The Surrender by Scott Esposito

I only realized in the past couple of years how dreadful many adults are about articulating what they really desire – also how dreadful I am at saying what I desire. Superficial desires might be easily expressed, but what someone really wishes to experience or become is often much harder to put out in the world because its buried under years of socialized behaviour. It's much easier to conform to expectations and slot into a category. In this short, powerful memoir “The Surrender”, Esposito describes his lifelong journey to giving into his desire to dress as a woman. At a certain point in his childhood he learned that his compulsion to dress girlish wasn't compatible with the masculine image imposed upon him so it remained secret and dormant for many years. Only through a surprising identification with Kiarostami's film Close-Up and gradually admitting to others his desire, does he begin to dress in a feminine way outside of the private sphere. This provokes Esposito to formulate a strikingly original meditation on the meaning of identity and desire in the modern world.

I was really struck by the profundity and beautiful simplicity Esposito has for articulating how burying what you desire is a grave dishonesty. He discovers “My needs were not compatible with the logics bred into my mind, and it was up to me to change them.” It takes a lot of patient reasoning and difficult confrontations with himself to truly understand why he fears his transvestitism being exposed. It also takes a lot of trust to confide in someone how he really feels, but how surprising and wonderful it can be to get a positive response to such a confession. He describes with heartrending emotion the feeling of being observed and why dressing openly as a woman was so difficult: “If personality is a performance, then there are certain parts of it that one only experiences in the presence of others. Shame, affection, desire, vulnerability; these are quantities whose experience in solitude is like the sound of a sonata heard by one faulty ear.” It takes many years for him to build up the certainty of character to allow his private self to be seen publicly.

One of the most touching things is the way Esposito describes the evolution of his identity in sync with the theory, literature and films he consumes. He meaningfully enters into a dialogue with those whose ideas feed into his experience helping him to better articulate his own desires. It made me aware of why reading feels like such a vital part of my life and how all the feelings produced from the things I read aren't just abstract concepts, but things that apply directly to my day to day life. I think this book makes a perfect companion to Maggie Nelson's “The Argonauts” which I only read recently. Both reflect strikingly on the dynamics of gender in a deeply personal and intelligent way.

The Ten Best Historical Novels of 2016

I'm not sure how much people are enjoying these lists, but I think it's fun to make them so I've picked out my top ten historical novels from 2016. These include a novel about a 17th century female aristocrat branded as mad, a star of Parisian opera houses who comes from humble beginnings, a dual tale with a mysterious painting at its centre, a talented Russian composer's struggle for artistic integrity, a fishery girl's reinvention of her life down under, a treacherous 19th century whaling voyage, neutrality in Switzerland, the victims of a South Korean uprising, a family saga set through Communist China and an inventive take on abolitionism in the American south. Watch me discuss these ten magnificent novels here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T2XcMqfcYQ

What makes a good historical novel for you and have you read any excellent ones recently?

The Ten Best Books of Short Stories from 2016

A new list today and I’m talking about short stories from this year that I’ve loved reading. These include an anthology that includes women writers from the north of Ireland, stories of personal change, satirical stories that give a lot of LOLs, icy tales of loneliness, fantastic tales that feel all too real, moving stories of Irish life, exquisitely-crafted tense gothic tales, highly inventive stories of transformation, the misguided adventures of people in Cape Canaveral and stories that give a new view of modern London. Watch me discuss ten exceptional books of short stories here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cdt7sHCSbQ

There have been many short story collections I’ve started this year, but not entirely finished reading so haven’t reviewed them yet. What have been some of your favourites?

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

There are two gripping mysteries at the centre of Emma Donoghue’s new novel “The Wonder”. An English nurse who trained under Florence Nightingale named Elizabeth “Lib” Wright is summoned on a special job to rural Ireland in the mid 1800s. Only during the journey does she discover that she’s charged to keep watch over a young Catholic girl Anna O’Donnell who claims to have subsisted for many months without any food. The girl, her family and the village believe she’s being kept alive purely through a divine power. This has made her a wonder that many devoted people make pilgrimages to see. Is this a religious miracle or a fraud? Lib’s job is not to make the girl eat but just to observe her to independently testify that she truly doesn’t consume anything. However, this nurse who served in the Crimean War has a troubled hidden past of her own: “Everybody was a repository of secrets.” When her atheist views clash severely with this deeply-religious village, great conflict ensues. This highly intriguing atmospheric story intelligently shows a clash between new and old world sensibilities, the complicated nature of religious belief and the malleable nature of identity.

