Five Days Untold by Badr Ahmad (translated by Christiaan James)

Several years ago I acted as an extra in a docudrama about a conflict in Afghanistan where I played a soldier. I was given a crash course in military training and how to handle a real weapon which was only armed with blanks. When filming started I fumbled with my weapon and found it difficult to keep pace with the other actors as they raced across the set re-enacting a war. The arms expert, crew and other actors got quite annoyed at what an incompetent soldier I made and it's safe to say my performance wasn't convincing. Luckily this was just a fictional situation and I've not ever been conscripted or made to perform compulsory military service. Ziad Al-Niqash, a young man who is one of the central characters of “Five Days Untold”, isn't so fortunate as an order delivered to his home commands him to join in the civil war occurring in his country. Though the specific location and conflict isn't named in the text, one can assume this is set during the civil war in Yemen given the author Badr Ahmad's nationality and because it takes place over the New Year of 2017-2018. We follow his harrowing journey being drawn into military service, the experiences of his family and the malicious plot of a local tyrant named Naji Awad. It's a terrifying insight into what it means to be a frightened young man who is suddenly forced to be a solider. 

There's a lot of pressure on Ziad at home already since he is the only son of his family and his father is mentally and physically unwell. Equally, he's made to feel like he must work in a specific job to support his family although his heart is drawn to a different kind of profession. So it's all the more heartbreaking when he's suddenly forced to become a soldier and he frantically wonders “how will I avoid being killed? I was unable to process it all. I wasn't made for this. I was created to draw and sculpt, to cultivate beauty in small corners, and to plant delight in people's souls.” The narrative follows the five days of his service which feels to him more like a lifetime as he's immediately fearful for his life and he encounters numerous gruelling attacks. The way this is vividly presented is so moving and heart racing. It's powerful how the author portrays the psychologically and physically destructive effects of such an experience while Ziad desperately clings to his humanity. At the same time, it's so brutal how little he's valued as an individual by many of the soldiers around him and how he's viewed as an absolute enemy by the opposing forces though he clearly didn't want to enlist in the first place. It's a devastating and impossible position to be in.

Though I appreciated how the author tried to also portray a politically-powerful man who is involved in dodgy arms dealing, I didn't think the characterization of Naji Awad was as convincing and his storyline seemed to belong more to a generic thriller. I don't doubt such self-interested and vicious people exist, but the way the author depicted his motivations for being such from his bad childhood to his impotence resulting from a car crash injury was rather rushed. It also made me very uncomfortable how the extreme sexual violence inflicted upon his wife was dealt with in an equally hasty manner. There's a scene where she seems on the brink of exacting her revenge which felt quite confusing and his story plays out in a rickety over-dramatised way. For instance, there's a scene where he enters a dance studio and takes out a gun but eventually leaves without anyone there seeming to notice him. Though the tensions amongst Ziad's family were handled somewhat better, I felt their unique story got swallowed up in a clunky plot and lacked the atmosphere present in the young man's sections.

I greatly appreciated reading a story from Yemen that concerns a conflict I've never read about in fiction before. However, I wish the novel had focused solely on Ziad's point of view as this was undoubtably the heart of the book. I'm still grateful to have read this because the way it immerses you in the perspective of a young soldier is very impactful. It’s wonderful seeing more Arabic fiction being translated into English from the publisher Dar Arab.

What You Can See From Here by Mariana Leky (translated by Tess Lewis)

It's been a while since a novel has consistently made me smile. “What You Can See From Here” has a wonderful lightness of touch to it while also being an emotional story which considers larger philosophical issues about the human condition. It follows Luisa who, at the start of the novel, is an adolescent girl and we follow her into adulthood. Moreover, it's the tale of the small West-German village Luisa has grown up in and the idiosyncratic members of this community as seen through her perspective. Luisa's grandmother Selma occasionally dreams of an okapi, an exotic African animal that's like a squashed-together version of several different animals. Whenever this creature features in her dreams someone in the area dies. So it's turned into an omen of death. At the beginning of the novel Selma has dreamed about an okapi again. Though they realise it's superstitious to believe a dream can signal such a tragedy, everyone in the village can't help fearing it and tensely wondering who will be next. Rumours of the dream spread like wildfire around the community leading everyone to take excessive precautions or prepare to meet their end. When someone eventually does die it has a devastating effect on Luisa and we follow her many years later as she and the village are still dealing with this tragic loss. 

Much of the delightful humour in this novel comes from the naturally amusing characters that populate it. Selma is a loving grandmother living in a slanted house. The local optician is secretly in love with Selma and begins many letters to her informing her of this but can't quite bring himself to complete or deliver them. Luisa's friend Martin dreams of being a champion weight-lifter and frequently picks Luisa up. Villagers flock to Luisa's eccentric great-aunt Elsbeth who makes homemade remedies for ailments or conditions. Luisa's mother is perpetually late for any crucial event and her father is constantly absent as he's travelling the world. Marlies is a grumpy woman who lives in the most remote corner of the village like a melancholy Eeyore. Even the family dog Alaska comes bounding in and out of scenes knocking things over and making its presence known. The way in which all these disparate individuals with all their foibles and peculiarities come together is handled in an endearing and loving way.

