The Lion's Den by Iris Mwanza

This is a gripping legal drama set in the early 1990s as a young lawyer named Grace takes on a pro-bono case for her law firm in Zambia concerning a young individual named Bessy who is persecuted for his homosexuality and wearing women's clothing. Bessy is beaten by the police, his family visits the station every day but aren't allowed to see him and the police don't follow the proper procedures for processing Bessy's case making it impossible for Grace to help him. Nevertheless, she's determinedly seeks justice. Bessy himself appears only briefly in the story. However, through Grace's investigation and interviews with people who know him, there's a strong sense of his life as a sensitive and romantic individual who longs for love and wishes to move somewhere he can live openly.

Grace also emerges as a spirited and determined individual born into very humble circumstances and whose mother who tried to sell her into marriage. Instead of capitulating she flees her village in order to earn a law degree and live independently. Though she's ambitious she has a strong sense of justice – especially for those who are marginalised because she's very close to her late father's gay best friend. I appreciated how the story contrasts the sharp division between the rich and poor. Grace encounters some privileged individuals at her university and through her law firm who are accustomed to plentiful amounts of fine food. But Grace grew up literally starving at some points so has a persistent appetite and grateful appreciation for any food available. Equally she must become accustomed to the dress and manners of a society far from the village she grew up in. I also found it moving how Grace retains a strong connection to the spirits of her ancestors and how her religious identity works alongside widespread Christian practices.

At this time in the 90s and still today in Zambia, same-sex sexual activity is illegal for men and women. More than the laws there's a terrible social stigma for anyone who is LGBT. These notions are partly the result of legal and religious systems of belief which arrived with colonization. Of course, this means that many gay or trans individuals feel compelled to conceal their identity and risk being blackmailed. Anyone who bravely lives openly faces alienation, threats, longterm imprisonment or death. I'm glad this story encouraged me to read more about the historic and current state of queer life in Zambia to make me more aware of this ongoing struggle. Though it wasn't easy growing up gay in a relatively rural area of America in the 1990s, it would have been much more challenging to have grown up in Zambia at this time.

The novel had a powerful impact for this reason but it was also gripping to follow the developments of this case and Grace's journey. This story is a testament to the bravery of people who stand up for what's right against nearly insurmountable odds. But it also shows the complexity of trying to enact substantial change and achieve justice for marginalised individuals when causes gets swept up into party politics.

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

One of my favourite kinds of literature is novels about novelists. So it was inevitable I'd be drawn into Tan Twan Eng's tale about Willie Somerset Maugham's 1921 travels to Penang and the inspiration he found there for his short story 'The Letter'. He and his secretary/lover Gerald stay with Willie's old friend Robert and Robert's wife Lesley. The narrative revolves around the uneasy companionship formed between Willie and Lesley. It's very compelling how Eng portrays this relationship because they aren't exactly friends but they're not enemies either. Each makes assumptions about the other, but both are at a crisis point and possess secrets. As more about their lives is revealed they form a special connection and understanding about one another. This is a novel primarily about the dynamics of romantic relationships. It's about how to balance levels of truth and intimacy in a marriage. It also vividly brings to life an area with a colonial past and the stirrings of political revolution. And it's about the process of creating fiction: which stories are memorialised, which are forgotten and how the past is manipulated through storytelling. It's a tale whose power became more evident the more I read and it's left me with a lot to think about in regards to all these issues.

I found this book immediately compelling because of the beauty of the writing. Eng's descriptions of the landscapes, the food and the society is so immersive. I felt like I could visualise the environment of Malaysia and feel the sensations being described. There's a transcendentally gorgeous scene where two characters swim in a sea that's filled with bioluminescent life. Not only did this brilliantly capture the feeling of this experience, but it also represented a poignant moment of liberation for the characters. The central metaphor concerns the titular House of Doors which is a structure that houses and displays beautiful old doors salvaged from buildings which have been destroyed. It develops a richer meaning over the course of the story suggesting gateways into the past which lead nowhere, stories whose truth can't be known and doors that open to new possibilities. It prompted me to wonder what is preserved and what is lost. This location is also an important focal point for the plot of the novel.

Lesley conveys to Willie the story of her close friend Ethel who was put on trial for murder after shooting a man. This formed the inspiration for Willie's fictional story, but we learn there is an even more complex and scandalous tale behind the one which Willie writes. Additionally, Lesley is more complex than she initially appears as details about her personal history, marriage and desires are revealed. Though certain sections concern the personal, professional and financial struggles Willie is going through, the narrative really belongs to Lesley and she takes control of her own story through this novel. At one point she realises: “we all had the power to change our pasts, our beginnings – or our perception of them, at least – but none of us could determine how our stories would end.” This epiphany allows her to take some agency in her life rather than be a victim of her circumstances. It also allows the reader to romantically imagine what might occur with her character after the end of the novel. This is such a superbly written and psychologically-rich novel I'm now eager to read Eng's previous two novels.