Hanging over this novel is the Great Famine in Ireland which had ended only recently in the early 1850s. The girl’s refusal of any food and gradual wasting away is a grim reminder of the near quarter of the country’s population who unwillingly perished. Lib is well aware of this enormous loss so it’s even more baffling to her that a girl would deny herself food and that her family/community/priest would support her decision. Lib’s opinion of the Irish falls as she spends time in the rural village and observes their customs. Not only are there intricate old-fashioned religious practices which sometimes elevates after-life glory over mortal wellbeing, but she shows contempt for their customs/manner of living, homes made of mud and unpalatable griddle cakes. It leads her to generalize “What a rabble, the Irish. Shiftless, thriftless, hopeless, hapless, always brooding over past wrongs. Their tracks going nowhere, their trees hung with putrid rags.” Her increasing bias throws into question who the reader should morally side with. However, an intelligent reporter from Dublin named William Byrne who is also a believer adds a bridge between this clash in national identity.

Donoghue includes a rich amount of period detail that makes this story richly alive. Not only are there compelling descriptions of the customs of village life in Ireland from this time, but also details about the nursing profession and medical practices. Many local physicians’ methodology was steeped as much in religious or misguided evolutionary beliefs as in hard therapeutic facts. Lib represents a newfound approach to medical care with a more rounded view of ways to support the afflicted: “what nobody understood: saving lives often came down to getting a latrine pipe unplugged.” This leads to a fascinating portrait of changing sensibilities within this time period. Donoghue also strikingly shows the subversive way people with misogynistic views could be manipulated through the way they underestimate women.

As in her well-known novel “Room”, the author shows a respect for the canniness and resilience of children. Donoghue remarks at one point “Like small gods, children formed their miniature worlds out of clay, or even just words. To them, the truth was never simple.” Rather than a pious simpleton, young Anna is gradually revealed to be a fascinating character with complex motives. The novel gains a swift momentum as the truth about both Anna and her vigilant watching nurse Lib are revealed. Donoghue explains in her author’s note how this novel was inspired by multiple cases over the centuries of fasting girls who reportedly survived for long periods of time without food. She has a great talent for condensing multiple instances of an irregular social phenomenon into a story that says something meaningful about our culture and the nature of being. “The Wonder” is a finely-crafted and emotionally-charged story.

Ten Great Books of Experimental Fiction from 2016

Continuing with my lists of the year centred around certain categories, here are great books of experimental fiction first published in the UK in 2016. I’m really excited by daring writing that breaks the mould and I think these books have pushed the form of fiction in interesting ways. They include a memoir told with a mixture of literary forms, a bleak tale of isolation and paranoia, a disfigured man waking up to the horrors of a warped reality, a detective investigation which shades into the philosophical, a wild road trip in search of a lost sister, a brilliantly innovative account of a difficult love affair, a radical re-visioning of Icelandic history, intriguing thoughtful tales of female experience, prostitution and rabid dogs in Spain and a hilarious/thought provoking take on standardized tests. Watch me discuss my top ten picks of experimental fiction here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQHC2fCUi_k

Have you read any books that intriguingly play with narrative form this year? Is so, let me know about them in the comments.

The Top Ten Debut Novels of 2016

Before coming up with an overall list of my books of the year, I thought it’d be fun to make different categories of favourite books I’ve read in 2016. I’ll make videos briefly discussing each book. I’m going to start by listing ten debut novels published in the UK during 2016 that I've loved reading. They include a historical novel about whaling, a story of introversion/artistic expression, a small town mystery centred around two charismatic girls, a teenager in a murderous 60s cult, vicious passion in Georgian London, tragic love in the Middle East, a family saga buried within a magnificent library, a father/son tale of emotional disconnection, an eerie remote fishing village and an absorbing novel about Soviet spies in mid-century Britain. Watch me discuss my top ten picks of distinctive & original new voices in fiction from 2016 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0Xz1Mra5pk

Have you read any great debut novels this year? Is so, let me know about them in the comments.

Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton

This isn’t your typical historical novel, but its protagonist Margaret Cavendish wasn’t your typical 17th century English aristocrat either. Attendant to Queen Henrietta Maria and married to William Cavendish, First Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, she could have spent her days reclining on a chaise lounge. Instead she engaged with the scientific, literary and philosophical ideas of her day by writing her own essays, plays and unconventional romances. Danielle Dutton has written an inventive fictional portrait of her life by delicately inhabiting this girl who grows up relatively care-free sketching stories and sharing a close relationship to her siblings. But she’s rudely awakened to the hard realities of the world when she experiences the death of family/friends, political conflict and torturous medical treatments that were meant to help her conceive after marrying. Gradually she’s inspired to make her thoughts and feelings known by publishing books which invigorate and challenge society. Showing a radical determination she declares: “I had rather be a meteor, singly, alone.” In pursuing her writing and ambition to be famous, this woman with a penchant for couture fashion achieved a level of notoriety and lasting influence on disparate groups of people over time – everyone from Virginia Woolf to Siri Hustvedt to animal rights activists.