Another reason why this novel is so funny is from the clever and engaging way it portrays the absurdity of life. Though we may have grand ideals or try to follow the path of logic, we can't control our instinctive reactions to what we encounter. So the villagers allow themselves to grow fearful when Selma has her dream of an okapi though they know it's not rational. It's natural for our emotions to occasionally consume us and the novel shows how this especially occurs when it comes to love and death. In her adulthood Luisa has a chance encounter with a Buddhist monk named Frederik and develops a strong bond with him. Though it may seem like a very random thing to insert into the story, it makes sense how the principles of Buddhism are contrasted against human nature. Various concepts concerning the perception and natural of reality are raised between the characters – though Frederik is more concerned with eating French fries than he is with discussing Buddhist texts. The story isn't mocking the religion but showing how challenging it is to free oneself from disruptive desires and an attachment to a limited, subjective understanding of the world. Whether a person is a Buddhist or not, these are large issues we all grapple with in one form or another. The novel poignantly demonstrates how these aspects of our nature are the very things which make us so beautifully human and join us together as a society.

The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang

Reimagining a classic novel is a risky business. Some such as “Gorsky” by Vesna Goldsworthy and “The Promise” by Damon Galgut have successfully borrowed plot lines from classics (“The Great Gatsby” and “Howard's End” respectively) and transposed them to an entirely new setting and context. However, there is a danger that using the scaffolding of a pre-existing plot might inhibit a new story. For instance, I felt Craig's novel “The Golden Rule” needlessly forced in some elements of classic tales in a way which lessened the impact of the otherwise compelling characters and storyline. 

In “The Family Chao” Lan Samantha Chang gives a modern-day retelling of “The Brothers Karamazov” to relate the story of a family with a domineering patriarch and three very different Chinese-American sons. For decades the Fine Chao restaurant has been a fixture of the community, but disharmony is brewing behind closed doors. The youngest boy James returns to his family's home in Wisconsin for Christmas to discover a lot of infighting. Though his eldest brother Dagou organizes a lavish feast and celebration at the family restaurant things don't go as planned. An explosive argument leads to Leo 'Big' Chao being discovered dead in the meat freezer the next morning. Was this an accident or did something more sinister lead to his demise?

Vicious gossip swirls around the family and the eldest son Dagou is put on trial for his father's murder. His two younger brothers Ming and James scramble to come to terms with their family's turbulent history and uncover what really happened that fateful night. With elements that include a dead stranger's travel bag filled with cash, an illegitimate child's well-kept secrets, a missing dog and a murder trial this is a mystery that grows increasingly thrilling as it unfolds. It's also a unique and meaningful tale which grapples with issues to do with racism, corruption and greed. At the same time it is darkly funny, poignant and gripping. 

Leo is rudely vicious in maintaining his dominance and ready to serve up whatever the public wants to feed their appetites and line his pockets. He succumbs to the American ideology that whatever is most profitable is also correct. But his sons have a decidedly different understanding of what it means to live and survive in this country. What's more telling is that the tragedy which occurs sparks public reactions showing deep-seeded stereotypes and biases. Though their situation is unique and the brothers come armed with different points of view, they are churned into an ongoing discourse. It takes honest reconciliations to extract themselves from this and persist in building their own lives. It's poignant the way in which Chang structures the novel to portray why this is such a struggle for this family. In its style and plot, she has successfully modernized and utilized elements of Dostoevsky's classic to tell a story which is uniquely American. 

Elena Knows by Claudia Pineiro (translated by Frances Riddle)

I can't think of another novel that has so deeply and intimately drawn me into the experience of someone living with a debilitating illness. Elena is in a late stage of Parkinson's disease where every physical action is timed around when her pills can be taken as these allow her a limited amount of movement. In the interim periods her body refuses to respond to messages from her brain and, even with the pills, normal actions which we take for granted are an enormous struggle. This is especially problematic as Elena is determined to visit someone on this day to call in an old debt. Her daughter Rita was recently found hanging in the belfry of a church. Elena doesn't accept the police's conclusion that it was a suicide and is determined to uncover the mystery behind her daughter's death. We follow her journey as she discovers the truth behind this tragic event and, in the process, get a profound insight into the challenges of her daily existence. However, this isn't a story that's as miserable as it sounds. Elena isn't the nicest person - often with good reason. She's irascible, extremely rude to some people and has a keen sense of irony. So following her thoughts and reflections is often a darkly funny and entertaining experience, but it's also very moving and enlightening. All these elements make this a riveting, revelatory and brilliantly imaginative story. 

