French Braid by Anne Tyler

In an entry from 1977 in “The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates” she remarks that “Anne Tyler's imagination turns (instinctively?) toward her central theme of staying-in-one-place / running-away. Taking on responsibilities / ridding oneself of all responsibility.” This is certainly noticeable in many of Tyler's novels – most notably in “Ladder of Years”. There's a persistent tension for many characters between maintaining the life they've built and leaving it behind. In her latest novel “French Braid” we have an example of a character who, in a sense, has it both ways. Mercy is the matriarch of the Garrett clan. Though in her younger days she fantasized about walking out on her life she has loyally loved and supported her husband and three children for decades. But her natural domain isn't the domestic. Once their youngest child has flown the coop she embarks on pursuing her passion for painting and gradually moves out of the family home into her artist's studio. She's developed a technique for painting a family's home by focusing on one aspect which is represented in high detail while the rest remains a bit of a blur. Mercy's living arrangement mostly goes unspoken amongst the family so she maintains her position while achieving a kind of independent freedom. It's an excellent compromise for a riddle that has been threaded throughout so much of this author's meaningful body of work.

The novel begins in 2010 before leaping back to a rare Garrett family holiday in 1959 and skipping forward through the decades alighting focus on several different members of the household. Similar to Tyler's “A Spool of Blue Thread” we get a broader picture of these individuals by seeing brief snapshots of them in different periods of time. Gradually we come to understand how this family has maintained loose bonds while living separately and largely unknown to each other. Though they are reunited for some holidays and anniversaries, other occasions such as weddings aren't always marked with the traditional get together. Tyler presents instances when they do see each other with a wonderful amount of detail and dialogue which captures all the awkwardness and uncertainty of people who are united through coincidence of birth rather than natural affection. Men in the family revert to bland discussions about the traffic getting there. Women side-eye the choices of dishes brought to the dining table. These are familiar figures who are of a certain type – yet they are also unique and distinct. Mercy and her husband Robin's son David doesn't conform to his father's masculine expectations. The rift this causes is subtle yet severe in creating a longstanding distance which is never entirely broached. It's just one example of how this family has drifted apart while still remaining roughly connected. Though Robin might be simply viewed as a domineering dad he's depicted with a lot of compassion and sympathy showing how evenhanded Tyler is when writing her characters.

The title of the novel is acknowledged as a metaphorical cliché when an older David observes how this style of hair arrangement which leaves waves in the strands when undone is “how families work, too. You think you're free of them, but you're never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever.” It's a bit of hard-won terse wisdom which is a platitude but still essentially true. However, the real understanding of family life comes from looking at members as individuals caught in different periods of time and circumstances. This is the technique Tyler has employed and which Mercy might have depicted visually if she painted people rather than objects. It's wonderfully affecting as the novel builds to say so much more than any of its finely-observed parts. Tyler's ability to find profundity in the mundane without any overly dramatic plotting is unparalleled and highly accomplished.

The New Life by Tom Crewe

Crewe's debut novel begins in the summer of 1894 as John Addington makes the important decision that he won't deny his sexual and romantic longing for men any longer. He's middle aged and married to a woman named Catherine. They have multiple children who are now adults themselves. The few sexual encounters John's previously experienced resulted in repentance and a return to the sublimation of his desires. After he meets a man named Frank at a nude swimming pond in London he longs for the kind of domestic closeness any couple in love wants. Most modern readers will naturally recognise that John has repressed his homosexuality because of Victorian attitudes which not only condemned gay relationships but criminalised them. The consequences of such laws were made famous by Oscar Wilde's 1895 trial which casts a shadow over this story.

Obviously John's life has been painful and we want to see him find happiness. What's so engaging and innovative about this novel is the way it shows the full complexity of trying to obtain such happiness. How do you change laws which criminalise such desire without first dispelling widespread prejudice? How do you change the attitudes of the public without first changing the laws? How do you reconcile your own innate desires within the framework of a society which teaches you to repress them? How much are you willing to obstruct the happiness of others' to achieve your own? Many scenes in this novel are more concerned with the way such questions intrude upon moments of these characters' lives leaving them in a tense state of ambiguity and uncertainty. In doing so, it causes readers to ponder their own assumptions about what is just and what is right.

Running parallel to John's story is that of a shy young man named Henry who enters into a non-traditional marriage with Edith. The couple share a strong intellectual connection and commitment to working towards “the New Life” as Henry feels “we must live in the future we hope to make”. Henry and Edith maintain separate residences as Edith is engaged in a romantic relationship with another woman named Angelica. Henry also has secret sexual proclivities which he finds excruciatingly painful to admit. He exchanges letters with John as they write a book together titled “Sexual Inversion” which seeks to establish an intellectual and medical basis for homosexuality. They hope this will lead to changes in the larger society and help usher everyone into this ideal conception of a “New Life.” However, historical circumstances and the impact this publication has upon people connected to the book dramatically complicate these aims.

These matters create such an intriguing and unexpected plot which plays out over the course of nearly two years in these characters' lives. Crewe's academic speciality for this period of British history gracefully informs the story and imbues it with tantalizing atmospheric detail. It also allows the author to adeptly deviate from historical fact and the actual men who inspired these characters in a way which serves the fiction extremely well. There is a striking scene where London is covered in such a thick fog that boys with lanterns need to be hired to guide people from one spot to another. This fog provides a natural metaphor for the dilemmas of the story as well as a romantic opportunity for desires which ordinarily must be concealed to be expressed in the open. The writing is highly sensuous (as one would hope it would be given the subject matter) and unashamedly captures the object of these characters' desires as well as how their yearnings manifest. It makes it a very sexy novel (albeit in a very English way) falling naturally in line with the work of Alan Hollinghurst.

