Ghosted by Jenn Ashworth

There may not be any actual ghosts in Jenn Ashworth's novel “Ghosted” but there are many different kinds of ghosting. The story begins when Laurie's husband Mark vanishes and she fears that he might have simply walked out of their relationship or “ghosted” her. But, alongside the complexity of this fading marriage, the narrative explores in many different ways the tension between presence and absence. There's the question of lineage, the condition of dementia, the loss of a child, the textures and patterns physically left in a house from previous inhabitants, the people who perform labour for us that we never see, the mystery of a murdered local girl, a medium who claims she converses with spirits and an awareness of a looming environmental disaster. The author meaningfully explores the lines between what's known and what's imagined and what we project into reality in order to make sense of or embellish it. 

We follow Laurie's point of view in the weeks and months following Mark's disappearance so alongside deeper ideas there's also a tantalizing question about how much we can trust her perspective. She takes a suspiciously long time to report that Mark is missing and easily lies to those closest to him pretending that he's still there. She has a fascination with crime dramas and the reader wonders if she's a fantasist that's had something to do with Mark's disappearance. This makes for a mesmerising tale as well as a subtly moving one. Scenes of domestic drama are shown with refreshingly realistic details which give a sense of how emotional and sexual interactions can be infused with unresolved anger and grief. The language evocatively reflects a Northern English dialect and a point of view not often depicted in fiction. This is richly-involving, multilayered, excellent storytelling.

Learwife by JR Thorp

How many people have watched Shakespeare's tragedy 'King Lear' and wondered 'But... what happened to Lear's wife?' This is a question author JR Thorp embraced as the subject of her debut novel which follows the perspective of Lear's exiled queen in the time immediately following the end of the play when the insane king and all three of their daughters have died. She's resided in a remote abbey for the past fifteen years where she explains “The abbey is the prison Lear made for me, the bridle so carefully constructed for my face. Forcing down my tongue.” Here she finally gets her say as she desires to depart to finally re-enter the world and the kingdom she's been banished from. We gradually understand the story of her life through fragmented memories and interactions with the nuns, but her thought-process is never straightforward as “in me the past and future are eliding, coiling together, thicker than umbilical cord, made of the selfsame substance”. Her perspective contains both poetic ambiguity and searing precision as her intense and justified bitterness is palpable. The author has created a brilliantly-calibrated voice that gives many insights and keeps the reader wondering whether she herself is mad or if circumstances have driven her to insanity or if she is carefully scheming as she cannily asserts “I have always been the kind to turn brutal luck to a better chance. I lie, and plan.” 

This is a narrative worth taking time with as the reader gradually becomes tangled in her thorny meditations. There's a delicious tension to the mental sparring she conducts with the nuns surrounding her who she is cooped up with because the abbey is under quarantine amidst a plague. She gets little compassion from these physical figures as she hilariously explains: “Who would speak to nuns of emotions? Better argue a point on politics with a piece of wood.” However, the nuns are also competing for her favour as a new abbess must be chosen and the narrator has been endowed with the duty of making this decision. Here we see on a more micro level the power at play within any organization and the politics involved which the queen formerly experienced on a grander scale when she lived at court. Through her memories we understand the way she's learned to wield power and rule, but also the way women were constrained by the sexist attitudes of this medieval time. I especially appreciated the way she wryly comments upon biblical stories such as the tale of Lazarus where his wife was forced to readjust to having her raised-from-the-dead husband there again: “perhaps she had become used to sleeping in the thin bed alone... Have you ever shared a bed with a man? It is sweet perhaps for a while but they sweat and stink out all their sins in their sleep.” 

We also see the way the past intrudes upon her present. Perhaps it's her new responsibility and the knowledge of her family's passing which instigate the feverish psychological battles she wages with the ghosts of the past. This is compelling but a difficulty with this novel's plot is that there isn't a great deal of action in the story. The physical drama has already unfolded in Shakespeare's play so that what we're mostly left with is her ruminations. Figuring out the mystery of what happened in her life and the key to her identity (her true name is teasingly withheld throughout the narrative) is highly intriguing however there's not a tremendous amount which actually happens in the story. This novel is more about her melancholy, barely-suppressed anger and the way her intelligence has been underestimated by patriarchal incompetence. Her assertive voice is mesmerising especially when she casts out sinister statements such as “Lear, I will die better than you. My God can do what yours cannot.” There's a dour satisfaction in following this survivor's voice and her steely determination to dominate over the spectres of her past – even if it precipitates her own destruction. 

The Fell by Sarah Moss

How can writers capture the feeling and repercussions of the pandemic in their fiction? As early as May 2020 an anthology called “Tools for Extinction” came out which included work from writers around the world responding to the ongoing crisis and Ali Smith's “Summer” included the pandemic as part of its storyline. It's curious to see how such recent events are embedded in a past which is now being fictionalised – especially as there's the possibility we could return to a state of lockdown and quarantine at any time. Although we usually go through our lives with little sense that we're living through history most people understand that these extraordinary times have significantly and permanently altered the world. Having so many people isolated in their homes has led to enormous emotional, financial and physical consequences. It's often remarked that writers need a sufficient distance from events to fully encapsulate their larger meaning in literature, but that depends on the strategy the author takes. 

