Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea

It astounds me when an author can create such a convincing voice for a character based on a real historical figure from an entirely different era - one which pays tribute to the real person, intellectually engages with the social politics of the day and makes that voice so compelling you want to hang upon every word she says. Debut author Gavin McCrea has done that with Lizzie Burns, a working-class woman of Irish descent who moved to London in 1870 with celebrated theorist Friedrich Engels. This was a time when Engels and Marx were engaged with founding a political philosophy which would change the world. McCrea is more concerned with the domestic side of this story. I don’t just mean the household duties and complex emotional bond between Lizzie and Friedrich – although the novel does deal meaningfully with these intricacies. What he’s created is a challenge to how the overarching ideals of this communist movement hold up when viewed through the lens of a woman with little means, bad lungs and a ferocious heart.

Lizzie has quite a complex attitude towards love and relationships. Part of her is highly conscious of the financial ramifications partnerships create. At the beginning of the novel she is vociferous on this point about practicality superseding love. Later she affirms that “I’ve seen enough of this world to know that most of us have to accept men we don’t feel for, and I’m not sure it’s for the worst in the end. A marriage of emotions can’t be lasting. It wouldn’t be healthful if it was.” Lizzie and Friedrich’s relationship is built largely upon an arrangement not entirely based on love. Friedrich is a wealthy heir to an industrial business. Lizzie keeps the house, manages the servants and runs errands for Friedrich. For Lizzie relationships are an exchange: financial and sexual. She states “A love with no interest does not exist. We always expect something for what we give.” Yet, as the novel goes on, her hardness of feeling yields to more intricately-shaded emotions and the desires she holds at bay come forth.

McCrea skilfully brings Lizzie to life through a sympathetic portrayal of her tightly-contained emotions and also through her physicality. Although feisty, she is not all hardness. She contemplates “I sometimes think that because my shoulders are wide and my waist doesn’t go in, that because my speaking holds its share of Irish, I’m taken for solid, when it’s tender I really am in broad light and with sober senses.” She is emotional and sensual. As well as enjoying pleasure with Friedrich, she also longs for other men. She has a glancing but powerful sexual attraction for a black musician she sees performing during an enforced retreat in Ramsgate. There is also a former lover that she shares a tumultuous past with and whose presence in her mind threatens to undo the order of her current arrangement. It’s with a jaded heart that she observes “Love buys cheap and seeks to sell at a higher price; our greed is for gain that lies outside our reach. We desire those who don’t desire us in return.” It’s tremendously moving the way Lizzie pays tribute to those desires which stir her the most while remaining loyal to the household she’s made.

There is a terrible insecurity overshadowing Lizzie’s relationship with Friedrich. The novel moves back and forth between their time in London and their past life in Manchester where Friedrich had a long relationship with Mary, a woman very close to both of them. Lizzie also suspects Friedrich of being a philanderer. With her wry awareness of the ways of men she accepts this but melancholically notes when she suspects him of keeping secrets “Is there a loneliness more lonely than mistrust?” Surely this is a sentiment anyone who mulls over their own suspicions while in a relationship can relate to. As the story shows, sometimes it’s these stormy thoughts which can be binding as well as damaging. McCrea presents the complicated motivations and variances of desire astonishingly well in this rich, engrossing story.

What I appreciated most in this novel are the astute observations about our human compulsion to envision multiple paths in life. Journeying into an established life in London with Friedrich at the novel’s beginning, Lizzie states “My heart feels faint, which can happen when you make the acquaintance of a real future to replace the what-might-be.” In this statement you can feel what alternatives in life Lizzie has sacrificed having taken decisive action and stuck with Friedrich. Yet she also acknowledges the element of chance in coming to certain places in life: “An animal, that’s what chance makes of me.” Although she lives in a highly civilized way, it gradually becomes clear how emotionally debased she feels because of the way fate has closed around her. As the novel progresses you learn how very different things might have been for her and Friedrich in Manchester if the wheel had spun another way.

Lizzie comes across a now-extinct quagga (half zebra, half donkey) in the zoo. Like this animal she is two halves of different things.