I found it particularly moving how John has such a strong sense of being watched even in private moments and how this has inhibited him for most of his life. Yet, when he becomes adamant about being open about his desires it impedes upon the lives of others such as his wife Catherine who speaks up at a crucial moment in the story. As total disclosures are made it also turns some who are sympathetic and supportive of John against him. This creates more haunting questions for the reader concerning what liberty we actually possess to confess all that we are to the world. How much honesty can our relationships and larger society take? Equally, the characters' earnest desire to establish a “New Life” compellingly teases out the vaguely shifting lines between being and becoming. There are no easy answers to these problems and by casting us back to a period of history that we believe we've progressed far away from, Crewe cleverly makes clear how the past is actually still present.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

It's hard to think of a novel I'd be predisposed to love as much as Gabrielle Zevin's story of two friends who become extremely successful game designers. Not only does the novel begin in an area near Boston I'm very familiar with, but its main characters are roughly my contemporaries. They reference video games I played a lot when I was younger. The characters discuss issues such as how to reach the top of the flag pole in Super Mario Bros and dying from dysentery in The Oregon Trail. Aside from my personal identification with the story and even if you weren't ever into gaming this is a novel many will enjoy in the way it poignantly describes a longterm platonic friendship, creativity and issues to do with identity. Adolescent Sam survives a car crash but sustains a serious foot injury which leaves him disabled for the rest of his life. While he's in the hospital he meets Sadie and the two connect over a shared passion for gaming. Both are somewhat socially awkward so their special relationship is particularly meaningful but over the years they go through rocky patches where sometimes they are emotionally distant from each other. While they are still in college they dedicate themselves to creating a new video game. Though they are driven more by passion than a desire for success the game becomes a worldwide hit. They are living the dream, but we follow how personal, professional and political challenges inhibit them from happily inhabiting the real world.

I enjoyed how the story shows that there's a liberating freedom in entering the gaming world where we're not subject to the same pressures and limitations of reality. It also broadens our scope for seeing how society can be refashioned to be more equal and fair for everyone. Sadie and Sam self consciously endeavour to form alternative worlds which aren't inhibited by sexism, racism and homophobia. The role playing in the stories also challenges preconceived ideas of history and our own culpability in morally ambiguous situations. As a model which gamers inhabit with avatars this can inspire change which carries over into decisions made in the real world. However, it can also be an addictive way of avoiding certain personal issues and foster as many factions as there are in reality. Equally, even though it can be a useful medium through which to build and sustain friendships, it doesn't always foster communication in the same way as speaking to people in real life. The story details the particular challenges which Sadie encounters because she was one of the few women in the professional field of gaming at that time. Sam becomes extremely withdrawn because of his serious injury and denies how much it impacts his life. Their social awkwardness is somewhat mediated through a mutual friend and colleague named Marx who is confident and caring. It's heartrending how the story of this trio plays out over the course of the story.

This is a novel of great ambition which is largely pleasurable and engaging to read. At times it feels like it strives a little too hard to cover quite so many topics from the line between power play in the bedroom and domestic abuse to same sex marriage to cultural appropriation. For the most part it meaningfully incorporates these into the characters and storylines, but it sometimes risks cramming a bit too much in to sensitively show the full repercussions and complexities of these things. The timeline shifts around quite a lot in a way which can be a bit disorientating at first, but it's fairly easy to follow. Interviews with Sam about the success of their games are interspersed with the main narrative so there's never any question about their success as game creators. Instead the plot focuses on the more interesting question of how they can continue to stay true to their ideas and vision while building a sustainable business. I admire how Zevin toys with narrative perspective itself so it sometimes switches to inhabiting game play. This builds a tension concerning what is occurring in the real world and why the characters are taking refuge in the virtual. The title of the novel is a quote from Shakespeare and its relevance in the story is only revealed later. It's pleasurable when stories do this because it's like a reward for the reader who finally understands the thematic frame of the book. Overall, it's a smart and alluring tale which poignantly expresses the bittersweet joys of gaming and the sustaining connection of friendship.

Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo

It's quite a challenge for a new book to use a device from a classic novel in a way which feels both relevant and entirely fresh. George Orwell's “Animal Farm” brilliantly satirised the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Stalinism in the Soviet Union by anthropomorphizing barnyard animals who fight to free themselves from the tyranny of their human farmer only to find themselves ensnared in an equally oppressive system. At first I felt skeptical that NoViolet Bulawayo used this same format by applying it to the 2017 Zimbabwean coup d'etat, but as I continued reading I discovered how this is a forceful and heartfelt way to update and expand upon Orwell's allegorical novella.

In Bulawayo's story Old Horse has been ruling the country of Jidada for forty years until he is suddenly ousted from power and a new regime takes control. Though the general population is presented with a simulacrum of a #freefairncredibleelection not much has changed where those in power rule with an iron fist, the economy deteriorates and many ordinary citizens continue to suffer. In doing so she captures the way language and political rhetoric can be weaponized to control a population and shore up power in our modern era. It's a book that succeeds in how it refers to specific historical events and describes the way all systems of government can abuse their power. It's a sweeping epic that evokes the plight of a nation and an intensely personal story about an expatriate's return to the chaos of her country. It brings to the centre the lives of women and girls who struggle under an oppressive patriarchal system. Moreover, it's a funny, heartbreaking, horrifying and utterly bewitching tale that I fell in love with.

There are many innovative elements in this novel which creatively convey clear points and complex ideas. Bulawayo skilfully utilizes repetition in a number of ways. In the name of the country itself it's frequently emphasized how it's called “Jidada with a -da and another -da” which expresses the idea of national pride, an emphasis on the patriarchy and a defiant stance to the international community about the way the country's name is pronounced. Certain idioms and figurative language such as the phrase “tholukuthi” and “those who really know about things said...” create a sense of collective identity and common ways of speaking as the characters try to clarify their situation. There are also a few instances of pages which are dominated by certain words or phrases being repeated such as “I can't breathe” when the citizens witness the video of George Floyd's murder and the word “take” flows across a page in an incessant stream as an outcry about how leaders have repeatedly stollen from the country. Sometimes the text is crossed out to show how certain characters manipulate language or how the country is regressing such as the chapter heading “PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE, PAST”. Also, the image of red butterflies recurs throughout the novel as things of beauty which also appear to be dangerous and/or bloody and they eventually come to represent something specific on the nation's new flag.

