I have no doubt there are people like this, the way in which Atkinson constructs this presentation of a counterculture lifestyle in relation to the pastoral ideals of Teddy’s later lifestyle of subsisting in the English countryside made me uncomfortable. It felt in a way like Atkinson was saying the societal movement which rebelled against the proceeding generation who fought in the war were merely ungrateful rather than having anything useful to say. It partly seemed to me like a case where the author is using the characters of Viola and Dominic as ciphers for her feelings rather than granting them dignity as individuals. Atkinson states in an afterward that her respect for the people who fought in WWII motivated her to write this book.

Viola’s character does take on more complexity later in the novel, yet she is a target of continuous ridicule. Atkinson has more fun with her when Viola eventually becomes a writer. Viola treats her aging father with frequent disregard or only wants to suck value from him like a vampire: “She might have been able to use his memories as the basis of a novel. One that everyone would respect. People always took war novels seriously.” This is quite a playful comment about what Atkinson is doing herself. If it feels like Viola isn’t treated with much compassion, the fact she becomes a writer makes me wonder if it might be her that Atkinson paradoxically identifies with the most. Viola’s children and the soldiers who fight are treated with much more reverence. That’s not to say a character like Teddy is presented as a faultless individual. His tragic misconstruing of his wife’s actions at one point is a particularly poignant example of his limitations.

The novel skilfully presents how the fates of very young soldiers who fought in the war were so precarious. Despite heroic acts, it often seems merely accidental whether someone survived or not during the heat of battle. There are also terrifying moments of epiphany for Teddy when in the midst of battle he sees that they are very small elements of greater societal shifts: “It was then that Teddy realised that they were not so much warriors as sacrifices for the greater good. Birds thrown against a wall, in the hope that eventually, if there were enough birds, they would break that wall.” Because the survival or demise of individuals hang upon mere chance, it’s as if Atkinson spins the roulette wheel of history in her story so that outcomes exist in a nexus of infinite possibilities. She states that “The whole edifice of civilization turned out to be constructed from an unstable mix of quicksand and imagination.” But that doesn’t make this particular story that she imagines for Teddy any less meaningful.

I am really eager to go back and read “Life After Life” now. Coming to this novel late, I’ve been able to see how it’s been received. Some Atkinson fans feel it’s her best where others still believe earlier books to be better. It was surprising for me to learn that “Life After Life” is focused primarily on Ursula who is Teddy’s sister. She didn’t stand out very prominently in “A God in Ruin” so I wonder if Atkinson assumed her readers would have more knowledge about her than we do or if she was happy to let her fade more into the background. I’m guessing that reading the first novel will only motivate me more to want to come back and read this latest one.

It seems to me that when writers create companion novels that involve the same characters the fictional world they’ve formed feels more complete because they’ve already meditated upon and imagined the characters’ lives and histories so well. This was certainly the case in Rachel Joyce’s “The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy” which is a companion to “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” and it was also the case in Marilynne Robinson’s “Lila” which is a companion to “Gilead” and “Home”. I loved these later novels and I felt they were much stronger than the earlier books. I know other people who feel differently. Whatever the case, Kate Atkinson has certainly created a fully realized universe and shows she possesses inimitable powers as a storyteller. “A God in Ruins” is a heartbreaking, profound and riveting read of great complexity and skill.

Whispers Through a Megaphone by Rachel Elliott

Novels can sometimes feel so emotionally raw it’s like the story has come straight out of the author’s unconsciousness without any editorial mediation. Rachel Elliott’s writing in “Whispers Through a Megaphone” has a primal power that is tied very closely to her central fictional creation of Miriam Delaney. This is a 35 year-old woman who has spent three years in her house without leaving except to step into her back garden. A traumatic event has caused this retreat from society. Here she mulls over her belief that she’s abnormal and her traumatic upbringing with her mentally ill mother Frances who taught her not to speak in more than a whisper. She chillingly observes that “The world is a safe place until it isn’t. People are good until they’re not.” Buried within these sentences is unfathomable trauma and pain. This novel is like a complex confession which gradually unfolds as several characters strive to make the connections they need to progress forward in their lives.

As a counterpoint to Miriam’s shut-in existence, this is also a novel equally about Ralph Swoon who gradually retreats from the pressurized life of friends and family until one day he walks out of his own birthday party. He’s a psychologist who is very good at empathizing with other people’s problems, but finds it very difficult to process his own. His wife Sadie is undergoing a personal crisis where she tries to reconcile her same-sex attraction to certain friends throughout her life. She keeps a private-public life separate from Ralph where she tweets frequently and these Twitter interactions are recorded in the text of the novel. She feels “What’s the point of an experience if you can’t share it? If you can’t tell other people what’s going on?” After rekindling a connection with her old friend Alison she gradually understands the importance of maintaining a degree of privacy in a relationship and how to manage her repressed longing.

While these central characters’ story lines follow an arc which shows their growth and development, I found at times Elliott’s focus veers off too sharply to briefly focus on other characters without giving them sufficient narrative space to grow. There are some fascinating people touched upon such as Ralph and Sadie’s son Stanley who has just entered his first gay relationship, Miriam’s neighbour Boo who obsessively cleans or an old flame of Ralph’s named Julie Parsley who independently runs a business and cares for her father. I wanted to know more about these characters, but we only get a glancing understanding of their fascinating lives. While presenting complex peripheral characters can really add to a main story, it can also be frustrating when it feels like the storyline rushes towards them but must quickly retreat to focus on the central characters again. By doing this, it feels like their independence isn’t being sufficiently honoured.  

Sadie recalls going to a Tori Amos concert with her friend Alison where Tori performed 'Cornflake Girl' while "staring at them as she sings"

Miriam’s mother Frances is perhaps the character who receives the most uneven treatment. For much of the novel she comes across purely as a villain disrupting her daughter’s development in the most shocking and cruel ways. There are some fantastically perverse lines which hint at Frances’ deranged way of thinking such as “Her mother always said that love was for people with dirty houses.” Yet, something strange happens towards the end of the novel where her relationship with Miriam’s school Headmaster is expanded upon in a chance meeting between the two. It doesn’t give an insight into why Frances might have acted the way she did towards her daughter, but it suggests why she met an untimely end. However, instead of adding another layer of insight this felt jarring and problematic to me. Prior to this, we only get an external view of Frances and when we finally see her point of view it feels like it comes too late.

Nevertheless, this novel is full of life and vigour. Where it really shines is in moments of deep introspection and acute psychological observation. Elliott states how “The mind is a fairground of unearthly rides. Intrapsychic theme parks. The constant rattle of ghost trains.” The past is continuously drawn into the present of these characters’ reality causing them to stutter in their interactions with each other. Scenes happening now are frequently interspersed with paragraphs that abruptly leap backward to a crucial time in that character’s past. Elliott writes sympathetically about people who find it very difficult to reconcile their internal and external realities. She weaves a lot of humour and jovial human interaction into her story which provides welcome light relief from some of the darkest moments in this novel. “Whispers Through a Megaphone” is an emotional read whose story touchingly suggests people can thrive when they make the right crucial connections with others.

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.