A Beginner’s Guide to Reading Joyce Carol Oates

It’s Joyce Carol Oates’ birthday today! If you read my blog or watch my booktube channel regularly you’ll know what a fan I am of Oates’ writing. Something I get frequently asked by people who haven’t read her before is where to start. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with choice as she’s currently published sixty six novels and novellas as well as thirty nine books of short stories. To fully answer this question, I’ve made a video with some information about Oates’ writing and life as well as suggestions for which of her books would make good starting points.

If you want short answers here are my suggestions. A great novel to start with is “The Gravedigger’s Daughter” as it really encapsulates some of her most persistent themes and it is written in a form of psychological realism which is her most frequent narrative form. If you want to begin with some short stories I’d suggest reading the 2006 anthology “High Lonesome: New & Selected Stories” which contains wonderful selections of her writing from across her entire career including her famous short story ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ For a good genre novel try reading the majestic family saga “Bellefleur” which is the first in her series of five post modern novels which employ certain writing styles to give a unique perspective on American life.

If you are a writer or interested in writing yourself her book of essays “The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art” is an extremely useful guide. Later this year, she’s due to publish another book about writing called “Soul at the White Heat.” For more information about Oates herself read her biography “Invisible Writer” by Greg Johnson which is carefully researched, comprehensive and absolutely compelling. Also “The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982” is a fascinating insight into Oates’ daily life, her thoughts on writing, encounters with other famous authors and contains meditative thoughts about the meaning of life – this is absolutely one of my favourite and most treasured books!

Painting by Renee Heinecke

I didn’t mention them in my video, but for a period Oates really embraced writing young adult novels. She’s frequently interested in writing about adolescence so this really melds well with this format and gave her a chance to explore certain social issues in a compelling way. For instance, her novel “Sexy” gives interesting insights into the psychology of a teenage boy disconcerted by his developing body and the growing sexual interest directed at him. She writes a gripping tale about his moral dilemmas. Oates is also a great lover of cats and has given tribute to some cats she’s owned by writing children’s books about them one of which is “Come Meet Muffin!” – a beautifully illustrated and gentle story.

I hope this gives a good answer for people wondering where to start with reading Joyce Carol Oates. If you want more detailed information the website Celestial Timepiece is an incredibly comprehensive site dedicated to Oates’ life and writing. But feel free to contact me or respond with any questions as I’m always happy to talk about Oates’ work. If you have read her books which is your favourite? Are there any other books by her you’re interested in reading?

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

After reading Jeanette Winterson’s novel “The Gap of Time”, I was thrilled to see that the Hogarth Shakespeare series also includes a new novel from Anne Tyler - one of my favourite authors. Winterson brilliantly combined her writing style and individual sensibility to open a dialogue with Shakespeare’s ideas/themes from The Winter’s Tale. I was a big advocate and fan of Tyler’s previous novel “A Spool of Blue Thread” last year which divided a lot of people, but I found it to be an inventive and meaningful story about generations of family life. Now Anne Tyler has given her “spin” on The Taming of the Shrew with this new novel “Vinegar Girl”. Firstly, I must admit that Shrew is the play by Shakespeare that I like the least. I find its ambiguous take on gender politics grating and more than anything I find the story to be rather dull. I even dislike Cole Porter’s musical ‘Kiss Me, Kate’ despite being a big fan of Porter’s music otherwise. So it’s an interesting experiment to pair Tyler with this problematic work by the Bard.

Tyler transposes the story of The Taming of the Shrew to the modern day and her familiar territory of Baltimore. Kate Battista is a young teacher’s assistant who is “big boned and gawky.” She takes care of both her father Louis, a distracted scientist working relentlessly on researching an autoimmune disease, and her popular teenage sister Bunny (Bernice) who outshines her with golden girls and a newfound interest in animal rights’ activism. Meanwhile, Kate makes horrifying sounding dinners with a dish she calls “meat mash” and comes perilously close to losing her job from expressing her opinions too bluntly to her young pupils and their parents. Louis’ lab assistant Pyotr lives in America on a work visa which will soon expire. To continue his important research Louis plots to marry Kate off to him to keep him in the country. Both Pyotr and Kate have somewhat abrasive personalities and awkward social skills. A comic story ensues.

The most successful parts of this novel were Kate’s interactions at the “Little People’s School” between the children and teachers. She generally doesn’t like most of the children and often treats them with a level of contempt where it’s remarked “It wasn’t true that she hated children. At least, a few she liked okay. It was just that she didn’t like all children, as if they were uniform members of some microphylum or something.” It is quite funny how straightforward she is with these children who are only four years old and how her manner totally goes against current prevailing attitudes of coddling young people to ensure each feels special. There are a number of enjoyably tense scenes with the principal Mrs Darling where you can feel her polite sunny veneer flaking away and her frustration over Kate’s unapologetic blunt manner growing.

Elizabeth Taylor as Katharina in Zeffirelli's 'Taming of the Shrew'

Tyler is also excellent at portraying minute actions in the way family members react to and relate to one another to show imbalances. Kate has been pushed into a mothering role since the family lost their mother which is something she readily accepted at first but now she finds herself turned into an unpleasant person. Louis increasingly takes her for granted requiring her to bring him his lunch and do his taxes. Bunny’s transformation into a hungry-for-romance teen means that Kate feels her sister has “changed into this whole other person, this social person, I don’t know; this social, outgoing person. And somehow she turned me into this viperish, disapproving old maid when I’m barely twenty-nine. I don’t know how that happened!” It’s moving the way that Tyler shows how people morph into certain roles within family life which they feel helpless to extract themselves from. Rather than taking an independent stand, Kate takes the rather non-feminist decision of using marriage as a way of getting out of her constrictive family circumstances.

This is where the novel somewhat troubles me. Both Louis and Pyotr treat Kate abysmally at some points and act in a horrendously selfish manner. Rather than expressing her intolerance for this behaviour or leaving them, Kate expresses an understanding for their foibles because that’s the way men are and she softens her acid tone. She delivers a speech at the end stating this in a way which is carefully modified from Katherine’s famous open-to-interpretation monologue at the end of The Taming of the Shrew. I didn’t find the development of the difficult relationship between Kate and Pyotr convincing. Rather than elucidate the building relationship of these problematic characters, Tyler gets bogged down in tedious details like methods of loading the dishwasher or the laborious process of cooking an egg. It felt overall like Tyler got too bogged down with trying to rejuvenate the mechanics of the Bard’s story rather than making the tale wholly her own as Winterson ingeniously did. Although “Vinegar Girl” is an enjoyable read I don’t think it’s Tyler’s best.