Dutton tells Margaret’s story using a spare, impressionist style of narrative which recounts parties she attends and large societal shifts around her. While this feels at times confusing as it jolts through the ballrooms of history, it builds a meaningful feeling for Margaret’s developing sensibility and unique view of the world. She feels curiously estranged from her circumstances and seems to half live in a counter-world of her own creation (The Blazing World). Through depictions of her meditative writing process and desire for fame, Dutton shows how she strives to connect with the actual world around her. That she practically demands that everyone pay attention comes across as both brave and arrogant. However, the author clues the reader into the quiet centre of Margaret’s life through her distinct style of writing. So, even as the story rapidly progressed through the years, I felt wholly sympathetic for her struggle to be both seen and heard. This culminates in an emotional scene where Margaret became the first woman to attend a meeting at the Royal Society of London.

Margaret Cavendish who was branded by the public "Mad Madge"

It’s fascinating how Margaret’s relationship with William Cavendish is depicted. He’s a man who was thirty years her senior and she inhabited an unsteady social/familial position being his second wife. Although he’s renowned as a man of high social standing and wealth, she discovers he secretly struggles with enormous money problems. This obviously creates challenges for them, but he’s amenable to her desires and fancies. William supports her writing but he’s nonetheless susceptible to the misogynistic prejudices of the time. It makes it difficult for Margaret to reconcile her feelings about him so that sometimes “He appeared to her a stranger wearing her husband’s skin.” It could have been easy to depict William as a certain type of villainous character, but I admire how Dutton treats him with the same level of empathy as she does her charismatic heroine.

It’s interesting to think about this book in comparison to Alexander Chee’s recent novel “Queen of the Night” which also depicts a flamboyant society woman from history (the Comtesse de Castiglione). Both meditate on the degree to which cutting-edge fashion and an obsession with self-image present different aspects of these women’s unique personalities. However, where Chee is dramatically expansive and lingers on sumptuous detail, Dutton is intensely concentrated. Overall, “Margaret the First” is a lively creation which crystallizes the lavish interior reality of a historical woman and the challenges she faced to make her ideas known amidst stultifying social conventions. It spoke to me strongly about the tension between our inner and outer world, the challenge of bridging the gap between the two and the slow burning effects of ambition. At one point she ardently contemplates “I have made a world, she thinks, for which nobody should blame me.” This feels to me like an incredibly liberating statement because it radically declares the validity of our individual perspectives and private being apart from other people’s expectations and judgement. “Margaret the First” is an inspiring, joyous novel that pays tribute to the complexities of our interior lives.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

Even though I’ve read reviews and received lots of strong personal recommendations about “The Argonauts” since it came out in the UK earlier this year, I was still somehow unprepared for the surprisingly clear-sighted wonder induced by Nelson’s thoughtful revelations about love and family. She writes with such refreshing honesty about her lover-than-husband Harry Dodge – a relationship which is at once unique because Harry is transgendered and perfectly ordinary for their desire to create a settled family/home. Harry comes to the relationship with a young son and, after living together for some time, Nelson decides to become pregnant through IVF treatments. She records their personal transformations – Harry’s body changing through testosterone injections and her own body changing in pregnancy – and their development as a family unit. The result is an invigorating and deeply moving meditation on gender roles and sexuality in modern day society.

One of the most exciting things about reading Nelson’s writing is the fine-tuned artistry of her prose. Her sentences are concentrated and direct. There’s an intelligent precision used which is akin to reading Annie Dillard. She recognizes the fallibility and subjectivity of language “Words change depending on who speaks them; there is no cure.” Yet, she knows it’s the only means by which to communicate what she wants to say. She draws upon a huge range of theorists, philosophers and artists including Eileen Myles, Susan Fraiman, Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Denise Riley, Sara Ahmed, Susan Sontag, Elizabeth Weed, Leo Bersami, Luce Irigaray, Anne Carson, Dodie Bellamy, William James, Michel Foucault, Mary Lambert, Julia Kristeva and Andrew Solomon. She also considers a range of authors who write about raising children. The quotes she selects from these writers are folded into her experiences and thoughts on her particular situation in society to give them immediate relevance. This makes her writing at once highly intelligent and wholly relatable.

