North Woods by Daniel Mason

“North Woods” started a little slow for me as Mason fleetingly presents his initial characters and mixes his styles of story telling. However, I quickly became aware that this novel centres around a single location from the moment of its birth with a foundation stone being set in the ground. Rather than introducing any character or group of characters who will lead us through the narrative, the book's focus is a yellow house in New England. As soon as I let go of the impulse to focus on any one individual's journey I could get into the flow of the story more. Of course, sections about later inhabitants are also longer so I naturally felt I knew them better and became really engaged by the story when I was introduced to a soldier/fruit enthusiast and his daughters.

As each section leaps forward through the decades there's a poignant accumulation of the stories of people who proceeded living in this abode. Traces of those who've previously inhabited the house remain. I like how Mason builds a layered sense of time. I've always found it touching to think about who might have lived in my house before me and who might live here when I eventually leave. There's a strange intimacy knowing we've shared this same physical space but will probably never know anything about each other's lives beyond changes made to the home's structure. Who knows what drama played out in this same space? That's what the author shows us tracing this line of inhabitants and I think it's very clever how this accumulates into a special poignancy.

The way Mason mixes songs, articles and maps into the narrative adds to this because this documentation tangibly shows the traces of those who've lived there before. I know for some it might feel jarring to be pulled out of the flow of the story by these but (for me at least) it adds another dimension to the novel and makes the North Woods feel like a real location imbued with so much history. I also enjoy how the author interjects some occasional humour such as a joke about a trick played on a thieving farmer family or a Minister's theory that the events of the Bible “had actually transpired in New England” with examples of potential parallels. These little asides are welcome since the story involves a lot of serious drama.

I must admit that the novel stirs sentimental feeling in me as well since I grew up in New England. The descriptions of the seasons and natural environment are very evocative. I appreciate the mention of specific things such as a regional flower called lady slippers and chickadee birds which I was very familiar with when I was young. At the same time larger American conflicts throughout different time periods seep into the experiences of people who pass through the same house. Mason evokes a strong sense of atmosphere though sometimes his description can lapse into cliché. In the first 40 pages I noticed he used the same adjectives: “violet consumes the lemon-yellow wings of the viburnum” and “She looked then much as she does now: a clean facade of lemon yellow”. This particular phrase always stands out to me because I heard a creative writing instructor once say it's better to describe something as “lemon yellow” rather than as “yellow” because it creates a stronger sensory experience for the reader. That's true but it's now become overused. However, that's a minor quibble in an otherwise beautifully written story.

As I continued to read this novel I felt a building anticipation to discover who might inhabit this location next. The form of narrative also continuously changes and I especially enjoyed a chapter composed of letters written from a painter to a poet. I'm a sucker for a tale written in epistolary form – especially one set in the distant past where you know the mail took a long time to reach its destination so there are interesting gaps and experiences which must have occurred between the correspondence. Again, to some readers, the changes in narrative might feel disruptive but I found it refreshing. It's also impressive that Mason can convincingly write in many different styles from true crime pulp to notes for a lecture intended for a historical society.

As much as I enjoyed the whole novel some sections would have felt melodramatic and over the top if I'd read them in isolation. At one point there's an outrageous séance which reaches a feverish gothic pitch. But I think because it's set in a single location and continues to involve previous inhabitants there is an added pleasure and meaning. I know some readers have been put off by supernatural elements in the story. To me this felt playful and I enjoyed the Beetlejuice vibe, but it also adds to this progressive layering of history which Mason builds.

Equally, it's a book that kept me on my toes. The characters change from section to section so I had to reorientate myself in new stories, but also the author changes his style of storytelling and even moves into the consciousness of a beetle. This was very funny and unexpected. And it's also inventive how it's incorporated into the overall plot and changing natural landscape. The narrative seamlessly slides between the micro and macro in this way yet always revolves around this one house. I also appreciate how this is represented in the imagery set between sections as well. There's a map of marked trees in the area, but also the paths carved by the beetles. When viewed from this perspective such landscapes become both large and small. It's an artful way of referring to larger stories of people and the nation while selecting to focus on certain pieces.

Watch me discuss this novel while baking iced apple buns

It was such a pleasure to read this novel but it's also challenging because I'd like to spend more time with certain characters such as a lively medium named Anastasia. However, the structure of the book necessitates moving on from them. I found I had to modify my expectations and not grow too attached to characters. Yet, the more the novel went on the more pleasure there was in picking up on small details which referred to characters who previously inhabited the house.

There are also quite a few instances of coincidence in the story for the sake of the plot which tie all the sections together. I'm in two minds about it because on the one hand it makes a very satisfying story where indicators of previous residents appear more and more. But, on the other hand, certain details feel so improbable – for instance, a letter written by a kidnapped woman that was tucked in a bible and taken to Canada finds its way back to the region and comes to a professor's attention after generations. Of course, chance findings and occurrences like this happen but it can sometimes feel a little too convenient for the plot.