Moonstone by Sjón

When contemplating our ancestral and national history we naturally look for people we can personally connect to. It can be difficult to divine the inner lives and feelings of people from a hundred years ago before social media, blogs and selfies made all that was personal very public. Of course, there are other kinds of records in the forms of letters, news articles, a scattering of photos, early films and artwork. However, it’s more likely that century old documents only offer a glimpse into the complex personalities of people from long ago or that certain outsiders left no record at all. Some special entry point of feeling is needed to connect to history so that you may fully understand and inhabit it. You want a body that you could have been born into. In fiction you can either assume the personality of a historical figure by clinging onto a glimmer of their state of mind or wholly create someone you could imagine being.

Author Sjón has found an extraordinarily creative way of entering into a crucial period of Iceland’s history in his novel “Moonstone” by inventing a boy. The majority of the novel takes place in the later part of 1918. At this time the country gained its independence as a sovereign state while also experiencing devastating losses in its population because of the spread of the Spanish flu. The boy Máni Steinn sells his body to older men and lives with an old lady. He goes to the cinema as much as possible. Here he becomes entranced by a French silent serial film Les Vampires. An outsider's perspective and the surreal crimes of this thriller combine in the boy’s imagination. A woman he idolizes merges with the French actress Musidora. The fluttering of a red scarf mirrors the image of the volcano Katla’s eruption. Through this point of view we feel a fresh version of the country’s transformation. We see it through queer eyes. Within the historic changes of a nation are inserted the creative possibilities of lives and ideas which surviving documents haven’t recorded.

Part 2 of Louis Feuillade's 10-part crime serial involving a secret underground gang known as The Vampires, of which one member is Irma Vep, portrayed by Musidora.

There are haunting scenes where Máni walks through Reykjavik while the influenza is spreading sickness and panic. He remarks how this has caused personal stories of tragedy to turn inward and become hidden: “these days the real stories are being acted out behind closed doors.” This is in sharp contrast to the very public celebrations and ceremonies of Iceland gaining independence from Denmark. Amidst the pomp of a nation being born a welcome level of perversity is introduced where Máni makes eyes with a sexy Danish soldier and the pair slip away to a secluded spot to get off with each other. When they are discovered it’s a scandal the nation wants to suppress. This isn’t the image they want to have. It’s not the history they want to record. Máni finds that he can only continue to grow and develop elsewhere, but a crucial energy and flutter of his heart is left behind.

“Moonstone” is wholly inventive, wildly beautiful and infectiously invigorating. The novel I can most closely compare it to would be Neil Bartlett's "The Disappearance Boy" in how the story radically re-views a nation's historical moments through a queer boy's perspective. It’s filled with startling imagery and fascinating ideas. This is a short, impactful novel like a dream you have around sunrise. It’s a tightly compressed tale whose meaning extends out far beyond its few pages.

My Video for Independent Bookshop Week June 18-25

Like any serious reader I love spending a lot of time wandering around bookshops. The great people over at Books Are My Bag created Independent Bookshop Week to celebrate all of our cherished local bookshops in the UK and Ireland. I love the idea of raising awareness and bringing communities together around these passionate booksellers.

Will over at the VintageBooks YouTube channel created a video answering ten questions for IBW2016. I responded to his challenge to answer these questions and made my own video which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STHmzKF708U

One of my favourite independent bookstores to visit is Gay’s the Word which is located near Russell Square in London’s Bloomsbury. It recently featured in the film ‘Pride’ based on the true story depicting lesbian and gay activists who raised money for the British miners’ strike in 1984.

Below are the ten questions I answered and I’d love to know your answers to these as well. Please continue the challenge giving your answers by commenting below or on my Youtube video. I hope to see lots of people talking about and visiting their favourite independent bookshops!

1. What book(s) are currently in your bag?
2. What’s the last great book you read?
3. What book have you gifted the most?
4. What’s your favourite independent bookshop?
5. What’s been your favourite book recommended by a bookseller (or fellow Booktuber)?
6. What’s your favourite bookshop memory?
7. What do bookshops mean to you? What do you love about them?
8. What are the books that made you? Which books have most affected or influenced you?
9. What book do you recommend readers gift for Father’s Day?
10. What book is currently at the top of your TBR pile?

Baileys Women’s Prize 2016 Winner

Kate Mosse introduces the evening.

After so much reading and discussion, the 2016 Baileys Prize Winner was announced last night! I was so thrilled to see that my predicted winner “The Glorious Heresies” took the Bessie statue and prize. The ceremony and party took place in the ballroom of the Royal Festival Hall which was packed with people and very warm. I had a fantastic evening alongside my good friend and journalist Uli from Gays the Word bookshop. Lots of lovely chat about literature with fellow book blogger/vloggers, booksellers, journalists and publishers. It was particularly a pleasure meeting author Cynthia Bond who is so humble and was as lovely as can be. Also, I spent some time talking with Ali Smith. We had a long conversation discussing animals for some reason where I talked about my passion for owls and she confided that her spirit animal is the pink fairy Armadillo which is native to Central Argentina. She’s never seen one in person but hopes to one day.

Not only is it a thrill to know that the energetic, creative and complex novel “The Glorious Heresies” will now get more deserved attention and be read more widely, but I also placed a cheeky little bet that it would take the award so I’m now pleased to find myself with an extra £45 in my pocket! Of course, the real point of the prize (rather than parties or gambling) is celebrating the voices of excellent female authors and all the involved discussion about great literature written by women. I’ve enjoyed following the prize so much because it’s introduced me to books I probably wouldn’t have read otherwise. Interestingly the consensus amongst the shadow panel I was involved with was that Kate Atkinson’s novel “A God in Ruins” should have won the prize – even though this novel wasn’t even shortlisted. What do you think? Are there any books on the long or short list you would have preferred to see win? Let's keep the conversation going!

Lisa McInerney's acceptance speech.