In her new novel Sarah Moss' tactic is to embody the immediate thoughts and actions of four different characters in a village. “The Fell” is set in November 2020 during the second national lockdown in England when residents were ordered not to leave their homes. Kate is a single mother who recently lost her job at a cafe because of the pandemic and now worries about how she'll pay her bills. Although she knows she's breaking the rules, Kate leaves her adolescent son Matt at home to go for a solitary stroll across the countryside. She does this despite the threat of government fines and citizens being encouraged to inform upon any neighbours who break the rules. It says something about her state of mind and the pressure she's under that her feet seem to lead her outside and that she doesn't return even when it's getting dark and she knows the sensible thing would be to turn back. Though the risk is small, the stakes are high. And this is the dilemma we've all faced over the past two years when for many people it's more a question of personal responsibility than any outside pressure to follow the rules.

Things go badly wrong for Kate and it changes what's only been a theoretical crisis into a real crisis. The narrative revolves between the perspectives of Kate, Matt, their older neighbour Alice who is shielding at home and rescue worker Rob. It movingly follows the mental process many of us have gone through when confined at home with all the attendant fear, boredom, frustration and self-pity as well as feelings of guilt for reacting like this when we reason that there are other people who are suffering in more severe ways than we are. Moss captures the sense of stasis and how “A person can doubtless live like this indefinitely, the background murmur of dread only a little louder week by week, month by month”. Following these characters' mental states we get a sense of the building crisis as what was formerly abnormal becomes normalised. As they experience an extremely difficult predicament they are forced to consider their own resiliency and ability to cope under these circumstances. In particular, I was entranced by the way Kate is driven to a state of such crisis that she experiences a semi-hallucinatory encounter with a raven that's like a spectre from a Shakespearean tragedy.

There is so much in this novel which feels relatable and there's a solace in reading about characters who have felt many of the same emotions I have during this time. Alice feels inspired to bake batches of cookies, but since she lives alone the dilemma is there is nothing to do with all these cookies but eat them all herself. She also takes a strange comfort in watching rollerskating tutorials from California on her computer. However, Matt reaches a point where he feels like he's seen everything he's interested in online and nothing is being updated anymore. It becomes even more evident that the internet is a receptacle through which people voyeuristically experience the world and it becomes many people's only touchstone to the outside – including awkward video call chats with family members while eating a meal. Everything becomes glazed with a sense of the unreal: “because your mind and memory can't get much purchase on pixels on a screen, because nothing feels real any more.” Moss encapsulates the texture of recent times in this novel while also contemplating the way we handle facing our own mortality and negotiate the risks that we feel are worth taking in life. It's an innovative and effective approach to representing what we've all just lived through.

All the Young Men by Ruth Coker Burks

Recently I went to see a good new production of 'The Normal Heart' at The National Theatre and it reminded me that I meant to read this recent memoir. In the mid-80s Ruth Coker Burks was visiting a friend in an Arkansas hospital when she noticed a nearby patient's door was painted red and the nurses were arguing about who had to go in to tend to the patient. Feeling concerned for whoever was inside, she entered herself and found a man dying of an AIDS-related illness. Rather than succumb to fear as many people did at that time (and especially in that highly-religious, predominantly-conservative part of the country) she was overwhelmed by human sympathy for a man in pain and alone in the last hours of his life. From there she started caring for other young men suffering and dying from the same affliction. 

As her involvement grew, she not only assisted them at the end of their lives and help to put their remains to rest (when some literally abandoned these men's corpses) but she also became an activist trying to source medication, spread awareness, distribute food and sexual protection amongst the gay community and create political change. Her intense dedication to this cause is in some ways astounding because she was a single working mother who was also Christian and heterosexual. By associating with and helping these reviled men she and her daughter were ostracised themselves. But, at the same time, she saw her involvement as the only possible response to help people who were clearly suffering. I admire how she refused to compromise her sense of caring for those in need even when she felt the same fears those around her were experiencing because there was so little understanding at the time what AIDS was or how it is spread. We follow not only her story getting involved in this cause but learn about the many individuals she befriended and lost because of AIDS because these men were never just a number or statistic to her.

Naturally, given the subject matter, there is a lot of heartache and sorrow in this book. But there is also a lot of humour, joy and love as well which is largely driven by Burks' effervescent personality. It's shocking reading about the hatred of certain people who confront her and object to what she's doing, but it's also funny reading her witty responses and bitchy asides about these people. For instance, when a woman is absolutely horrible she remarks how this lady's camel hair coat was expensive at one point but that time had past. Equally, since she worked for a long time selling time shares, it's very funny reading about the clever psychological strategies she employed to get people to sign up. This soft approach also served her well in trying to rally support for the cause she fought for. What comes across in all her interactions with people is a real empathy in trying to understand their position and form a real connection. Although she encountered a lot of blatant hatred and hypocrisy, she also met people who were surprisingly sympathetic and there are beautiful moments of small kindness. There are also many dynamic personalities in the gay community who shine through these pages though the men themselves died long ago.

I'm so filled with admiration for Burks that it doesn't feel appropriate to critique this book's writing style or construction in the way I might other books. The subject matter and people it describes are so engaging and interesting that I was completely drawn into her story and the plight of the individuals caught in this tragic time of history. It's impressive that Burks refused to turn away when some men in the gay community itself preferred to pretend it wasn't happening even while their own friends and lovers were dying around them. I also really appreciated how this account shows a different part of the country since most stories about AIDS in the 80s centre around NYC or San Francisco. This memoir is not only a beautiful memorial to the many lives lost, but also the perseverance of individuals dedicated to doing what's right rather than what's easy.