Friedrich Engels looms large in the history books as a thinker whose ideas went on to reshape much of our civilization in ways very different from how he and Karl Marx intended. This novel considers him from another angle because as Lizzie states “They call him a genius… Me, I can only know what I know, and that’s the man, the meat and bones of him.” In fact, we’re informed quite a lot about this man’s meat! There are also some stupendous descriptions of Marx: “whiskers like bramble on my face, his lips like dried-out sausage.” It’s in the flesh we’re made to really feel these men’s devotion to a cause which supersedes their own circumstances whilst being aware that these are men with faults and foibles which are all too human. In addition, we find out that Friedrich is someone that Lizzie underestimates in some crucial ways. Eleanor Marx, nicknamed Tussy, is also fascinatingly portrayed as an emotionally-fraught teenager – a somewhat sad foreshadowing of the tumultuous route her life would eventually take.

Before I started this novel I was entirely unaware of who Lizzie Burns was and after reading a few chapters I couldn’t resist looking on Wikipedia to get the outline of her life. In a way this spoiled part of the plot as McCrea is naturally faithful to following the thread of her real life. Several realizations are made as Lizzie’s past is gradually recounted. It obviously didn’t spoil the experience, but part of me wishes I had experienced it all knowing nothing and then read up more afterwards. This is just a small caution to any readers saying you might want to resist this impulse.

‘Mrs Engels’ is an absolutely engrossing read which has left a lasting impression with me. Taking a punt on new authors is a risky business, but Gavin McCrea’s story is so confidently told with humour and sympathy he’s clearly a masterful storyteller. I hope everyone reads this new author who has unearthed and given a voice to a fascinating woman from history.  

Jack of Spades by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates has considered the issues of authorship and identity at length in both her fiction and nonfiction. For several years, Oates published novels of psychological suspense which featured twins using the pseudonym Rosamond Smith and, later, three thrillers using the pseudonym Lauren Kelly. In an essay titled ‘Pseudonymous Selves’ from her nonfiction book (Woman) Writer Oates observed “It may be that, after a certain age, our instinct for anonymity is as powerful as that for identity; or, more precisely, for an erasure of the primary self in that another (hitherto undiscovered?) self may be released.” In Jack of Spades, Oates’ protagonist is a respected writer named Andrew J. Rush who has been dubbed by the press to be the “gentlemen’s Stephen King.” As a man in his fifties with an established literary reputation, Rush unleashes just such an undiscovered self by creating the pseudonym Jack of Spades. Using this name he has published several lurid thrillers that no one would associate with his more highbrow public self. As with all pseudonyms, the secret is difficult to maintain; when Rush’s hidden persona is under the threat of being revealed his life goes awry.

Read my full review on Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies: http://repository.usfca.edu/jcostudies/vol2/iss1/4/

Baileys Women’s Prize ShortList 2015

After spending the last month reading as many of the twenty longlisted books for the Baileys Women’s Prize 2015 as I can, below are the official six shortlisted titles. I guessed 4 out of 6 correct. To be honest, I personally believe a few other books by writers like Newman, Taylor or Seiffert belong on this list more than Outline which is a fascinating book but not an emotionally-satisfying read for me. It’s been a pleasure being a part of the prize’s shadow panel to participate in discussions about each of these books. Reading concurrently with five other dedicated readers has been enjoyable and enlightening. Now the serious discussion (fighting) for the winner can begin! We’ll all be rereading these books in the coming weeks to then meet and decide upon our own champion.

Whichever book ultimately wins, I am so glad this prize has introduced me to a range of unique books I probably wouldn’t have read otherwise. From Laline Paull’s outrageously original The Bees to Jemma Wayne’s ambitious take on the aftershock of war in After Before to Rachel Cusk’s fascinating chorus of voices in Outline to Grace McCleen’s elegant portrayal of madness in The Offering to Marie Phillips’ hilarious Arthurian tale The Table of Less Valued Knights to Sandra Newman’s challenging mighty tome The Country of Ice Cream Star. In my opinion, book prizes help us notice great literature we might have missed and the Baileys Prize has offered up a lot of excellence this year.

Click on the images for my reviews of each title. (except for Kamila Shamsie which I haven't reviewed yet) Who do you think will win?