I've always been doubtful about novels whose primary mode is satire because it feels like if you take an ironic stance to ridicule something it's very difficult to also express any kind of emotional sincerity other than disdain. However, “Glory” maintains a fine balance between hilariously skewering the leaders of this nation (including the “liberator” who pettily stresses about the amount of followers he has on social media and falls in love with his Siri) and expressing the earnest concerns of those suffering under a tyrannical leadership. It does so through the speeches delivered by particular individuals and political parties as well as the online discussion which rages while the country physically deteriorates. There's a large cast of vibrant characters who take the forms of different animals that are at turns hilarious, cunning in their doublespeak and sympathetic in their struggle. Together they express a palpable anger at clear acts of greed and abuses of power as well as the fragmentation which prevents the general population from overturning a corrupt system.

I was a big fan of Bulawayo's debut novel “We Need New Names” and it's so impressive how she's crafted an ambitious second novel which is very different from that first book, but stays true to the heart of her subject matter. Both books speak from the stance of a distinct individual while also voicing the concerns of the collective. In “Glory” there's the well-timed introduction of a character named Destiny who abruptly left Jidada a decade ago and has returned to reconnect with her mother and discover the truth about her family's past. She gives a much-needed moral centre to the novel as well as expressing the tension between an individual's drive for self preservation and a sense of obligation to her family and community. Through her we feel the emotional immediacy of this tale which tears off the mask concealing political hypocrisy and how every nation struggles to come together for the collective good.

The Promise by Damon Galgut

Damon Galgut's brilliant 2014 novel “Arctic Summer” was a fictional reimagining of the life of EM Forster which describes his experiences after the publication of his novel “Howard's End”. Forster's classic book about who will inherit a house serves as the structure for Galgut's new novel “The Promise”, but it's set in South Africa in the years immediately before and after Apartheid. It follows the experiences of a relatively-privileged white family who own a small farm and their fates over time. An annexe to their property is inhabited by Salome, a black maid who has worked for the family for many years and the novel begins with matriarch Rachel on her deathbed requesting that the deed to this property be given this woman who has served her so faithfully. Although her husband Manie promises to fulfil her wish, the transfer of ownership to Salome is delayed year after year after year. The self-consumed and selfish family members are so concerned with their own dramas that fulfilling this bequest always seems tediously inconvenient or perhaps it's a power they are unwilling to relinquish. But youngest daughter Amor witnessed the promise being made and persistently reminds her family it should be honoured (much to their exasperation.) Just as Forster's novel symbolically asked who will inherit England, Galgut's story asks who will inherit South Africa but I think his query is much more complicated than that simple concept sounds. 

The striking thing about how this novel is written is its impressively fluid style which artfully weaves in and out of certain perspectives, briskly navigates through different scenes and frequently switches point of view. At first this felt almost disorientating to me as transitions in focus are made so rapidly it sometimes requires careful attention to follow the narrative, but it soon became mesmerising as I felt caught in the flow of time and Galgut's gorgeously poetic language. However, the apparent freedom of this narrative to roam wherever it wishes (even into the perspective of the dead) is deceptive. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that in following the fates of different members of the Swart family we're also tragically locked into the white gaze from which they cannot escape. Their prejudiced views saturate the sensibility of this novel. Their assumed superiority and odious casual racism appears with wincing regularity. For example, a typical paranoid statement made about black servants is that “You have to get rid of them before they start to scheme.” If these racist attitudes come to feel exasperating and if the reader longs to instead get Salome's perspective I think that's fully intentional. It's something the Swart family with their myopic view of the world never considers and so the reader is similarly denied access except for brief glimpses such as the family's black driver Lexington who observes with exasperation: “It is not always possible to please two white people simultaneously.” As such, we come to understand the real crisis in a country where legalized segregation may have ended but the tragic divide between two groups of people remains.

The crucial character in this tale and its moral ballast is Amor who slowly comes to understand the poisonous society in which she's being raised. At first she has a childish innocence about this: “Amor is thirteen years old, history has not yet trod on her. She has no idea what country she's living in.” As soon as she realises how her family and nation are locked into insurmountable prejudiced attitudes she removes herself from them and the novel itself. We're fed very little information about her life other than how she trains as a nurse, works with AIDS patients, has a relationship with another woman and ends up living on her own. But the more intricate details and her emotional reality are something we can only imagine just as the narrator wistfully imagines furnishing her sparse apartment. Amor only appears when a crisis occurs in the Swart family and it's very difficult for them to locate her because she's made it almost impossible to contact her or doesn't respond to their calls. She realises there isn't a way to change her family's attitude or mend the deep fissure which exists in this country. Nor does she presume to know or understand Salome and her son's situation. All she can do is insist upon the rightful ownership of a crumbling piece of property. Herein lies the tragedy of every person's position in this system which Isabel Wilkerson wrote about so powerfully in her book “Caste”.

Galgut's inspiration for the plot of this novel may have come from a book frequently cited as one of the greatest works of English literature, but its message feels more rooted to me in the 1950s classic Hollywood melodrama 'Imitation of Life'. In this film, a white woman named Lora takes in an African-American widow named Annie whose mixed-race daughter is desperate to be seen as white. When Annie dies, Lora looks shocked at the enormous amount of people who come to mourn her maid and how Annie had a full life outside of her home that Lora was entirely ignorant about because she never asked. The radical thing about this is that the director is also asking the audience to consider why they didn't think about Annie's life outside of the circumscribed boundaries of Lora's white world. Similarly, late in the novel “The Promise” the narrator makes an accusation of his reader “if Salome's home hasn't been mentioned before it's because you have not asked, you didn't care to know.” While we avidly follow the story of justice being served to the Swart family as their archaic world implodes over the course of the novel, there are different characters' stories we are being denied access to... or perhaps we are wilfully blind to the reality of certain people different from ourselves. This is an unsettling distinction and I admire Galgut for raising this point in such an artfully constructed novel.