And certainly this isn't a novel that's aiming for strict realism since it becomes increasingly supernatural. After a certain point the story becomes increasingly wild in its evocation of the dead and their interaction with the living. But the environmental concerns of the novel grow at an equal pace. These two subjects come together in the most beautiful and moving way in the final section of the book which shows how the world itself operates on a very different clock from human's conception of time - that the experience of our lives is so ephemeral compared to the surrounding forest and the structure of the house itself which gradually degrades with only brief instances of remodelling or repairs. Certain objects that might easily be overlooked take on such significance so when later characters enter into the house the reader is aware of the meaning of things whereas to these newer characters it appears like a lot of old clutter. The line from a later chapter “She was struck by the discrepancy in meaning the belongings presented. That death meant not only the cessation of life, but vast worlds of significance” feels poignant and relevant to a lot of what Mason is doing in this novel. The lives and struggles of these vibrant characters come to feel small when considering the vastness of time in a certain location yet traces remain even when their meaning has been lost.

This has been such an enjoyable novel to read – especially at this time of year because the sections set in the winter are so vivid! It's only 369 pages but it feels like a much longer and epic novel in a good way like I've fully experienced the yearly cycles of this house over centuries and also the accumulating weight of experience from all the residents and people who've passed through this location. The ending is incredibly poignant and it has such a haunting effect. Not only has Mason created an entertaining book that I'm keen to return to in order to better understand the many connections between its characters and stories, but it offers a refreshingly different way of understanding time and the environment of a unique location.

Promise by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

It's tragic how the connection between childhood friends can be gradually poisoned by social issues. An instance of this is vividly described in poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths' debut novel 'Promise'. It's a story about Ezra Kindred, her younger sister Cinthy and Ezra's friend Ruby. They're adolescent girls growing up in the late 1950s in a small town in Maine. Though they're conscious of being one of only two black families in the area, the Kindreds create their own humble oasis in a book filled home set in a beautiful location. The sisters are raised to be smart and strong as their parents are well aware of how harsh the world can be – especially for black Americans amidst the growing civil rights movement. Ezra and Ruby's friendship forms naturally but it soon becomes apparent that differences such as Ruby's whiteness and poverty matter a great deal. In a striking early scene the trio of girls intimately examine themselves and each other to try to understand whether there really is a difference between them. Over time, underlining fears and prejudices come to play a prominent role in their relationship. The novel focuses primarily on clever and defiant Cinthy's perspective as the community grows increasingly hostile towards her family and dramatic events unfold.

Griffiths' poetic leaning is evident in the prose. There are lush, beautiful descriptions of the landscape, the food and their home. The sometimes testy relationship between the family members is also well conveyed in dialogue which crackles with personality. I appreciated how the tumultuous history of the parents is built into the nature of their characters. There's a reason why the father is so eager to forget the past and the mother smothers her pain with drinking. The story of their lives is gradually revealed in a way which is effective. I especially liked the later introduction of a charismatic grandmother who is so vivacious and strong. As a family unit they're very compelling to read about because each generation has been so differently effected by the circumstances of the time. This means that there are frequent misunderstandings and tensions which arises between them. However, there is a unifying love and commitment to one another which is very endearingly portrayed.

Ruby's personal story of adversity and survival is also initially effective when a teacher's untimely death leads to an opportunity for her own good fortune. Unfortunately, the course of her tale felt a bit more confusing when she comes under the sway and guardianship of a monstrous woman. Of course horrific people motivated by bald-faced racism exist but I couldn't figure out the larger schemes of the perpetrators in this novel. Perhaps they were motivated by nothing more than a desire to alienate, harass and kill the black families in the community but it seemed like there were also other motives beyond this especially when it came to Ruby. It is interesting how their influence comes to deeply change Ruby and especially how this causes such a bitter clash in her relationship with the Kindred sisters. Overall, the story came to feel somewhat perplexing as the tragedies pile up and history seeps into the present. In the later part of the book the characters are also prone to didactic speechifying. These aspects lessened the sense of realism so the novel didn't feel as impactful as it could have been. However, I appreciated this book on the whole. There are some beautiful and moving passages towards the end. It's also poignant how it builds a layered meaning about the potential promise we hold both personally and as a nation.

The Art of Falling by Danielle McLaughlin

When I read Danielle McLaughlin's debut book of short stories “Dinosaurs on Other Planets” I knew this was an author to watch. Her ability to capture the nuances of our psychological reality and complex relationships in fiction is extraordinary. McLaughlin's talent has been confirmed by being awarded a Windham Campbell Prize and the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award in 2019 as well as numerous other literary awards. So her first novel comes with a lot of anticipation. 

