In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

Carmen Maria Machado's “In the Dream House” is a highly inventive memoir which primarily focuses on a past abusive relationship and the effects of it. Part of what drew me to reading this book was a curiosity to see how she'd meld her fantastical style of writing - which she displayed in her excellent short story collection “Her Body and Other Parties” - with her own autobiographical experience. In this book there are many straightforward recollections of her past particularly concerning an abusive relationship. But they're all framed within the idea of a dream house that was formed within this intense romance. Like a fairy tale castle this imagined space becomes the central setting of fantasy, pleasure and horror. And through this Machado considers different tropes found in folk literature and how they sync with the trajectory of her own turbulent love affair. 

What makes this so effective is it shows the author's own meaningful influences from literature to queer theory to the history of domestic violence and references to films such as Gaslight and Stranger by the Lake. Through her intelligent analysis and personal interpretation of these we feel how deeply traumatised she's been by this relationship. It's possible to get an idea of an abusive relationship from details such as threatening phone calls or bodily harm, but it's much harder to convey the intensely conflicted feelings of fear, shame, lust and love which accompany these events. Machado has found a method to do this which is unique to her sensibility and which fully shows the reader all the ambiguities of her experience. 

It's interesting how she chooses to primarily narrate this memoir through the second person. Fairly early on there is a switch from speaking about her past in the first person to describing it using the pronoun “you” which suggests a more analytical way or looking at her own experience as well as inviting the reader to imagine themselves in her shoes. I felt this was impactful in showing moments of realisation and perspective: “though it would not be until the next summer solstice that you’d be free from her, though you would spend the season’s precipitous drop into darkness alongside her, on this morning, light seeps into the sky and you are present with your body and mind and you do not forget.” In writing “you” the reader understands there is a mindfulness about how she realised this situation was not right, but she was nonetheless unable to free herself from it at the time.

In Meena Kandasamy's powerful novel “When I Hit You” about an abusive marriage, she observes how the shame is not always in the abuse itself but in having to stand to judgement after leaving that relationship. Machado is similarly aware how people will question what is considered abuse and she meaningfully explores how this is further complicated by it being a same-sex relationship. As she found when doing research, there are precious few accounts of domestic abuse in lesbian relationships or between other queer couples. This memoir is not only an important testimony to add to these seldom-recorded histories, but it's also an emotional and thoughtful examination of why so few exist.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

I doubt there could have been any better gift to myself this past December than reading “Little Women” for the first time before going to see the new film version adapted and directed by Greta Gerwig. It’s a somewhat strange prospect for a man over forty years old to read this classic novel of sisterhood which most readers first discover in their adolescent or teen years. But I immediately fell in love with the March girls with their various different creative pursuits, tragi-comic adventures and moral dilemmas as they grow into adulthood. Although I knew one of the girls died I couldn’t remember which one it was and having not seen any of the previous film versions I knew little about the plot of this novel. So it was entirely fresh to me and I got caught up in the story with all the girls’ aspirations, good deeds and occasional squabbling.

One of the scenes which struck me the most was their mother Marmee’s confession to Jo that her temper can become as heated as her daughter’s. It’s an endearing moment that hints at a deeper complexity in a character who is otherwise entirely charitable and good natured. As expected, there were a lot of moral lessons in the novel but I think many of them still stand up and are inspiring for the way the various stories encourage us to be better people. I wanted to listen and learn from them because all the girls are very endearing. However, a section which comes across as a bit antiquated is when Marmee advises Meg on how to satisfy and appease her straying husband who spends time in the company of another woman because of the drudgeries of home life and young parenthood. While it’s an understandable situation the blame is uncomfortably placed entirely on Meg’s shoulders. So it’s good that in the new film this is switched around so Meg’s husband John Brooke must adapt to accommodate Meg’s desire for occasional respites (rather than the other way around.)

It’s interesting how many readers end up feeling attached and sympathetic with one sister in particular and claim they are most like either Meg, Jo, Beth or Amy. I could definitely see aspects of my personality in each of the girls so couldn’t totally define myself as being most like one or another. I’m probably mostly a mixture of Meg and Jo though I definitely have Beth and Amy moments. Because each of the girls are quite distinct in their nature they are so easy to identify with and I can definitely recognize qualities in each of them that I’ve noticed in other people throughout my life. I’m guessing while reading the novel most readers probably also feel like Laurie in wanting to join in the girls’ activities and become an honorary member of the March family – as I really wanted to!

There was only one section of the novel that I found somewhat tedious and cloying. It comes later in the book when the narrator self-consciously focuses on Meg’s twins and youngest daughter. The way the dialogue is written with babyish language used by the children came across as grating to me. But on the whole I felt fully engaged with the sisters’ stories and following what happened to each girl as she grew, became ill or encountered new professional or romantic opportunities.