The Book of Form & Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

Be careful not to mistreat your books because they might talk back! Ozeki's novel follows the story of adolescent Benny who begins to hear voices after his father's death. He senses that these are coming from the inanimate objects around him. So he frequently takes refuge in a library because books are better behaved than other things. His widowed mother is naturally very worried about her son. She also grapples with her own sense of loneliness, being made redundant from her job and a hoarding problem. There's also a looming threat from Benny's school, counsellors and social workers to take him away and medicate him. Both mother and son meet some figures and encounter literature which inspires them to question their relationship with society, material possessions and reality itself. As with her novel “A Tale for the Time Being”, Ozeki draws in concepts of Zen Buddhism to encourage her characters and readers to ponder meaningful philosophical questions. 

Though the concept of this novel about talking objects sounds quite whimsical it takes seriously the emotional strife of a struggling single mother and her troubled teenage son. There are some truly heartbreaking scenes where she desperately tries to connect with her boy and sooth him only to be rebuffed as he's embarrassed and feels misunderstood. While I did find this involving I often questioned the necessity of Ozeki's narrative device where the book becomes a character itself. Benny grows increasingly frustrated with the way it tells the story – especially when it gets into embarrassing detail about his mother's personal life. Certainly this is a creative approach for trying to convey Benny's experience of the world, but I sometimes found it detracted from my engagement with the story. 

Similarly, there are parts of the book which felt like overt diatribes about materialism and consumer culture. It's not that I disagreed with Ozeki's points but they felt didactic because her lessons took prominence over her characters in some sections. This was especially true for an artistic character who calls herself The Aleph. Though I found it fun how she devised a game of planting clues in various library books to form a trail for readers to follow, she frequently preaches about her beliefs in a way which felt too pointed. The mother also sometimes came across as overly naïve as if she was simply created as a receptacle for the wisdom that the author wanted to impart. Perhaps I wouldn't have taken such umbrage with these issues if the novel weren't so long as it didn't feel like it needed to be over five hundred pages. I did enjoy many parts of the book. I just wish it had stuck more to the emotional core of the story rather than creating so many flourishes. 

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. 

A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville

“A Room Made of Leaves” begins with a note from Kate Grenville in the guise of a transcriber and editor who found these pages which are supposedly the secret memoirs of Elizabeth Macarthur, a real Anglo-Australian merchant from the late 18th/early 19th century and wife to one of the most famous and wealthy entrepreneurs in New South Wales at that time. However, at the end of the book Grenville acknowledges “This book isn't history. At the same time it's not pure invention.” This playful ruse makes the novel an immersive fictional experience but it also adds to the sense of what went unsaid both in the historic documents Elizabeth left behind and concerning the circumstances that led this couple who came from humble origins to build a lucrative Australian wool industry. Grenville fictionally reimagines Elizabeth's journey from growing up among provincial Cornish farmers to her challenging marriage to her indomitable husband John to settling in the relative wildness of the New South Wales colony. It's a tale of self-invention, hidden passion and the canny resolve needed to outwit a patriarchal society in order to achieve real independence. Grenville creates a portrait of a woman with hidden veins of emotion while also atmospherically depicting the gritty reality of pioneer life in a foreign land. 

The chapters which make up this novel are quite short in length which gives the text the punchy immediacy of diary entries. I enjoyed how this kept the novel skipping along at a good pace. It's terrifying how Elizabeth becomes entangled in such a nightmarish situation marrying a brutish husband and being forced to move across the world. Yet she's intelligent enough to know the real danger of stepping out of her role and falling into an even more perilous position. At one point during the long sea voyage to their new home John becomes very ill and she realises that if he dies she'll be even more vulnerable. I found it moving and relatable how she discovers the key is to time things right to allow for opportunities for certain freedoms within this restrictive society as well as chances to discover what she really wants in life. Crucially, Grenville frames this story within the context of colonization and that the land where Elizabeth and John found rich opportunity is also a place which was stolen from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. A mystery about what really happened during a crucial battle between the English and the native people gives a haunting quality to this intimate tale about how one shrewd woman might have triumphed over considerable obstacles to realise her full potential.

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste

One of the reasons I enjoy reading great historical fiction is that it illuminates periods of the past that I was totally unaware of. Most of my understanding of the events surrounding WWII are centred around an American and English perspective. So prior to Mengiste's “The Shadow King” I had no knowledge of Mussolini's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, one of the last sovereign African countries at that time. As Mengiste has explained in interviews, the Second Italo-Ethiopian War is well documented but there are few written historical accounts of Ethiopian women's active involvement in defending the country through these battles. This novel provides a different framing of this period by insisting on the prominence and importance of these women. The author introduces us to this era by focusing on the story of Hirut, an orphaned girl who becomes a maid to Kidane who is an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie's army and his strong-willed wife Aster. As the invasion begins the balance of their lives is totally upended and their relationships alter in accordance with the joint will to fight to maintain Ethiopia's independence. The result is a dramatic story filled with bloody battles and the emotional journeys of individuals whose lives are fundamentally changed by these larger events. 