At its heart, “The Art of Falling” is about a seemingly ordinary woman named Nessa whose busy days are filled with her work at an art gallery and caring for her family: husband Philip whose ambitious property development business has fallen on hard times in the wake of the devastating Irish property bubble and teenage daughter Jennifer who is growing secretive and difficult. Yet, amidst juggling gallery lectures and shopping for food to make the family dinner, Nessa grows increasingly aware of how fragile her secure reality has become. Her marriage is still recovering from the recent discovery that Philip was having an affair. More inconvenient truths from the past soon emerge. An eccentric woman publicly asserts that she is the true creator of a famous sculpture that's the centrepiece of an exhibit Nessa is curating. Also, the son of Nessa's long-deceased friend Amy visits the area seeking to learn more about his mother's life. These factors tip Nessa's world into chaos as she scrambles to keep things together and she must question whether buried truths should remain so. These dilemmas create an emotional pressure which is intensely felt and the complex meaning of this story gradually unfolds as the facts are revealed.

One of the things about getting older is that our versions of the past become solidified within our own self-justification and egocentric certainty. Anything that challenges this is often met with suspicion and hostility. Therefore it's moving the way Nessa must accept her own role in perpetuating mythologies which have emerged regarding an artist's career and her friend whose life was tragically cut short. McLaughlin's story raises many intriguing questions. To what degree are facts manipulated to serve a common narrative? What does our subjective experience do to bend the truth? Does excavating certain truths about the past enhance our reality or disrupt it? How much forgiveness is necessary if we want to honestly know what happened in the past? This novel inspires a deep reckoning with one's personal history in a way similar to Julian Barnes' “The Sense of an Ending”. It made me reflect on my own past and how much I have psychologically tidied away to serve my own purposes. What Nessa's tale beautifully shows is that this is a very human trait and we need to be careful about how we manage collective and personal memory.

I admire how McLaughlin is able to raise all these probing questions gradually so they primarily emerge and continue to meaningfully linger after the story finishes. While reading this novel I got so involved with the sympathetic details of Nessa's life and the mysteries of the plot as it unfolded. Like Anne Tyler, McLaughlin has a way of making the everyday wonderfully engaging. This made reading it a very pleasurable experience. There are details which have stuck in my imagination such as the central sculpture which was made with a material that causes it to slowly disintegrate over time. The artist might have been done this purposefully or not, but the nature of this artwork raises a point about what should remain permanent. By encoding personal history into a certain narrative we're limiting the truth about how complex the experience of living really is, yet it's a necessary part of forming identity. “The Art of Falling” shows how the messiness of these dilemmas and questions make being human both beautiful and eternally troubling.

Dominicana by Angie Cruz

Who would have thought the story of a fifteen year old girl who moves from the Dominican Republic to the United States in 1965 is exactly what I wanted and needed to read right now? Over the past several months I've been desperate to lose myself in some really good stories to temporarily avoid the difficult reality we're living through. It's such a blissful relief from the chaos and the magic of a great novel is discovering new love for a character I never could have imagined. “Dominicana” is a novel that swept me up in the immediacy of its story of young Ana Canción whose family pressure her to marry Juan, a man over twice her age. He brings her to New York City even though it was never her dream to live in America. Her family see this pairing as part of a strategic plan for them to eventually move to America as well. Juan and his brothers also seek their own benefits from this match. There's such an intense pressure built into this transactional marriage that made me whole-heartedly feel for Ana's difficult position where she essentially becomes a prisoner in a dank 6th floor apartment in Washington Heights. But I also revelled in the joys and passion she unexpectedly discovers in her accelerated maturity and as she gradually discovers what she truly wants in life. Angie Cruz evokes the intense feeling of this perilous coming-of-age tale with evocative detail. 

I enjoyed how as Ana immerses herself in American culture she begins to imitate and parody it. So after watching 'I Love Lucy' or 'The Sound of Music' she incorporates herself into their narratives in a way which playfully undermines their idyllic images. Equally, on a trip to the World's Fair she becomes aware that she must present an exaggerated image of her own culture in order to sell pastelitos to the American public. She also becomes aware of all the distinct ethnic neighbourhoods in the city and the stereotypes that develop alongside them which are perpetuated by Juan, but when she actually begins talking to different people those stereotypes are dispelled. I also thought it was moving how Ana naturally dreams of being saved by a knight in shining armour, but learns she needs to rely on herself as an independent woman to achieve what she really wants in life. Although both Juan and Ana's mother place unfair expectations upon Ana and take advantage of her, Cruz is careful to show how they are also subjected to pressures placed upon them. This certainly doesn't justify their actions, but it shows how they are all caught in a system which perpetuates different forms of oppression. There are also larger shifts happening in both America and the Dominican Republic which Ana is only slightly aware of but these are delicately incorporated into the background of the story. However, Ana is really at the heart of this novel and I was glad to be fully drawn into her solitary existence.

Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen

Set in the fictional Northern Irish border town of Aghybogey, “Big Girl, Small Town” follows a week in the life of Majella, a young woman cruelly nicknamed Jelly by the locals. She works in a local chip shop and lives with her alcoholic single mother (her father disappeared during The Troubles.) The story begins with the dramatic news that her Granny was brutally murdered in her home. An awareness of this simmers beneath the story as we follow Majella's routine existence slinging fried food and caring for her Ma. Prior to this news she lived in relative anonymity, but local interest in the crime makes her an unwelcome focus of attention. There's a humour and wonderful lightness of touch to this story as we view her world through an extensive list of things “she wasn't keen on”. Subjects which encompass her judgement range from the “small talk, bullshit and gossip” to “the political situation”. Throughout the course of the days we see the tedium, absurdity and small-mindedness of this environment. In this way, Majella is granted dignity and power amidst a community that has so ruthlessly defined and dismissed her. 

Given the subject matter and setting, many readers will be reminded of the novel “Milkman” which similarly depicts the way a young Irish woman who wants to be left alone comes under the pernicious scrutiny of the locals. Gallen opens up a direct dialogue with Anna Burns' novel by quoting from it in the epigraph of this book. But the actual experience of the story feels more like “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine” in the way its protagonist feels psychologically distanced from those around her and only knows how to interact with people by imitating their social behaviour and routines. So when a lecherous male customer asks Majella “D'ye want a bit of my sausage?” she knows to use the cutting rejoinder that her coworker scripted for her “I'll batter yer sausage if you're not careful, now.” But, where the narrative of “Milkman” sometimes felt too viscous and the humour of “Eleanor Oliphant” sometimes felt too contrived, “Big Girl, Small Town” succeeds in conveying the frustrations and plodding routines of its protagonist's existence in a way which is consistently funny, endearing and compulsively readable.

Majella's life is in no way romanticised as she serves an endless barrage of drunken loutish customers, hurriedly shags a coworker in the storeroom or consumes her late night battered and fried meals in solitude. Yet there's a poetic beauty to this narrative in the way Majella has learned to regulate the life and situation she was born into. The author movingly portrays the way her routines are simultaneously comforting and maddening. I enjoyed how Gallen draws ironic contrasts between Majella's life and the lives portrayed in the TV show Dallas which she frequently rewatches. The novel also deftly skewers how many of the lives in this Irish community revolve around the chip shop and alcoholism is rife – Majella explains to an immigrant how the Irish have many words for being drunk. While the father's disappearance and the grandmother's death serve as intriguing mysteries as we follow the protagonist's daily life, the most meaningful question is how Majella can escape from an increasingly stultifying habituated existence. It's powerful how this novel dynamically portrays the life of a working class young woman who many people overlook and offers a tentative message of hope. 

Sight by Jessie Greengrass

The prospect of having children can be exciting, but also terrifying. Luckily, it's something I've never strongly desired so I'm satisfied in the role of uncle, godfather and sometimes babysitter to friends' children. However, some reasons I'd be frightened of having children (beyond a total ignorance of how to care for them) is a dread of making some irreparable mistake and also the inability of protecting them from experiencing pain at some point. Jessie Greengrass describes this as “the overwhelming fear of fucking up that having children brings, the awareness of the impossibility of not causing hurt like falling into endless water”. Her debut novel “Sight” is a reflection on the process of having children and why her narrator is particularly self conscious about the continuation of her lineage. But, more than that, it's a remarkably poignant meditation on the internal and external levels of our mental and physical reality. The narrator is a young woman who cared for her mother during her terminal illness and now faces the prospect of becoming a mother herself. She sifts through her personal past and considers the lives of disparate individuals such as Sigmund & (his daughter) Anna Freud, Wilhelm Röntgen (the first man who produced and published scientific studies of X-rays) and scientist/surgeon John Hunter. In doing so, she embarks on a journey into how she might allow her child to see the multiple layers of life and thus pass on an abiding sense of happiness.

As demonstrated in her superb short story collection “An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It”, Greengrass has a particular creative talent for not only plucking out and creatively reimagining unusual stories from history, but finding a wondrous pertinence in them. It's fascinating when talented writers can pair distinct elements of fiction and nonfiction to create a story which is still deeply emotional. Ali Smith also accomplished this in her novel “Artful” where she essentially took a series of her lectures and threaded them together around the story of a narrator who is grieving for (her or his – the narrator's gender is never specified) lost lover. It still worked as a piece of fiction for me because I felt drawn into the journey this narrator took towards a new understanding through intensely contemplating these different subjects. Greengrass similarly pairs her narrator's struggle with accepting the identity of motherhood by considering the multiple innovative methods particular historical figures took in seeing one's self: whether that be the bones of our bodies, the internal workings of a woman's womb or a method of understanding the unconscious mind.

Sometimes it's not what these figures found which the narrator identifies with, but their process. For instance, she speculates “if we could understand these moments and the weeks that followed them when Röntgen, alone, placed object after object in front of his machine and saw them all transformed, then we too might know what it is to have the hidden made manifest: the components of ourselves, the world, the space between.” In her connection with the challenges and moments of revelation these individuals experienced over a century ago their scientific practices act as touchstones and channels towards the narrator's own working towards a cohesive sense of being.