Though Elena is only 64 years old she has the appearance of someone much older. She's unable to fully lift her head so that in the course of her journey our perspective of the world is limited to only what she can see. Usually this is people's shoes or the ground. This is one of the ways this narrative locks the reader so fully into her experience. At one point before her death, her daughter demanded she go to a beauty salon and, during the course of a pedicure, the beautician suggested she regularly use a cream on her feet. However, “she wasn't willing to add any more chores to the unending list of daily challenges: walking, eating, going to the bathroom, lying down, standing up, sitting in a chair, getting up from a chair, taking a pill that won't go down her throat because her head can't tip back, drinking from a straw, breathing. No, she definitely wasn't going to put calendula cream on her heels.” At almost every point in the story we're made aware of how all these necessary actions which most of us perform unconsciously require a big effort on her part because of the limitations her illness imposes. She comes to think of her disease as a separate entity in itself which she describes in the most disparaging and vicious terms like a hateful neighbour that has taken control and resides within her body.

There are so many lines in this book which made me attentive to aspects of physical existence which I normally don't consider. For instance, Elena observes how “She'd never had to think about her neck, about her eyebrows, to wonder whether they were muscles or flesh, or just skin, and she doesn't know what they are, but they hurt.” It's almost surreal how her illness makes her hyper-aware of things she hadn't previously considered so that her own body reveals itself as a foreign landscape. The story also gives an insight into the tremendous burden Elena's illness causes for the people around her. Before her death, Rita was Elena's full time carer assisting her with feeding, bathing, going to the bathroom and almost every daily action. This put an enormous mental, physical and financial strain on their relationship and Elena comments about how much they bickered. Rita also possessed some conservative values which caused conflicts and harm to people she encountered. I appreciated how the novel sympathetically shows the strenuous challenges Rita faced and the difficulty this caused in her relationship with her mother while also acknowledging her foibles at the same time. It's a tragic situation, but it's meaningful how Elena doesn't perceive herself as a victim and how she's committed to living though her illness has severely reduced the quality of her life. This is an example of a novel whose impact and meaning will continue to resonate with me for many years.

Love Marriage by Monica Ali

When a couple decide to get married it's a nerve-wracking experience arranging for the parents to meet for the first time. Monica Ali's “Love Marriage” opens with Yasmin travelling with her parents to the home of her fiancé Joe and his mother. Though Joe's mother Harriet is a feminist and scholar who has published a progressive sexually-explicit book, Yasmin is too nervous to even mention sex in her household because of her parents' traditional values. So she has even more cause to worry about how their very different families will get on. The story describes how these individuals become heavily entangled in each other's lives amidst planning for Yasmin and Joe's marriage. Certain aspects of all their identities have remained hidden, but as they come closer to making a commitment the truth about the past and these characters' desires comes out into the open. There's a wonderfully engaging quality to Ali's style of writing which makes so many of these characters feel instantly familiar. I greatly enjoyed reading this romantic drama which involves the complexities of modern relationships, misunderstandings between generations, cross-cultural tensions and issues in the medical profession. 

It's moving how Yasmin's character develops over the course of the novel so she gradually comes to question what she really wants in life (both professionally and romantically) and how she underestimates her parents. Her experience diligently training to become a doctor contrasts sharply with that of her brother Arif who wants to make a documentary that he'll post on YouTube. Equally, the way he pursues a relationship is very different from Yasmin. However, the novel teases out assumptions which are made concerning career choices and the path couples take showing how there is no single way to live one's life. It also openly addresses different levels of racism and Islamaphobia and how the dialogue surrounding this in both liberal and conservative circles of British society can involve misconceptions, oversensitivity and hypocrisy. Since Harriet is a writer and knows a number of other authors there are also discussions between the characters involving the purpose of the novel itself and whether an author should only write about their own experience or allow themselves to imaginatively create stories of other lives.

Though the novel openly addresses these and many other issues, the characters are fully rounded so I felt really involved with the way Ali dramatises their inner and outer conflicts. One of the most fascinating characters is Yasmin's mother Anisah who undergoes a feminist awakening and starts to develop her own business selling chutneys. Though Yasmin's parents have always maintained theirs was a love marriage (as opposed to an arranged marriage) there's a question surrounding how they got together which hangs in the background until the truth is finally revealed. As so often is the case, what we perceive on the surface is very different from what's going on inside of people's experience. The pressure this causes builds throughout many different characters' lives. It's touching following how Yasmin gradually comes to a more dynamic understanding of those closest to her and herself in this tale filled with suspense, humour and wit.

Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park (translated by Anton Hur)

It's so exciting and refreshing reading new fiction which fully represents the complexities of modern gay life. There are romantic moments in “Love in the Big City”, but it certainly doesn't romanticize queer experience. Nor does it wallow in oppression or resentment. Instead it faithfully represents the point of view of a young Korean gay man named Young as he navigates family, friendship and various relationships (some are mere hookups while others are knotty emotional entanglements.) He struggles to complete his education and hold a stable job. Many nights are spent drinking, clubbing or chasing tricks on gay hookup apps. On his first night's leave from compulsory military service “the only three things floating around in my brain were iced Americano, Kylie Minogue, and sex.” He's overweight and aware of where he falls in the pecking order of a cruising culture that classifies men based on superficial physical attributes. His contemporaries have developed more stable jobs and relationships, but he's entirely unapologetic about following his desires and instincts even if it leads to his own undoing. The result is a riveting account of the pleasures and pitfalls of intimacy. 

The structure of this novel is satisfying in how it's divided into four parts where each begins with a particular moment in time. This thrusts the reader into a pressing dilemma Young faces. Then the story tunnels back to describe how Young got to this moment and what results from it. I admire how this draws the reader into his particular experience since it often feels like he just falls into situations, but we gradually see how he comes to particular points in his life based on his personality and the circumstances that he lives under. There's also an unflinchingly honest quality to his account which veers from defiant to self-deprecating. In fact, at times he verges on the maudlin in how he feels “life had always been eager to fail my expectations, no matter how low I set them.” It's a tone of writing which feels like a mixture of Jean Rhys and Brontez Purnell – two very different authors but their prose equally expresses a relentless commitment to romantic/sexual pursuits despite feeling it will inevitably end in heartbreak/emptiness. At one point Park observes: “is love truly beautiful? To me, love is a thing you can't stop when you're caught up in it, a brief moment you can escape from only after it turns into the most hideous thing imaginable when you distance yourself from it.” The way he captures experiences fuelled by this bittersweet belief is paradoxically life affirming.

Of course, there were parts of this novel that made me want to bitch slap the narrator. He insistently tries to maintain a relationship with an ideologically-driven man suffering from internalized homophobia who can't love him back. But he also treats his most consistent relationship with a sweetly-devoted responsible man too frivolously and actively pushes him away. All the while Young is fully aware he's making bad choices and acknowledges “my whole life was basically a series of not-clever moves”. It's infuriating behaviour but his character is written in a way which made me entirely sympathise with him and care about his welfare. So it's especially alarming when he doesn't use protection during one sexual encounter and contracts HIV – which is something he can barely openly acknowledge and calls his Kylie, but it’s not something which defeats him. However, he can't avoid the practical difficulties it causes in getting the right medication, having sexual encounters and passing medical exams for certain jobs he tries to get. It's arresting how the story deals with this issue and other long-lasting consequences of his affairs.

I found it touching reading in the translator's note how strongly Anton Hur identified with Park's writing as a Korean gay man. Though there were some specific geographic and linguistic references which I had no knowledge of, I certainly appreciated getting a brief insight into Korean gay life. There were also so many points of reference concerning gay popular culture and a homosexual mentality that I strongly identified with and recognized. It reminded me of reading the nonfiction book “Gay Bar” where drinking holes in different regions and countries are described as having a unique character but all exert the same feeling of being a gay-specific space. Similarly, entering Young's perspective seeking pleasure and companionship while struggling with issues to do with marginalization and poor self-esteem will certainly ring true for any gay man in the world today.

Born of No Woman by Franck Bouysse (translated by Lara Vergnaud)

I was greatly anticipating this gothic novel which brings to light the secret journals of a 19th century woman named Rose. She was sold into servitude at a creepy mansion and condemned to die in a rural French asylum. It begins promisingly enough with a priest called upon to bless the poor lady's body. When Father Gabriel is entrusted with her notebooks he's overcome by the story of her plight and seeks to reveal the consequences of her wretched life. But rather than just getting her account the perspective switches between a number of characters including a mysterious man and child whose identities aren't revealed until the end. However, most of the other points of view including Rose's father, the mansion's tyrant and a mysterious labourer who works on the estate all feel like one-dimensional characters. Nor do their perspectives add much to the story which couldn't be deduced from reading Rose's journals. The villains are ridiculously evil and a number of the characters act in a pitifully naïve way. Though Rose is obviously a sympathetic character trapped in a horrific situation and there are some chilling atmospheric details it's like the narrative doesn't trust her enough to convey her own tale. Though this book was a best-selling prize winner in its native France, I sadly found it to be a let down as the structure doesn't do anything innovative and the story isn't groundbreaking or especially engaging beyond its thrilling final twist. 

What Willow Says by Lynn Buckle

There's something so moving about stories concerning a strong intergenerational bond – in the case of slender novel “What Willow Says” it's between a grandmother and her deaf granddaughter who spend time in nature developing their own unique form of communication. It's composed of 29 journal entries which follow their excursions in parks and forests as well as their encounters with schools, hearing specialists and the deaf community. In doing so we come to understand their beautiful relationship and get an insight into a language formed for just two people. Subtle issues arise about the way society strives to “normalize” deaf people: “Her specialists may hear her not, because her ears are not working for them.” The story raises questions concerning the limitations of what speech can do and how the hearing community's ways of using language are so institutionalized we don't always acknowledge different forms of communication. There's also a tense element to the story as we're aware the grandmother's time is short and she wants to do what she can to ensure her granddaughter's security while cherishing the special bond they share. 