The difficulty with some historical novels is that they are so steeped in a narrative of the past it's a challenge to enter as a reader if you aren't equipped with a knowledge about it. This was definitely why I found it hard to finish reading “Wolf Hall” on the first go and why it took supplementary reading for me to better understand the events and drama being portrayed. The same was true for Mengiste's novel. Frequently throughout the story I found myself entrenched in scenes of conflict I struggled to understand so it was difficult to emotionally invest in the outcome. I fully accept this is a problem of my own ignorance about the series of historical events being portrayed. Like with Mantel's fiction, I think the payoff gained from really concentrating and reading additional material is worth it because “The Shadow King” is undoubtably an impressive work of fiction. I'm equally sure that reading this novel a second time will yield a lot more pleasure because I'd be able to focus more on the development of the characters, the links between them and the symbolic resonance of the story more than working so hard to follow what was actually happening. However, this means that at the moment this is a novel I admired more than really enjoyed.

Where this book shined the most for me were in private moments where a character like Hirut realises she is trapped in events much larger than herself. There's a sudden understanding that this entangled political conflict has irreparably changed her in a way that runs counter to her own natural development and she must radically redefine herself in order to survive. But there are different strategies for making this happen. In the case of Aster, she takes a stand against her own husband and insists she can play an active leading role in defending their country. In the case of the cook, she cannily flies under the radar by refusing to divulge her name or make her identity known. It's moving how Mengiste shows the way identity is distorted and reformed by the trauma of war. I also found it powerful how the characters aspired to shape the narrative of history while the conflict was still in progress through the photographs being taken and the news which was portioned out to the rest of the world. It's compelling how Mengiste portrays an evolving sense of national identity when a country struggles to maintain its independence and how that country's true character resides in the collective will of its people rather than a figurehead like Selassie who fled into exile. This novel shows that the truth of a nation is found more often in what its citizens' sacrifice rather than the spoils of war.

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry

The plot of “Night Boat to Tangier” isn’t what drew me to this book. Two aging Irish gangster wait at a Spanish port for a particular boat to arrive as they mull over the past and seek answers to what happened to one of their lost children named Dilly. Stories about gangsters usually put me off because many seem to revel in a kind of machismo that makes my eyes roll. But I enjoyed Kevin Barry’s previous novel “Beatlebone” so much that this is a writer I’ll eagerly follow no matter what subject he writes about. His writing feels quintessentially Irish. It plays with the meaning of language, draws sharp characterisations and evokes humour through a lot of dialogue, confidently navigates between the absurd and the alarmingly realistic, isn’t afraid of a dirty joke but also approaches life’s big questions with a lot of profundity, veers towards the melancholic and it lingers on the meaning of Irishness itself. Barry’s new novel even plays upon one of the greatest works of Irish literature of all time: Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’. It encompasses all this and a lot more while relating the story of Maurice and Charlie’s life as they sit on a bench in this strange liminal space.

I admire how poignantly Barry is able to construct a scene which contains a lot of funny discussion that’s also underpinned by more serious emotions which hang suspended in the background. He states how this works at one point when describing “They look into the distance. They send up their sighs. Their talk is a shield against feeling.” While long-term friends and colleagues Maurice and Charlie have a definite mission being at this Spanish port they also have a lot to discuss which hasn’t been said between them before. They sift through memories and jump between periods of the past to consider how they got to this point, the real value of all their drug smuggling escapades and how they’ve become so estranged from the people who matter the most to them. It’s a process of learning how to live with what they’ve lost rather than trying to forget it: “There comes a time when you just have to live among your ghosts. You keep the conversation going. Elsewise the broad field of the future opens out as nothing but a vast emptiness.”

The prospect of a novel which is largely a conversation that veers between topics like death and masturbation might sound too ponderous to many readers. But there’s a lot of tension in the story as their process of interrogating some people who pass through the port contains flashes of violence or the threat of violence. Many surprising revelations and twists in the plot occur as well while they consider periods of the past and how their relationship is much more complex than it first appears. I also enjoy how this foreign port is a location where they can consider their conflicted feelings of national identity. In some ways Ireland is a place they deeply resent: “Fucking Ireland. Its smiling fiends. Its speaking rocks. Its haunted fields. Its sea memory. Its wildness and strife. Its haunt of melancholy. The way that it closes in.” Yet, it’s also somewhere they’re fiercely attached to both in its people and its landscape contoured by a living past. The daughter Dilly takes the form of a new kind of global citizen still tethered to this vast Irishness which Maurice and Charlie wrestle with, but her radical self-creation is less likely to be crushed by its weight.