The sections where Greengrass recounts Freud's professional/familial relationship with his daughter Anna take on a very personal feel for the narrator. Her grandmother, who referred to herself as Doctor K, was a psychoanalyst so her ideas were directly inherited from Freud and influenced the icy grandmother-grandaughter interactions at her Hampstead Heath home. This challenging relationship combined with her mother's terminal illness heavily colour the narrator's complicated distress over the prospect of motherhood. They make her yearn for that clarity of vision which can be passed on, but she also acknowledges with caution that “the price of sight is wonder’s diminishment.”

X-ray of Bertha Rontgen's hand

One lovely moment in the book which will no doubt be highly relatable to avid readers/introverts is the default compulsion the narrator feels to read. At one point she states “I read not with any particular object in mind, nor really with the intention of retaining any information about the subjects that I chose but rather because the act of reading was a habit, and because it was soothing and, perhaps, from a lifetime's inculcated faith in the explanatory power of books, the half-held belief that somewhere in those hectares upon hectares of printed pages I might find that fact which would make sense of my growing unhappiness, allowing me to peel back the obscurant layers of myself and lay bare at last the solid structure underneath.” Part of the joy of this novel is in its inherent belief in the power that reading has to connect us to the past and ideas when we're grappling with life's challenges – even when we only turn to books in a disconsolate and disordered way.

The way that Greengrass combines disparate elements from the past with her narrator's dilemmas is done with such fluidity that it reads with stunning ease. Like Virginia Woolf's writing it's often poetic and philosophical at the same time making statements such as “what are we if not a totality of days, a sum of interactions; and a glimpse of what is underneath the surface, the skeleton on which the outer face is hung, cannot undo the knowledge of skin but only give it context, the way it rises and falls, its puckering, its flaws.” This novel seeks to account for the unruly fluctuations of emotions and disparate elements which make up our existence. As a deeply introspective work of fiction it won't appeal to everyone because its drama is primarily in how it marks the subtleties of transitions in life (from child to adult, from daughter to mother.) But it does so in such a captivating and meaningful way that sensitive readers will find “Sight” utterly gripping and profound.

In this video I predict why I think "Sight" will win the Booker Prize in 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbwWlqMJqaA

Devil’s Day by Andrew Michael Hurley

Andrew Michael Hurley is something of a genius in how he amps up the creep-factor in his writing about isolated rural traditions and village secrets. His phenomenally-successful novel “The Loney” was certainly one of the most atmospheric novels I read last year. New novel “Devil's Day” also produces that unsettling feeling which makes you fearfully look over your shoulder late at night. The narrative artfully plays upon superstitions and anxiety to draw the reader in. John returns to the remote Lancashire sheep-farming community he was raised in for the funeral of his grandfather “The Gaffer” and the annual local Devil's Day celebration. This is a ceremony where the devil is at first tempted in to spare him ravaging the sheep and then expelled back out into the barren moors. Meanwhile, John's pregnant wife Katherine is frequently bothered by a persistent rotting smell, there's a sick ram in the barn, local girl Grace exhibits psychic powers, an act of arson burns a large plot of land and a father recently released from jail has gone missing. This accumulation of details all build to make the reader frantically wonder what's really happening. Is there something supernatural about this environment or are these bizarre occurrences merely messing with our perception? The story builds to fantastically tense scenes and an eerily climatic ending.

This wouldn't be possible if it weren't for Hurley's talent for suffusing his story with a rich amount of detail. The landscape is magnificently described and the intricacies of farming life are vividly rendered. There's a certain beauty to this age-worn setting and its proud community, but there's a sense of ever-present dilapidation to it as well: “Living on farms was one endless round of maintenance. Nothing was ever finished. Nothing was ever settled. Nothing. Everyone here died in the midst of repairing something. Chores and damage were inherited.” The author describes the physically-taxing nature of farming life and how little profit there is in it. He also renders how this creates a long-lasting effect on people over time: '“The valley made placid men stubborn, just as it made ageing men older.” Hence, it's little wonder that John was drawn to move away and make a life for himself elsewhere. But his return to his homeland makes him to reconsider his family legacy and whether he should continue established traditions.

The thing which elevates this novel into being something other than a finely-rendered spooky story are the heartfelt questions about family life that it raises. Are we obligated to honour our ancestors by carrying on with their work or are we free to set out on our own? This is played out through John's narrative but his story which sifts between the past and present comes with hitches which gradually make us question his motives, viability and certain facts about his personal history. There are beautifully poignant moments when he considers how few details we can actually recall in our memories: “Like salt boiled out of water, these things remain. Everything else has evaporated.” We can draw multiple conclusions out of the fragments we get from John's past and the ending of the story. Like all the best riveting narratives whose exact meaning remains elusive, this novel has left me wanting to discuss it with other people so we can collectively try to tease out an answer for what really happened.