Dinner Party by Sarah Gilmartin

Family get-togethers are inherently dramatic as they are often accompanied by so much expectation, pent-up emotions and long-held grievances. They often start out with the best intentions but can spiral out of control into feuds. There's an intense familiarity yet often family members can feel like strangers to each other. This is something Sarah Gilmartin understands well as her debut novel begins and ends with a dinner to mark the anniversary of a death in the family. In between these dinners we learn about the history of the Gleesons, a contemporary Irish family of farmers with two sons and twin daughters. The story focuses on daughter Kate as she struggles to reconcile with family tragedies, emotionally connect with the family members who remain and progress forward in her own life. It's an engaging story with many moments of high tension and heartache because it's clear that these people care deeply about each other but also drive each other crazy. 

The routines of family life: games of charade and cards can explode into warfare especially as the matriarch has an emotionally volatile sensibility where suddenly hellfire is released into the living room. She's domineering, highly critical and very concerned about how the family appears to the rest of the community. There's an inherent comedy in the fact that Kate frequently zones out or tries to keep reading a book as the mother is speaking to her and thinks about other things only to realise she's expected to respond and must quickly piece together what was being talked about. Yet, she's also a bridge-builder in the family trying to stop arguments before something is said which will be regretted. At the same time she harbours her own secrets and perilously avoids discussing emotions which are constraining her potential. Ominously, she counts how many bites of food she eats and we see her lack of control manifests into a longstanding eating disorder. She also has an affair with a married man which doesn't give her the emotional satisfaction or security she needs. This leads to another memorably disastrous dinner with her lover where she gets horrifically drunk. This scene is so cleverly written because we understand just how messy things become from the reactions of people around her.

I felt like I grew to know each family member intimately by the end of the book and understand their point of view. Gilmartin skilfully conjures the physicality of her characters while showing their bond to each other with lines such as “He had a similar skin to herself, the kind that flashed up feelings to the world.” At the same time there are many sharp observations which speak more widely to the psychological and social effects of significant events. Though death is a much-discussed and ritualized occurrence in Ireland it's also like a marker which taints the surviving family members: “Death depressed people, and it changed their opinion of you.” The mother vigorously engages in gossip about local people who've died or experience serious illness, but when it occurs within her own family it puts her in an unbearable position within the community. Gilmartin shows how this sense of status and self-image don't matter at all in one sense but in another matter a great deal. The tension of this is movingly played out to show how the bonds of family can both strengthen and destroy us.

The Booker Prize 2021 Winner

I've been following the Booker Prize even more closely than usual this year reading all 13 novels on the longlist. Despite issues creeping up regarding the prize (see my rant video) I still appreciate how this book award highlights some of the best novels of the year. Some of my personal favourites include “Klara and the Sun”, “Bewilderment”, “Great Circle” and “China Room”. This year's finale was held in person but it was a much smaller affair than usual and broadcast online so if you want to watch the entire award ceremony with me in my library I filmed a reaction video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9r4WhDfayg Towards the end of the video I also asked Galgut some questions immediately after his win.

From the moment I finished reading “The Promise” by Damon Galgut I knew this is a very special novel. I filmed a video trying to articulate my feelings and reaction to it, but there is so much to say about this book that I feel there will continue to be debate and discussion surrounding it for many years to come. There's a haunting quality to it which has stuck with me long after having read the book. The characters that loom large in my memory aren't so much the main protagonists of the family we follow, but the voices which are absent. It's extraordinary how Salome who is denied receiving ownership of the home which is promised to her year after year continues to be such a strong presence though we only see her in the background of each section.

Equally, the youngest child of the family Amor who is a kind of moral compass of the story takes such a strong role in the novel. As the years go by she has a better understanding of how both her family and the country are poisoned by racism and this is something she is unable to change. As a consequence she retreats from both while also retreating from the narrative itself. We get few details of her life and though I wanted to know more about Salome and Amor's stories I understood why we're denied them. The reader is trapped in the racist mentality of this family which is slowly dying off as we follow funeral after funeral. We can't escape this point of view anymore than the family members themselves and I think Galgut is saying how these pernicious attitudes can't simply be shaken off no matter how much politics and society progress. It's a bold statement and an emotionally impactful way of conveying this message using an entirely unique style of narrative.

So I'm very happy with the result of this year's prize though my favourite novel from the group “Bewilderment” didn't win. But, for me, this book award isn't about winners or losers. It's about encouraging discussion, closer reading and taking another look at books we might initially dismiss. The award has definitely done that this year and I'm grateful for everyone who has engaged in discussions with me about the books. What do you think about the winner? Have you read it or are you eager to read it now? Did you have a favourite you were hoping would win? Let's keep the conversation going.

Tenderness by Alison MacLeod

It's strange knowing the novel “Lady Chatterley's Lover” was subjected to obscenity trials in 1960 and became the focus of heated public debate. The language and subject matter used in this book is hardly considered shocking today which is probably part of the reason why D. H. Lawrence isn't a particularly fashionable or widely-read author anymore - that and the fact the book contains weirdly paranoid anti-Semitic and homophobic ideas expressed by the character of Mellors. Some people would probably argue that looking down on this novel originally published in 1928 for its outdated attitudes is censorship of a different kind but to me it feels like common sense to rigorously critique any book that makes such statements. Yet, the furore surrounding Lawrence's final novel in 1960 is even more bizarre than it first appears when you know what a special interest the FBI took in the trials. This stirred author Alison MacLeod's imagination as well and inspired her to write the novel “Tenderness” - the title which Lawrence originally contemplated calling what became “Lady Chatterley's Lover”. 