Photobooth snapshop with Uli.

with Cynthia Bond author of "Ruby"

Thanks for letting me know your thoughts about the nominated books. There’s still time to win a copy of McInerney’s novel because I’m leaving this competition open until the end of June. Just comment on my BookTube video about the Baileys Prize shortlist and subscribe to my YouTube channel for a chance to win a copy of McInerney's stunning novel.

The Lonely Sea and Sky by Dermot Bolger

When reading novels about WWII you are usually shown the perspective of women and men from countries involved in fighting the conflict. However, I haven’t come across many representations of countries that maintained neutrality. So I’ve found it fascinating reading two recent novels which do this: Rose Tremain’s novel “The Gustav Sonata” which portrays the long term consequences for a Swiss officer and his family drawn into a serious moral conflict and Dermot Bolger’s new novel “The Lonely Sea and Sky” which is based on a historical incident where a small Irish ship chose to save 168 shipwrecked German sailors in 1943. The question of whether to save these men from drowning is more difficult than it first appears: some German forces sank Irish vessels (frequently as target practice) despite their nation's neutrality and there was also the risk that the Germans might take control of the Irish ship once they had boarded and outnumbered the seamen. Their country might have been neutral, but they lived in a world at war. The novel is narrated from the perspective of a 14 year old Irish boy named Jack who joins the crew of a shipping vessel called the Kerlogue. He needs to mature quickly for a hard life at sea and he's confronted with many moral dilemmas posed in this dramatic journey. Bolger creates a personal, heartrending and atmospheric tale of the lives of these Irish sailors during a period of great international conflict.

Jack recently lost his father who was also a sailor; he never returned from his last ill-fated expedition. It’s left his mother and multiple siblings on the brink of starvation. Even though he is technically underage, he finagles his way into joining this shipping vessel’s crew. Jack’s discovery process along his first voyage at sea has many layers. The difficulty of sailing is vividly created as Jack becomes accustomed to seasickness, hard duties and navigating the social structure of a tightly compressed group of men. There is a hierarchy of rank which must be respected and sailors must tread carefully to not enquire too much about any sailor’s problems – such as a particularly troubled man named Mr Walton. Rather than neglecting each other’s emotional wellbeing this is seen as a sign of respect. Since some of the crew sailed with his father, it’s touching how Jack discovers parts of what was his father’s daily life and character which were previously unknown to him.

Jack is also introduced to foreign cultures and attitudes in the Welsh and Portuguese ports where they stop for cargo or customs inspections. He’s led a very sheltered existence up until this point in his small Irish town of Wexford which was “dominated not by fear of an all-seeing God but by a terror that neighbours might think you lacked respectability.” Out in the world he’s free to make his own choices away from the prying eyes of familiars. He has a particularly striking encounter in Lisbon with a Czechoslovakian Jewish woman named Katerina who has eluded capture and has improvised a difficult new life for herself. Bolger writes with great sensitivity and detail about Katerina’s complex psychology and the conflict and hardship she faces. Her presence in Jack's mind also gives Jack more complex opinions when faced with the moral challenges ahead.

"The Fastnet Lighthouse, though crews on cargo ships call it the Lonely Rock... This is the last bit of Ireland emigrants glimpse when they're America bound."

The novel shows that rather than existing wholly outside the conflict, “neutral” nations were forced to make compromises or concede in certain respects to German or Allied forces. The cook who Jack works for on the ship remarks at one point “Ireland is the only neutral country gaining nothing from this war,’ he said. ‘The Portuguese happily trade with the British and, at the same time, they flog tungsten to the Nazis to armour-plate their tanks. The Swedes supply the Germans with iron ore and Swiss banks can barely close their vaults, they’re so crammed with looted Nazi gold.” Although these other nations clearly suffered hardships and strains during the war which was detrimental to their economies and people, it's interesting to think about the precarious position of neutrality and how some people might have used the war to their benefit. It's also interesting to learn how the IRA briefly considered siding with Hitler's Germany in the hopes of creating a re-united Irish nation with the north.

More than any political arguments or issues of allegiance, what comes through in the novel is the sailors' essential humanity. They see themselves in a kind of brotherhood with any man who sails at sea because the living is so difficult and fraught with danger. Faced with drowning men, they couldn't allow sailors to perish whether they were soldiers that posed a threat to them or not. The consequences of rescuing them may have impacted the crew of the Kerlogue negatively: it ostracised them from the British as their priority was getting them to the nearest port in Ireland for medical attention and from the Germans for not returning their men. It also led the crew to losing their cargo and any profit they'd make from their long journey – something they could ill afford to do while living on the brink of poverty. However, their action has assured these brave sailors a heroic place in history as having done the right thing in an extremely difficult time. Dermot Bolger has done them justice in producing such a finely crafted and extremely readable tale which brings their story to life.

LaRose by Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich is one of those well regarded American authors I’ve always meant to read, but never got around to. When I was sent a copy of “LaRose” I thought I’d dip in to see what her writing style was like. The story had me instantly hooked! It begins with a terrible hunting accident within a Native American community. A man named Landreaux accidentally shoots his neighbour/friend Peter Ravich’s young boy. To compensate for the loss he’s caused and in keeping with his tribe’s tradition, he offers his equally young son LaRose to Peter and his wife Nola to compensate him for his loss. There follows an emotionally complex series of events as the Ravich family struggle with their real son’s loss and Landreaux’s family adjusts to living without LaRose. Meanwhile the boy is caught in the middle. This extraordinary drama raises questions about the meaning of family, guilt and the role traditional Native American beliefs, practices and history play in modern day life making this a deeply engaging novel.

Erdrich has a special ability for writing compelling three-dimensional characters who stick with you. Peter’s wife Nola is a strict Catholic and a hardened woman with self destructive tendencies. The way that she and her strong wilful teenage daughter Maggie play against each other is wholly believable. They are combative characters that find themselves united by love in moments of real crisis. At one point Nola looks at her daughter and realizes “She had raised a monster whom she hated with all the black oils of her heart but whom she also loved with a deadly confused despair.” This compellingly conflicted relationship plays out in a way which shows deep layers of hidden emotions.

The unorthodox Father Travis is a fascinating individual who formerly served in the military. He finds that “Getting blown up happened in an instant; getting put together took the rest of your life.” Now he takes an active role in recruiting converts by trawling bars to preach to the most vulnerable and running a drug/alcohol rehabilitation group. Romeo Putay lives on the margins of the community, skimming prescription drugs off from the sick and elderly to use or sell at a profit. He also hoards discarded information to later leverage a sense of power over those he believes have wronged him. The story of his difficult childhood and orphaned life alongside Landreaux is particularly memorable. Romeo’s son Hollis has been raised by his former friend Landreaux adding another dimension to the sense of improvised family units and loose support networks formed to bring together a suffering community.