I felt immediately sympathetic to the grandmother as each entry begins with a description of the weather and my grandmother kept a journal in a similar way where the weather is always mentioned. As the book goes on, these brief observations about the weather come to reflect much more her psychological and spiritual state of being. She's someone who stands somewhat outside the mainstream like an ageing hippy (at one point she notes going to an Irish ashram) and I think this makes her especially attentive to the limited ways her granddaughter is treated. Because of her own hearing issues and advanced age, she finds it difficult to learn the sign language which her granddaughter fairly quickly picks up. So they need to invent their own way of speaking and they do this by spending time in nature developing unique ways of conveying an observation, feeling or question – especially as it's related to the movement of trees in the breeze or signs which can be gleaned from closely observing life in the natural world.

The grandmother is forming a catalogue of the trees in their area by drawing them and she refers to her process of attempting to do this - though it's cut short by her physical limitations. I wish some of this artwork had been reproduced in the text and it's interesting to hear in an interview conducted by Shawn the Book Maniac that following this novel's publication Lynn Buckle (who is also an artist) has created some pictures based exactly on what the grandmother describes. Though I found this story very moving, I felt the text sometimes got too poetic and abstract so I struggled at points to understand exactly what was happening in both these characters' lives. But its central message is conveyed in a powerful way. Out of necessity the granddaughter must constantly invent new ways of speaking: “She rewrites dictionaries for all who meet her.” Of course, on some level, creating a particular language is something we all do in the close bonds we form with other people as we all develop a shorthand or way of communicating which is special to that relationship. It's beautiful how this story emphasizes such a distinctive bond while alluding to larger issues concerning our perceptions of deafness and the environment. 

Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope

I'm grateful I've been reading Trollope's Barsetshire series in order because – although the central protagonists of this fourth book “Framley Parsonage” are new – there are a host of familiar characters in the background who are also integrally involved in some of the novel's side plots. Though I'm sure readers unfamiliar with the previous books would still enjoy this novel the experience is greatly enhanced by a knowledge of these established characters. It's a wonderful pleasure to again meet the domineering Mrs Proudie with her weak-willed bishop husband who were first introduced in “Barchester Towers” and confident, clever Miss Dunstable who we first met in “Doctor Thorne”. In this new novel we even get a new generation as Griselda, the eldest daughter of Dr Grantly and Susan Grantly (who we first met in “The Warden”), is now looking to marry and there are a couple of suitors in contention. In fact, there a number of marriage plots in this new novel which all spin in the wings amidst the book's central story of Mark Robarts, a young vicar who gets drawn into the glamorous lives of the county's aristocracy and unfairly burdened by a debt attached to the cunning Nathaniel Sowerby. Mark's patroness Lady Lufton is deeply saddened by how he's seduced into this faction of the upper class and she serves as a fantastically intimidating foil to the set of characters that revolve around the Duke of Omnium. 

Like a soap opera, the book is perhaps a little overburdened with plot lines as there are also the stories of Harold Smith's short-lived time as a cabinet minister and Mr Crawley, an impoverished clergyman who needs assistance as his wife is stricken with typhus. It makes sense that Trollope had so much going on since this novel was written in serial form for a magazine edited by William Thackeray. However, for the most part, the abundance of story lines balance well and come together to present a fantastically entertaining and compelling portrait of a community. It's a tale rich in themes surrounding ambition, money and marriage. As always, Trollope's characters are so dynamic that even more “villainous” figures such as Mr Sowerby are presented in a semi-compassionate way. But that doesn't stop the author poking fun at the foibles of several characters and playing them against each other. Nor is the author an invisible puppet master working in the background as what really makes Trollope's novels rise above typical stories of scandal and romance is the way the narrator frequently intervenes to converse with the reader on the issues at stake, the choices the characters make and the nature of society.

One of my favourite scenes is when the characters indulge in a social fad which they label a “conversazione”. Though it's really just a party with a pretentious name it's hilarious how it leads to discussions about what should and shouldn't be allowed to occur at a “conversazione”. There are several interactions which occur at this party concerning certain characters' marriage prospects. It also culminates in a confrontation between the novel's two most politically opposed characters Lady Lufton and the Duke of Omnium. As I know from reading “Barchester Towers”, Trollope writes truly captivating and uproarious party scenes. But he also beautifully describes moments of great tenderness such a discussion concerning the nature of grief between Mark's sister Lucy and Lady Lufton's son Ludovic. I also adored the dynamic between Mark and his loving wife Fanny who must not only serve as an intermediary between Mark and Lady Lufton but loyally stands by Mark when the debt collectors come knocking at their door.