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

Like a lot of people I’ve sometimes found reading difficult during this period of national lockdown. It can be challenging to concentrate when there’s so much anxiety all around me. So the calm and measured thoughtfulness found in Anne Tyler’s new novel is greatly welcome at this time. Since she focuses on psychological nuance and a realistic portrayal of daily experience nothing very dramatic or distressing often occurs in Tyler’s novels. That’s true for this book as well although there is an imagined apocalyptic scene which felt surprisingly relevant for this current time. At one point the protagonist has a fantasy that his community has been hit by “one of those neutron bombs they used to talk about that wiped out all of humanity but left the buildings intact” so that he imagines himself as the sole survivor and, while he would occupy himself with his usual solitary activities, he’d eventually go out looking for other people and find “Nothing.” This is exactly the sort of existential crisis many are experiencing now when they venture outside to a normally bustling community and find no one around. So this added a touching poignancy to an all-around gentle story about a man caught in the humdrum routines of his well-established lifestyle.

The novel follows the daily experiences of Micah, a man on the brink of middle age who has a lowkey life working as a “glorified handyman” assisting local individuals with their computer problems. He runs his independent business under the name Tech Hermit which is a title all too appropriate for him. Although he has a long-term girlfriend and close connections with his family, his life is dominated by tidy habits which shield him from any messiness in his home or emotional messiness. Eventually this distances him from those closest to him and when the son of an old flame arrives at his doorstep he finds himself confronted by how severely circumscribed his existence has become. As often happens in Tyler’s novel, the mundane details of ordinary life gradually build to something much more moving, substantial and profound. Few writers can capture the way individuals are trapped in the steady flow of time the way Tyler does.

My favourite novel by Tyler is “Ladder of Years” which concerns a wife and mother who literally walks away from her life to enjoy some precious much-needed solitude. In a way, “Redhead by the Side of the Road” offers an opposite point of view about a man who has consciously built a self-contained solitary world for himself but finds when he’s left absolutely alone he needs others to provide a form of disruption to his orderly routines. This causes him to glancingly imagine others around him when there’s really no one there such as when he comes upon a fire hydrant that he regularly passes by: “He momentarily mistook the hydrant for a redhead and gave his usual shake of the shoulders at how repetitious this thought was, how repetitious all his thoughts were, how they ran in a deep rut and how his entire life ran in a rut, really.” While many of us long for a special kind of solace found in being entirely alone, an important aspect of human nature is maintaining some form of human contact. Yes, this will inevitably lead to disorder or even chaos but part of the pleasure of living is not being able to predict what these interactions will bring. This novel shows that Tyler’s humble story can provide a startlingly timely message.

Surge by Jay Bernard

The question of how we should memorialize victims of injustice, those who've been forgotten or those whose stories can't ever be known is a difficult one. Jay Bernard writes a powerful introduction to their book of poetry “Surge” explaining how they conducted research into the 1981 New Cross Fire which was also called the New Cross Massacre and claimed the lives of 13 young people. Many believed this was a racist attack and the reverberations of this unresolved case are still felt today - especially when there are eerily familiar new cases such as the Grenfell Tower fire. Bernard’s poems poignantly embody the spirit and voice of people involved in these incidents including family members in mourning, bystanders, protesters and even the victims themselves.

Some poems reflect more on Bernard’s own personal experience to discuss issues to do with gender, sexuality, national and racial identity because, as the author states, “Many questions emerged not only about memory and history, but about my place in Britain as a queer black person. This opened out into a final sense of coherence: I am from here, I am specific to this place, I am haunted by this history but I also haunt it back.” What forms over this book’s journey is a communion and convergence of voices who rightfully insist upon a presence in the nation’s collective memory. These poems are artfully infused with a political urgency, sensitively consider the weight of history and punch through the past into the present day.  

A series of poems take on a strong lyrical quality with repetition and rhythms reminiscent of the songs sung in Jamaican patois that emerged amidst the protests after the New Cross Fire. Other poems are more reflective using imagery which considers the border between past and present, memory and forgetting, life and death. The poem ‘Pace’ meaningfully explores a sense of connection to those who’ve come before us in the physical space we inhabit. Still other poems speak with startling directness in the voice of restless victims: “No-one will tell me    what happened to my body”. Interspersed between the poems there are sometimes photographic images of individuals or banners involved in the protests following the New Cross Fire. There are also occasional quotes taken from a variety of media such as text messages, news reports and relevant books of nonfiction. These add to the texture of the reading experience suffusing the poems with a living energy.

Several poems are achingly intimate and form kinds of narratives based in memory. One describes the bravery summoned to join a Pride parade and the confused sensation of melding into a community: “am I the steaming black street, am I the banner and the band, the crush, lilting ale, tipsy hug, charged flesh and open eye”. The poem ‘Ha-my-ca’ recounts a trip to Jamaica and the experience of skinny dipping where a new relationship with the body is formed: “I learned of self and other when my waist left the water”. While the poems with a more personal feel stand slightly to the side of the poems which converse with the research concerning the New Cross Fire, they add a sense of intimacy to how the author isn’t disconnected from this mission of bearing witness but is also a presence made solid.

Johnny Osbourne - 13 Dead

Sometimes I’ll read poetry collections where only a few individual poems make much of an impact, but nearly all the poems in “Surge” made me stop and meditate on them. It’s a richly complex and accomplished book that demands answers for those who’ve been marginalized and rendered voiceless throughout history: “It’s the only question we ask. Will anyone lessen the losing? Will anyone lessen the loss?... Losing and losing and loss. Never recouping the cost.”

Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith

One of my goals this year is to read more poetry and I feel lucky to have started with a new book which totally gripped me with the intensity of its voice. The poems in “Don't Call Us Dead” by Danez Smith have the urgent force of a rallying cry. They pay tribute to individuals and groups who will not be silenced no matter how much they are oppressed, incarcerated or killed. Specifically Smith speaks powerfully about the experience of being a gay African American: how skin colour can lead someone to be targeted by the police or alternately excluded/fetishised in the gay community. These are poems drawn from somewhere very personal. They sometimes play off from lyrics from musicians like Billie Holiday or Diana Ross and use a unique variety of forms to convey meaning as much in their structure as they do in the choice of words. Like all great poetry it can be interpreted a number of different ways, but there is a clarity of self here which definitely has something to say.