The individuals living on the Native American reservation in Erdrich’s novel engage in a self conscious struggle with problems that affect their community. A friend of Landreaux’s teaches Ojibwe culture and “Going up against demons was Randall’s work. Loss, dislocation, disease, addiction, and just feeling like the tattered remnants of a people with a complex history. What was in that history? What sort of knowledge? Who had they been? What were they now? Why so much fucked-upness wherever you turned?” The overall portrait is of a people strengthened by their traditions, but hampered by years of being inhibited by institutions that have slighted them and a history of oppression. Romeo has a conversation in a bar with his son Hollis where the teenager remarks about their people “When we fuck up now, we mostly fuck up on our own” to which Romeo replies “Are you crazy! That’s called intergenerational trauma, my boy!” The common problems of their people can’t simply be changed by personal willpower because they are the result of many years of systematic abuse and a conscious effort to eradicate their culture.

Writer L. Frank Baum once wrote: "The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians."

Within the novel Erdrich recounts the shocking fact of author L. Frank Baum’s chequered journalist past where he advocated for the extermination of Native Americans. I had never heard of his outrageous assertions but subsequently read about it in this NPR article and in other sources. Erdrich also incorporates elements of Native American folklore into her story in the form of a particularly unsettling and surreal section about a teenager named Wolfred who flees with a girl who is sold into slavery by her own mother, but the pair are continuously followed by the head of Wolfred’s boss Mackinnon in a way which is terrifying. These fantastical elements add a layer to the novel’s underlying messages about issues to do with guilt and possession which saturate the entire culture.

Erdrich’s way of writing about tricky moral dilemmas and very sympathetic characters reminds me of the excellent Canadian writer Joan Barfoot. She looks at complex issues and tests how they play out in extreme situations. I hope to read more of Erdrich’s acclaimed work based on the strength of this novel. “LaRose” is an absorbing and utterly fascinating read.

Baileys Women’s Prize 2016 Winner Prediction

My first proper book video. I was a bit nervous. What do you think?

The Baileys Prize 2016 winner will be announced next week on June 8th! In case you need a reminder, the six books shortlisted for the prize are listed here where you can also listen to me and Simon from SavidgeReads discussing all of the books in a special Baileys Bearded Book Club podcast: http://lonesomereader.com/blog/2016/4/12/baileys-womens-prize-shortlist-2016

I want to emphasize that I don’t have any affiliation with the prize or publisher so all of my comments and posts about this prize come purely from being a committed reader and lover of great literature written by women.

It’s been fascinating discussing the books nominated for the prize with so many people this year. It’s really helped broaden my opinions about many of the books and hopefully I’ve inspired a few people to pick up books on the list they might not have read otherwise. My opinion has probably changed the most about Anne Enright’s “The Green Road” which is brilliantly and beautifully written, but I do now wonder how well it hangs together as a whole novel since different sections focus on self-contained moments in the family members’ lives. Nevertheless, it still stands as one of my favourite books that I read in 2015.

Compared to last year where I felt Ali Smith was the clear winner, I think it’s really difficult to guess which novel will win this year. “The Portable Veblen” is such a fantastically fun and clever read, but I think it’s too quirky to be considered the best out of all of them. Also, “A Little Life” is an incredibly compelling and moving novel, but it is perhaps too divisive to be unanimously agreed upon to be a winner. This might be why this novel keeps being nominated for prizes like the Booker but not actually winning them. I’ve heard some people say it’s a life changing experience and others say the author betrays her characters after a certain point in the book.

Now, I have to be honest. I haven’t read “The Improbability of Love” and it’s not that I haven’t tried. I started reading it… three times. Usually I give a book 50 pages before I decide to continue on or put it down. I couldn’t ever get past page 20 of this novel. It simply isn’t for me. Some readers who I respect did really enjoy reading it and felt it was a hilarious satire of both the pretensions of the art world and romantic chick-lit novels. Others have been equally unimpressed bit it. I found it too frustrating to read because it felt too trite and superficial. Interesting how almost every year there’s at least one of the books on the Baileys list I don’t get on with such as Rachel Cusk’s “Outline” last year which is a book many people loved, but I found ultimately unsatisfying. Strangely, it’s the books I like the least that drive some people to seek them out and read them out of curiosity.

I think the contest for this year’s prize is really between Cynthia Bond’s “Ruby” and Lisa McInerney’s “The Glorious Heresies”. Both are intense, original and wonderfully written novels. It’s a coin toss between them and in my video about the shortlist I make an instantaneous guess as to which I think will win. However, I could be totally wrong. I think it could really go to any of these novels. I’ve been lucky enough to have been invited to the Baileys Prize ceremony so I’ll be fascinated to see who wins.

If you want to win a copy of the book that I think will win watch my video roundup of the prize, subscribe to my YouTube channel and leave a comment. The competition is open worldwide and I’ll keep it going until the end of June when I’ll randomly select a winner from the comments. Would you like to see me make more videos? It’s a new thing so I’m kind of nervous about it. Let me know what you think, what book you think will win the Baileys Prize and (if you haven’t read any of the shortlist yet) which book you’re most interested in reading.  

Negroland: a memoir by Margo Jefferson

Growing up in an upper/middle class family in Chicago in the 50s & 60s, Margo Jefferson was subjected to unique pressures from within her household and the community around her. She felt self conscious about inhabiting a space in society she refers to as Negroland – a particular socio-economic group of well-educated and financially secure black groups cornered by certain social perceptions. They felt they couldn’t fully be accepted into white society nor did they want to be associated with what were perceived to be lower class/uneducated black people or what Jefferson terms “lowlife Negroes.” This created an intense form of self consciousness where Jefferson felt stuck between assimilating into the white culture including pressures to modify her appearance to look white and separating herself from society’s expectations about how she should appear and act. She states “We knew what was expected of us. Negro privilege had to be circumspect: impeccable but not arrogant; confident yet obliging; dignified, not intrusive.” Jefferson goes on to eloquently describe the historical conflict faced by privileged African Americans and meaningfully conveys the internal struggles concerning racial identity that she’s experienced throughout her life.