Elmet by Fiona Mozley

One of the reasons I enjoy following book prizes so much is that (as well as hoping to see books I’ve loved make their lists) they often introduce me to authors and books that wouldn’t have been on my radar otherwise. I think it’s fair to say that the general reading public had not heard of writer Fiona Mozley or her debut novel “Elmet” before it was longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize – partly because it wasn’t published yet. (Its release was pushed forward because of its listing for this prize.) This might turn out to be both a blessing and a curse because it will put this new author under a heavier amount of scrutiny and criticism than a debut novel would typically receive. “Elmet” has been published by John Murray under their ‘JM Originals’ list – an excellent series first launched two years ago that self consciously seeks to promote fiction that is “fresh and distinctive” and that also “provokes and entertains”. It’s the same list which also produced Jessie Greengrass’ extraordinary and award-winning book of short stories “An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to the One Who Saw It.” Now this series has put out another big prize contender. “Elmet” fits all those descriptive aims for the ‘JM Originals’ list perfectly. It’s a curiously eerie tale about a small working class community whose meaning expands to say so much more about society in general and builds to a thrilling climax.

Adolescent Daniel is wandering northwards begging for food and barely surviving. We’re given sections of his journey in italics and these are interspersed with longer passages about his unusual upbringing. He’s mostly lived a cloistered existence with his physically intimidating, strong-willed father John (who he only refers to as Daddy) and his older sister Cathy in a house that Daddy built for them in a remote copse. They’ve had little to no contact with larger society other than a smattering of locals including a woman who gives John’s children a limited home education that’s partly centred around reading obsolete instruction manuals. Their lives are mostly harmonious until the local landowner Mr Price comes knocking along with his arrogant, spoiled sons. Civil unrest is being waged by the predominantly poor locals who break their backs for the few wealthy members of the community. Although he sought a self-sufficient and quiet life in this remote location, Daddy gets roped into these struggles and their peaceful lifestyle is interrupted.

The novel is partly concerned with the mystery of what motivated Daddy to remove his children from larger society as he’s done. Tales of rogue survivalist fathers inflicting their extreme lifestyles on children have been the focus of a number of recent novels including Claire Fuller’s “Our Endless Numbered Days” and Gabriel Tallent’s “My Absolute Darling”. In both cases, the father figures are darkly disturbing, but here the father is surprisingly tender despite his radical life choices, violent history and domineering appearance. This gives an interesting slant on the story and raises compelling questions about how children should be raised in a society which is unequivocally unjust. In this circumscribed existence Daddy can better protect his children and raise them with values devoid of the larger society’s prejudices, but it also preserves their overall ignorance of the world: “Everything he did now was to toughen us up against something unseen. He wanted to strengthen us against the dark things in the world. The more we knew of it, the better we would be prepared. And yet there was nothing of the world in our lives, only stories of it. We had been taken out of our school and our hometown to live with Daddy in a small copse.”

One of the most intriguing results of their isolated existence is that this brother and sister grow up at a remove from traditional gender roles. Cathy likes to wander through the forest and tries to engage other boys in sport while Daniel is drawn to more domestic duties frequently doing the cooking and cleaning for the whole family. There’s a fascinating section where Daniel describes how he doesn’t consciously think about himself as one gender or another. It’s a striking way of portraying how we all primarily inhabit our lives as individuals devoid of identity labels which we’re often only made aware of when we come into contact with others who only initially see what’s superficial. Daniel’s path towards physical and sexual maturity is interestingly portrayed, but I would have liked to seen it explored even more in the narrative.

It’s skilful how Mozley kept me hooked throughout this story’s unusual situation, dropping clues so that I could gradually and satisfyingly piece things together and ramping up the tension in a way which kept me on edge. Who could say what her prospects are for advancing in the competition for this year’s Booker Prize which includes so many astounding novels? But I’m glad to have been introduced to a writer whose vision is so unique and shows such tremendous promise. I hope Mozley continues to publish more.

The Blood Miracles by Lisa McInerney

It's so intriguing coming to “The Blood Miracles” after reading Lisa McInerney's rhapsodic debut “The Glorious Heresies” about the lives of several disparate individuals in modern day Cork. This new book is a continuation of that story, but she narrows the focus onto Ryan who we first met as a teenager with his longterm girlfriend Karine. Ryan's initial involvement working for drug dealer Dan has morphed into becoming a key player in Dan's gangster circle. But these aren't the kind of modern gangsters portrayed in The Sopranos (as Ryan quite clearly states at one point.) I don't think it's necessary to have read “The Glorious Heresies” before reading this new book as Ryan's past and current situation are quite clearly explained at the beginning. However, it's interesting for me having first read McInerney's writing in her short story 'Berghain' from the anthology “The Long Gaze Back.” The style of this new novel more closely resembles that initial story. It captures the heady atmosphere of a young group of working class Irish men and women struggling to find their place in an economically-strained society. McInerney is particularly adept at portraying this conflict in her hero Ryan who finds himself at a crisis point in this novel without any strong role models or institutional support to guide him.