Something that connected me to these poems so strongly is the way that Smith frequently makes broad statements while also drawing the reader into the emotional core of their reality. Smith states “i am a house swollen with the dead, but still a home.” How brilliantly this expresses the architecture of being! That we can encompass all who've come before us and/or those who haven't survived, but our very structure is designed to accommodate this Genealogy and invite others in to experience it. I was continuously jolted by how startlingly personal these poems felt but I also frequently stopped to contemplate how their meaning is so beautifully expansive. Smith speaks about individual experience as well as others when they write a line with such dazzling beauty like “let's waste the moon's marble glow shouting our names to the stars until we are the stars.”

The Black Lives Matter movement has revolutionized our dialogue for speaking about both institutionalized and rogue violence inflicted upon black communities. The very spirit of not letting the deaths of young black men like Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown pass without testifying to their injustice and how they are endemic of systematic racism seems wrapped up in the line “don't fret, we don't die. they can't kill the boy on your shirt again.” But Smith is also conscientious of the fact that many people who die or experience stultifying oppression aren't memorialised in such a way: “i'm not the kind of black man who dies on the news.” This is because there is also a death of spirit which isn't visible and which is more broadly felt by groups of people continuously ground down. Smith expresses this so powerfully in the line “some of us are killed in pieces, some of us all at once”. There are also moments when Smith doesn't hesitate to give their poetry a startling directness “reader, what does it feel like to be safe? white? how does it feel to dance when you're not dancing away the ghost?”

Danez Smith reads 'Principles'

This collection is also a poignant testimony to the way romance and sex are experienced by a black gay man. Some poems speak directly about how race and skin colour are listed as turn on or turn offs on dating/hookup profiles. Yet there are gorgeously romantic instances in poems which yearn for a transcendence of these imposed boundaries: “if love is a hole wide enough to be God's mouth, let me plunge into that holy dark & forget the color of light.” The poem 'seroconversion' has the most innovative and creative way of eviscerating identity to describe a conflagration of coupling that results in radical transformations and self-divisions. Smith doesn't shy from the raw power and sensuality of gay sex “praise the endless tub of grease” or the numbing anonymity of it “i'm offered eight mouths, three asses & four dicks before i'm given a name”. Still others pay tribute to instances of aching personal hurt: “I was his fag sucked into ash his lungs my final resting place.”

Smith's poems are also very cognizant of the effect AIDS and STDs have upon the gay community. There's a bracingly sympathetic moment when someone is waiting for test results and pleas “ask him to wait before he gives me the test results, give me a moment of not knowing, sweet piece of ignorance, i want to go back to the question”. Then there are a number of structurally innovative poems such as 'it's not a death sentence anymore' where the words of this sentence are whittled down the page until you're simply left with “a sentence” with spaces in between. This speaks so powerfully about a shift in common thinking that because being HIV+ doesn't instantly equal death anymore, it shouldn't be such a concern. 'blood hangover' fiercely forms what Smith calls “an erasure” of Ross' popular song to acknowledge the serious after-effects of sex. Elsewhere the words “my blood” and “his blood” are repeated until they collide and rapturously mingle on the page in the poem 'litany with blood all over'. It's so heartening seeing these complex issues explored in Smith's poems while also capturing the joy, romance and steaminess of gay sex. I admire how new young poets like Smith and Andrew McMillan are so thoughtfully exploring layers of queer life in their writing. 

I was totally captivated by the urgency and power of “Don't Call Us Dead”. These are poems that are, of course, political and personal at once. They have an invigorating clarity while also being complex enough to yield multiple meanings from rereading. Most refreshingly, this is poetry which feels of the moment.

Kumukanda by Kayo Chingonyi

I bought a copy of this poetry collection when it first came out a few months ago, but its recent listing for the Costa Book Awards poetry category finally inspired me to pick it up. Kumukanda means initiation but since Kayo Chingonyi came of age in England rather than Zambia where he was born, he mostly records in these poems the rites of passage he goes through as a young black man in Britain. From cricket games to spending time in a Londis grocery store, these poems express his particular take on common experiences of modern English youth and the tributaries that fed into the creation of his particular identity.

Many of the poems describe Chingonyi’s affinity with music and especially his attachment and affection for cassette tapes. In one poem he writes “You say you love music. Have you suffered the loss of a cassette so gnarled by a tape deck’s teeth it refuses to play the beat you’ve come to recognise by sound and not name?” This invokes a real nostalgia not just for the music these tapes contained, but also the process of listening to this antiquated format. He observes how the static these tapes contained was part of the experience. One poem describes the background sounds which are accidentally recorded within tracks and how this can mentally transport the listener to the actual recording studio. These poems build to a sense of how music is a living commentary upon people’s lives and exists within the movement of time so that R&B artists work with “their lyrics written out on the backs of hands.”

There are references to musical influences from James Brown to Prince, but in some poems he also points to more complicated forms of broader song and dance imagery like Bojangles. This made me recall Zadie Smith’s most recent novel “Swing Time” for the way it describes a black individual in modern Britain contemplating racist imagery from the past and how that affects self-perception. Chingonyi describes in the title poem how he wonders what a version of himself that had been raised in Zambia would have thought of his British self. I admired how he describes in later poems that beyond any internal conflict of national or racial identity he recognizes a more fluid sense of being. In ‘Baltic Mill’ he describes a meeting point where it’s acknowledged “The exact course that brought us here is unimportant. It is that we met like this river, drawn from two sources, offered up our flaws, our sedimental selves.” I felt this worked in two different ways where it could describe two people meeting or someone reconciling different aspects of oneself as adding up to a unique individual.

This collection is a passionate and engaging take on one man’s coming of age.

A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee

Neel Mukherjee may have narrowly missed out on winning the Booker Prize when his previous novel “The Lives of Others” was shortlisted in 2014, but someone ought to give this writer a crown just for writing such impactful openings in his novels. In both that book and his new novel “A State of Freedom” I was moved, surprised and totally gripped after reading the first twenty or thirty pages. The vignettes which open these novels are separate from the main plots but have the ability to capture a reader’s attention and emotionally set the tone for what’s to come. In the case of this new novel, we meet a man who returns to India after living in America for a long time with his son in tow. On their travels to tourist sites he has a conflicted sense of identity seeing his native country through Western eyes. He has feelings of guilt mixed with anxiety and disgust. Then something so surprising and eerie occurs that I became hooked. The novel goes on to describe the lives of a few different individuals whose stories connect in fascinating ways. It’s a sweeping story that makes a complex but highly readable portrait of the state of modern India, economic inequality, classism and national identity.