Though Trollope doesn't often create much dramatic tension concerning the conclusions of his plots, I was surprised by the fate of Miss Dunstable in this novel. I despaired for her having to fend off yet another scheming suitor intent on marrying her for her money and I love how she relishes “ridiculing the world's humbugs.” So it was satisfying to see her finding comfort and happiness in this story. Certainly, there are some uncomfortably telling moments about the attitudes and values of mid-19th century society from the way certain characters refer to Jewish people or some characters describe their colonialist plans to “civilize an island in the South Pacific”. Yet, there are also many wonderful scenes and keen observations Trollope makes that his books continues to be an absolute delight to read and I'm looking forward to the next two books in the Chronicles of Barsetshire. 

More Than I Love My Life by David Grossman (translated by Jessica Cohen)

The older I get the more I contemplate what I can never know about past generations of my family. Even as I've tried to outline the facts and piece together story fragments, I know that there won't ever be a way to truly understand what my ancestors went through or why they made certain decisions. This is a subject Maria Stepanova rigorously contemplated as she sifted through family mementoes and records in her fascinating and extensive book “In Memory of Memory”. One of her conclusions seemed to be that whatever narrative we construct about the past doesn't necessarily give us any substantial insight or meaning. Equally, David Grossman rigorously questions the intention and value of documentation when it comes to examining family history in his compelling and moving puzzle box of a novel “More Than I Love My Life”. 

The book opens with a narrator recounting the story of her parents and grandparents' lives on a kibbutz in the 1960s. It doesn't occur to this narrator to introduce herself as Gili until we're deep into the complicated relationships of her immediate family. She's enthralled with their stories (even though they occurred long before she was born) and they give the sense of having been told and retold so many times they've developed into a personal mythology. After the death of her grandfather Tuvia's first wife he married a Yugoslavian immigrant named Vera. Tuvia's son Rafael also falls for Vera's daughter Nina, but it's an unequal love affair as Nina is hampered by the violent circumstances of WWII and life under President Tito. Gili feels a deep anger towards her mostly-absent mother Nina as she's led a promiscuous life full of wanderlust. However, Gili is also aware that Nina's problems stem from something which happened when she was a girl – an unaddressed betrayal by Nina's mother Vera.

The second half of the novel takes place in 2008 when Gili and her father Rafael decide to record a documentary about Vera who has just turned 90 years old. Nina has returned for her mother's birthday and also reveals she's suffering from an illness which will cause her to prematurely lose her memory. In order to memorialise Vera's life and create an account which Nina's future self can use as a reference point, this family of four embark on a journey back to Vera's homeland as she recounts the horrors she endured during wartime. Many secrets and revelations emerge which lead to emotional confrontations. All the while, Gili and Rafael endeavour to film and interview Vera to better understand her life. It becomes clear that no matter how rigorously or honestly they try to document her account they won't ever fully understand what she lived through or why she made choices which put both herself and Nina at risk. Interestingly, in some sections the narrative slips to Vera's intensely gruelling imprisonment at Goli Otok, a barren island known as the “Croatian Alcatraz” that was used as a political prison when Croatia was part of Yugoslavia. In their earnest attempt at preserving Vera's memories and forming a reconciliation, they are left with more questions than answers.

I greatly appreciated how this complex and entrancing story explores issues to do with family, self-worth, the past and truth. The way it dramatises its characters yearning for understanding and a sense of belonging made me deeply feel for them. Though some scenes that occur in the present felt needlessly melodramatic I still got caught up in the intense feelings involved. This novel painfully shows that love doesn't necessarily allow for justice – especially when under the intensely pressurised circumstances of national upheaval when life is lived “on the edge of a knife”.

Strangers I Know by Claudia Durastanti (translated by Elizabeth Harris)

Claudia, the narrator of “Strangers I Know”, begins her story by describing her unusual situation as the daughter of deaf parents who've never taught her sign language. They can speak to each other because her parents read lips, but they still establish a very unique form of communication as Claudia invents imperfect hand gestures to convey what she wants to say. Her parents aren't necessarily trustworthy as they tell her contradictory stories about how they met. Nor can she rely upon them for stable parenting because of their erratic behaviour and tendency to leave: “I missed my mother when she disappeared, but she was a nebula and my father, the blackest of galaxies that neutralized any theoretical physics: my brother was the first matter I could gather around.” Claudia's sense of national identity is also divided as she grows up amongst relatives in both America and Italy. From this perspective we see how Claudia has a special relationship to history, truth, language and the ways in which experience is codified. This curious novel is part coming of age tale and part essay collection as we see her life and ideas filtered through her unique position. 