Since this novel has been adapted for film a number of times already some critics have expressed confusion about why a new movie of it needed to be made. But one of the most interesting choices Gerwig made was in alternating scenes from the girls’ childhood with their later teenage lives. This flashing backward and forward builds to a more rounded perspective of their development since the novel is told in a linear way. It also tunes the viewer into how the conclusion of this new film is creatively ambiguous because of how the final scenes we watched are interspersed with each other. In one we see a storyline where Jo gets married (in a somewhat formulaic conclusion) and in another we see her discussion with a publisher where she retains the copyright of her first novel suggesting more independence just as Louisa May Alcott (who never married) maintained. It’s unclear whether the scene we’ve watched where Jo races to catch Friedrich at the train station actually happened or if it’s part of fictional novel Jo has written about the girls’ lives. This ambiguity is a creative way to satisfy both the audiences’ craving for Jo to be married and pays tribute to how Alcott’s original intention. She didn’t want her character Jo to get married but felt pressured to write this conclusion because many readers at the time wanted to see this occur. In any case, I found the new film a complete joy to watch and I’m so glad I read the novel beforehand to fully experience the original text of the March family’s wonderful story.  

My Top 10 Books of 2019

It’s been an eventful year for books. Some of the biggest literary releases of the year took the form of sequels such as “Find Me”, “Olive, Again” and “The Testaments”. Atwood’s novel was also controversially awarded this year’s Booker Prize alongside Bernardine Evaristo magnificent “Girl, Woman, Other”. Thankfully other book prizes stuck to awarding one winner. Lucy Ellmann’s “Ducks, Newburyport” didn’t make it past the shortlist of the Booker but it did win this year’s Goldsmith’s Prize. The Women’s Prize for Fiction was awarded to Tayari Jones’ “An American Marriage”. Jokha Alharthi, an author from Oman, won this year’s Booker International Prize for her brilliant novel “Celestial Bodies”. The Wellcome Book Prize was awarded to “Murmur” by Will Eaves. The Wainwright Book Prize for Nature Writing was awarded to Robert Macfarlane’s “Underland”. The Desmond Elliott Prize was awarded to Claire Adam’s “Golden Child”. Excellent writers Danielle McLaughlin and David Chariandy were amongst the recipients of this year’s Windham Campbell Prizes. It’s also been a significant year for poetry as Raymond Antrobus’ “The Perseverance” won both the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Winners of The BAMB Readers Awards included Madeline Miller’s “Circe” for Fiction, Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” for Non-Fiction and the late great Leonard Cohen’s “The Flame” for Poetry. We also lost a number of great authors this year with the deaths of Toni Morrison, Jade Sharma, Kevin Killian, Andrea Camilleri, Deborah Orr, Clive James, Andrea Levy and Rachel Ingalls.

Personally, I’ve read many great books this year. There have been a number of powerful memoirs including “Kill the Black One First” and “My Past is a Foreign Country” and some excellent new poetry including “Surge” and “Deaf Republic”. But here are ten highlights which I think are truly exceptional. If you’ve read any of these books I’d love to know your thoughts as well as some of the best books you’ve read this year. You can also watch a video of me discussing my ten favourites here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9SVanX5kO0

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

This novel may be more famous for its page count than the contents of its story, but I think it’s utterly immersive. The story is almost catered for me as it discusses a lot about baking and old movies (two passionate interests of mine) but it’s also a brilliant take on our current times, our current state of mind, our current uncertainties and fears, our current tendency to rely on rumour and assumptions over facts and all of this is filtered through the unrelenting perspective of one Ohio housewife. I found it hypnotic, hilarious and unlike anything I’ve ever read before while also having the feel of great classics like Mrs Dalloway and Ulysses. I think it’s ingenious and like I said in a video I made recently about my favourite books of the decade I think it will be a future classic.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

One of the difficulties about having political discussions concerning racial minorities and minority communities in Britain is it lumps huge groups of distinct individuals into one category (and that’s something which occurs in a lot of rhetoric from political pundits). So it’s really meaningful and effective how Evaristo creates stories of many different black women to present the complexities of many different points of view and ways of living. But this novel isn’t just about making this larger statement. More importantly, it’s great enthralling storytelling that had be gripped and flipping through the novel to fully understand all the connections and ways these women’s lives touch upon each other. It’s a very creative way of telling the story of a community of people who both support each other and sometimes tear each other down.

My Life as a Rat by Joyce Carol Oates

I think one of the most terrifyingly tragic things that anyone can face is to be rejected from their own family. In this story an adolescent girl witnesses her brothers committing a racist attack and testifies to that fact. This is seen as a betrayal and so she’s thrown out of the only life she knows. One of Oates’ greatest themes is the instinct for survival. And it’s heartrending how the girl at the centre of this story persists and continues while still hoping to be welcomed back into her home. But it’s really a novel about the tough choices all of us have to face when negotiating whether to remain loyal to those we depend upon or stay true to what we know is right. And the way Oates presents the psychological complexities of this is so impactful.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

This novel looks at another side of racial injustice where a young man is falsely accused of a crime and taken to a juvenile reformatory in Florida. There he experiences the horrendous way young men (most of whom are black) are being abused and killed and where the larger community either ignores this is happening or takes a complicit role in their exploitation. It’s so impactful how Whitehead composes this story and presents the way whole histories and communities of people can be made to disappear. And I’m one of this novel’s many fans who feel like it’s an injustice this book hasn’t won any awards yet.

You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr

This is another novel which unearths hidden histories. Before reading this novel I didn’t realise that during the Second Boer Wars in the early 1900s, the British military set up and ran concentration camps in South Africa. These camps were purportedly for their inhabitants’ safety but really they were a slow form of torture and a political tactic to steer the war. The story follows a mother who is taken to such a camp, but it’s a dual narrative as the second half of the book goes over a century into the future where a teenage boy is taken to another kind of camp which is meant to make a “real man” out of him through torturous practices. So this novel is about how certain institutions can appear to be for people’s benefit, but really physically and psychologically destroy them. I know this all sounds very weighty and difficult, but you’re just made aware of these things in the background and it’s what I’ve thought about since finishing the book. But the immediate story is about the warmth and endearing characteristics of its central protagonists and that’s what makes this novel an enjoyable read as well as a moving one.