Nelson recounts tense moments of confusion where strangers question Harry’s gender, being stalked by a disturbed fan of one of her books and the arduous process of giving birth. She considers how the ideas of some of the aforementioned writers sometimes help her process or conflict with her own unique experiences. Yet, for all the sophisticated references, there is also a wonderful light-heartedness and humour to this book. For instance, when considering a description of female genitalia by Ginsberg she states “I still don’t see the need to broadcast misogynistic repulsion, even in service of fagdom, but I do understand being repelled. Genitalia of all stripes are often slimy and pendulous and repulsive. That’s part of their charm.” This humorously levels all the physical differences of gender to find a commonality outside of sexuality while giving a light-hearted slap to the tendency gay men have for offensively sneering at the female body.

It’s interesting how what Nelson is essentially seeking to create is a rather traditional nuclear family unit through other means. She shows through their struggles and triumphs how every family is unique in its own way. The central metaphor of the book is a boat which is made of component parts that are being continuously replaced, yet it maintains its name. So, as their family undergoes change, the couple at the centre retain something essential about themselves despite superficial differences. The portrait Nelson creates of their experiences isn’t romanticized, but “The Argonauts” feels like one of the most romantic books I’ve read in a long time.

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers - Max Porter (guest review by Naomi Frisby)

As a final post about the Sunday Times/Peter Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year award, here is Naomi’s review of Porter’s book. It was so interesting to hear Naomi talk about this at our shadow judges' meeting and reading her review since she knows Ted Hughes’ Crow so well and I’ve never read it. Nevertheless, I think this is an extraordinarily book that I also loved and you can read my review about it here. It's been a pleasure featuring Naomi's reviews here. Read more of her writing at TheWritesofWomen!

I’m going to set my stall out from the first sentence: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is an extraordinary piece of work. Porter creates a scenario in which a woman has died suddenly leaving her husband – a Ted Hughes scholar – and their two young boys behind. Into their grief-stricken word arrives Crow, the Crow from Hughes’ collection of the same name, who rings the doorbell of their London flat a few days after her death.

One shiny jet-black eye as big as my face, blinking slowly, in a leathery wrinkled socket, bulging out from a football-sized testicle.

SHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

                                                                                                                                     shhhhhhhh.

And this is what he said:

I won’t leave you until you don’t need me any more.

The grief the characters go through is narrated by three voices: Dad who attempts to go to work, write a book on Hughes’ Crow and parent his children; Boys who speak as one voice and wonder what happened to the fire engines and the chaos that they feel should’ve been present at the death of their mother, and Crow who is slippery – is he the father’s therapist? A trickster? A myth? A bird feeding on grief?

There is no plot as such. Porter moves the characters forward as though they’re in fog or a timeless bubble. Things happen but grief colours almost all of their movements as they try to negotiate a world without a wife and mother. There are heart-breaking moments when Porter articulates how that grief feels without becoming mawkish.

Ill people, in their last day on Earth, do not leave notes stuck to bottles of red wine saying ‘OH NO YOU DON’T COCK-CHEEK’. She was busy not dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone.

She won’t ever use (make-up, turmeric, hairbrush, thesaurus).

She will never finish (Patricia Highsmith novel, peanut butter, lip balm).

And I will never shop for green Virago Classics for her birthday.

I will stop finding her hairs.

I will stop hearing her breath.

But there’s humour too. Crow is arrogant, obnoxious and sometimes cruel but he’s also very funny. The first time Dad brings a woman home and has sex with her, he finds Crow on the sofa ‘impersonating me pumping and groaning’. He also likes to show off in the bathroom, ‘performing some unbound crow stuff’ for Dad to believe he’s ‘hearing the bird spirit’

Gormin’ere, worrying horrid. Hello elair, krip krap krip krap who’s that lazurusting beans of my cut-out? Let me buck flap snutch clat tapa one tapa two, motherless children in my trap, in my apse, in separate stocks for boiling, Enunciate it, rolling and turning it, sadget lips and burning it. Ooh, pressure! Must rehearse, must cuss less. The nobility of nature, haha krah haha krap haha, better not.

Reviewers seem to have struggled with how to describe the form of the book; is it prose? Is it poetry? Is it a prose poem? I think that the form Porter’s chosen to take is one that suits the subject matter. Grief is impossible to define accurately. It ebbs and flows, visiting each of us differently. Porter’s words appear to be divided into phrases, sentences and paragraphs as he felt they should be as opposed to him attempting to force them into a standard or accepted format. That and the language he uses – which moves between Standard English and invented words – helps to portray a family out of sorts and an animal from literature which may be a figment of the father’s imagination.

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is extraordinary for several reasons: the form and language; the vivid imagery; the integration of Hughes’ Crow (although you don’t need to know Crow in order to appreciate this work); the depiction of grief. Max Porter’s a very exciting young writer indeed.