Ryan is just turning twenty-one and considering important decisions about which direction his life will take. His passion and talent is for making music, but dealing drugs is so lucrative it's hard to resist. Plus he's so ensconced in Dan's circle that it's difficult to safely get out, especially now that Dan is planning on channeling a new form of ecstasy or “yokes” from Italy which will make them all big players in the underworld. Ryan relationship with Karine has also turned very rocky, especially after he becomes enamoured with a charismatic new girl named Natalie. Things start to go badly wrong and Ryan finds himself caught between warring gangs and girlfriends.

Amidst his journey through these conflicts Ryan continuously thinks about his lost mother and persists in keeping an internal dialogue with her which is marked in italics. This is rendered in a way which is deeply poignant: “I was hungry but the hunger felt right. I needed to miss you more than I needed to eat.” Her absence is intensely felt as he's desperately in need of some guidance. Although he knows what he wants to do in life he finds himself drawn into self-destructive behaviour: “It does not escape his notice that he was set for something other than this, that his mother had laid such foundations. Instead of playing and composing on piano Ryan does it on a monitor; instead of practicing he is out on the lash.” He finds himself pulled deeper into self-destructive patterns of behaviour and dangerous circles which are increasingly difficult to extricate himself from.

Although Ryan's internal struggle is movingly rendered, the dialogue-heavy scenes where he bounces between different factions of the gangs and the women he's involved with become a bit strained. The arguments he has with these different parties are realistic, but they start to feel too circular. The stakes increase with a new stream of pills coming from Italy and there's a high level of paranoia within Ryan's gangster circle when things start to go wrong. But the dramatic urgency of this crisis where Ryan fears for his life begins to wane when things don't change or progress fast enough. Something about the thrust of the story feels lost when it's stretched out so far – whereas I think it would have kept its tension if it were just one part of a multi-threaded panoramic view of Cork-life as rendered in “The Glorious Heresies.”  However, excitement really builds when "The Blood Miracles" reaches its climax.

Ryan is a compelling character filled with good-hearted flaws who often makes bad decisions. He's at his most endearing when his best intentions lead to nothing so you can feel and relate to the frustration of his struggle: “You talk enough and soon enough none of it matters; it’s all just words, pauses, silence-and-sound.” As a big fan of “The Glorious Heresies” it's also interesting to see how central characters from the first novel such as Ryan's father Tony, gangster boss Jimmy and Maureen re-enter the story. It'll be fascinating to see how McInerney develops the characters and story further in the planned third novel in this trilogy.

The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

This novel is one of those rare great success stories in that it was first published in 2014 by a small press as a limited edition before being picked up by a much bigger publisher. When it was published by John Murray last year it received a wide amount of critical acclaim and won both the Costa Book Awards First Novel Award and the British Book Industry award for best debut fiction. Such a book comes with a lot of expectations and I was delighted to find “The Loney” lives up to them. Set in a bleak strip of coastline in the north west of England in the 1970s, it’s the story of two brothers who accompany their parents and members of their parish on a pilgrimage one Easter. Andrew Michael Hurley so skilfully builds a sense of a tense, gloomy atmosphere and creates suspense that I felt wholly gripped and wanted to understand the mystery of what happened during this trip. As well as being a satisfying gothic thriller, the novel raises compelling questions about faith, life's meaning and family.  

The novel is narrated by one of the brothers from a point in the far future. He recalls the pilgrimage of that Easter in the 1970s and wants to record what happened because a body has recently been found in the area that they visited. He feels a fierce sense of protection over his brother who he nicknames Hanny. As boys they were incredibly close because Hanny was mute up until that Easter and they shared a special communication. It's really tender and moving the way that Hurley portrays this where the meaning of a gesture or sign from Hanny is instantly understood by his brother as they've developed their own unique sign language. However, the boys' mother Esther (who the narrator refers to as Mummer) is determined to cure Hanny's muteness by appealing to God and puts him through a series of ardent prayers and rituals to cure him.

Their family belongs to a devotedly faithful Catholic parish which was once overseen by an extremely strict and pious man named Father Wilfred. The narrator recalls how sadistic he could be disciplining the boys, yet he's also eventually portrayed as a complex and sympathetically troubled man. Before their pilgrimage during that particular Easter Father Wilfred dies and he's replaced by a much younger and more liberal man Father Bernard McGill from Belfast. Where Father Wilfred advocated for absolute truth and confession, Father Bernard understands that “the truth isn’t always set in stone. In fact it never is. There are just versions of it. And sometimes it’s prudent to be selective about the version you choose to give to people.” Mummer and Father Bernard gradually clash in a fascinating way as she wishes him to use a more strictly enforced regiment for practicing faith. Out of this tension and the strange things happening amongst the local population, Hurley creates an intriguing sense of conflict where the meaning of faith is questioned and tested.

This drama is played out in an eerie landscape which feels overwhelmingly bleak, grey and foreboding. The narrator comments that “I often thought there was too much time there. That the place was sick with it. Haunted by it.” It's a sparsely populated rural area of farmland where unseen strange pagan rituals occur. There is a special ancient shrine that isn't often visited, but which the small group from the parish go to so that Hanny can drink the holy water and hopefully be cured. The Loney itself is a treacherous stretch of land on the coastline where the tide washes in and out of quite quickly, often surprising and overwhelming anyone who might happen to be on it. It's a potent symbol of how a natural force greater than people can overwhelm them and control their destiny in a way that they don't foresee.