I love novels such as “Arctic Summer” by Damon Galgut and “The Master” by Colm Toibin which reimagine the lives of authors and consider how their writing was produced alongside events they experienced. It's irresistible to wonder about the personality behind a great book with all the intense passion and dedication which must have gone into writing it. MacLeod adds another dimension to this in her novel by inserting some lines by Lawrence within her story about his journey and the fate of his novel to show the interplay between life and text. The novel begins with the final part of Lawrence's life when he was suffering from tuberculosis, bickering with his wife Frieda and living in voluntary exile on the continent. It then moves onto the events surrounding the trials which take place 30 years after Lawrence's death including a FBI special agent who trails after Jackie Kennedy. He photographs the soon-to-be First Lady at a hearing for “Lady Chatterley's Lover”. We delve into Jackie's perspective and follow a young female literature student whose family was satirised in a short story by Lawrence. Amidst this, the novel frequently flashes back to moments in Lawrence's earlier life, his financial/artistic/romantic struggles and his interaction with other literary figures including E. M. Forester and Katherine Mansfield. The novel also includes a short sequel to “Lady Chatterley's Lover” imagining what events might have followed after the end of Lawrence's story.

So there is a lot going on in MacLeod's ambitious novel and it skilfully utilizes its 600 pages to fully integrate all these elements into a coherent and bewitchingly epic story. It's engaging and insightful how it does so with many tantalizing moments of conflict and camaraderie. The question of the morality of “Lady Chatterley's Lover” is swept up into the Cold War politics of the time and attempts made to derail John F. Kennedy's election. Novelist and literary critic Rebecca West emerges as a force to be reckoned with playing and informing on different sides to accumulate power and push her own agenda. There are delicious moments of discussion between Jackie and critic Lionel Trilling about the novel's meaning and importance. Though tempestuous Lawrence sharply critiques and fights with E. M. Forester, it speaks highly of Forester's character that he still expresses admiration for Lawrence's work rather than backbiting. All these elements mix together to say something much bigger about the importance of literature and how it tangibly integrates into our lives and culture. Great books are a reflection of the present moment but they also move us forward by enhancing our sensibilities. “Tenderness” expresses this while telling a complex and riveting story of its own.

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

Some literary writers create a character who they continuously return to in a series of books and (because that character is an author) seem to be an obvious foil for the writer themselves. “Oh William!” is the third book in a series after “My Name is Lucy Barton” and “Anything is Possible”. I'm not trying to suggest Lucy is directly based on Strout's own personality and past – I think it's more that she's become a way for the author to chart feelings of what ageing and experience do to a person over time. Since it's been five years since we readers were first introduced to Lucy we're also older and more experienced (if we've been following her story since the beginning). In this new novel Lucy becomes an even more more dynamic and rounded character as we learn more about her history, her point of view and her continuing quest to understand her position in the world. 

This book picks up with Lucy later in her life after the death of her beloved second husband. When her first husband William discovers he has a half-sister Lois whom he's never met he invites Lucy to join him on a journey to Maine where Lois lives and where his mother Catherine had an early first marriage which she ran away from. It's a road trip novel, but it's also about the complex evolution of Lucy's relationship with William over time. This isn't about will they or won't they get back together. It's more about the meaning they have in each other's lives and how the people who know us the best can both support and stultify us. In some ways, it's also about the contrast between Lucy and her mother-in-law Catherine's lives. Both women came from very impoverished families but grew to succeed and inhabit respectable positions in the world yet they inhabit adulthood with very different levels of confidence.

Strout is a master at describing great subtlety of feeling using language and a style of writing that's very approachable and enjoyable to read. A large part of the pleasure of this book derives from having read the first two novels so I'm not sure I'd recommend reading this new book without having read the previous books. However, for me, it's a joy returning to Lucy's voice and disconcertingly existential point of view. She describes how “I have always thought that if there was a big corkboard and on that board was a pin for every person who ever lived, there would be no pin for me. I feel invisible, is what I mean.” Yet her understanding and sense of self grows over the course of this story and ultimately leads her to admit “I am not invisible no matter how deeply I feel that I am.” William sometimes has an abrasive demeanour and this journey reminds her of that and why they separated, but they also share a history and a heightened sense of intimacy. For instance, they still use pet names with each other. It's these interactions and the sense of a longstanding bond with William, her daughters and others which cement her place in the world rather than the accomplishments which come from being a successful author.

This is also a story about the process of memory. Although Lucy is sincere and open we're made to wonder if her memories are entirely true when she makes statements such as “It is easy to recall this now, but in my memory it is true.” There are emotionally painful subjects she often prefers to avoid and self consciously states she doesn't want to talk about or discuss anymore since they were already covered in the first two books by Strout (and the memoirs Barton has written within the story.) But there are moments and experiences she naturally circles back to as they were pivotal aspects of her life which have influenced and haunt her. These can be small details such as Catherine's tangerine coloured couch which takes such a presence in her recollections of her mother-in-law. Or she alights upon striking metaphors for encapsulating more universal experiences of the past. I love how she describes the feeling of “the curtain of childhood” around her when recalling the terror and frustrations of youth. This so accurately captures that feeling of being shrouded in naivety when we're young.

However, despite there being many poignant moments and this being such a pleasurable book to read I don't think it's Strout's best. The story itself is quite meandering and leisurely so it doesn't feel as focused as the previous novels. This is partly due to the style of narrative where we so closely follow Lucy's thought process and reasoning. Some sections end too wistfully with lines such as “But who ever really knows the experience of another?” Nevertheless, I personally enjoyed the experience of reading this book so much because it felt tremendously comforting and contains some poignant reflections. There are also points of reference and in-jokes about the experience of being in Maine such as the fact Mainers eat their meals so early which makes Lucy wonder: “When does anybody in this state eat?” But primarily I appreciate the thoughtful distinction this story makes between inhabiting somewhere and feeling like you belong. I know it will be enjoyable to go back to the previous two books and read this series in order to pick up on more clues and follow Lucy's gradual transformation. So, while this new novel might not be among the best books I've read this year, it is one of the most pleasing.