The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch

I think some of the greatest feminist dystopian fiction includes Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Angela Carter’s “The Passion of New Eve”, Sandra Newman’s "The Country of Ice Cream Star" and Naomi Alderman’s “The Power”. They don’t just speculate about terrifying ways that humanity can go wrong for women, but also powerfully comment upon the continued subjugation of women today. Lidia Yuknavitch has created an utterly original and wildly imaginative take on this narrative in her new novel “The Book of Joan”. This novel takes readers to the near-future 2049 when a series of cataclysmic events have reduced our planet to a “dirt ball” around which orbits a slipshod repurposed satellite. Upon this resides the mutant elite of humankind who survive on the scarce resources they can suck out of the decimated planet Earth. This will most certainly be the end of the human race as these mutants’ genitals have dropped off or sealed up and people’s skin has turned so (ugly) white they are nearly transparent. They are led by a powerful former self-help guru Jean de Men who organizes trials and executions of “offending” citizens as entertainment. But there is a resistance to this tyranny in the form of a strike branding artist Christine who tattoos poetry on the grafted skin covering her body. She mythologizes the story of Joan who created chaos across the planet and was ritually burned like her 15th century French-warrior namesake. The ensuing conflict is not only a mesmerizing and grisly adventure but makes striking observations about gender, genetics and the meaning of story-telling.

So I couldn’t help thinking that Yuknavitch was speaking directly about today when Christine comments: “We are what happens when the seemingly unthinkable celebrity rises to power. Our existence makes my eyes hurt.” It’s difficult not to read this as a reference to the current American president. It’s interesting how she engages with the way that popularity and power intermingle and the compromises and resolutions such a leader must make to either maintain their image as a beloved celebrity or flagrantly abuse their power to ensure the general population falls into line. This is shown differently in both of the figures of Jean de Men and Joan. Notably, she does so not just in these characters’ actions but in the way their bodies are radically transformed and mutate as they utilize previously untapped elements from both nature and technology.

It’s difficult in dystopian fiction to maintain a balance between explaining the conditions of an imagined future reality and developing characters that readers can really connect with. There were sections of this novel which flew over my head. Yuknavitch ambitiously builds this distorted future by playing upon many elements of philosophy and science such as subatomic physics. She also hints at bands of rebels and subservient robots. To fully flesh out this future would have taken thousands of pages, yet there could have been ways to briefly round out her fantastical reality to help me fully picture it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t always clearly see it so parts of the novel felt too chaotic to me. But she makes up for it with some fantastic characters whose very bodies carry the scars of what they’ve gone through. There is Christine’s gay friend Trinculo who affectionately and relentlessly spouts antiquated bawdy insults at her. There’s also the love affair between Joan and Leone who is a Vietnamese-French girl that fights alongside her in battles across the world.

One of the most striking things in this novel is the way that poetry and verse becomes an adornment that symbolizes privilege. Christine emphasizes that tattooing text is an art and since their group of mutant beings keep grafting on layers of skin it’s like parchment which they carry with them everywhere. She emphatically holds onto the importance of storytelling because “To have a story was to have a self.” The difficulty with real historical tales like that of Joan of Arc is that her story can be shaped into whatever its tellers need it to be. She could be portrayed as a saint or a heretic. Yuknavitch poses the question “What if, for once in history, a woman’s story could be untethered from what we need it to be in order to feel better about ourselves?” In the character of Joan she creates a woman that untethers herself from the script which is assigned to her and becomes fiercely individual – someone that can only be defined by what she loves. 

Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

Rarely have the social pressures to produce children been conveyed with such intensity as in Adébáyọ̀'s debut novel “Stay With Me”. Yejide and Akin are an intelligent, beautiful and prosperous couple living in modern day Nigeria. In the year 1985 it looks like they are set for a promising future, but no matter how hard the couple try they cannot conceive a child. The narrative alternates between the points of view of Yejide and Akin. They convey the multi-faceted strains on their relationship as their family and society demand that they produce children. They go to extreme measures to do so and there are multiple shocking plot twists along the way. Amidst the personal crisis that this couple experience, the political leadership of the country is in a precarious state forcing them to make choices which they wouldn't in more stable circumstances. This well-paced drama skilfully conveys the different dilemmas faced by women and men when the importance of conceiving children is placed above all else.

Although Yejide is an educated woman who runs a successful beauty salon it's the perception of her husband's family that Akin financially supports her. No matter how capable she is the fact that she's a woman will always place her at a lower status to that of the man. The overwhelming impression over the course of the novel is that according to the family Yejide's body is not her own, but merely an instrument to bring in the next generation. It's typical for couples to feel under strain from the previous generation to produce children, but the interference here is so much greater where Yejide is subjected to physical examinations from the family and they arrange for Akin to have a second wife when she doesn't become pregnant quickly enough. The worst challenges Yejide faces to her relationship are from Akin's mother and Funmilayo, the woman selected as Akin's second wife. It's a sad consequence of a patriarchal social system that women begin to oppress each other and feel that they must compete with one another.

Even when a woman has a child her body and life are not her own. It's perceived that “a mother does not do what she wants, she does what is best for her child.” So whether she has a child or not, Yejide never feels like she fully controls her own destiny. Matters are not helped when Yejide's own family line is uncertain because her mother died early in her life. She states “the point was that when there was no identifiable lineage for a child, that child could be descended from anything. Even dogs, witches or strange tribes with bad blood.” Yejide's own father had multiple wives and no matter how much she's favoured by the man, the fact that her mother's lineage is unclear makes her a rogue element in this family line. When social status is such an important factor it doesn't matter how capable an individual is; without a strong family tree to support you you will always be condemned.