It’s fascinating how she connects feelings of self consciousness about privilege throughout generations since American slavery and cites different examples of how different black individuals in positions of power have either reinforced these notions or worked for social progress. She describes how “The secret signal which one generation passes, under disguise, to the next is loathing, hatred, despair. And as a result of these, a sense of perpetual violation.” However, because of social expectations from within and outside of the black community these feelings that Jefferson had could never be expressed and only internalised: “With external failure out of the question, internal discord seemed the only protest mode.” They lead her to some very dark and heartrending moments in her story.

Of course, feelings of segregation based on racial difference were only part of the difficulties of development that Jefferson experienced – something she readily acknowledges. This was a time period of many radical social changes and issues of anti-semitism, sexism, classism and homophobia were also prevalent. It’s interesting and sympathetic how Jefferson acknowledges throughout her memoir the complexity of identity. It’s also touching how unwilling she is to give into self pity and maintain a tough critical distance from the deep emotional hurt she experienced while still making the reader achingly aware of the power of her feelings.

Some of the most wonderful sections of this memoir are Jefferson’s recollections of her development as a reader. She sharply critiques Mark Twain and James Baldwin while identifying strongly with the intense world of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women”. Early on in her learning, she rejected male-dominated fiction: “I was a jealous little she-reader; I resented pouring myself into the lives of hero-boys.” Where Jefferson thrived the most is when she identified the writers and cultural movements that she related to and that inspired her the most. She drew particular inspiration from jazz artists and a beat generation which she could feel a part of without letting it define her: “I was trying to enter a world tied to my history but not my autobiography.” Radical movements were necessary to push the kind of social change that could allow ambiguity and individual voices to emerge: “The world had to upend itself before shades of possibility between decorum and disgrace could emerge.”

Ad from Ebony Magazine. Jefferson writes: You will never be the fair sex, but you strive to be an ever-fairer one."

While reading this I was reminded of a literature course I took once where a white teach was giving a lecture about the writer Jamaica Kincaid. She lamented that Kincaid’s more recent work focused on her passion for gardening (something the author acknowledged was inherited from a European tradition). My teacher said she felt the author was trying to be white writing about such a subject instead of focusing on colonialism and racial issues in the Caribbean. I didn’t know how to respond at the time but it feels to me outrageous now that she felt Kincaid should limit herself to a certain kind of writing or not allow herself to take pleasure in activities which didn’t originate from the culture she was born into. It’s terribly elitist and makes me wonder how in some ways “higher education” might reinforce particular kinds of division.

The way that language is used concerning race is a touchy subject. Just by titling her memoir “Negroland” is something which will no doubt provoke an emotional response and I must admit it made me feel self conscious reading the book in public. What might someone think it's about glancing at this title? This is the point. Jefferson means to provoke thought and discussion about the subject – something which is ongoing and necessary. It’s a tremendous strength of this book that it doesn’t lapse into didacticism, but instead prompted me to feel more awareness of how people might or might not change their behaviour based on racial differences. It made me think about how marginalized groups in our society don't all exist on one level but inhabit different spheres of repression and discrimination. It's also striking the unique perspective Jefferson gained from inhabiting a particular group: “Being an Other, in America, teaches you to imagine what can’t imagine you.” This is a powerful and thought-provoking memoir.

The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror by Joyce Carol Oates

In her introduction to the anthology American Gothic Tales (1996) which Joyce Carol Oates edited she pays tributes to the gothic tradition in American literature bourn out of a crisis in the Puritan consciousness. She detailed how writers such as Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and H.P. Lovecraft wrote unsettling fiction in which “the ‘supernatural’ and the malevolent ‘unconscious’ have fused” and how Lovecraft, in particular, has a compulsion in his fiction “to approach the horror that is a lurid twin of one’s self, or that very self seen in an unsuspected mirror.” Such a crisis in consciousness where the real and unreal intermingle to produce horrific results is adeptly-realized in the six unsettling and mesmerizing tales contained in Oates’ new book The Doll Master and Other Tales of Terror.

Reading about characters such as a lonely boy whose sister died of a rare disease, a diligent adolescent girl entrusted with house-sitting a beloved teacher’s upscale residence or a wife who ardently desires to be a loving companion to her charismatic husband, we want to believe and trust these sympathetic individuals. Even when taken into the point of view of a white man imprisoned for shooting dead an unarmed black boy, we guardedly hope that there has simply been a misunderstanding as he so vehemently insists. We do this in order to preserve our belief in people’s essential “innocence” and “goodness”. We’re invited in these stories to connect with these characters’ experiences - sometimes in a bracingly direct manner such as this passage in the title story: “All your life, you yearn to return to what has been. You yearn to return to those you have lost. You will do terrible things to return, which no one else can understand.” The involved reader will hesitantly survey his own emotionally conflicted experience as well as fearfully wondering what lengths the cryptic narrator has gone to assuage his own painful feelings about his past. Here is the perverse pleasure of these stories which become so personally involving it’s as if we see the horrific consequences created from our own darkest compulsions (albeit within the “safe” realm of fiction).

Oates has a masterful way of leading us through the consciousness of the troubled individuals at the centre of these stories so that heartfelt sympathy is gradually replaced by guarded unease and, eventually, by a terrifying repulsion. Paranoia leads the characters to conclusions which make them act in a way to justify reprehensible actions. Their fear often comes from social issues such as drug abuse, economic inequality, racial divisions or child kidnapping. The narrator of the story ‘Soldier’ remarks how “Uncle T. has told me This country is at war. But it is not a war that is declared and so we can't protect ourselves against our enemies.” Destructive divisions are created by ideological notions passed down by political rhetoric, extreme religious institutions or inflammatory media sources to create an “us” and “them” mentality where the characters feel drawn into taking extreme action to defend against insidious encroaching forces. At other times, paranoia arises in a more domestic setting from problems that seem sadly endemic of the human condition like a fear that those we love will eventually betray us.