The Table of Less Valued Knights by Marie Phillips

I can’t remember when a book had me chuckling as much as “The Table of Less Valued Knights.” It made me wish I could shut the world out, curl up somewhere snug and read the whole thing in one go. Marie Phillips cleverly recreates an Arthurian landscape that sends up all the pomp of the famed Round Table by portraying fame-hungry knights, princesses that will do anything not to marry, an acne-riddled giant with parent issues, a blacksmith with a loyalty card scheme and a Lady of the Lake who is just working the job as a temp. After being shamed by an incident from his past, Sir Humphrey du Val can no longer sit with the most esteemed of Arthur’s knights and instead sits at another “less valued” table with the deposed, elderly and ineffectual knights. Although he technically isn’t allowed to take up quests, he seizes his chance to redeem himself when a damsel in distress shows up late one night looking for a knight to aid her in recovering her kidnapped fiancé. Alongside other knights seeking glory, they ride out on a quest with lots of comic misadventures along the way.

The quests which the knights valiantly set out upon are gradually revealed to be more complicated than they initially thought. Unlike mythic tales of Arthurian legend these are no simple 'good knight chases bad villain to rescue virgin maiden' tales. Phillips is consciously working against such simplification. It's observed at one point that “People think with their eyes, not with their minds, that’s the problem.” The novel satirizes the macho men who wish to dominate the narrative of history as pompous fools. A prince errant who schemes to control as many kingdoms as he can insists: “War is what men were made for! War and fucking. War and fucking and – no, just those two.” This is a man who could appear as a revered figure in a stately portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. Yet here he's shown to be a small-minded ruthless tyrant stomping his feet when he doesn't get his way. In this novel the people who emerge to shine are those with a more nuanced understanding of what both men and women are capable of.

Like a lot of Shakespearean comedy there is a hilarious dose of gender confusion. In order to escape detection a lady masquerades as a man. There is a man who likes to dress as a woman and prefers being called by a woman's name. Amidst all the swapping and mixing of gendered presentation there is also a questioning of roles. When a woman takes on a more assertive attitude Sir Humphrey “felt flustered, as if she were the knight and he were the maiden.” The political landscape is painted in a contemporary shade where traditionally-minded heterosexual majorities seek to oppress women and gays. Yet there are strong displays of opposition to this and a burgeoning consciousness of respect and flexibility. The effect of consciously eschewing historical accuracy for the pleasure of relatable sensibilities gives a more inclusive sense of history – as if we could actually inhabit and relate to this medieval carnival. It makes this novel a participatory joyous experience.

Baileys Women's Prize ShortList 2015 Predictions

The shortlist for the Baileys Prize 2015 will be announced next week. Since the longlist announcement, the shadow panel and I have been reading feverishly and discussing the books in earnest. Sometimes we’ve agreed and sometimes we’ve been surprisingly divided about these novels! With twenty books on the longlist there is a great diversity in subject and writing style. Phew, it's been a race to read as much as we can before the shortlist announcement!

Using the judges' criteria I’ve come up with my own six shortlist choices. Four were clear favourites of mine. I mulled over five other books (each great in its own way) quite extensively trying to decide what other two should be on the shortlist. Finally, here are my choices in no particular order. It’ll be fascinating to see how accurately I’ve guessed the list and how my choices compare to those of my fellow judges on the shadow panel.

I have a clear favourite I want to win but I'm keeping my mouth shut for the time being. What books from the longlist do you think will appear on the shortlist? Who do you want to win? Please comment below! Also, links to my reviews for each book appear in the text below.

The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman
The Shore by Sara Taylor
How to Be Both by Ali Smith
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman

“The Country of Ice Cream Star” is written from the point of view of a 15 year old girl whose name is taken from a Friendly’s restaurant sign and set in a dystopian future where everyone is afflicted with a disease which the narrator refers to as posies. This affliction causes them to die around the age of 20. To be presented with a civilization of children makes me wonder how influenced author Sandra Newman was by “Lord of the Flies” – especially because at one point a character named Piglet appears. Ice Cream lives with children similar to herself and they call themselves Sengles. They inhabit a rural area in what was Massachusetts by hunting, stealing and “parlaying” mostly peaceably with neighbouring tribes. She feels that she “Ain’t be the hero of my mind. Ain’t even normal made.” Yet, motivated by the illness of her beloved brother Driver, she’s drawn into a quest to find a cure for her people’s terminal disease which eventually finds her raised to a deified status in New York City which is now called C. de las Marias and run by a new sect of Christianity. She becomes an instrumental part of a war which has been raging for some eighty years and destroyed much of civilization.  