Although the novel deals with a lot of serious subjects and has many brutally heartrending scenes, a lot of the book is saturated by the warm sensation of cooking. In the second section, an unnamed character makes annual visits to his family in Bombay after he’s permanently settled in England. He’s writing a book about regional Indian cooking because he asserts “Indians have always known there is nothing called Indian food, only different, sometimes wildly and thrillingly different, regional cuisines. This is a fact that has been flattened out in the West.” So he develops a special interest in his parents’ Bengali cook Renu and frequently gossips with his mother about her and their maid Milly. We’re given a strong sense of the flavours of their meals and aromas like fennel, cumin, fenugreek, nigella and mustard seeds which permeate their kitchen. These descriptions are not only evocative of sensory experience but the author delineates the origins of dishes, their attachment to particular sections of society and the way recipes are passed down through generations. This character’s desire to acquire this information and neatly present it for a British audience begs questions about cultural appropriation or cultural/class tourism as he delves further into Renu’s humble origins and the slum she inhabits.

A Qalandar and his bear.

The story veers sharply when the next section describes a baby bear which emerges into a village out of the wilderness. A poor man named Lakshman burdened with caring for his family and his absent brother’s children takes possession of the bear which he names Raju. He alights upon a money-making scheme to train the bear in the tradition of some wandering ascetic Sufi dervishes who make their bears “dance” for the amusement of the public. In reality, the methods used to get these bears to “perform” requires torturous techniques and Lakshman is aware that this practice has been outlawed. Nevertheless, he and Raju set out on a journey to make their fortune. It’s a sad, poignant and tense tale as Lakshman believes he develops an emotional connection with his bear, but the reader is highly aware that the bear’s animal nature persists despite being violently tamed.

One of the biggest luxuries that divide people into different classes and levels of privilege is access to education. The novel takes a surprising turn when the next section describes the back story of the maid Milly, her impoverished childhood and conversion to Christianity. The family and many local villagers convert because they are promised “a big sack of rice. It was food for a month.” Although Milly shows a natural flair for learning and enjoys reading with a passion, her education is abruptly cut off at the age of eight when she’s forced to travel far away to work as a maid.
“‘And school?’ she [Milly] asked in a small voice. ‘Studying?’
‘Nothing doing,’ her mother replied impatiently. ‘Studying. What is that for a girl?’ You’ll be more useful bringing in some money. Now shut up.’”
Naturally, being a lover of reading this scene felt particularly heartbreaking. But it also made me inwardly cheer as Milly tries to find secret ways to continue reading in her new places of employment. 

We follow the agonizing condition of Milly’s life as she works for a variety of households. Earlier this year, I read Anne Brontë’s first novel “Agnes Grey” which recounts the life of a humble governess as she works for a series of middle/upper class families. It feels like Mukherjee uses the same method here, depicting a servant in a variety of settings to both satirize the behavior of a girl’s privileged employers and expose the egregious abuse heaped upon the servant class. While Brontë’s depiction might have been scandalous at the time, Mukherjee’s is even more so now for the way he shows Milly is not only oppressed but turned into an imprisoned slave.

"The world transformed - in the burnished gold of the winter afternoon sun, the umber-red sandstone used for the whole complex at Fatehpur Sikri seemed like carved fire, something the sun had magicked out of the red soil in their combined image and likeness."

Running parallel with Milly’s story is that of her childhood friend Soni who suffers devastating losses due to illness. This highlights another important schism between classes of society: access to healthcare. Through emotional scenes in a rural underfunded and understaffed hospital the author powerfully depicts how “Illness was a luxury for the rich. Illness had reduced everyone here to a beggar.” Soni’s tragic circumstances prompt her to join the “People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army” – a radical Maoist armed group bent on overthrowing the government. This brushes against the Naxalite movement which Mukherjee explored so fascinatingly in “The Lives of Others.” In this story it makes a sharp contrast between the paths that Milly and Soni take in life and elucidate the central preoccupation of the novel: what choices do we really have in determining our personal freedom?

The final section, yet again, goes somewhere else entirely and demonstrates a complete stylistic change as well, but poignantly circles back to earlier story lines. It builds to a spectacular tale that prompts uncomfortable questions about the degree to which our own independence impinges upon or inhibits the freedom of others. Mukherjee excels at describing evocative details of particular places, but also movingly comments upon universal conditions such as friendship and aging: “Childhood friendships were often like that – intense in presence and in the present tense, remote and unreachable in absence.” His characters are so memorable not only because he movingly captures the arcs of their development, but lets us feel so intensely that given a twist of fate their stories might be our own.

The Girls by Emma Cline

In a case like the 1969 Manson Family murders a lot of focus has been centred on leader Charles Manson, his background and his bizarre ideas. Less emphasis has been given to what would motivate young women to follow such a fanatic and commit such horrendous acts of violence. In Emma Cline's debut novel “The Girls” she creates a situation which highly resembles the Manson cult and crime, but gives voice to fourteen year old girl Evie Boyd who is drawn into becoming a part of this group. Moving back and forth between the summer of 69 and a point many years later when the crime has become notorious, Cline gives Evie's account of the inner workings of this Californian quasi-commune and why she becomes involved with them. With great insight and sensitivity she writes about female adolescent development to create a hypnotic and powerful tale.

Evie comes from an upper-middle class background and lives with her single mother Jean. Her long-time friend Connie has shrugged her off in the way that friends sometimes do around this age when our development causes us to grow apart from those we were at one time intensely close to. Jean is more concerned with her own love life and building her own self confidence than caring for her daughter. So Evie is somewhat isolated struggling to understand who she is and what this new body is that she's growing into. Like many adolescents, she learns from magazine and the media that she should work to make herself attractive: “the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed you – the boys had spent that time becoming themselves.” At that time, boys weren't held to the same standards and so don't feel the same level of self consciousness. She remarks “Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love.” There's a sense that if only they can find someone to recognize and value them then they will have worth in the world. It leads Evie to long for a role model to look up to and she finds it when she sees a confident black-haired girl named Suzanne.