Many stories contain surprising and satisfying twists worthy of the most compulsively-readable tales of Poe or Agatha Christie. Unexpectedly the hunter might become the hunted. Those who seemed well-meaning or benign become frightfully sinister. What felt like sure fact turns out to be fiction formed in a character’s deluded mind. Oates finds inventive methods for keeping the reader on their toes. She invokes the methods of this genre’s great masters while building upon them with issues current to today. “Mystery, Inc” pays the most playful tribute to the suspense genre as it is set in a rural bookstore which contains enticing treasured editions from some of America’s greatest writers. It also allows Oates to engage with a meditation upon the genre itself as a touchstone for our most personal philosophical concerns. The shop’s gregarious owner states that “It is out of the profound mystery of life that ‘mystery books’ arise. And, in turn, ‘mystery books’ allow us to see the mystery of life more clearly, from perspectives not our own.”

"the lonely Siamese cat appeared in the kitchen doorway staring at me with icy blue eyes" from 'Gun Accident: An Investigation'

Another story 'Big Momma' has the tenderly emotional and creeping sinister feel of a fairy tale. An insecure middle school student named Violet who has recently moved with her working single mother to a new area ingratiates herself with a welcoming close-knit family run by a single father. She’s rebellious against her mother and seduced by the caring affection of her friend’s father. Although she becomes naturally wary of something unsettling about her new adopted family, she is seduced by the acceptance she finds with them which feeds her emotionally and physically. The startling outcome and imagery invoked by this parable of young adulthood produces a distinctly haunting feeling.

Oates has previously invoked elements of genre fiction in multiple novels and story collections. These range from novels of ambitious literary scope such as her gothic quintet of books which she first began publishing in the early 80s with the family saga Bellefleur (1980) and only recently completed with the historical gothic-horror novel The Accursed (2013). Some story collections approach genre in a more straightforward manner such as her books Haunted (1994) and The Collector of Hearts (1998) which indulge in sinister stories of the “Grotesque”. Last year she produced Jack of Spades: A Tale of Suspense (2015) which takes the form of a thrilling story about author-rivalry and pseudonyms. With The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, Oates has created unique, gripping stories which take us to the most extreme edges of what people are capable of when logic breaks down and their minds are plagued by virulent emotions. The terror comes from knowing that with a twist of fate their stories could become our own.

This review also appeared on Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain

I had the pleasure of hearing Rose Tremain read from her new novel “The Gustav Sonata” at a special event at Waterstones Piccadilly several weeks ago. The section she read and her writing in general has a wonderful way of drawing you into the lives/experiences of her characters so I was eager to read this new novel – especially since I loved her previous book “The American Lover” which is a collection of short stories. It’s admirable how Tremain never sticks to writing about any one particular genre, subject matter, time period or area of the world. Her books span from historical novels set in the court of Charles II to the mid-1800s New Zealand gold rush to stories about migrant works in modern London. “The Gustav Sonata” primarily takes place in pre and post-WWII Switzerland (with a later leap to the more recent past). Given its location it gives an interesting slant on the war and the meaning of neutrality by focusing on the lives of two different families affected by the greater conflict. It’s a deeply immersive story about loyalty during times of conflict, ambition, betrayal and family strife that made me stay up late at night longing to read more.

The novel centres around a Swiss boy named Gustav whose single mother Emilie struggles to make ends meet while working in an Emmental cheese factory. His father Erich died at an early age, but was once an assistant police chief during the tense period in the lead up to the war. In 1948, a six year old Gustav befriends a new Jewish boy named Anton at school. Emilie resents her son’s companion because she blames their diminished circumstances on the influx of Jewish refugees. It’s not difficult to see how these embittered isolationist feelings still resonate today in current political opinions. Despite his mother’s objections, Gustav and Anton form a special bond which continues throughout their lives. Questions raised about how Emilie got to this difficult point are answered in the second part of the novel which moves back to 1937 to recount her tumultuous marriage with Erich. The third part of the book then skips far forward to the end of the 20th century to show how dilemmas about his family and his country’s past still resonate for Gustav in his later years.

Tremain skilfully raises many difficult questions about what happens to political allegiance, social responsibility and moral conscience when put under the pressure of warfare. Being only a boy during WWII, it takes Gustav a lifetime to untangle the truth and meaning of the decisions his parents and their friends took at the time. It’s remarked how “Europe is at war. Fairness is now becoming a word without meaning.” There is no balanced view when embroiled in the fear and terror of this conflict. When looking at specific actions from a historical point of view, it’s easy to judge what was right and wrong. But when facing conflict in the present when you’re aware of different negative outcomes no matter what decision you make, the choice is not always so clear. By moving backwards and forwards in time through different parts of this novel, Tremain artfully shows the true nightmarish dilemma faced by ordinary people caught in a large-scale battle.

I also greatly appreciated the dynamic view of transforming sexuality represented in the personal lives of her characters. Throughout their entire adult lives all of the characters find their desire changes which also transforms their points of view. Lottie, the wife of Erich’s friend Roger, is a particularly fascinating character who finds herself drawn to the forbidden and struggles to express her sexuality within the narrow confines of society. Also, there’s a particularly memorable and disturbing section where a mentally-disturbed young neighbour attempts to sexually abuse Gustav when he’s still a boy. Although this character and his actions are reprehensible, he is still treated in a balanced way as he is evidently a victim of shock treatment and other damaging medical therapies of the time. There is also an innocently intimate scene between Gustav and Anton as boys which is so delicately portrayed. Tremain has a tremendous ability for writing intelligently and sensitively about the ever-evolving sexuality of a broad range of characters.

A subterranean melody plays throughout Gustav’s journey in this novel. As a child Anton is an aspiring pianist and his desire for fame hangs upon him throughout his life despite his crippling performance anxiety. He frequently plays Beethoven and other composers to Gustav. It’s extraordinary how I started to almost hear this music playing as I progressed in reading the novel. Like great works of music, “The Gustav Sonata” has a subtly transformative effect saying what can’t be overtly stated by using a juxtaposition of characters, place and images. It also made me salivate to try Emilie’s favourite desert Nusstorte! This is an exceptionally beautiful and accomplished novel.

Sergio Y by Alexandre Vidal Porto (translated by Alex Ladd)

Sometimes real happiness can only be found through a radical process of self reinvention. It takes a considerable amount of courage to move to a new country on your own, leave behind everything that’s been familiar or change your name to become another person. “Sergio Y” is powerful novel about how some people aren’t able to really be themselves or fulfil their potential within the family, community or even the body that they were born into. It’s about the extensive lengths some must go to and the hardships they must endure to fully inhabit the life they were meant to live. This novel is also a compelling mystery whose story becomes more and more intriguing with every new bit of information its obsessive narrator tracks down. 