While the challenges for a woman in this society are manifold, the author equally shows the enormous expectations and problems faced by men. Akin is fiercely in love with Yejide and truly only desires her, but he's pressured to accept Funmilayo as a second wife whether he wants to or not. This compels him to treat her badly and although Funmilayo is presented as a scheming individual, I felt sympathetic to her precarious position. The author also dramatically shows the depths a man will sink to in order to conceal his vulnerability. The demand that he produce a child compels Akin to plot against and lie to his wife. Gradually the levels of deception and self-deception are revealed over the course of the story. The characters are under such strain to perform correctly in their social roles they begin to convince themselves that the reality of the situation is different from what it is. It's observed how “the biggest lies are often the ones we tell ourselves.”

When reading this novel I was reminded of Lisa McInerney's novel “The Glorious Heresies” which also has a tragic romance at its centre. Although these two novels are set in very different societies, they both show the insidious way the dominant ideologies of their countries put undo pressure on personal relationships. “Stay With Me” contains a gripping story that intelligently portrays the longterm destruction of a relationship from choices made under pressure from the family and community that surround Yejide and Akin. Although it contains a lot of serious and compelling themes, the story is full of such vibrant characters and fascinating surprises it's a very pleasurable read.

Dirt Road by James Kelman

New novel “Dirt Road” is the first book I’ve read by Scottish writer James Kelman. It may not be representative of his usual work as I believe he has a reputation for writing novels that invoke Glaswegian patterns of speech which make it difficult for people unfamiliar with this dialect to understand. His Booker Prize winning novel “How Late It Was, How Late” was surrounded by controversy for its frequent use of bad language, but Kelman responded to these objections saying he was honouring and representing how working class people in Glasgow actually speak. “Dirt Road” features both Scottish and American Southern dialect because the story is about a US road trip, but it’s very readable and easy to understand. This emotionally affecting story closely follows the experiences of Scottish teenager Murdo as he and his father visit relatives in Alabama shortly after his mother died of cancer.  

I’ve find it can take a while to get into novels that are so embedded in the moment to moment thoughts and feelings of their protagonists. It can feel at times like a chaotic accumulation of superfluous detail and tedious observations. It’s a testament to the skill of Kelman’s writing that I was surprised to find after fifty pages or so how mesmerising this narrative became and how close I felt to Murdo as he navigates a country that is bewildering and foreign to him. What’s more, his position of naivety gives a fresh perspective on social, national, racial and economic divisions within society highlighting their ridiculousness. In the middle of the novel, Murdo and his father Tom travel with an aunt and uncle to an American Scottish festival. The dress and activities on display here are a strange simulacrum of outdated traditions and are out of sync with modern Scottish sensibilities. It makes for funny scenes but it also feels like this contrast between the idea of a unified national character and actual Scottish characters make a poignant and timely statement about how national identity is porous and changeable. Kelman isn’t mocking the sense of community that festivals like this give, but he shows how they are more about the idea of a nation rather than truly representing the evolving complex reality of a nation.

Murdo is a talented accordion player and his teenage passion for this musical art form is poignantly rendered. He tries to explain to his father how he’s not academically gifted in the traditional sense, but gets a sensory education from listening to music: “Just hearing it the way I’m hearing it, it’s like learning, although I’m just listening like I hear it and I learn it. It’s just the way I do it Dad so I mean that’s just how it is.” When Murdo encounters attractive girl Sarah and her grandmother Queen Monzee-ay who is locally famous for her Zydeco music, the impressionable boy is strongly drawn to playing alongside them and joining this charismatic group of performers. Naturally, his father is protective and wary of his son setting out with bands of musicians when he’s still only sixteen and not an American citizen.

At the heart of the novel is how Murdo and his father Tom’s relationship changes as they learn how to live without the mother and Murdo’s sister Eilidh who died many years ago. I can’t help but feel Kelman must have been inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” in some way because of the novel’s title and the emotionally fragile father-son relationship it portrays as they travel together without a mother. When I think of McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel I’m immediately reminded of the chilling horror it portrays, but my more lasting impression is the bond shown between a man and his son. It’s a tricky thing to do especially because many men conform to their gender roles and don’t often openly discuss emotion. The same is true in “Dirt Road” where Tom spends a lot of time reading on his own while Murdo likes to escape to his aunt’s basement to listen to music in solitude. Conversations between them are short and to the point. Details about the emotional discord created by the mother’s death are gradually revealed, especially how Murdo was placed in a caring position for his father. He thinks with resentment: “The son shouldn’t have to feel sorry for the father. Jesus didn’t feel sorry for God.” But their experiences together during their journey create a more harmonious bond and mutual respect for each other.