How to Survive a Plague by David France

Growing up in the 80s I really had no awareness of the spread of Aids in America. One of my first memories of hearing about Aids was in science class at school where my teacher Mr Marble told everyone that it’s the gays who were responsible for spreading this disease. It was only during my teenage years in the 90s when I came out and befriended other gay people that I became more knowledgeable about the virus. It’s a sad fact that some of the people I was closest to in my younger years are now HIV+. With an estimated 35 million people having died from Aids and another 37 million people currently living with it, this is something which affects everyone but particularly people in the gay community. I was aware that for many years there was a huge stigma attached to it and I saw the documentary by the same name as this book, but only now having read David France’s masterful nonfiction book “How to Survive a Plague” do I fully comprehend what a courageous few activists and scientists did to help educate the public, change the policies of the government and pharmaceutical industry and bring together an afflicted community overrun by fear.

David France is a journalist who arrived in New York City at the end of the 70s just as the virus was starting to rapidly spread in the gay community. In this book he gives a detailed and comprehensive account of the spread of Aids and the way it affected society. He does this through many personal stories of doctors, activists, politicians, businessmen, researchers and HIV+ individuals which bring their struggle to life as they combat a system gripped by prejudice. It’s truly shocking how the institutionalized homophobia of the government and community leaders showed a blatant indifference to the thousands of gay men infected with HIV across the country who died over the course of the 1980s. France makes it vividly apparent how this led to innumerable personal tragedies from people who hid their status until their deaths to people so terrified of contracting HIV they became celibate: “In countless ways, survival, unexpected as it was, proved as hard to adjust to as the plague itself.” But he also shows how this galvanized parts of the community to come together to literally fight for their lives (albeit with many disagreements along the way).

France recounts how Reagan and his government maintained a shocking level of silence about Aids for many years. It was only when the actor Rock Hudson and an anemic boy who received an HIV+ blood transfusion went public about their status that the country at large started to take real notice and action about Aids. But, even then, an insufficient amount of money, time and expertise was being applied to combat it. It’s horrifying the lack of funding given to Aids research, care and prevention because of institutionalized prejudices. For instance, the negligence of mayor of NYC Ed Koch meant that “In the thirty months of plague, a time in which 1,340 New Yorkers were diagnosed and 773 were already gone, Koch had spent just $24,500 on AIDS. In the same time frame, San Francisco had allocated and spent more than $4 million on care and prevention.” Across the country policy was being shaped by the stigma attached to the disease and prejudices against gay people: “In 1985, twenty states debated legislation for quarantining or otherwise controlling people with AIDS and suspected carriers.” This book really makes it apparent how the institutional response set an example which turned people against trying to understand the disease and the gay community. It led to rampant homophobia which condemned huge groups of people who were already painfully suffering.

It was only through the concerted action from some of the people cited in “How to Survive a Plague” that society at large began treating people afflicted with Aids with compassion rather than scorn. In some instances, France recorded verbatim rousing speeches in public forums which came from a place of passionate personal emotion as much as from a place of clear-sighted truth about the outlandish bigotry of the system. This includes a heartrending and inspiring speech by Darrell Yates Rist which he delivered at a town hall meeting at a Methodist church in Greenwich Village. I know that his words are going to stick with me.

David France’s powerful and emotional book not only pays rightful tribute to the heroic acts of people who cared for those affected by Aids, but sets a benchmark for how we should all be active and engaged citizens. Have a look at this article to see why we still need to be vocal about combating Aids. Given the new conservative governments we’ll be living under in both America, Britain and other parts of the world, it’s more important than ever that we learn how to engage our politicians and decision-makers to look out for the welfare of all people – particularly those afflicted with Aids. Please don’t be intimidated by the length of this book; it’s relentlessly engaging on many levels. “How to Survive a Plague” reveals an incredibly important part of our history that should never be forgotten.

Books from 2016 still in my TBR pile

Help! I’m getting that end-of-year panicky feeling that I haven’t read enough this year. Yes, I read a lot but when the best books of the year lists start rolling out I’m consumed with guilt that I haven’t had time to read half the books I’ve wanted to. Does anyone else get this feeling? I know it partly comes from a worry that when I make my own best books of the year list at the end of December I’ll have missed out on some vital book everyone agrees is genius. I know I’ll have the rest of my life to read these books, but I do find it hard to fight the desire to lock myself in a room for months and not emerge till I’ve read them all. So have a good look at this photo of books published in 2016 and let me know which ones you think I should prioritize reading before the end of the year.

Some books such as Sarah Perry’s “The Essex Serpent”, Megan Bradbury’s “Everyone is Watching” and Mia Gallagher’s “Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland” I’ve been purposely saving because I have a fantasy of snuggling up in a comfy chair drinking endless cups of tea reading them while the winter storms rage outside my window. But the truth is December always gets really busy with finishing work before the holidays and meeting up with friends - so I never get as much reading time as I hope I’ll get. My strategy is to finish my Christmas shopping early so I can stay inside reading while everyone else climbs over each other in the shops – we’ll see how well I do!