To be honest, if I hadn’t agreed to be on the shadow jury for the Baileys Prize I would have given up reading “The Country of Ice Cream Star” about 100 pages into it. But I’m so glad I stuck with it and read to the end of this long novel. This is a very challenging read that inspires and frustrates in equal measure. It’s difficult not just for the unique voice of the narrator who speaks in a new kind of lyrical dialect which Newman says in an interview with Foyles that she “developed from African-American English.” It also features numerous fast-paced battle scenes. Action like this is difficult enough to capture in more standard kinds of fiction because a certain rhythm must be achieved in the narrative to effectively convey detail alongside key events. On top of all this action is a complicated new-world order that has an intricate social structure and political make-up. There is also a large cast of characters, most of whom I found difficult to keep track of because their names are more often like nick names than traditional names. Combining all these factors meant I often felt disorientated right up until the end. I was fascinated, but confused.

What really drew me along and kept me with it, was the assured power of Ice Cream’s voice. It’s playful, poetic and impressively consistent for such a long novel. Where I think this novel shines the most are in more private moments where she becomes more contemplative. Because they die so young, it’s necessary for the children to become sexually mature as soon as they go through puberty. She chillingly remarks at one point: “Be almost old. Ain’t like to get no enfant when I be sixteen or seventeen. They never going to know me. I can die before they talking words.” The pressure to continue the race so swiftly has created a fascinatingly compressed form of passion where the dynamics of love are more intensely felt. Speaking of her most intense affair: “Ain’t words for what this be. Be something make all honor small. No life nor honesty remain, and every strangeness, every stopping pain, become bellesse. We speaking words like love, like you, that ain’t mean nothing. Words waste in air. Nor ain’t knowledge of this losten hour, is gold you cannot see. Cannot find out what it been. Yet this blind thing be more real than life.” It’s a relatable kind of feeling when language breaks down because of the heat of the emotion that’s being experienced.

Newman captures so well how there is no time for fooling with tender kisses in times of war. Coupling is feverish and necessary, but there are also feelings seeping out the sides: “Can see his face exhilarate and need. Feel how his kiss will be, and how we struggle on the floor, our knifen-fist of loving war. Yo, tears come vicious to my eyes. Be like a death somehow, be like my love itself go weep.” It’s entirely appropriate that metaphors of sex are mixed with death because in this world the two are so closely paired together. Here she perfectly encapsulates the raw reality of a teenage sensibility in a world gone mad: “We cling together with no words, until our scary silence be another nakedness. Is loving with no fight, is helpless. Every touch be words insane – and be the only truthful words I known. Be like a perfect name.”

One of the narrator's favourite salvaged food-stuffs was also one of my most-loved childhood meals

Curiously, standard English as we know it is a foreign language to Ice Cream. To her: “sleeper English. Some words comprehend, but nothing weave into a sentence meaning.” She feels as alienated by the English which has survived from the past as many of us are in the act of reading this novel. I wonder if this is making a commentary on the experience of different races living within Western society who have their own dialect and often find themselves separated from mainstream culture because of this. In quite a subtly powerful way this novel is very much about race. The surviving population of America is black with a scattering of white people who are referred to as roos. One of the most fantastically realized character, the insidious Anselm who is a high-ranking apostle in C. de las Marias remarks: “There are feelings about white people here. You could call it superstition, or you might just say it’s prejudice. Anyhow, it’s been a long and thorny history.” At another point it’s stated: “‘You don’t understand how whites are regarded here,’ Pedro say in teaching voice. ‘In our Bible, they’re described as hell’s offspring, a race of giant scorpions.’” The schism of race relations in America is still very much alive even in this future when the native white population has died out. Still invaders (in this case white Russians) come to dominate the black population by tricking them into taking up arms or becoming sexually enslaved in a way which eerily mixes elements of colonial history.

Clearly, this is a novel much more sophisticated and intelligent than any book jacket summary could convey. I wonder if this is part of the reason why this novel hasn’t been more widely read. Also, the basic elements which make up “The Country of Ice Cream Star” add up to sound like any of the slew of dystopian young-adult novels that currently saturate the market. This is most definitely a literary novel with fantastic ambition. It’s assuredly led by a confident and complex narrator unlike any that has been written before. This is a character willing to travel into the darkest places of life and do what is necessary to save the brother she loves. She ominously vows “If evil can save Driver; I will love all filth.” This novel gets very grimy and uncomfortable in the realisation of what a war run by teenagers would look like. Yet it also provides revelation in Ice Cream’s subtly of feeling and her comically irreverent take on the dominant establishment.