The Ruins of Contracoeur by Joyce Carol Oates

At this time of year I do enjoy dipping into some dark tales of gothic mystery and sinister horror. Recent collections of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates that fall into this tradition include “Night Gaunts” and “The Doll-Master”. The six stories which are included in “The Ruins of Contracoeur” also encompass these elements, but as they are written by Oates they include many deeper themes such as challenging family dynamics, the resilience of girls, economic division in society and the heartbreak of grief. The line between the living and the dead becomes blurred as we follow the thoughts and actions of individuals who've been wronged or wronged others. While some seek vigilante justice, there's not always a clear moral compass used by the complicated personalities which inhabit these stories. These prose are teeming with emotion, they create an atmosphere of unease in the reader's imagination and a feeling of suspense with each page that is turned. 

The story 'Mr Stickum' is predominantly narrated in the collective voice of a group of teenage girls who carry out deadly revenge upon predatory men. In 'The Cold' we find ourselves disconcertingly aligned with the mind of a grief stricken woman whose experience becomes increasingly hallucinatory. With the story 'Monstersister' we experience an alarming sensation of body horror but we're also left with a melancholy sense of what it'd be like if a distorted version of ourselves were to take our place within our own family. The story 'Commencement' may feel like it's set in the most civilized environment imaginable but it's conclusion is so shocking and barbaric you won't believe what you're reading. 'The Redwoods' is one of the most original ghost stories I've read and the title story 'The Ruins of Contracoeur' builds an environment so menacing I felt terrified for the children trapped in this dilapidated family estate. It also took me back to the territory of Oates' brilliant and wildly imaginative sequence of gothic novels. I found these stories thrilling, complex and haunting.

I hosted the launch for this collection and you can watch Lisa Tuttle, award winning author of science fiction, fantasy and horror in conversation with Oates here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJfglF6Xyp8

Sterling Karat Gold by Isabel Waidner

Isabel Waidner has invented such a unique style of writing that's a mixture of social commentary, wildly creative imagery and buddy humour. I feel like Waidner is a modern-day Joe Orton. “Sterling Karat Gold” is a play on Kafka's “The Trial” in which an innocent character named Sterling is arrested after unwittingly being drawn into a bull fight in London's Camden Town. Sterling faces prosecution by a corrupt judge, enlists the help of friends, grapples with their lost father, stages a radical theatre production and uses space ships to cross time barriers. If this sounds too fanciful let me assure you that these stretches of the imagination always feel rooted in real-world issues and reflect the feeling of being marginalized within oppressive systems. As a character named Chachki states at one point: “correcting falsified narratives is important; but conjuring counter-realities even more so.” The bizarre quest which Sterling embarks on has the effect of liberating these characters and the reader from the restrictions and limitations we are forced to live under by plotting out new possibilities. It's also fantastic fun to read and gives a warm sense of camaraderie. 

The novel begins with Sterling stating that they lost their father to AIDS. It's gradually revealed that in his football career he had an affair with Justin Fashanu who was and still remains the only major English footballer to come out as gay. He later committed suicide. In the narrative, Fashanu becomes a kind of imaginary step father to Sterling. As in Waidner's earlier novel “We Are Made of Diamond Stuff” the referencing of real-life historical figures serves as a cultural reference point for individuals who broke through the static of the mainstream narrative to make their voices heard, but were ultimately strangled by society's restrictive perceptions about their identity. In addition to considering this history, Waidner's novel is also a powerful contemplation of the absurdity of the world today reflecting the feeling that “we were non-consensual participants in a reality put together by politicians, despots, more or less openly authoritarian leaders.” This leads to dangerous disillusionment and resignation because of the sense that “we're alive in a substandard fiction that doesn't add up.” Through this visionary new fiction Waidner shows how we don't need to settle and conform to the reality we've been offered but can boldly make our presence known and reform the mainstream narrative.

Manifesto by Bernardine Evaristo

It was such a thrill to be at the award ceremony on the historic night of Bernardine Evaristo's Booker Prize win for her novel “Girl, Woman, Other”. At the time I was a great admirer of the book and was aware of her reputation, but I had no idea how many years of hard graft and dedication the author had devoted to reaching this point. Now, reading her memoir “Manifesto”, I also have such an admiration for this creative individual who has fused her experience and imagination to produce a body of literary works which artistically reflect the breadth of our culture and celebrate individuality in all its wondrous forms.

In concise sections Evaristo lays out how she got to this point by describing her diverse family background, the places she's lived, the relationships she's had, the community and politics she's engaged in, the development of her distinct form of fiction, the writers and figures who've inspired her and the ambition to persist as a creative person. She describes her experience with such charm, wit and wisdom it's extremely enjoyable to read. Evaristo wholly embraced the platform which winning the Booker Prize gave her and I've been in awe seeing how busy she has been chairing this year's Women's Prize, speaking on panels, providing endorsements for books and curating the 'Black Britain, Writing Back' series which included the excellent novel “Bernard and the Cloth Monkey” which I read earlier this year. This memoir is subtitled 'On Never Giving Up' and the book is really a wonderful testament to how the creative individual must persist and express themselves no matter what hardships are encountered. 