Please comment letting me know what you think I should read or what have been your favourite books of the year that I should definitely read.

I also made a video about these and a few other books I acquired recently:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sMGfPH4jjo

The Sunday Times/Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year 2016 Shadow Panel Winner

Who knew the first official shadow judging panel meeting to decide on our own winner for this fabulous young author award would be so bloody?!? Shouting matches, fist fights, eye scratching, hair pulling and that wild Simon Savidge even tore apart one of the books with his bare teeth in a Bjork-style fury! It was sheer mayhem. Actually, I’m kidding. It couldn’t have been more lovely. Our very organized and excellent chair of judges Dan Dalton kept us well in line. We sat chatting with cups of tea and slices of cake (a lemon-ginger layer cake with toasted marshmallow frosting I baked in honour of Naomi’s birthday) for two hours. We talked in detail and depth about the four totally diverse and absolutely fascinating books nominated for this prize. Honestly, everyone agreed they are all such strong books and all worth reading. But, since we had to choose one, after some well-reasoned arguing we selected our winner. Remember that this is only our shadow jury winner (a fan favourite, if you will) and the official winner will be announced on December 9th.

Fab group Charlie Place, me, Dan Dalton, Naomi Frisby, Simon Savidge & Kim Forrester

Our shadow jury winner is Jessie Greengrass for her daring and intelligent book of short stories “An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It”. We agreed that Greengrass is an extremely accomplished, interesting and promising writer. We were compelled by the frequent themes of loneliness and arctic weather in several stories. I particularly admire how Greengrass subtly challenges preconceptions of gender by purposefully leaving it obscure about whether the protagonist is male or female in several of her modern-day stories – similar to what Ali Smith does in her short stories but Greengrass' fiction explores such different ideas. Interestingly, we all had some favourite stories in the collection. Upon rereading many of the stories, I gravitated most towards the emotionally poignant ‘On Time Travel’ and the brutal humour of ‘The Lonesome Trials of Knut the Whaler’. There is such a rich diversity of ideas and subjects explored throughout the collection that I think Greengrass is an extremely exciting new author that you should all watch out for.

Be sure to check the PFD site where they’ve gathered lots of our reactions to all the books listed for the prize and where the official winner of the 2016 award will be listed on December 9th. Let me know your thoughts about our winner or any of the other nominated books!

Inch Levels by Neil Hegarty

Every family has their own social rules and ways of communicating with each other. Often things are left unsaid or hidden, but the way each family works around these areas of silence is unique. As a terminally ill man only in his 30s, Patrick is at a stage where he doesn’t need to mince his words. He’s laid up in a hospital where the nurses quietly recognize he’s close to death. When family members such as his mother Sarah, his sister Margaret or her husband Robert come to visit he makes it very clear whether they are wanted or not. The novel is framed around the mystery of a missing local girl and her mother’s subsequent suicide. However, the majority of this novel is concerned with the different points of view of this Northern Irish family through three generations, how the Troubles impacted them personally and patterns of abuse which trickle down their bloodline. It shows how at this crucial stage in his life Patrick chooses to be radically honest. This novel artfully gets at the subtleties of family life: what’s left unspoken and the impact this has on relations over time.

Whenever a painting is described in a novel I’m reading I like to go on a pilgrimage to actually view this work of art myself whenever possible. This happened when I read Ali Smith’s novel “How to be Both” which led me to The National Gallery to see a painting by Francesco del Cossa. In “Inch Levels” there is an emotional confrontation between Patrick and his sister Margaret when he’s visiting her in London and they take a trip to Tate Britain. Here they see Pegwell Bay, a 19th century painting by William Dyce. So I went to see this painting for myself one morning. It feels significant to this novel for the way the painter portrays a family on a seaside trip engaged in their own activities. Many scenes in the novel (including a trip to a coastal area that gives this book its title) are described in a similar way where each member of the family is entirely consumed in their own world of emotion and aren’t able to connect with the family members around them. It’s haunting the way the painting suggests a family that is unified in their activity, but psychologically distant from one another.