Cline describes very well that feeling we have as teenagers where we become so enamoured by someone we want to do whatever we can to be close to and be seen by them. She inveigles her way into Suzanne's circle of friends and the ranch commune she lives at centred around the charismatic Russell. But, for Evie, Suzanne is always her focus. She's powerfully drawn to how Suzanne and her friends “were sure of what they were together”. Evie believes that there must be a point when your identity becomes a solid knowable thing “As if there were only one way things could go, the years leading you down a corridor to the room where your inevitable self waited – embryonic, ready to be revealed.” Of course, in reality our identities are constantly shifting as we continue to grow and change throughout our lives, but a vulnerable girl like Evie has no way of knowing this without guidance.

There's a section I love where Cline also gets at that teenage feeling of wanting to be numbed. She references “Valley of the Dolls” and that desire for drugged stasis and Evie's wish for “my body kept alive by peaceful, reliable machines, my brain resting in watery space, as untroubled as a goldfish in a glass bowl.” Rather than face the difficult task of understanding who she is and what she wants as she grows into her adulthood she'd rather be unconscious and wake up at some later stage fully formed. It's a powerful notion and gives one perspective on why teenagers in particular are perhaps so drawn to the blissful effects of drugs and alcohol.

Camp Fire Girls

Cline also has a powerful way of describing the psychological impact of sex at this age. Evie has a number of sexual encounters which show her natural curiosity, the draw of pleasure and a desire for closeness more than a wish for the physical act itself. Her wish to be near Suzanne produces complex feelings. Men such as Russell have a persuasive way of psychologically manipulating young women into participating in acts they aren't ready for when they aren't outright forcing them to have sex with them. After the fact, Evie expects there to be a shift in the world to match the shift in her own post-sexual mindset: “I wanted the world to reorder itself visibly around the change, like a mend marking a tear.” This strongly describes the way we want the world to substantiate the confusion and internal changes that occur after such a significant life experience.

Although this novel is centred around a violent incident and flashes of this horrendous crime are shown, “The Girls” is more about the incremental stages of adolescent development. Emma Cline's writing reminds me somewhat of Joyce Carol Oates for the way she captures this experience so well while also creating vividly rendered characters, scenes and metaphors. There is a relatable intensity to Evie's psychology as she is not innocent, but stumbles towards finding what she wants in life and can be persuaded into discarding any sense of morality in favour of being accepted by people she idolizes. This is an intense, insightful and engaging novel.

The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain

I had the pleasure of hearing Rose Tremain read from her new novel “The Gustav Sonata” at a special event at Waterstones Piccadilly several weeks ago. The section she read and her writing in general has a wonderful way of drawing you into the lives/experiences of her characters so I was eager to read this new novel – especially since I loved her previous book “The American Lover” which is a collection of short stories. It’s admirable how Tremain never sticks to writing about any one particular genre, subject matter, time period or area of the world. Her books span from historical novels set in the court of Charles II to the mid-1800s New Zealand gold rush to stories about migrant works in modern London. “The Gustav Sonata” primarily takes place in pre and post-WWII Switzerland (with a later leap to the more recent past). Given its location it gives an interesting slant on the war and the meaning of neutrality by focusing on the lives of two different families affected by the greater conflict. It’s a deeply immersive story about loyalty during times of conflict, ambition, betrayal and family strife that made me stay up late at night longing to read more.

The novel centres around a Swiss boy named Gustav whose single mother Emilie struggles to make ends meet while working in an Emmental cheese factory. His father Erich died at an early age, but was once an assistant police chief during the tense period in the lead up to the war. In 1948, a six year old Gustav befriends a new Jewish boy named Anton at school. Emilie resents her son’s companion because she blames their diminished circumstances on the influx of Jewish refugees. It’s not difficult to see how these embittered isolationist feelings still resonate today in current political opinions. Despite his mother’s objections, Gustav and Anton form a special bond which continues throughout their lives. Questions raised about how Emilie got to this difficult point are answered in the second part of the novel which moves back to 1937 to recount her tumultuous marriage with Erich. The third part of the book then skips far forward to the end of the 20th century to show how dilemmas about his family and his country’s past still resonate for Gustav in his later years.

Tremain skilfully raises many difficult questions about what happens to political allegiance, social responsibility and moral conscience when put under the pressure of warfare. Being only a boy during WWII, it takes Gustav a lifetime to untangle the truth and meaning of the decisions his parents and their friends took at the time. It’s remarked how “Europe is at war. Fairness is now becoming a word without meaning.” There is no balanced view when embroiled in the fear and terror of this conflict. When looking at specific actions from a historical point of view, it’s easy to judge what was right and wrong. But when facing conflict in the present when you’re aware of different negative outcomes no matter what decision you make, the choice is not always so clear. By moving backwards and forwards in time through different parts of this novel, Tremain artfully shows the true nightmarish dilemma faced by ordinary people caught in a large-scale battle.

I also greatly appreciated the dynamic view of transforming sexuality represented in the personal lives of her characters. Throughout their entire adult lives all of the characters find their desire changes which also transforms their points of view. Lottie, the wife of Erich’s friend Roger, is a particularly fascinating character who finds herself drawn to the forbidden and struggles to express her sexuality within the narrow confines of society. Also, there’s a particularly memorable and disturbing section where a mentally-disturbed young neighbour attempts to sexually abuse Gustav when he’s still a boy. Although this character and his actions are reprehensible, he is still treated in a balanced way as he is evidently a victim of shock treatment and other damaging medical therapies of the time. There is also an innocently intimate scene between Gustav and Anton as boys which is so delicately portrayed. Tremain has a tremendous ability for writing intelligently and sensitively about the ever-evolving sexuality of a broad range of characters.