In a way I wish the novel had continued in a similar vein to the first half of the book which is primarily concerned with describing the narrator's parents and extended family both in New York City and a small village in Southern Italy. The details and description of their habits are intriguing and playful, but a fully rounded understanding of their lives gets lost as the narrator goes on to analyse their circumstances and conveys her theories about various subjects. Though the book progresses largely in chronological order it becomes increasingly fragmented with ideas trailing off into metaphors and logic that trips over the narrator's limited knowledge. While a lot of fiction is “autobiographically inspired” there seems little point to the confusing blur here between narrator as author and Claudia as a character. The structure of the book seems to reflect the narrator's assertion that “The story of a family is more like a map than a novel, and an autobiography is the summation of all the geologic ages you've passed through.” However, this way of presenting Claudia's experiences left me with a very patchy understanding of her life as a whole and interesting concepts get quickly dropped before they can be fully explored.

Certain impressions from this book have stuck with me such as the way Claudia develops a love of reading when she moves to Italy and also begins to lie about how much she's read. It's compelling how she expresses the disconnect she feels between her sense of place and the actual experience of living there. There are also several emotionally charged descriptions which are memorable including her sense of alienation from the other children at her school: “I was still an island at my desk in the middle of the room, with stagnant water all around.” But these aspects of the book don't add up to a very satisfying picture of her life because so many details are used as reference points to larger ideas the narrator expounds upon rather than telling a more complete story. Later scenes in the book such as time living in London, a conflict with her first employer and a friend who suffers from drug addiction pass too fleetingly and allude to situations more complex than the author allows space for. While I admire fiction that resists sticking to the conventions of genre, I feel like the structure Durastanti has created for this book mostly amounts to a series of interesting suggestions rather than forming a fully realised and completely satisfying picture. 

The Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World

As a reader who loves perusing bookshops to chance upon a book I wouldn’t have come across otherwise, it’s been frustrating over the past couple years of the pandemic not being able to physically visit many bookstores. After they reopened in London after the first lockdown ended I headed straight to some of my favourites in the city to have a wander amongst the shelves and you can see the results in a video I made in June 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0MFLk0O3LA

That video now feels like a curious time capsule. Certainly “normal” life hasn’t fully resumed but thankfully bookshops have been open here in England for some time. Hopefully this year international travel will become easier again and it’s inspired me to think about some of the beautiful bookshops around the world I’ve been able to visit in years past - including Lello bookstore in Porto. Recently I came across a list in Conde Nast Traveller about some of the most beautiful bookshops in the world so I made a new video discussing these shops such as Boekhandel Dominicanen in Maastricht, Netherlands and Libreria Acqua Alta in Venice, Italy and showing pictures as I hope to visit them someday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkb6PeKxH0U

I’d love to hear about the most beautiful bookshop you’ve ever visited in the comments.

Tides by Sara Freeman

Why would someone walk away from the life she's built and everyone she knows? That's the haunting question which hangs over the delicately-paced story of Sara Freeman's debut novel “Tides”. Mara arrives in a seaside American town just as the busy tourist season is waning. It's achingly appropriate that she chooses to go somewhere in a season out of sync with the pattern of most people's lives. She's fallen out of time's rhythm and now she's in a dangerous free fall. Though this community is affluent she is terrifyingly aware of her limited funds and she doesn't want to use any credit cards because she might be traced. She gets by on scraps of food, sleeps rough, swims in the sea at night and takes a menial job in a local wine shop. A connection she forms with a man who appears similarly adrift is less about starting a new relationship and more about acknowledging their parallel disconsolate realities. Though her existence seems perilously reduced “This is exactly what she wanted, she must remind herself: to slip into a blind spot, to run out on her life.” Written in a spare, emotionally-charged style, this novel gradually unfolds to reveal the aching truth of her past and raises stirring questions about the narratives we use to shape our lives. 

What's so moving about this story aren't the sombre facts of Mara's life, but the way it patiently lays bare the psyche of its protagonist. Ample blank space is allowed on the page between passages as if to represent the vacant spaces of time Mara's new wayward existence gives her. Her motives aren't necessarily to rebuild or to start afresh as with most characters who've experienced a devastating loss, but to disentangle her ego. Does her mother really resent her? Is she really inferior to her brother? Did she really fail her husband? These are issues which plague her and it's difficult to know whether this was her actual position in relation to those closest to her or if she's brutally recasting her role in their lives as a form of self punishment. There's a sense that she wants to lose her former self and become someone new but she's unable to shake her personal history. “She can feel it, the past, grabbing, pulling... It takes her wherever it wants her to go; this is the mind's undertow.” Physical encounters with the sea and imagery about the ocean are poetically built into the narrative. It's poignant how this suggests a daily pace to the world which Mara can no longer keep up with because of the enormity of her grief. Though this novel has an undeniably melancholy tone it's not devoid of hope and I appreciate how its extreme example shows how self doubt has the potential to utterly devour us if we don't meet society's expectations or reach the milestones set before us. It gives the reader a lot to quietly consider and reflect upon.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

There's a particular reading pleasure which comes from getting lost in a great family saga and “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois” certainly counts as one of the greatest. Part of the resonance of this form of writing comes from the question: how much can we ever know about the lives of generations who've proceeded us? There are unique challenges associated with African American genealogy due to the slave practices of the Antebellum South and North which resulted in a lack of birth or death records, name changes and a conscious erasure of family histories. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers' triumphant debut is in part about directly facing this struggle as the story's protagonist Ailey grows up to be a student researching Indigenous, Black and White generations past who've inhabited the small town of Chicasetta, Georgia. This is her own family and her study is a process of gathering tales and uncovering the truth about the betrayals, triumphs and savvy reinvention individuals from the past experienced while enduring the injustices of the past. Scenes from previous generations are interspersed with Ailey's coming of age tale in a way which shows how the past bleeds into the present. This novel gives an entirely new view of history while also telling an exquisitely detailed, enthralling, inventive and utterly immersive story. 