There can be something really powerful in a good tale told in a simple direct prose style. “Sergio Y” is narrated in short sections by a seventy year old therapist named Armando about incidents surrounding his client Sergio Yacoubian. Armando boasts that he is one of the most respected doctors in São Paulo, but Sergio's case haunted him for many years and became something of an obsession. Sergio came to see him as a teenager troubled by a sadness he didn't understand. After months of sessions in which they discussed his life, particularly his great-grandfather's emigration to Brazil where he escaped the massacres which occurred during the Turkish war in the early 20th century, Sergio alighted upon a path towards happiness. He moved to New York City and went through the process of transitioning from male to female. However, Armando wasn’t aware of the fact Sergio was transgendered when he treated him. Consumed with guilt about a case he didn’t fully understand, Armando investigates what happened to Sandra by speaking to her family, American therapist and her troubled neighbour. Gradually he comes to a better understanding of what it means to seek real happiness in life.

Although this novel has a deeply tragic element to it, it’s admirable how Porto makes of the story something ultimately hopeful. He shows that strength of will and determination can triumph over circumstance. Here he movingly describes the state of mind required to initiate radical change: "Many manage to improve on the first drafts of the lives they are given. But for that they need the courage to jump off a diving board fifty meters high, blindfolded, not knowing if it is water or asphalt that awaits them below." This novel is also a sympathetic and refreshing portrait a transgender individual. Even though I read about an equally compelling transgender character in Jenni Fagan’s recent novel "The Sunlight Pilgrims" it still feels as if dynamic and interesting characters that were born with the wrong gender don’t often appear in many books. I would love to see more novels where transgender characters appear where their transition isn't necessarily treated as an "issue" but a simple fact. This is something I believe "Sergio Y" somewhat achieves because Sandra herself doesn't struggle with her transition process; it's the doctor who must come to terms with it. It was a great pleasure reading this emotional and fascinating new novel.

The Sacred Combe by Thomas Maloney

There’s a special pleasure in finding something another reader has left in a used book. While reading you might come across a train ticket, a receipt or a passage in the text that’s been emphatically underlined. Suddenly you find yourself connected to an unknown reader from some period in the past. If you have a curious and imaginative mind you might wonder if the previous owner read this book while on a busy journey or alone in a study. Did she/he finish it? What did she/he think about it? It’s a unique feeling of connectedness that’s entirely different from the enjoyment of cracking open a pristine new book. “The Sacred Combe” is a family saga told not by immersing the reader in specific stories about different generations, but providing flashes from their lives which have been left in their enormous library. The narrator and the reader of this novel must piece together their story from what scraps of personal information different family members have left within the books that they read.

The central story of Thomas Maloney’s compelling debut novel features an undeniably alluring job for any serious book lover. Banker Samuel Browne turns to reading for comfort and to take his mind off from the collapse of his personal life when his wife suddenly leaves him. He tackles Edward Gibbon’s multi-volume enormous text “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and finds within it a cryptic advertisement to volunteer in someone’s private library. When his brief phone application for the job is accepted he leaves his London life for a rural northern location. Here he meets an elderly man named Arnold Comberbache who presides over Combe Hall, a 230 year old collection of books which is “one of the finest private libraries in the country.” A vital personal letter has been hidden somewhere in this library by Arnold’s ancestor Hartley. Thomas is charged with searching through each book one by one. Along the way, he unravels the fascinating history of the Comberbache family by discovering notes written in the books’ margins, letters tucked between the pages or intriguing references to significant events. He also has the pleasure of nosing through a plethora of rare and unusual books!

During his patient search, Samuel meets the remaining people who are associated with the historic hall such as the punctilious housekeeper Miss Synder or the mysterious young scarred artist Rose who help fill in missing details not found in the texts. He also explores the large estate which includes many hidden curiosities such as a special temple in the forest built to appreciate light and the movement of celestial bodies. Samuel’s complete immersion in the story of this family which is entangled with a mystery about one of the great poet’s of the age provides a way for him to escape the desolation of his marriage and start anew. It’s an escape into a meditative space. It is observed how “When the cordons of habit are withdrawn, the unruly forces of the mind strike out in new directions. Our own thoughts can seem almost as unfamiliar to us as our new surroundings: reason itself begins to turn in our grasp.” In the alien environment of Comberbache family’s historic abode, Samuel gains a valuable perspective about what he wants in life and finds himself unexpectedly entangled in the family’s complex narrative.

Maloney does well to avoid any clichéd resolutions to the novel. Instead he creates an intriguing conclusion which can be interpreted in different ways. This book isn’t about neat resolutions, but a process of discovery. There are moments when the story about the family becomes somewhat convoluted – especially because many of the Comberbaches have the same first names (something Arnold himself admits is confusing for archivists). But patient readers will be rewarded with a complex puzzle to uncover scandalous events involving opium, infidelity and plagiarism. “The Sacred Combe” is a cleverly-structured moving meditation for anyone who isn’t sure what step they should next take in life. It’s a richly immersive bibliophile’s fantasy. Appropriately for its subject matter, this novel also has a gorgeously designed cover itself.

Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

To what degree do labels like mother, father, daughter or son define us? Ideally different relatives will take on different nurturing roles for their family members in times of need. Traditionally it's the mother who is expected to perpetually care and nourish her family. In Deborah Levy's novel “Hot Milk” the mother-daughter roles are reversed. Twenty-five year old Sofia moves with her mother Rose to the desert landscape and jellyfish-laden beaches of Andalucía in southern Spain. Rose has chronic problems with her feet and can barely walk, but these symptoms might be fantasized. Sofia takes out a substantial loan to get her mother treatment in the Gomez Clinic run by an exuberant doctor with questionable credentials and his artistic daughter who he calls Nurse Sunshine. While relations with her mother become strained, Sofia embarks on two separate affairs with an attractive man named Juan and a formidable German woman named Ingrid. She also travels to Greece to meet her estranged father who has married a woman forty years younger than him and given birth to her new baby sister. In this story Levy creates a challenging and fascinating view of families whose constantly shifting dynamics both support and destroy each other. 