Constellations by Sinead Gleeson

This is a book of autobiographical essays which follow the trajectory of Sinead’s life through illness, marriage, motherhood and work as a journalist. And while she goes into some very personal subject matter it also gives a perspective on social and political transformations in Ireland over the course of a generation. I love this book because the writing is so beautiful and smart while not being self-important. And she does this by referencing many different artists and writers but only in instances where they have deep personal meaning for her and the subject matter of her life. It’s an evocation of an entire culture as well as a hard-fought life.

The Years by Annie Ernaux

This book does something quite similar to the above but concerns a very different place (as it’s set in France instead of Ireland.) This is my first time reading Ernaux’s writing and I was utterly blown away how she can write such specific details about a life that simultaneously evoke an entire culture and time period. She does this by using the collective “we” when describing events and transformations over a half-century of French life. But you’re also aware of events in the life of the individual protagonist that this narrative is filtered through who goes through significant events like having children and getting a divorce. Reading this was a revelation to me as it’s so unique and extraordinary.

This Brutal House by Niven Govinden

Another very unique way of telling a story and presenting a culture is what Govinden does in this novel. It shows drag culture in NYC by representing the voices of different queens who sometimes speak in a collective voice, the police force they sometimes clash against and the individual story of Teddy, a child of one of these houses. It’s a beautiful evocation of how drag is both funny and playful as well as being a political act and a way of creating non-traditional families. And he really meaningfully shows the complications and in-fighting within this community as well as its strong bonds.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor

This novel takes the concept of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando where a character changes back and forth between a man and a woman – but in the form of a 23 year old college student in 1993. However, in some crucial ways Paul really differs from Orlando and even self-consciously states at one point that’s not who he is. Even though he can physical change back and forth between being a man and woman, there’s a central core to his character which is constant. I found him to be really endearing and fun, but the story also shows how he’s a very flawed individual that makes assumptions about other people based on their appearance just as assumptions are made about him based on how he fashions his own physical appearance. It’s really brilliant and it’s such a sexy sexy novel.

Underland by Robert Macfarlane

This is a nonfiction personal account of Macfarlane’s journey through many different subterranean landscapes from natural caves to mining operations to underground scientific research centres to the bottoms of glaciers. It’s a way of looking at a different part of the planet which we’re usually unaware of but which shapes our environment and is a repository of both geological and human history. I found it a really liberating way of breaking out of my own circumscribed view of the world which normally consists of walking between work and home. And the writing is so beautifully poetic, touching upon many reference points and making a larger statement about where our humanity is headed.

Ironopolis by Glen James Brown

I've discussed before how much I enjoy it when novels take the form of interlinked short stories, but the structure of Glen James Brown's debut novel “Ironopolis” is wholly unique in how it not only tells the interweaving stories of several individuals centred around a council estate but does so using different formats from letters to interviews to personal accounts. I've been meaning to read this book since it was first published last year and most recently it's been shortlisted for The Portico Prize (a literary award which celebrates Northern lives and landscape across fiction and nonfiction.) Brown's novel is located in Middlesborough, a city that has gone through large transformations since the closure of its coal and steel industries. These changes are particularly felt by the residents of this estate which undergoes a protracted process of rejuvenation by the local housing association resulting in the displacement of many long-term inhabitants. 

Over several decades we follow the lives of many locals including a mother dying of cancer, her bibliophile son, a local artist whose paintings come into vogue, a young man who finds a newfound passion for acid house music while emerging into his sexuality, his sister who grapples with a gambling addiction and her failing hair salon business, an elderly mobile librarian who harbours dark secrets, a petty criminal whose ill-fated meeting with the law sends him into a spiral of paranoid loneliness and a mythical green-skinned woman who dwells in the river and the bottom of a well. These distinct lives are all given a chance to shine individually as their voices gradually emerge, but their experiences powerfully join together in a tapestry to form a richer understanding of this area and its people.

I became really drawn into this novel through its sympathetically-portrayed range of characters and then felt gripped by the many intriguing mysteries and hidden histories buried in their stories. By getting a range of points of view in different narrative forms details surrounding particular dramatic events gradually come to the forefront giving a much more rounded understanding of the characters' motivations and circumstances. Brown has an impressive ability for startling the reader with revelations that they didn't even realise they were expecting. What resonates most powerfully is the broad empathy extended to numerous working class individuals whose voices often go unheard or are actively ignored. “Ironopolis” is a moving tribute to them and stands as a dynamic account of a recent era whose story has been paved over in the name of progress.