While Evaristo poignantly describes her fluid sexuality engaging in affairs with men and women, one of the most arresting things about her story is learning about the abusive relationship or “torture affair” she had with a woman she calls “The Mental Dominatrix”. Here she found herself in a dynamic where she was mentally and physically abused in a way which sapped her creativity and spirit. Not only does this testify to how we can become trapped in such a destructive dynamic, but it sheds new light on the section of “Girl, Woman, Other” concerning the character of Dominique who was in a very similar situation. Knowing now that Evaristo was writing from experience makes this part of her novel all the more heartrending.

I also greatly appreciated her many pithy observations about how aspects such as gender, race, nationality as well as sexuality all play a part in who we are and how we exist in society but don't define us. In an ideal world these things wouldn't even need to be defined but because of the various imbalances and prejudices which persist they still play an important role. For instance, she describes how “Men and women live in the same world, but we experience it so differently.” It means that fiction and art play such an important role in expanding our point of view to really see how other people see the world. I admire the dedicated way which Evaristo has persisted in doing so over her life no matter the peaks and pitfalls of her profession as a writer and how she will continue to reflect the world back at us in exciting new ways.

Little Scratch by Rebecca Watson

Authors have used innumerable methods and styles of writing to describe the physical and mental experience of everyday life in fiction, but Rebecca Watson has developed a technique which feels wholly unique. “Little Scratch” is the story of a day in the life of an unnamed young woman in London from the moment she wakes up to the moment she goes to sleep. The text is spaced across the page in a way which captures the repetition of the character's actions or how she might be thinking one thing while doing something else or how she might be surprised by a physical sensation like hot water. In this way we get a feel for the overlapping/simultaneous thoughts and sensory experiences she has throughout the day which at first appears to be an ordinary day like any other, but gradually it's revealed that she's really struggling to deal with a traumatic event. Encountering text which deviates so radically from the uniform paragraphs we're accustomed to might feel gimmicky or alienating at first, but it soon felt totally natural to me as I got into the rhythm of writing. It's also highly relatable because it captures something true about how we judder throughout our days getting lost in distractions or small obsessions or the tedium of office life or how we avoid thinking directly about things which seem insurmountably difficult. Watson creatively shows this to be both comic and tragic. 

Reading this book I became newly attuned to the way consciousness works. Within the process of thought we can get caught up in trivialities and possibilities which won't ever happen. I became aware how the imagination takes such a presence within our minds that we can playfully distort reality or build fictional narratives about the world around us to suit our desires. Watson demonstrates this in an early scene where the narrator observes someone with a small dog that looks like a bear and suddenly starts conjuring fantastical scenarios around it. She also shows how our laziness can become justified by thinking ourselves out of a situation. For instance, when she throws the remainder of an apricot away and misses the bin she goes on an elaborate train of thought about how it's the gesture to get it into the bin which really counts and how if she's questioned about the litter she'll refuse to accept any accountability. Obviously, it'd be much easier to just pick up the apricot and throw it away properly but it felt realistic how she avoids doing what's clearly sensible. The same proves to be true for larger issues in her life and this is conveyed in a poignant way. While the novel is mostly funny at first it slowly reveals the more serious issues she's avoiding and this is encapsulated at one point with the devastating line: “Is silence lying?”

The narrator is also a writer who frequently thinks about the book she wants to write or ways she can get into the literary scene rather than actually writing. Again, this feels highly relatable and though it can seem like a cliché to write a novel about the experience of wanting to be a writer, Watson addresses this in the text as well when reading a review about a book heavily based on an author's own life: “before having read the book, and despite liking autofiction! liking blurred memoir! still thinking, oh stop, stop with the talk about yourself, make something up, anything, anything, escape from yourself, just give me someone else's sincerity apart from your own, not your own!, trauma borrowed from yourself reads sore, feel it in me too much, no distance right now, need distance”. It seems almost contradictory that we often want authors to write what's true and important to them but also to use their imaginations to take us somewhere far from the author's own experience. It's interesting how she conveys this sense while also knowing that she doesn't want to confront the terrible thing that has shaken up her life.

Though I read this novel in its physical form I also listened to it as an audio book. When reading the physical book it's interesting to see all the gaps on the page and the way the text is creatively laid out, but it was also a unique experience hearing how this is conveyed in the audio book. Of course, pauses are used to dramatic effect but in some sections the overlapping text will be read simultaneously so you get a strong sense of how the narrator is thinking one thing while doing another. Sometimes books which use such a unique format feel like they are just being wilfully different, but this novel departs from a conventional narrative form in a way which is truly meaningful. It gets at the truth of experience to an almost uncomfortable degree. I found it highly relatable how she gets annoyed at someone on public transport because she can't read the title of the book they're reading, but I also got irritated with the narrator for being so consumed with such trivialities. However, I realise that what I'm really irritated with is myself because my mind is so often consumed with similarly petty or silly things. This novel has a disarming effect and I admire how it creatively presents experience in a way which feels truly novel.

Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett

We're accustomed to reading coming of age stories that attempt to faithfully reproduce the experience of growing up and the transition into adulthood, but “Checkout 19” by Claire-Louise Bennett takes a radical new approach. The narrative is an account of a young woman reflecting on her life thus far and roughly follows the linear trajectory of her development. Events such as period pains, moving to a rapidly-growing city, a tumultuous romantic relationship and a traumatic occurrence are recounted. However, her experiences have been refashioned by the process of memory till they feel like smoothed stones lodged in the gut: “I experience, every few years, an urge to recall this moment and the events that preceded it. Not only to recall it, but to write it down, again. Again.” We don't necessarily get a fully rounded picture of an event but an impression of the predominant feeling which remains because of certain encounters or experiences. Her account adheres to a different form of truth which is influenced as much by the imagination as it is by history. This is a life dominated by reading and writing which are just as real or more real than concrete experience. The story isn't so much a quest to know what is true, but a refreshingly honest account of this state of being. 