Kelman is attentive to small differences in customs and behaviour making America strange to this Scottish boy such as the way tax is only added at the point of sale, the way many Americans use fork and knives differently from Europeans and the social separation between racial groups that exists in parts of the American south. It makes for atmospheric reading as it is so finely filtered through the sharply observed perspective of a sensitive teenage boy. Equally strong is the way Murdo is bewildered by his own changing identity as he builds a sense of self out of his interactions with other people: “Ye look in the mirror and see other people. Because they are seeing you.” This is an impactful story about a damaged father and son building a connection and respect for each other amidst their lingering grief, but it is also about how artificial lines of division break down when real connections are formed.

The Abundance by Annie Dillard

It's been an emotional week. On Friday when the result of the UK referendum about whether to remain in the EU came out as leave I felt an enormous sense of grief and worry. Like many people who wanted us to remain, I could do little but spend the day watching the depressing news unfold in the press and scrolling through the outcry on twitter. The consequences of this are so uncertain with theories and predictions running wild it gets to a point where it feels too maddening to continue following. So I decided to turn off the news and pick up a book I've been meaning to get to since it came out in April. Annie Dillard is a writer I've always adored, admired and read for inspiration. “The Abundance” is exactly what I needed. Reading this book now isn't hiding from reality; it's a way of facing the complexity and mystery of it more fully.

It turns out Annie Dillard has something very sensible to say about calamitous events. She writes: “It’s been a stunning time for us adults. It always is. Nothing is new, but it’s fresh for every new crop of people. What is eternally fresh is our grief. What is eternally fresh is out astonishment. What is eternally fresh is our question: What the Sam Hill is going on here?” Her cool gaze at the perpetually surprising turn of disastrous events in the world is tempered by an acknowledgement of our very human response to cry, shake our heads in wonder and react. What's important to remember is that there are lives of individuals like you and me at stake no matter how far removed we might feel from tragic events reported in the news.

Dillard's subjects are wide-ranging and idiosyncratic. She writes about an occasion when Allen Ginsberg and journalist/political dissident Liu Binyan took a stroll in Disneyland, a restrained deer in the Ecuadorian jungle and the life of the French palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin. Several of her essays explore poignant autobiographical moments from her childhood and adolescence. There are endearing recollections such as her parents' fondness for jokes and more touching moments such as her break with the church, a romantic obsession or dancing to loud music with her father and sisters after reading “On the Road”. Her sense of growing rebellion is described as “I was a dog barking between my own ears, a barking dog who wouldn’t hush.” And also “I was an intercontinental ballistic missile with an atomic warhead. They don’t cry.” These descriptions of the heightened emotion of adolescence are as strong as any metaphors you find in fiction. Although the story of her upbringing is particular it is easy to identify with her universal stages of development. She has a special way of articulating a burgeoning awareness and engagement “as though my focus were a brush painting the world.”

There are moments when Dillard begins to sound like the best kind of preacher. She's someone who describes the world and makes it feel utterly fresh so that you see more clearly how you fit into and interact with it: “You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.” It's easy in life to become complacent but Dillard urges “You must go at your life with a broadaxe” and to be present and committed: “you have to fling yourself at what you’re doing, you have to point yourself, forget yourself, aim, dive.” Imagery such as diving is repeated over a number of essays: “The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after.” This is a beautiful way of describing how we can wed the reality of our lives and the way we imagine it. Other moments describe a terrifying confrontation with the abrupt end of life such as an instance where she comes upon the deflated skin of a frog or the screams people emit when the landscape is consumed by darkness during a total eclipse.

"I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with the fierce and pointed will."

The final essay is one of the most sustained and ambitious pieces in the whole collection. Here she alternates between passages about expeditions to the poles of the earth and attending services at a church. She describes arduous journeys of the 19th century when ships became trapped in ice, but the expedition continued on sled or on foot: “They man-hauled their sweet human absurdity to the Poles.” At one point in the essay the line between religious experience and the hunt for the ends of the earth blurs. The churchgoers become the explores trudging through snow. She explains how “Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand – that of finding a workable compromise between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.”

I've read many of the essays included in this book before. It was somewhat of a surprise to discover that there isn't any newly written material in “The Abundance.” This is work that has been taken from past books and rearranged. It hardly matters because it's Annie Dillard. If you haven't read her before this is a wonderful introduction to how her endlessly-insightful mind works and even if you've previously read everything she's written her writing bears endless revisiting. Certainly any writer should read and pay close attention to her classic essay ‘A Writer in the World’ where she describes the importance of reading as much as writing: “Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened, and its deepest mystery probed?” There is a satisfying arc to how these essays flow from the first to the last. An excellent forward by Geoff Dyer proceeds them where he describes what she does in her writing better than I ever could. Dillard's gaze focuses both on the minute and the infinite. Unanswerable questions are posed and she suggestions ways of looking. She gets at the way we as conscious bodies blunder through life eager to know, experience and understand.