This is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill

Over the past few years it’s been inspiring seeing how the momentum of the Me Too movement has raised people’s awareness about sexual harassment and sexual assault as well as instigate a lot of discussion about what’s acceptable behaviour (especially in circumstances where power and influence are at play.) So it’s really interesting how Mary Gaitskill has written a novella about the blurry lines between friendship, flirtation and inappropriate conduct. “This is Pleasure” has a dual narrative that gives equal balance to the voices of long term friends Quin and Margot. Allegations of sexually harassment are made against Quin from former friends and colleagues at the publisher he works for and soon more and more women come forward to testify against him. Margot feels compelled to defend her friend, but finds herself questioning whether his habits and behaviour do indeed cross a line. It’s striking how Quin isn’t a stereotypical predator. He’s charming and sensitive, inspiring many women to befriend and confide in him. And sometimes there are cringe-worthy sexual overtones to his conversation which leads to fondling. He’s an entirely believable and recognizable character – as well as Margot who is quick to justify these types of actions with the explanation “It’s just the way he is.”  

It’s excellent how Gaitskill pries open the complexity of these relationships by alternating between their points of view. Reading this novella felt somewhat like watching a documentary as Quin and Margot are so firmly entrenched in their own perspectives they sometimes find it difficult to see the larger picture or consider the feelings of others. Even when describing the fact of Quin’s gross behaviour they find it easy to explain it away because they’re both so convinced about his essential innocence. Their adjacent points of view show the complexity of friendship and how supporting the people we love can sometimes lead us to become complicit in their inappropriate or harmful actions. As a publisher Quin also muses on the nature of storytelling and in this Gaitskill fascinatingly shows the levels on which personal stories can come to influence the conscience of society and, in turn, these social narratives can be integrated into our own personal narratives. This novella opens up such big issues in an impressively pared down style that its effect is all the more haunting than if it’d been a much longer novel. This is the first book I’ve read by Gaitskill but it’s made me eager to read more of her writing.

Lake Like a Mirror by Ho Sok Fong (translated by Natascha Bruce)

There’s an eerie tension at the centre of the short stories in Ho Sok Fong’s collection “Lake Like a Mirror” but it’s not a conventional tension to do with plot. It’s more an uncertainty about how reality might bend around the perspectives of the characters involved. They might be consumed by plants or become amphibious or escape in an air balloon. Some stories slide more into the surreal while others confront harder realities such as women who are institutionalized or teachers who are dismissed for teaching liberal ideas. These tales revolve around the lives of different Malaysian women who are trapped in certain circumstances often to do with religious or social pressure. The title story is one of my favourites as it delicately describes a sense of how other people’s distressed lives touch upon our own and how we’re sometimes powerless to help them. But I also enjoyed the unsettling humour of the story ‘Summer Tornado’ where a woman attaches herself to a family at an amusement park and forces them to continue going on rides with her in manic desperation. Although many of the characters seem trapped in a sluggish existence there’s often a frenzy bubbling beneath the surface which warps the world around them in surprising and, sometimes, terrifying ways.

Thomas Cromwell by Diarmaid MacCulloch

I had a plan. It was a beautiful and logical plan that I was so excited to start. Having tried and failed to read Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” several years ago because I felt confounded by the politics of the Tudor period, I thought reading a biography about Thomas Cromwell would give me an informed background to start reading the novel again. “The Mirror and the Light”, the third part of Mantel’s much-lauded trilogy about Cromwell’s epic rise and fall is due to be published in March. So I want to catch up on the first two novels. Reading Mantel and MacCulloch side by side should be the perfect pairing because both authors compliment each other’s writing in their respective books. But wading through this biography was a big effort. MacCulloch conducted a lot of research using period documents and letters to piece together a narrative about Cromwell’s life detailing his instrumental role in the court of Henry VIII and the English Reformation. While this did give me a broad overview of the events surrounding his life and his political manoeuvres during this period of radical reform, it felt to me more like an academic book for people who have a specialist interest and knowledge about this historical period. As an amateur who wanted some basic understanding I felt alienated.

I know I must sound like a lazy schmo, but I frequently found so much of this book tedious. There are endless lists of names carefully detailing the trajectory of these individuals’ ranks and social status. There are long passages about political strategies which made my eyes glaze over. Even when it came to the bloody machinations of Henry’s reign that saw whole slews of people being beheaded or chopped up, the descriptions of these events made them sound like tiresome inevitabilities. Certainly there were some sections I found more engaging. Certain events gave me an interesting and different perspective and as well as new knowledge – especially concerning false starts in the Reformation and the economics surrounding the dissolution of the monasteries. I also occasionally found some small details interesting such as the large amount of money Henry spent creating a massive library – though he probably had other people read most of the books for him rather than reading them himself.

Where this biography really frustrated me was in what it brushed over in its 752 pages. Cromwell’s early life, development, marriage and early status as a widower are quickly dealt with to get to the meat of his professional career. Details about his downfall also feel strangely sparse as if the author wanted to quickly move onto his legacy and Henry’s regrets about having Cromwell’s head chopped off. I realise as a historian MacCulloch must stick to what can be verified rather than speculate or guess on the emotional status of the parties involved. In one section, MacCulloch even refers the reader to a scene from Mantel’s novel if they want to get a feeling for the inner lives of these historical figures. So this biography failed to come alive for me in the way that reading Matthew Sturgis’ equally long biography of Oscar Wilde did for me earlier this year. I think because I don’t possess a passion for this period of history or a reverence for the individuals involved I simply got impatient as if I was listening to a monotonous lecture.