The reading life permeates her experience to the degree that when thinking back to certain time periods they are more dominated by lists of what authors she'd read or not read at that point rather the particulars of her circumstances. As I was reading these sections I found it geekily pleasurable mentally ticking off which authors I've also read, which I still want to read and which I've not heard of before. Moreover, Bennett writes in such a compelling and sympathetic way about the process of reading: “Certain written words are alive, active, living – they are entirely in the present, the same present as you. In fact, it feels as if they are being written as you read them, that your eyes upon the page are perhaps even making them appear, in any case, certain sentences do not feel in the least bit separate from you or from the moment in time when you are reading them. You feel they wouldn't exist without your seeing them. Like they wouldn't exist without you. And isn't the opposite true too – that the pages you read bring you to life? Turning the pages, turning the pages. Yes, that is how I have gone on living. Living and dying and living and dying, left page, right page, and on it goes.” This is such a gorgeous description of the dynamic way we interact with the text of books and why we connect so strongly to certain literature.

As she continues to read throughout her life she becomes aware of not only the sexism which permeates some literature but the gendered way readers are treated. This naturally draws her to only read female authors: “There came a point I don't know when exactly when I'd read enough books by men for the time being. It happened quite naturally – I don't recall deciding I'd had enough and wasn't going to read any more books by men for a while, it was just that I began reading more and more books by women and that didn't leave me much time anymore to read any books by men.” This is such a glorious way of putting to rest the assumed superiority certain male authors project, but equally Bennett skewers the way certain male readers arrogantly claim literature as belonging to them exclusively. “Women can't withstand poetry, seemed to be Dale's view. Women are beautiful and tender creatures and poetry breaks them, of course it does. Poetry rips right through you, makes shit of you, and a man can be made through you, makes shit of you, and a man can be made shit of and go on living because no one really minds, not even the man. The man likes it in fact, likes to be made shit of so that he can sit there and drink his head off and declaim one epithetical thing after another and all the other interminably taciturn men believe he is an exceptional man...” Reading this I found myself frantically nodding along recalling some self-consumed self-righteous male readers I've encountered.

There were plenty of other passages I connected with as well. In her childhood she describes the experience of being made to work in a group at school and how the result of these collaborative projects was disappointing compared to the quality work she knew she could do if working on her own. I definitely shared this kind of solitary work ethic. Even though I felt a strong connection to some parts of this novel, there were also other sections and tangents which eluded me and felt so abstract I honestly can't pretend to know what they are about. Perhaps my confusion partly comes from the unique way the author's account is a blend of the past and the fiction she wrote. When recounting a memory of a train journey she describes how: “I've a feeling I was wearing a green hat but I might be wrong about that, that might have been the woman I made up years later who takes a train to see friends of hers a day earlier than they expect”. Though this is intriguing and playful it can also be quite disorientating for the reader. Some parts of the book concern a fictional character named Tarquin Superbus whose quest to find the single sentence written in a library of otherwise blank books goes awry. As curious and bewitchingly whimsical as these sections are they felt at times like a distraction from the more interesting narrator's point of view.

Though the bulk of the novel is written in the first person, the opening and closing sections are narrated in the collective “we”. It feels like the individual is a twin being that is in constant dialogue with herself. She reinforces the validity of her point of view by agreeing and building upon it. This creates an oddly hypnotic rhythm which is reminiscent of a Beckett play. Part of me would have liked to see the entire novel written in this way. But then I would miss the forceful and directly personal way that this story is a celebration of books as they are exchanged, discussed, revered, dismissed and ignored. It does not just list authors but shows the physical presence of books, the room they take up, the difficulty in moving/keeping them and letting them go. It's also a testament of the impulse to create, to revise, to fashion out of experience an impression of life which is universal. It's the force which gives meaning to our existence when we're stuck in a job which is as tediously repetitive as scanning items at a store's checkout.

Matrix by Lauren Groff

I was in the middle of reading a much-acclaimed new novel recently and the experience was dragging because I wasn't gripped by it so I decided to put it aside and pick up Lauren Groff's new novel “Matrix” instead. French lesbian nuns in the 12th century! This is what I need! That's not to say that it's appealing just for the subject matter. The story delves into the mind and heart of its heroine Marie de France in such a compelling and complex way that I'm still pondering the larger meaning of this tale. On the surface it's very different from “Fates and Furies” which is the only other novel I've read by Groff. Yet, it's a continuation in the way this author so cleverly and sympathetically elevates the stories of women who mostly appear in the margins of storytelling. 

The novel begins with Marie, an illegitimate child of the royal court being written out of history as she's sent to permanently live and work as a prioress in a dilapidated and impoverished abbey in Angleterre. In this foreign land and in circumstances much more humble than the life she lived before she's meant to quietly reside out of sight from larger society. But Marie is a large woman - both in body and spirit and she's going to make her presence known. As we follow the story of her long life we see how she not only reinvigorates this rundown countryside abbey but establishes a sisterhood among the nuns who live there. It's a vividly told and dramatic tale which takes the richness of its protagonist's inner life as a given because she has so much more to offer than the opportunities she's given. Yet, the novel also really excels in how it interrogates the way Marie might unknowingly contribute society's rocky evolution.