A crucial character at the centre of this novel is a woman named Cassie. She’s an orphan who enters the family when Sarah was a girl and her mother died. Rather than find a new wife to help keep up his household, her father chooses to take in this girl who is described as simplistic and may suffer from some form of autism. She forms a crucial kind of centre for the family and sometimes becomes a confidant for the things which the rest of the family can’t confess to one another. There are also some wonderful touches of humour she brings – such as a scene when Margaret and Patrick are children stealing from the kitchen’s treat jar (which are treats meant for a pet). It’s interesting the way she offers a perspective on the family to the reader – even if she doesn’t often make her opinions known to those around her.

with William Dyce's painting Pegwell Bay at Tate Britain

The changing political climate of the country serves as a backdrop for several parts of the novel. Sometimes characters are direct witnesses to conflict such as the Bogside Massacre and other times larger events make little personal impact such as a scene of national independence where Sarah finds “Her mind strayed from history: she worried about the stew Cassie had made and left for tea; gone too long and it would dry up.” Hegarty is skilful in the way he describes these larger events being absorbed into every day life such as frequently bombings where it’s felt “It was abnormal and it was normal, all at the same time.” It gives a powerful sense of the way we are both connected to and outside of the history we inhabit.

“Inch Levels” is a novel which becomes quietly absorbing over time as the intricacies of this family’s life and their relationships become clear. Rather than create scenes of high drama, Hegarty conveys deep levels of emotion through what is left unsaid and unacknowledged in the cramped parameters of family life.

Physical – Andrew McMillan (guest review by Naomi Frisby)

Here is Naomi’s next review of another outstanding book shortlisted for this year’s Sunday Times/Peter Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year award. When I first read this book of poetry last year I was so struck by its distinct direct voice and connected so strongly with McMillan’s original perspective that it became one of my favourite books of the year. If you want to read my review of ‘Physical’ click here.

Since the publication of his debut poetry collection Physical, Andrew McMillan has been hailed as the poet of masculinity. It was interesting to be aware of this approaching the collection as a feminist and – if I may be so bold – I’d dare to say that McMillan is also a feminist, at least to the extent that he understands that patriarchal ideas of masculinity are as damaging to men as they are to women.

The collection’s divided into three sections. In the first, also titled ‘physical’, McMillan explores what it means to be male in the 21st century, alongside experiences of loving relationships and one night stands. In ‘Strongman’ the narrator bench presses his nephew asking ‘what is masculinity if not taking the weight/of a boy and straining it from oneself?’ while conceding that his own attempt is one ‘not even a minor Greek would see as fit to sculpt’. While in ‘The Men Are Weeping in the Gym’, McMillan creates a picture of those who do sculpt themselves ‘and because they have built themselves/as statues this must mean that God/has entered them’ but juxtaposes this with the vulnerability that lies beneath, created with an image of the muscle tearing ‘itself/from itself’.

McMillan excels in moving from the general to the specific. In ‘Urination’ (the poem he tells us at the Young Writer of the Year Award bloggers’ event his mum has asked him never to read again), the narrator begins by describing the potential horror of bumping someone at the urinals, leading to thoughts of the times the bathroom is shared in intimate settings and the specific moment when he takes ‘the whole of him in your hand/and feel the water moving through him/and knowing that this is love…’. It’s these moments when he writes of love – whether of a one night stand in ‘Just Because I Do This, Doesn’t Mean’ where ‘the kisses that wanted to stay for longer than a night’; or a lover who’s with someone else in ‘If It Wasn’t for the Nights’: ‘if it wasn’t for the nights       Steffan       I’d come home’; or the rescued relationship in ‘Choke’ ‘we talked ourselves together’; or the break-up in ‘Today’

today    you will break the life of someone
or you’ll break yourself apart from them
and   having dressed themselves in you for months
they will be naked and half in shadow as you close the door

– where you find yourself catching your breath. McMillan captures the vulnerability that close relationships bring in many of their different forms.

The third section ‘degradation’ deals with death, whether literal or metaphorical, and again ties into ideas of masculinity and how men are expected to face death in a society that equates masculinity with bravery and stoicism.

For me, however, it was the second section ‘protest of the physical’ which really interested me. This interest was twofold: firstly, in terms of structure, this is the most ambitious section of the collection. Here nine untitled poems – five leading on to a second page; four very short and all beginning with the word ‘graffiti’ interweave moments in relationships, McMillan’s love for the poet Thom Gunn and snapshots of the northern town, Barnsley. The latter is the second thing that interests me, having grown up in Barnsley, like McMillan (although I was born eleven years prior to him). The poems that begin and end the section both start with a crane: ‘lame arm of the crane       circling/unstocked shelves of half built car park’, a nod to the town which still hasn’t recovered from the miner’s strike and Thatcherism (call centres and ASOS and Next warehouses aren’t enough to replace an industry). In the second of the longer pieces, McMillan juxtaposes a relationship – ‘love/is giving everything too easily/then staying to try and claw it back’ – with the decimation of the town – ‘town coughing something up/watching    breathless    as it rolls into a crack in the earth’ – using a structure and a rhythm that echoes the town’s industrial heritage – ‘people were shouldertoshoulder/as in a cage waiting to descend’. It’s no coincidence that the industry the town was built upon is one synonymous with masculinity and that part of the town’s challenge is also that of 21st century men: how to reconcile itself with having that stereotypical, patriarchal view of what a man should be stripped away.