This leaves me a bit apprehensive about restarting Mantel’s trilogy. It might be a blissful relief to experience these people and events dramatized in her imagination… or it might feel like being sat back in the classroom. I wouldn’t normally make such an effort to reread a novel, but I’ve read and loved Mantel’s novel “Beyond Black” and memoir “Giving Up the Ghost”. So I think this is an author worth making an effort for. The two novels in her trilogy thus far are also hugely critically acclaimed award winners so it makes me feel like an odd duck for not having fully engaged with them. I don’t mind having the dissenting opinion as there are novels such as “Milkman” and “First Love” which didn’t work as well for me as they did for the majority of readers. But I feel like I have to give “Wolf Hall” a second try before having a proper opinion about it. While I feel better equipped to do so having read this biography, it was an enormous slog I wouldn’t recommend to anyone who doesn’t have a scholarly interest.  

The Portico Prize 2019 shortlist

I enjoy discovering new book prizes which highlight literature from different angles. The Portico Prize celebrates all forms of writing including fiction, non-fiction and poetry which “evoke the spirit of the North”. But only one book will be awarded the prize and £10,000 on January 23rd 2020. It’s a biennial prize based in the Portico Library in Manchester and presented in association with Manchester Metropolitan University. In fact, it’s not a new prize as it ran from 1985-2015 but has been on hiatus for the past few years. Past winners have included biographers, historians and novelists such as Jenny Uglow, Anthony Burgess, Val McDermid, Sarah Hall and Benjamin Myers for his fantastic novel “Beastings”.

I was very excited to see the shortlist announced this morning as a number of the books are ones I’ve been wanting to read and I always find book prizes give me a good excuse to put those tempting titles at the top of my TBR pile. Earlier this year I heard author Jessica Andrews read from and discuss her debut novel “Saltwater” and I’ve been very intrigued to read it since then. It’s about a young woman from a working-class neighbourhood in Sunderland who starts university in London and finds the city isn’t what she expected. “The Mating Habits of Stags” by Ray Robinson has been sitting on my shelves since it was published earlier this year. The novel’s intriguing plot revolves around a former farmhand in his seventies who is on a quest for revenge. It’s also an especially beautifully presented book!

Former winner Benjamin Myers is shortlisted again this year for his new non-fiction title “Under the Rock: The Poetry of a Place”. The author makes a personal exploration of an area called Scout Rock in West Yorkshire. I’ve also been longing to get to this book since I’ve had a desire to read more nature writing having recently read and loved “Underland” which won The Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize earlier this year. Myers has also been especially busy since his excellent novel “The Offing” was also published this year. Another novel I’ve been intending to read since it was first published last year is Glen James Brown’s debut “Ironopolis” which follows the changes that come to a housing development in North East England over three generations. This book was also shortlisted for the inaugural Orwell Prize for Political Fiction earlier this year. I just started reading it this morning and I’m already hooked.

The six authors shortlisted for this year’s Portico Prize

The final two shortlisted books are the novel “Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile” by Adelle Stripe and the non-fiction “The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness” by Graham Caveney. If I have time I’ll be keen to read these as well. But I’ve also been reading more poetry this year and two books of poetry which were longlisted for this year’s Portico Prize are “Zebra” by Ian Humphreys and “Us” by Zaffar Kunial. So I’m hoping to make time for these as well. In any case, it’s great to have a set of fantastic looking books to explore over the holiday break and I’ll be keen to see which title is awarded the prize in late January.

Let me know your thoughts on any of these books if you’ve read them or which books on the list you’re keen to read now.

Pursuit by Joyce Carol Oates

The best suspense novels always have a teasing ambiguity about whether you can trust the characters at the centre of their stories. Abby, the protagonist of Joyce Carol Oates’s most recent novel of suspense PURSUIT, can barely trust herself. At the start of the book she steps in front of a bus (whether on accident or on purpose is unclear) and is rushed to hospital with a concussion. Willem, who Abby only just married the day before, stays faithfully by her side and hopes to discover the reason why she has such persistently disturbing nightmares. Abby’s past is shrouded in secrecy as Willem has never met any of her family and eventually learns that her birth name was entirely different from the one she uses.

What follows is the tale of Abby’s self-invention born out of a violent upbringing and a broken home similar to that of Oates’ previous novel THE GRAVEDIGGER’S DAUGHTER, but here there is a gothic pallor to the atmosphere steeped in a consciousness so traumatized that Abby can scarcely separate fantasy from fact. There’s a teasing ambiguity to this story which entrances the reader with its swift momentum as well as its chillingly precise psychological and physical details. In trying to free herself from the catastrophic destruction of her parents’ marriage, Abby becomes tragically entombed within a fairy tale of her own creation.

There’s an attentive detail to the vulnerability of girls and mothers as well as the domineering and controlling nature of certain paranoid male personalities. Early on Abby acquired strategies to placate men: “As a girl you learn not to offend strangers by rebuffing them. Especially men. Strangers, but also employers.” This habitual silence is mirrored in the experience of Nicola, Abby’s mother, who learns that speaking out about abuse and threats does nothing to protect her or her daughter because there isn’t institutional support which can help her.

Yet Oates is also cognizant of the way violence is taught and bred into some men who enter the armed forces. Llewyn, Abby’s father, is a war veteran who is haunted by memories where “Maybe he’d shot (some of) the (Iraqi) enemy. So much confusion, he never knew… More than once it was kids they were shooting at, no more than thirteen years old. Moving targets. Just followed orders like everybody else, but even then sometimes he didn’t – not much.” Llewyn is someone trained to react violently against perceived enemies but he’s also prone to manipulating the story he tells himself to suit his own outcome.