It did take me a bit of time to get into the rhythm of this story because it moves swiftly through the years and there's a large cast of women to keep up with. Given the time period the average lifespan wasn't too long so often newly introduced figures don't last long while others continue to appear in the background. As soon as Marie becomes really established at the abbey and makes it into a profitable enterprise the novel leaps forward to much later in her life when she's going through menopause. This felt jarring at first but I suppose so much of her life is made up of routines which are only punctuated by some dramatic events such as an attempted siege of the abbey by a gang of resentful locals and the holy visions which occasionally overcome Marie. These inspire her to make dramatic changes, but are they really decreed by the mother of God or are they driven by Marie's own ambition and ego? This question is dynamically explored as the abbey comes to take a prominent place in an increasingly capitalist society. I really appreciate how this book presents the way economic changes on local levels gradually spread to affect civilization as a whole in a way similarly referred to in the novel “Cathedral” by Ben Hopkins.

Rather than living humbly the nuns find themselves with better garments and more to eat than the locals. Marie's decisions and authority start to feel more tyrannical than being concerned with the welfare of the community or even her sisters. She's also motivated by a wish to impress queen Eleanor who she's been (romantically?) infatuated with since she was a teenager participating in the crusades. The way both Marie and some of the other nuns psychologically and spiritually rationalize and act upon their romantic and sexual needs is handled in a really fascinating way. The majority of women at the abbey are people who don't fit in anywhere else because of how they look or their personalities or their position in society, yet they find bonds here which are mutually fulfilling: “in this enclosure there is love enough here even for the most unlovable women.” Of course, there are still petty arguments, disagreements and long-held grievances as there would be amongst any group of people. But the way Groff writes about the complexity of their inner and outer lives shows that these women weren't simply a benign presence in the wings of history.

Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux (translated by Tanya Leslie)

Every year there is excited debate about what author will be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and this year one of the top contenders that readers were speculating about was Annie Ernaux. Since I had a fairly free morning and while I was waiting for the prize announcement to be made, I thought I'd get to reading the most recent book to be translated by this author whose work I fell in love with starting with “The Years”. It's very short – just under 50 pages! And it centres around the subject of a married man that the author/narrator had an affair with for a couple of years. It's an all-consuming passion which takes over her life for this period of time. Her focus is not on the details or moral drama of the affair, but the impact passion has upon an individual: “I do not wish to explain my passion – that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify – but simply to describe it.” In doing so, she illuminates how we can become completely entangled in heated passion in a way that defies all logic and reason. Ernaux uses her characteristically rigorous sense of self enquiry to raise larger questions about the nature of desire, imagination, time and memory. 

One of the most fascinating aspects of Ernaux's writing is the openness of her narrative to take shape in the way which will best convey the meaning and heart of her subject matter. She describes how: “I felt I was living out my passion in the manner of a novel, but now I am not sure in which style I am writing about it, whether in the style of a testimony, or possibly even the sort of confidence that can be found in women's magazines, maybe a manifesto or a statement, or perhaps a critical commentary.” This book defies genre or any conventional form. Yet, its construction feels perfectly suited to what she wants to say and there's a masterful precision to her ideas. If most writers were to do this and discuss the book's construction so openly within the text it would feel intrusively self conscious, but with Ernaux it feels like a sincere and conscientious way to explore the subject matter. The book even moves from the past to the present tense because she realises that she's gradually being released from the grip that passion has on her which traps her in memories of her lover. At the beginning she's outside of the flow of everyday life, but by the end she's rejoined the stream of time and can reside again in the present.

It's curious how feverish passion causes us to idealize the lover. In the midst of this the lover can feel like the greatest person in the world, but afterwards we can see all too clearly that individual's flaws. Ernaux is careful not to reveal many details about the lover in order to respect his privacy and because his identity really isn't the subject of this book. We do know that he comes from a country outside France and that he doesn't even speak French that well. The fact that the narrator can't communicate that clearly with him almost seems to add to the way he's fashioned into an ideal and how nothing about their relationship is clear except the sexual desire between them: “I would only ever be certain of one thing: his desire or lack of desire. The only undeniable truth could be glimpsed by looking at his penis.” However, rather than recounting the details of their encounters, Ernaux focuses instead on the excruciating interim periods between their meetings and the force with which this passion controls her life.

This is most certainly not a saccharine or nostalgic account of a love affair. Ernaux describes passion as a destructive force which leads to pernicious thoughts and grievous actions. Not only does the passion annihilate any other pleasure she has in her life, but she longs for self destruction to reclaim that sense of closeness: “One night the thought of getting myself screened for AIDS occurred to me: 'At least he would have left me that.'” Equally disturbing is her compulsion to go “to the place where I had a clandestine abortion twenty years ago... As if hoping that this past trauma would cancel my present grief.” It was quite a shock to suddenly be taken back to the incident and physical location described in Ernaux's book “Happening”. Yet, it doesn't feel like Ernaux is justifying or judging the simultaneously exhilarating and poisonous effect that passion has upon a person's life. Rather, this text functions as a kind of testament which can be a touchstone for others who have felt such passion. The fact that Ernaux ultimately judges this passion to be “meaningless” adds to the persistent mystery of why it is a force that so feverishly grips our lives.

When I finished reading this book I went online to see that Ernaux has not won the Nobel Prize this year (the award went to the great Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah), but I hope one day she'll receive this honour.