The novel engages seriously with the ideas of the great sociologist and historian W.E.B. Du Bois, but the reader doesn't need to be aware of his work to appreciate and enjoy Jeffers' story. However, it does help and add to the meaning of the book to understand his concept of double consciousness in subordinated or colonized groups. Du Bois himself plays a small part in the novel through anecdotes told to Ailey. This serves as a remind that seminal figures such as Du Bois were only human despite their significant contribution to society. In fact, Jeffers' story is a critique as well as a tribute to Du Bois as she brings a more modern and feminist perspective to his important concepts. Similarly, Jeffers takes to task the way the past is perceived and interpreted by current academia and at historic sites. There's a dark humour as well as a rigorous seriousness to the way in which the author takes to task the way African American history can be wilfully misrepresented and dangerously disassociated from issues to do with racism today. But Jeffers shows in her story that reckoning with the past doesn't mean that we need to be trammelled by guilt as we proceed into the future. As the character of Uncle Root states: “The truth can be both horrible and lovely at the same time... It's important to know what the truth is even if you only say it to yourself.”

There's a tremendous momentum to the novel which is built over hundreds of pages as the past is revealed alongside Ailey's discovery of it. Though I know many people are hesitant to read a book that's so long its length does feel necessary to show the full complexity of this epic tale. There are many surprising twists which develop over the generations as well as in Ailey's own immediate tale – especially to do with her relationship with her two sisters and the secret they share between them. It's meaningful how Jeffers shows that though the same trauma might occur for multiple people it will inevitably affect them all differently as everyone has their own methods of dealing with it. The way this plays out in the story is so insightful and meaningful. At the same time, this tale is infused with such warmheartedness and humour. I found certain scenes so endearing such as when Ailey drinks too much orange juice before going to church and then struggles to sit still as she needs the toilet, but the ladies around her assume that her fidgeting means she's possessed by the spirit. Similarly, it's amusing how disappointed she is at being given a first edition of “The Souls of Black Folks” for her teenage birthday. It's only natural a teen would rather receive anything other than a dusty old book for her birthday, but it's touching knowing how it will go on to inspire her. Similarly, I hope the importance of Jeffers' novel is something we will continue to recognize in the years to come.

How High We Go In The Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

It's impossible to know how we'll react to losing a loved one until it happens. Similarly, it's difficult to predict how an ongoing pandemic and environmental crisis will shape our society's future. But these are issues which Sequoia Nagamatsu movingly examines on many different individual human levels within his imaginative and absorbing debut “How High We Go In The Dark”. The novel opens with the discovery of the preserved remains of a prehistoric girl who is found amidst the melting permafrost in the Arctic Circle and, with her, a deadly virus is reintroduced into human civilization. By following the many lives of a number of linked individuals across hundreds of years we see the way our society splits apart, comes back together and grieves for what is lost. 

In some ways, this book functions like a group of interconnected short stories. The different chapters focus on subjects as varied as a theme park for terminally ill children, a pig grown for organ transplants that develops an ability to talk, a mechanic that no longer has the parts to repair families' beloved mechanical dogs, a scientific breakthrough that's implanted in one man's mind and an artist who paints murals in the corridors of a spaceship that seeks a new planet for humans. Yet the ending of the book circles back to the beginning in an innovative and surprising way. With its emphasis on themes of technology, space travel and a dystopian future this novel might appear like standard science fiction from the outside, but the story's real world resonance and psychologically complex characters feels more resonant of inventive hybrid novels such as “Bewilderment” by Richard Powers, “Station Eleven” by Emily St John Mandel and “XX” by Rian Hughes.

This is a narrative driven by deeply human stories centred around love, the painful experience of letting go, the ways we memorialise each other and our ability to persist through challenging circumstances. Certainly there are some characters which I connected with than others, but I enjoyed the way some more peripheral characters come to the forefront in different sections while also letting us know about the fates of other characters we know well. This not only gradually gives the reader a deeper understanding of certain people but shows how these individuals exist in a rich network of various different experiences. It's alternately horrifying and inspiring following how Nagamatsu imagines the evolution of humanity amidst dramatic global changes. But, just as one character chooses to name her own constellations in the sky, this story ultimately demonstrates how we can each form our own destinies.