The novel dramatically shows how these social teachings and repetitive ways of thinking can lead to calamity and psychological breakdown. In some of Oates’ recent fiction such as the novel HAZARDS OF TIME TRAVEL and the short story “Fractal” the author has exhibited dualities in her storylines. Entirely different narratives coexist and compete for the reader’s understanding of what is true. A similar strategy is taken in PURSUIT where the reader is hauntingly left to wonder whose reality we’re inhabiting. The world warps and the truth remains teasingly out of reach because the characters are so intent on reshaping their own stories. It’s chilling effective in its ability to disturb and leave the reader desperately searching for clues.

My Ten Favourite Books of the Past Decade

As we near the year 2020 there have been a lot of ‘best of the decade’ lists coming out and here’s another one! Many such lists seem top heavy with more recent titles. So I wanted to challenge myself to pick only one book from each year of the past decade and it has to have been published in that year. This naturally forced me to consider what books have meant the most to me in the long term and which continue to resonate for me personally long after reading them. You can also watch me discussing these books in this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kPlIpLHj7Q

It made me reflect on how we’ve lost a great talent this year with author Andrea Levy who died at a relatively young age. I felt a bit melancholy opening my copy of “The Long Song” and seeing her signature which she inscribed when I went to see the Booker shortlisted authors read in 2010. If she’d have won that year (rather than Howard Jacobson) she’d have been the first black woman to win the prize. So it’s a shame she didn’t live to see Bernardine Evaristo win this year’s Booker.

Julian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending” didn’t make much of an impression on me when I first read it but (now that I’m a bit older) rereading it made me realise just how its story is so poignant. Other favourite authors such as Joyce Carol Oates and Ali Smith have produced a number of books in the past decade, but the stories in “Lovely, Dark, Deep” and the novel “Artful” feel especially meaningful to me and show these brilliant writers at their most formally daring and innovative while still retaining emotional resonance. Maybe there’s something to be said for the length of a book deepening its impact because the novels “The Luminaries” and “Ducks, Newburyport” are both massive. They still vividly reside in my imagination and I’d gladly go back to reread their hundreds of pages.

Probably the most obscure book on my list is “The Parcel” which also stands as one of the most heart-breaking novels I’ve ever read. It challenges the reader to consider many difficult moral questions, but it also made me fall dearly in love with its characters. Choosing this list made me consider how it’s not always book prize winners who should be most noted, but the books which receive multiple prize nominations. “Mrs Engels” was listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Walter Scott Prize, the HWA Goldsboro Debut Crown, the Guardian First Book Award and the Green Carnation Prize (which I actually helped judge that year.) It sadly didn’t win any of these awards, but its inclusion by a wide range of judges certainly testifies to its quality. Finally, I was also reminded how there are accomplished and much-respected writers such as Colson Whitehead and Sarah Moss whose back catalogue of books I still need to explore.

Obviously I had to make some tough choices when limiting myself to a list of only ten books. Some years included many extraordinary new publications which I also loved such as “A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing”, “H is for Hawk”, “Lila”, “A Brief History of Seven Killings”, “Almost Famous Women”, “Under the Udala Trees”, “Dinosaurs on Other Planets”, “A Book of American Martyrs”, “Lincoln in the Bardo”, “Sight”, “The Years” and many many more. But the whole point of lists like this is to provoke discussion and get readers to chide me for making some obvious omissions while championing their favourites. So I’d love to hear in the comments below about some books from the past decade that you consider to be the greatest!

Underland by Robert Macfarlane

It can be so easy to get caught in the here and now of life when most of it consists of a routine path between home and work. I’ve certainly found that where day after day I take the same trains while passing by the same trees and buildings. After a while I barely notice them because I’m so fixated on looking at my phone or a book. But reading Robert Macfarlane’s “Underland” gives a radically new perspective on time and space as he describes his various journeys to subterranean landscapes. From ancient caves in England and Norway to the bottom of glaciers near Greenland to the subterranean chambers of London and Paris, Macfarlane explores terrain that few people have tread but which has always existed under our feet. In doing so he explores the concept of deep time where he can see the marks of many past centuries inscribed upon the rocks and ice hidden here. This is where resources are extracted from, bodies are buried, waste is disposed of and treasure is hidden. It’s also where scientists can detect changes to the environment and archaeologists can study the oldest traces from human history. Macfarlane recounts his experiences in these places, sympathetically describes the colourful individuals who guide him through them and meaningfully reflects on our hidden relationship to these subterranean regions.

It’s interesting how many people that he meets who either work, study or inhabit these spaces under the land have a strong sense of character. Many are devoted to a particular cause such as preserving the environment, snubbing the law to form a culture of undercity dwellers or mining resources for the good of society. It’s often just as interesting learning about his companions as it is about the underland spaces they’re exploring and Macfarlane shows what a deeply empathetic person he is in how he interacts with them and recounts their perspectives. One of the most compelling people he meets is a boisterous and fiercely independent fisherman named Bjornar who lives on a remote island in Norway. He’s the descendent of generations of such men and this deeply entwined relationship with the sea and landscape have given him a deep understanding of this environment far more meaningful than the oil companies scanning it for resources and the environmental impact of extracting them. I appreciate how Macfarlane gives voice to a plethora of points of view showing how battles over the land are such a complex social issue. However, the crisis of climate change is made absolute clear in the transforming landscapes he explores.