The Lonely City by Olivia Laing

It’s difficult to write about books that affect me the most. Of course I was drawn to this non-fiction book because the title is so in line with my blog’s title. As well as being a platform for me to ponder what I’m reading, I like to think of this blog as an ongoing exploration on the conflicted relationship I have to literature – how it can make me feel so connected to our larger shared humanity. At the same time, it makes me physically alone and reading itself can serve as a self-imposed barrier to social interaction. Therefore, “The Lonely City” is exactly the kind of extended meditation on loneliness I crave to better inform me and expand my understanding of this condition. It’s a heavily researched book focusing on a choice selection of artists’ work and biographies to enhance Olivia Laing’s arguments about why we might frequently feel lonely, what loneliness means and how it’s a manifestation of living in society. This book is also highly personal with sections which are startlingly candid and touchingly vulnerable. In the same way that Helen Macdonald used an electric range of sources and personal experiences to broaden our understanding of grief in “H is for Hawk”, Laing uses fascinating research to inform a dynamic portrait of her intimate reality and make strong observations about loneliness. This made reading “The Lonely City” a deeply meaningful experience for me and made it a riveting book.

Laing concentrates on multiple visual artists such as Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Henry Darger and David Wojnarowicz to formulate a nuanced and compelling understanding of what loneliness means. Her interpretations of these artists’ creations is heavily informed from biographical information and how expressions of loneliness are reflected in the physical forms of their work. She conducted an extensive amount of research going through archives and conducting interviews to gain deeper insight into the struggles they faced. In doing so she makes a number of compelling connections between how similar difficulties can manifest differently through artistic expression. She also references studies from psychologists such as Frieda Fromm-Reichmann to inform her arguments and deepen an understanding of the feelings these artists processed and formulated into art.

Klaus Nomi - Simple Man

"Come now and take my hand
Now and forever, never to be lonely
Yes, I'm a simple man!
I do the best I can"

There’s a mesmerising way in which Laing’s engagement with art and artists leads on to more research and related research into other fascinating figures/artists such as Valerie Solanas, Peter Hujar, Billie Holiday, Klaus Nomi, Zoe Leonard, Jean-Michel Basquiat. They all reflect back on her focal subject and cast a different perspective on the sensation of being an outsider. The queer or racial minority status of many of her subjects and the way in which broader society has rejected them makes their deep-set feelings of aloneness and alienation highly understandable. They also serve as touchstones for Laing’s own feelings of not fitting into the majority or any neat classification of gender or sexuality: “I inhabited a space in the centre, which didn’t exist, except there I was.” Examples such as the famous gay cruising grounds of the piers in 1970s NYC serve as vibrant displays of freedom from social pressure to be in a monogamous couple or “to cuddle up, to couple off, to go like Noah’s animals two by two into a permanent container, sealed from the world.” Although men are frequently made to measure themselves against impossible masculine standards, women experience differently intense stresses to fit into a certain type leading Laing to state “God I was sick of carrying around a woman’s body, or rather everything that attaches to it.” Her observations about the general pressure towards conformity make her conclude that multiple forms of “structural injustice” induce feelings of loneliness and that loneliness is a collective experience rather than a singular one. In some form we all inhabit this state of mind, this city.

Growing up as a queer boy in the relatively rural state of Maine, I always had a keen sense of being outside the norm and often felt lonely. Moving to the city of Boston in my teenage years did little to assuage these feelings. While I met many like-minded people and had a range of experiences to broaden my sense of identity, I was made to feel more intensely isolated during a short period where I had nowhere to live. Bundling up against the cold and hunkering under a closed shopping centre’s light throughout the night, I read constantly to distract myself from the sleeplessness caused by living rough.

I always remember one evening when a guard patrolling the centre’s perimeter came upon me at 3am. Nervous I’d be ushered to move along I started to get up, but he just raised his hand and asked with genuine concern if I was alright. I huddled further into my coat and raised my book again assuring him I was fine. He lingered a moment and I could tell he wanted to ask more or offer some assistance, but I concentrated on my book deflecting any potential connection. There is a similar moment that Laing recounts when she’s reading at a train station and is approached by a man who is obviously desperate to strike up a friendly conversation. She avoided this contact and subsequently felt guilty about it. In the same way, although I was the one in need, I feel a lingering guilt that this man offered a connection in a lonely city and I shied away from it.

Reading can be a deeply enriching experience providing knowledge and extending our empathy to see the world through another individual’s perspective. However, it can also serve as a shield to avoid engaging with others even when a connection is what we desperately want. It’s also why participating in online interactions can be so much more seductive than making real life contact. As Laing writes about time she spent mostly online: “I wanted to be in contact and I wanted to retain my privacy, my private space.” It’s particularly fascinating how she concentrates upon examples from the rapidly changing landscape of the internet for how loneliness is both expressed and perpetuated through this medium. It proves how loneliness isn’t simply a question of being by yourself as opposed to being surrounded by others, but how the internal life become despondent, detached or separated from the external reality.

“The Lonely City” is a book that raises many deeply embedded and probably hidden feelings. It’s admirable not only for the sustained and studious lengths to which Laing probes the mystery of the common state of loneliness, but the way in which she bravely inserts herself into the question itself. Reading this book felt to me like engaging in the most personal and intense internal conversation – the kind you might only have with yourself sitting alone in a diner late at night staring through a window at all the distant lights.

Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

The premise of Kevin Barry’s novel “Beatlebone” is irresistible. In 1978 John Lennon travels across Ireland trying to reach an island so he can scream. This is an island he purchased years ago hoping to establish an arts community there, but which has remained nothing but a weather-beaten desolate pile of rocks. Now the artistically-frustrated famous singer wants nothing more than to spend a few days there to practice his primal scream therapy he learned in California. But there’s a problem; Ireland gets in his way. His well-meaning philosophical driver takes him on his journey, but Lennon is diverted by the press which hounds him, drunken nights at the pub, a dog he dubs with the name Brian Wilson and a small new-age group living in an island’s dilapidated hotel who engage in a disturbingly confrontational practice called “the rants.” All the while Lennon craves nothing but solitude and to escape the newly popular sound of Kate Bush singing about her wily, windy moors. The sensational aspect of this tale gradually moves aside to reveal a deeply-effective meditation on the search for meaning. It’s also full of gutsy-good humour and some of the snappiest profanity-ridden dialogue you’ll ever read.

It’s fantastic the way Barry uses language to evoke place and the lives of his characters. His descriptive writing is so precise in conveying a particular mood. So, as Lennon and his driver are travelling along the coast at one point, we’re given the line “The seabirds hover watchfully with their mad eyes, all wingspan and homicide.” Its lines like this which heighten the mood and imaginatively draw the reader into a scene. The tone of the book also swings in sync with the emotional state of the characters so the narrative can go from stark realistic descriptions of Lennon’s quest to more fragmented parts when he comes under extreme distress. At one point the language breaks into a synesthetic rush matching Lennon’s state of mind: “the scent of the girls’ voices is on the air – their voices are coloured yellow and racing green.” There are many vibrant characters ranging from a drunken woman hilariously ranting in a pub to an emphatic guru trying to get John to emotionally open up. The dialogue is pitched so well that I felt like I could hear the characters in my head and picture the expressions on their faces perfectly.

John Lennon performing ‘Mother’ live

Amidst John’s quest to get to his island, Barry does something quite unusual a little over halfway through the book. He breaks for a while to speak directly to the reader about his research writing this novel and how he himself tried to emulate the experience he creates for Lennon in a cave. Patricia Duncker’s recent novel “Sophie & the Sibyl” uses a similar sort of authorial intrusion in her fictional narrative. It works differently in “Beatlebone” making Barry into more of a fictional character himself, but they both produce the similar effects of playfully breaking the fictional illusion and mixing the emotional tribulations of the author with the characters that they are writing about. Here Lennon’s artistic crisis in trying to produce meaningful new music is reflected in Barry’s struggle to write the novel he wants to. So towards the end it feels as if John’s speech about his new album could be coming from the author himself: “What’s it about? Fucking ultimately? It’s about what you’ve got to put yourself through to make anything worthwhile. It’s about going to the dark places and using what you find there.” The struggles of the artistic process are felt all the more dearly knowing Barry’s thoughts. I found that the interjection came at the perfect point in the narrative where the momentum of the journey was waning and it was enhanced by this dramatic shift.

I think any reader can empathize with Lennon’s drive for some solitude to reflect and make sense of how to progress further in the work he wants to do. The physical reality of the island isn’t ultimately what matters. It’s the emotional state of the person who journeys there and the radical confrontation with himself he must make in a lonely place where there is no one to answer to, no one to perform for and no reason to proceed other than to get out of the trap of his mind. Barry states with characteristic blunt humour: “The examined life turns out to be a pain in the stones. The only escape from yourself is to scream and fuck and make and do.” Sometimes we lose our momentum and purpose to continue forward in life. “Beatlebone” brilliantly and entertainingly explores a quest to find the way back to what we really want.

Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cumming

Reading a celebrity’s memoir isn’t usually my sort of thing. But this book actually has very little to do with being a celebrity. Alan Cumming’s extraordinarily complex and difficult family story is reason enough to read this memoir without the need for salacious Hollywood gossip (of which there is very little in this book). “Not My Father’s Son” is primarily about Cumming’s incredibly problematic relationship with his estranged father and overcoming the horrendous abuse he and his brother experienced as children. However, it is because of his fame that he was able to participate in the program Who do you think you are? where celebrities get to trace their heritage and uncover hidden facts about their family. In this book we’re given his personal take on discovering more information about his mysterious maternal grandfather who was a war hero and whose life came to a shocking end. What was going on between his immediate family while this was being filmed is even more extraordinary than what happened in this television program. There are events and revelations in Cumming’s life happening simultaneously while the show is made with bizarre connections linking the past and present.

This memoir turns into a kind of thriller as it progresses because of the anticipation of what family details will be revealed. It moves back and forth in time from Cumming’s childhood and budding acting career to the time of filming the TV show. Interspersed are family photographs which become particularly poignant as more of the story is revealed. Cumming’s complex story naturally raises questions about the meaning of family and how much genetics determines who we are. It also meaningfully conveys strategies for dealing with the aftermath of abuse. I found the story in “Not My Father’s Son” extremely moving. It’s about survival, identity and what really makes people family.