A subterranean melody plays throughout Gustav’s journey in this novel. As a child Anton is an aspiring pianist and his desire for fame hangs upon him throughout his life despite his crippling performance anxiety. He frequently plays Beethoven and other composers to Gustav. It’s extraordinary how I started to almost hear this music playing as I progressed in reading the novel. Like great works of music, “The Gustav Sonata” has a subtly transformative effect saying what can’t be overtly stated by using a juxtaposition of characters, place and images. It also made me salivate to try Emilie’s favourite desert Nusstorte! This is an exceptionally beautiful and accomplished novel.

Loop of Jade by Sarah Howe

At just sixty pages, “Loop of Jade” is a strong slender book of poetry. I had an odd experience reading it over a number of days as I found myself occasionally flipping to the back to see how many more poems awaited and every time I checked it felt like there were more. It was as if they were continuing to multiply or that the book was growing a tail to extend out further and further. I think this is because poetry, and particularly Howe's evocative poetry, has the effect of levelling time. The past, present and future can be experienced together. Even though many of the poems in this book obviously come from a very specific personal place, the weighty themes of identity and particularly society's diminishment of women are universal. There is a feeling in the language used that what has come before is coming again, that our patterns of thought and that our memories too spin round and round, that we live and travel in ever widening and continuous circles. This is informed poetry with something important to say.

Some of this writing such as the devastating poem ‘Tame’ have a more narrative or fairy tale feel. Here the value of female life and freedom is superseded by their perceived economic value. The poem 'Islands' is in a similar style yet has a more coming of age structure and surprises with lines of brutal reality that hit like a hammer: “She said she saved me from the refuse heap, from being eaten by the dogs with other scraps.” In the extended title poem ‘Loop of Jade’ micro-poems seem embedded within the larger poem which is composed of the stories told by a mother. There is an intensely felt gap between the experience between the mother and narrator: “myself a waving spot, unseen, on the furthest shore.” Yet there is a sense of continuation and connection between generations in the inherited “loop” which serves as a talisman forming a physical connection to the past and possible future.

There are poems here about love affairs and the act of creativity as well as strong poetry about identity and the question of place. This repeated phrase in 'Crossing from Guangdong' takes on great profundity: “Something sets us looking for a place.” The inclusion of multiple languages in the excellent poem 'Others' pays tributes to the blend of cultures and skin itself through generations. One of the strongest themes of this collection is the treatment of women in a patriarchal society. This is particularly true in China, but in the west as well. The institutionalized way in which women are valued below men so that we become blind to the ways in which this occurs. It seems to me that the intention of many of these poems are to sharpen our focus on how this works. One poem gives a perfect metaphor for this shift in point of view: “like at a put-off optician’s trip, when you realise how long you’ve been seeing things wrongly.”

Howe intelligently reexamines attitudes about gender in classical figures. In ‘Sirens’ she traces the disfigurement of women through literature that makes them into strange creatures because of a fear of desire: “for lust brings with it many monsters.” Later the same scrutiny is put to the Sphinx and the dividing line between genders. She also takes on Shakespeare stating in one poem that “On the heath, Lear assumes all ragged madmen share ungrateful daughters.”

This powerful poetry affirms the need of books to widen our view of history to include points of view which have no voice. There is a striking statement about the dominant political forces which have seized the narrative of history, but are mindful of the alternative narratives they've suppressed: “In their dreams, our long-lost books nightly buckle & char.” There is also much playfulness and humour to be found in this book which mentions Michael Flatley in one poem and where folklore mixes with research on Wikipedia. Howe demonstrates how she is in dialogue with many other poets as well referencing authors as varied as Theodore Roethke, Homer, Horace, Ezra Pound and Peter Streckfus. The most startling and beautiful thing about Sarah Howe's poems are the way she uses colours and shading to form images in the mind so I felt like I'd spent a long time gazing at paintings rather than simply reading.

Sarah Howe is one of the writers shortlisted for The Sunday Times/Peter Fraser and Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award. The winner will be announced this month. I'm so glad this excellent prize has introduced me to Howe's writing. 

Read an interview with Sarah Howe here.

Skyfaring by Mark Vanhoenacker

One of the longest flights I’ve taken in my life was from London to Beijing several years ago. Flying over the vast mountains and tundra of northern Asia I was amazed how incredibly desolate it was. Looking at a blank space on a map can’t convey the hundreds of miles of inaccessible emptiness that exists when you glide over it at such a height. Flying has the potential to radically shift your spatial awareness of the world. Or it may just be an isolated amount of time to catch up on reading or watching movies. I find our relationship to flying fascinating and I once wrote an absurdist short story about passengers in an airplane watching people rise from the earth. You can listen to a recording of this story ‘Rise’ being read by the actor Matt Alford at Liars’ League NYC here. Although people have many different reactions to the experience of flying, few have given such a sustained and deeply sensitive amount of thought about it as pilot Mark Vanhoenacker has in his book “Skyfaring.” This is an extended meditation on the process of flying and the way it transforms our relationship to the world we inhabit.

Vanhoenacker has flown all over the planet having worked for around a dozen years as a commercial 747 airline pilot. In this book he combines his technical insight about the mechanics of flight with his poetic sensibility about his place in the world. He focuses on particular subjects such as 'machine', 'air', 'water' or 'night' by combining scientific knowledge with meditations upon his experiences in flight. He's like a modern Antoine de Saint-Exupery who I first read last year. Of course, Vanhoenacker references him as well as many other writers to support different points he makes or illuminate profoundly different ways of viewing the world. He draws upon a wide variety of literary sources from the poet Rumi to Emily Bronte to Joan Didion. The convergence of all these things in this book creates deep-feeling insights on the distance between the self and the world around us.

Watch Mark Vanhoenacker read from and discuss his book Skyfaring at University Bookstore in Seattle.

What's so engaging about “Skyfaring” is Vanhoenacker's beautiful style of writing which provokes deep contemplation. It exhibits both an authoritative understanding and a ceaseless wonder. Stories of his life-long journey towards becoming a pilot are combined with specific experiences he's had flying around the world. There is a curiosity and excitement he shows about the naming of places, the nature of clouds, the poignancy of anonymous encounters which is infectious and makes you want to read more. It also paints the world and skies he sees on his flights with such exquisite detail it helps you re-experience and re-view those times you spent looking out of a plane's window. This book is a deeply thoughtful and enjoyable read.