What elevates Macfarlane’s account above a standard travelogue is the beautifully poetic language he uses to evoke these varied subterranean spaces as well as his own state of being when passing through them. He also makes poignant connections referencing different poetry, novels and music so the book functions as a way to philosophically define our relationship to the natural world. But it never comes across as pretentious as he frequently feels humbled by what he finds. In fact, there are points where language is utterly defeated because it cannot describe what he’s seeing such as the glacial ice in Greenland: “Here was a region where matter drove language aside. Ice left language beached. The object refused its profile. Ice would not mean, nor would rock or light... a terrain that could not be communicated in human terms or forms.” This book gives a powerful sense of being humbled before the vast expanse of our world’s history and invites the reader to recall our part within it.

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

I’ve been curious to read Elizabeth Gaskell for some time and I have a geeky habit whenever reading a classic author for the first time to start with the first book they ever published and then read all of their books in the order that they appeared. Or, at least, that’s the aim. I’ve tried doing this with authors such as Iris Murdoch, George Orwell and Vladimir Nabokov and I’ve still not got around to reading some of their final novels or skipped ahead to read a novel I’m more interested in. In any case, there’s often an assumption that a writer’s first book will be weaker than their subsequent ones because they haven’t fully found their voice as an author yet. However, “Mary Barton” is so confidently and skilfully done. It’s a sympathetic portrait of working class families in Manchester and begins in 1839.

The central romance of the novel concerns heroine Mary’s torn affections between Jem, an honest hard-working labourer, and Harry Carson, a scheming wealthy mill owner’s son. A bungled proposal of marriage and a dramatic incident sends her on a perilous journey to save a man from being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Along the way, Mary has a heart-wrenching reunion with her aunt Esther who has become a street-walker. These characters are richly brought to life with dialogue filled with Mancunian speech (as well as Liverpudlian when the characters travel there.)

The main criticism I’ve seen made about this novel is that it’s a book of two halves. The first is concerned with detailing the plight of the working class including starvation, poor living/working conditions, alcoholism and appeals to reform labour laws which are rebuffed by the government. The second is more plot driven as it concerns the fallout of a violent crime performed as an act of protest against the gentry. I agree that the novel does have a different feel in these two parts yet they both work well. I also appreciated the switch to be more involved with story because in the first part it sometimes felt like the characters spoke too self-consciously about their struggles as a way for the author to make points about the working class. But on the whole I thought the characters were rendered sympathetically and realistically. The story also dramatically demonstrates the complex points of opposition between different classes. It’s poignantly done and I’m eager to read more of Gaskell’s fiction in the future.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor

The year 1993 was incredibly important for me personally as I was just becoming a teenager at that point and awkwardly figuring out my own identity. This is the year in which Andrea Lawlor’s wickedly funny and absorbing novel is set. Its story bears all the marks of that era with references to zines, mix tapes and an increasingly assertive queer population that enthusiastically formed tight-knit communities outside of mainstream heterosexual culture. So I felt a strong affinity toward Paul, the novel’s 23 year-old hero who is more interested in hooking up with a wide variety of people than completing his college degree. We follow his journey navigating urban life between seedy gay hotspots, lesbian communes and leather bars while having lots of sex with men and women along the way. It’s quickly revealed that Paul has a special ability to morph like a mythological figure and physically transform into a woman. This allows Paul to change his body and genitals to suit the desires of any man or woman whether they are gay or straight. In this way he gains intimate access to the bedrooms and communities of a whole spectrum of people in his quest to understand where he belongs. It’s an inventive way of memorializing the many-varied and radical subcultures of this time period as well as questioning the meaning of gender identity.

There’s a great tradition of queer literature which Lawlor’s book references including many poets and novelists who’ve dealt with LGBT and gender issues, especially Woolf’s “Orlando” – though Paul self-consciously defines how he differs from this figure. Some other excellent recent novels that include protagonists who criss-cross or blur the line between male and female are “The Night Brother” and “The Lauras”. Lawlor’s novel gives another refreshing perspective on how gender is a social construct. However, it’s not didactic in the way it deals with this subject matter as Paul is portrayed as an extremely flawed and oftentimes superficial individual. In his relentless quest to transform himself to fit in with whatever subset of people he’s trying to ingratiate himself with Paul discovers that every community has different guidelines in how its members are expected to dress and act in order to be admitted. For instance, he hilariously becomes painfully self-conscious about the way he chops vegetables while in a kitchen full of lesbians or gets treated with contempt for not being suitably attired in a bar full of leather men until he reveals at the piss trough what a sizeable member he possesses. I admired the way this novel shows the superficial reasons by which people judge whether an individual can be allowed into a community or alienated from it.

Paul is highly cognizant of how to transform himself because he too quickly casts judgements about everyone he meets based on their manner and attire. When he reveals his true nature to someone at one point he gets his heart broken, but he’s also prone to breaking hearts by discarding people soon after having sex with them. I felt his complicated nature made him very sympathetic as well as the real-world economic struggles of a young adult living from pay check to pay check. The novel records in detail Paul’s ever dwindling bank balance and his frequent struggles with money. Lawlor also interjects several self-contained fables into the narrative in a way which brilliantly reconfigures the moral conundrums of Paul’s story. All these aspects made me fall in love with this book which encapsulates the way we function as social and sexual organisms. It’s bold how frankly Lawlor presents bodies in a wide variety of combinations and how these individuals constantly yearn to both satiate their desires and be desired themselves.