Physical is an interesting, often ambitious, sometimes breath-taking look at love and masculinity. If this is what Andrew McMillan is capable of in his debut collection then I can’t wait to witness the rest of his career.

The Ecliptic – Benjamin Wood (guest review by Naomi Frisby)

As I wrote in a previous post, I was invited to be a shadow judge for this year’s Sunday Times/Peter Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year award alongside some other fantastic bloggers including Naomi from TheWritesofWomen. Given that the self-defined mission of her blog is to only cover books by women, I’m very proud to host Naomi’s reviews of the three shortlisted male authors on my blog and it’s interesting what different views she has compared to my own thoughts about the books. If you want to read my review of The Ecliptic click here.

Elspeth ‘Knell’ Conway, celebrated artist, is holed up in Portmantle, a retreat on a Turkish island. Directed to this mystery location by her sponsor, she befriends playwright MacKinney, novelist Quickman and architect Pettifer. Into their world arrives seventeen-year-old, Fullerton.

From our very first glimpse of him, we understood that he was one of us. He had the rapid footfalls of a fugitive, the grave hurriedness of a soldier who had seen a grenade drop somewhere in the track behind. We could recognise the ghosts that haunted him because they were the same ghosts we had carried through the gates ourselves and were still trying to excise.

As the quartet keep watch over the troubled youngster, they also battle their own creative demons. Portmantle, Knell explains, exists out of time – as does art – as well as providing a sanctuary where artists can relocate their artistic desires. Each has a failed project which has driven them to the retreat. For Knell it’s a commission for which she was attempting to render The Ecliptic – ‘a great circle on the celestial sphere representing the sun’s apparent path among the stars during the year’ – on a mural for the Willard Observatory.

While the first and third sections of the novel take place at Portmantle, the second takes us back into Knell’s past documenting how she became an artist, her rise to prominence and her relationship with the artist Jim Culvers.

Elspeth’s from a Clydebank family and attends Glasgow School of Art on a scholarship – a detail far more plausible in the 1950s and ’60s of the novel than the present day. There she’s taught by Henry Holden who tells her to ‘Paint what you believe’. When the external assessor finds Elspeth’s blasphemous painting Deputation unworthy of a grade, the school denies her graduation and she goes off to London – thanks to Holden – to be Jim Culvers’ assistant. Holden says it’ll take a while for Culvers to realise she’s better than him. When that does happen, Culvers’ agent sets up Elspeth’s first show.

While at Portmantle, Knell comments on her name:

I always suspected my work was undermined by that label, Elspeth Conway. Did people exact their judgements upon me in galleries when they noticed my name? Did they see my gender on the wall, my nationality, my class, my type, and fail to connect with the truth of my paintings? It is impossible to know. I made my reputation as an artist with this label attached and it became the thing by which people defined and categorised me. I was a Scottish female painter, and thus I was recorded in the glossary of history.

While Knell sees an issue with her name and gender, Wood does something few male novelists do well in portraying her purely as an artist and a human. Knell reads precisely as a female painter because Wood never treats her as one. His focus is on the creative process and her relationships with fellow creatives.

The Ecliptic focuses on the creative process throughout the novel. At Portmantle, Knell and her friends worry that they have lost their abilities. They over analyse their work, attempting – and failing – to recreate past highs, or avoid artistic endeavour altogether. They work in secret, rarely discussing their progress, or lack of it. In the novel’s second – and strongest section – Elspeth learns her craft, encountering the disparity between the public’s, the critics’ and her own views of her work. Wood uses this section to consider the effect on an artist’s confidence and, therefore, their work when external forces begin to exert pressure on the creative process. It’s no surprise that Elspeth, still only twenty-six, struggles to cope.

In his attempt to explore how the creative process works, Wood pulls a sleight of hand on the reader which is revealed in the fourth and final section. At the Young Writer of the Year Award bloggers’ event, Wood said that he knew he was taking a risk with this. Whether or not he pulls it off will, I suspect, depend on the taste of each of the novel’s readers. For me, it was an ambitious – and an interesting – undertaking and I’d rather see a novelist challenge themselves to produce something unusual and difficult than play it safe. Whilst I wasn’t wholly convinced, the very end of the novel is inspired and very clever; it left me feeling that Benjamin Wood is one to watch, I suspect he’s going to produce something very special indeed.