Sofia's engaging, funny and perceptive voice brings this story to life. She trained as an anthropologist but her career has only consisted of working at a coffee house. The novel starts with her dropping her laptop. Now that the image of the universe used as the background on her screen has shattered, her view of her life and those around her becomes fragmented. The tone of her narrative fluctuates between comic moments such as when she contemplates a cartoon character's personality: “Is Donald Duck a child or a hormonal teenager or an immature adult? Or is he all of those things at the same time, like I probably am? Does he ever weep? What effect does rain have on his mood?” and deeply-moving starkly-metaphorical statements such as “My love for my mother is like an axe. It cuts very deep.” She sees the world from a really interesting point of view that made me think differently about ways in which we are perceived and how we perceive others.

I admire the way Sofia's fluid sexuality plays out in the novel. She engages in passionate sexual relationships with a woman and man with equal force stating “Ingrid and Juan. He is masculine and she if feminine but, like a deep perfume, the notes cut into each other and mingle.” Her relationships with them are more determined by their personalities. Her affair with Juan is casual and comforting whereas she finds her affair with Ingrid (who is also in a relationship with a man named Matthew) to be more tumultuous and energizing. In a strikingly symbolic scene Ingrid kills a snake with an axe as if demolishing the need for any man's presence in their lives.  

Although many people find her beautiful and seductive, Sofia views herself as something of a monster who swims with jellyfish in the sea (locally known as medusas). At several points in the novel the narrative breaks from Sophia's point of view to short statements from someone who is persistently observing her from a distance. Sophia is conscious of steadily gaining weight and her mother makes her feel ashamed about this: “It is true that I have shape-shifted from thin to various other sizes all my life. My mother’s words are my mirror. My laptop is my veil of shame. I hide in it all the time.” Negative self-perception is also reflected back at her in how Ingrid views her “She wanted to behead her desire for me. Her own desire felt monstrous to her. She had made of me the monster she felt herself to be.” These relationships make a compelling view of the way that women can sometimes sadly demean each other. Also, by focusing on the importance and power of women's relationships to each other she annihilates the notion that a woman's most important relationships are with men: “Neither a god nor my father is the major plot in my own life. I am anti the major plots.”

Images of milk and motherhood abound throughout the novel which gives its title a steadily increasing power. It's suggested that she go to visit a statue of the Virgen del Rosario that “is made from a delicate marble that is the colour of mother’s milk.” At another point she contemplates “Is home where the raw milk is?” Dr Gomez has a cat named Jodo who gives birth to kittens which eagerly feed from their mother in a scene that makes powerful statements about the meaning of nurturing. Sophia watches her young step-mother feed her infant sister from her breast in a way that makes her emphatically stand apart from any traditional notion of engaging with motherhood herself. Instead, she defiantly declares her physical being as separate from that course in life: “I was flesh thirst desire dust blood lips cracking feet blistered knees skinned hips bruised, but I was so happy not to be napping on a sofa under a blanket with an older man by my side and a baby on my lap.”

One of the most powerful lines in the novel comes amidst Sophia's anthropological musings about the power of signs in our culture. She questions the degree to which individuals fit into the common symbols for male or female as seen in signs for public toilets. Subsequently she wonders about the labels in family life: “A wife can be a mother to her husband, and a son can be a husband or a mother to his mother, and a daughter can be a sister or a mother to her mother, who can be a father and a mother to her daughter, which is probably why we are all lurking in each other's sign.” There is something beautifully freeing in this statement that we don't need to feel trapped as any one kind of thing in how we relate to our family members. Our ways of being come out of how our unique familial situation exists at any one point, not out of predefined roles which we must play.

"the tentacles of the jellyfish resemble the hair of the Medusa, which in pictures is always a tangled mess of writhing snakes."

It's interesting thinking about “Hot Milk” in relation to Elizabeth McKenzie's recent novel “The Portable Veblen”. Both centre on women with distinctly original points of view who have difficult hypochondriac mothers that they feel compelled to care for. They each come from different story angles to show how we can grow into different relationships with our parents, that we can move freely between being nurtured and nurturing. However, McKenzie focuses more strongly on the development of a sustainable balanced romantic partnership where Levy's novel is concerned more with developing a substantial individual sense of self outside of society's expectations.

I think “Hot Milk” will continue to have a subconscious effect on me in the future. You know how sometimes you'll recall a scene or character or original point of view from a novel many years after you've read it? There are aspects of “Hot Milk” which I can already feel echoing through me. Deborah Levy has a powerful use of imagery which unsettles in a way that is welcome because it helps broaden my perspective. It's a fantastic, distinctly powerful novel.

The Desmond Elliott Prize shortlist

If you need any other proof that new Irish fiction is going through a particularly exciting period, look at the Desmond Elliot Prize shortlist. Gavin McCrea and Lisa McInerney are two of the most exciting debut authors I’ve read in recent years. Since I first read it a year ago, I’ve brought up Mrs Engels many times on this blog and on social media. You know what I’ve said about it so here is what the prize’s Chair of judges Iain Pears says about McCrea’s novel:

“McCrea has cleverly included just enough historical detail to set a very evocative scene, then lets his cast tell the story. The writing always surprises, his characters are compelling without having to be likeable and, as all of we judges noted, Mrs Engels is perhaps the most feminist novel we read for the Prize.”

That’s an interesting final thought considering McCrea was one of only three men out of the ten authors on the Desmond Elliot Prize longlist!

Lisa McInerney's novel is a powerfully-written and sweeping tale of modern day Cork that includes people who aren’t often portrayed in fiction. It’s also recently been shortlisted for this year's Baileys Prize for Fiction.

Pears said: “It is no surprise that not one but two major literary prizes have noticed McInerney’s talent. She gives us strong, complex working-class characters with real emotional hinterlands, and plays with the reader’s emotions in an extraordinarily sophisticated way.”

Also included in this shortlist of three is Julia Rochester’s striking novel about family secrets. It’s a novel that also made the Baileys Prize for Fiction longlist.

Pears said: “Rochester’s writing is quite wonderful – she is particularly strong on her sense of place. She brings the landscape to life just as she does her characters. We all felt we were with them at key points in the book.”

Click on the titles below for my full reviews about each of these novels.

Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea
The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney
The House at the Edge of the World by Julia Rochester

The winner will be revealed at a ceremony at Fortnum & Mason on 22 June, where he or she will be presented with a cheque for £10,000.