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

I’ve been meaning to begin reading Anne Carson’s poetry for some time. Multiple people recommended I start with “Autobiography of Red” and I’m so glad I read this incredibly inventive book! Carson translated the existing fragments of a poem about a red winged monster with a human face named Geryon which was written by the Greek lyric poet Stesichorus’ who lived from 630-555 BC. In the opening sections Carson imaginatively discusses Stesichorus’ life and the legend of his being rendered blind for insulting Helen of Troy. Carson has said she found it difficult to satisfactorily translate his writing successfully so she’s taken the liberty of imaginatively filling out the story of Geryon’s life in this epic narrative poem which reads more like a novella. It takes elements from Geryon’s story but inserts them into a blend of the modern and mythic following his relationship with his mother, sexual abuse by his brother and his romantic entanglements with a man named Herakles (in the myth Heracles kills Geryon by shooting him with an arrow.) It’s stunning how she captures the sensations of Geryon’s life and his unique perspective: his feelings of alienation, artistic aspirations and sexual yearnings. And it’s so beautifully written with many complex lines and metaphors that made me pause and think.

Carson sympathetically portrays Geryon’s gradual awareness of his otherness as he gets older. There the obvious differences in how he appears as his body is red and he possesses wings which he learns to conceal. But he also perceives the world in a different way and at some points Carson describes his synaesthesia so that he can hear “noise that colors make. Roses came roaring across the garden at him.” So Geryon becomes aware that he’s an outsider who can never fully integrate with the people around him or have a traditional relationship with Herakles. He’s a part of society but outside of it and learns he can’t live without it: “There is no person without a world.” Yet there’s a tremendous wellspring of emotion within him which is symbolised by a pilgrimage he and Herakles take to a volcano. He also takes up photography as if becoming an observer and recorder can emotionally remove him from reality.

This is book filled with so many profound and beautifully-made observations I’m sure I’ll return to it again and again.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder)

On its surface “The Memory Police” feels like a typical dystopian novel about an oppressive military force. The narrator lives on an island where certain objects such as roses and music boxes totally disappear. Not only do these things vanish overnight but so do people’s memories of them. Anyone possessing or even recalling these things after they’ve been outlawed disappear themselves through the enforcement of an impersonal group known as the memory police. This leads people (such as the narrator’s mother who is taken away) to conceal objects which were supposed to disappear and people who remember outlawed things go into hiding. Events such as the systematic burning and destruction of outlawed objects have obvious parallels with historic fascist regimes. While it portrays this nightmarish world in a moving way, Yoko Ogawa’s novel isn’t as concerned with the mechanics of totalitarianism as it is with the philosophical mysteries of the human heart as well as the meaning and function of memory.

The narrator is a novelist and over the course of the book we also get snippets of a story she’s writing about a typist and her instructor. As the novel progresses the parallels between the narrator’s world and the typist’s world become surreally aligned as they seem to reflect her internal reality. While I found the sections of the narrator’s novel-in-progress somewhat intrusive at first they take on an increasing power as her reality grows increasingly bleak and restricted. The interplay between these stories is given a further complexity in how the narrator’s editor (only referred to as R) goes into hiding and tries to coax the narrator into remembering what’s been lost in the disappearances. It’s so interesting how this shows the complex process of memorialisation and prompts the reader to question things like: what’s vital to remember and what’s better to forget? How much do we imaginatively insert false memories into the truth of what occurred in the past? To what degree is our memorialization of certain things or people about our own ego rather than honouring what’s been lost?

From reading Ogawa’s previous novel “The Housekeeper and the Professor” it’s clear these complex issues about memory are ones which doggedly preoccupy the author. I admire how she explores them in surprisingly subtle ways and from different angles in her brilliantly unique novels. She also has an interesting way of approaching the parallel issue of romance – both romance between people and our romantic relationship with our own pasts. In “The Memory Police” there’s a lot of discussion about the heart and how “A heart has no shape, no limits. That’s why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why it can hold so much. It’s much like your memory, in that sense.” When things disappear it’s described as leaving holes in the hearts of people who can’t remember them and, because their absence forms these “new cavities”, it drives people to destroy any remaining physical trace of the thing. It’s like destroying sentimental letters, photographs or mementos when a relationship ends or a person dies – as if that can cancel out our feelings of bereavement.

The narrator’s mother is a sculptor: “My mother had loved to sculpt tapirs, even though she had never seen one in real life.”

In contrast to the resistant attitude of the editor R, the narrator also has a long-time friend and supporter in a figure only referred to as the “old man”. Although he assists the narrator in hiding the editor and rescuing disappeared goods, he has a more apathetic attitude about the worrying frequency with which things vanish. He states: “The disappearances are beyond our control. They have nothing to do with us. We’re all going to die anyway, someday, so what’s the differences? We simply have to leave things to fate.” Paired with the disappearances of memories is an inertia and lack of resistance from most of the general population who simply comply. This echoes many examples from history where people are unwilling to defend their values, way of life and the lives of others when threatened by a perceived authority. I’m sympathetic to this dilemma and it’s a complex subject. I admire the way this excellent novel wrestles with these issues that we all face both as individuals and citizens of our communities.