“The Loney” feels like a perfect read as we ease into Autumn for the tremendous sense of atmosphere and introspection it creates. This could have easily been a more straightforward spooky story of outsiders who stumble into a provincial area ruled by sinister old rituals, but Hurley makes it a much more nuanced and meaningful story than that. It's a novel with a lot of mystery and ambiguity – particularly because it's only told from the narrator's point of view and I gradually began to wonder if he's entirely trustworthy. He asserts towards the end that “Details are truth.” “The Loney” is a novel whose magnificent details evocatively and precisely evoke a certain kind of mood which seeps into your skin and makes you want to read on.

This novel is one of those rare great success stories in that it was first published in 2014 by a small press as a limited edition before being picked up by a much bigger publisher. When it was published by John Murray last year it received a wide amount of critical acclaim and won both the Costa Book Awards First Novel Award and the British Book Industry award for best debut fiction. Such a book comes with a lot of expectations and I was delighted to find “The Loney” lives up to them. Set in a bleak strip of coastline in the north west of England in the 1970s, it’s the story of two brothers who accompany their parents and members of their parish on a pilgrimage one Easter. Andrew Michael Hurley so skilfully builds a sense of a tense, gloomy atmosphere and creates suspense that I felt wholly gripped and wanted to understand the mystery of what happened during this trip. As well as being a satisfying gothic thriller, the novel raises compelling questions about faith, life's meaning and family.

An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It by Jessie Greengrass

This is Jessie Greengrass’ debut book which won this year’s Edge Hill Short Story Prize. This is the only UK award that recognizes excellence in a published short story collection. There is something beautifully mesmerising about this author’s distinctive voice which is at once highly intelligent and deeply emotional. The characters in these twelve stories often find themselves at odds with the life they’ve ended up with producing feelings of estrangement and loneliness. The breadth of imagination used in creating these oftentimes surprising tales makes them utterly mesmerizing. They span great swaths of time and place from a sailor who hunts a group of birds on a remote rock to extinction to a dystopian future where the narrator is sequestered in an underground bunker to a smelly misogynist in the 1500s who witnesses a peculiar plague. Yet, there are also stories set in very recognizable and relatable situations such as a narrator stuck working in an impersonal call centre, a girl caught in the middle of her parents’ bitter separation and a lovesick student unable to focus on her thesis. The unashamedly long-titled “An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It” is a daring and diverse collection that makes a big impact!

Many characters in these stories desire impossible forms of escape from their present circumstances. For some this is filtered through a (very relatable) form of escapism by exploring alternate lives found online. In ‘All the Other Jobs’ the narrator wishes to take on enticing employment that will take her out of her present location or work that will engage her creatively such as becoming a lookout for polar bears in the arctic, a lighthouse keeper or an armourer for the Royal Opera House. Ironically the infinite possibilities she finds online induce stasis rather than any move towards making an actual change in her life. The same is true in 'Some Kind of Safety' where the narrator is trapped underground with a limited food supply but instead of usefully plotting a way out of this circumstance dreams instead of being able to go back online and look at cat videos.

The wish for escape is most emotionally realized in the story ‘On Time Travel’ where the young narrator whose father has died dreams of entering another version of reality by finding a time slip. This isn’t simply grief but also suffused with a kind of guilt because they hadn’t been a happy family so that “it seemed so awful that something so obviously terrible might in some ways come as a relief.” Thus the narrator and her mother find it painfully difficult to move on. The story ‘Scropton, Sudbury, Marchington, Uttoxeter’ is also laden with guilt about a failed relationship between a child and her parents. Making a life for herself far from her parents’ green grocer business, the narrator of this story returns many years later to the site of their business after her parents have died and the grocer stall has long been closed down. Here she lingers like the spectre narrator in Jean Rhys’ story ‘I Used to Live Here Once’ caught in an emotional stasis anchored in the past. She notes “it is strange how memory retains the structure of things and the details but so little in between.”

A character who does find freedom from his difficult life is the sailor in 'The Lonesome Trials of Knut the Whaler'. Shipwrecked and alone, Knut buries the body of the ship’s former captain at sea taking pride in the fact that he is now captain of the ship. The only trouble is that the ship is wrecked, the crew is gone and there is only a slim chance that he will survive living in or being rescued from this remote location. It seems that escape comes with a heavy price.

In the story ‘The Comfort of the Dead’ Greengrass posits that the intense desire to escape will mellow with time. As his life progresses and his wife leaves him, protagonist David finds that “In age, the fussy confines of his life began to seem appropriate: he no longer struggled between what he was and what he felt he ought to be.” Rather than change his circumstances, David remains in place with the ghosts of people he once knew increasingly visiting his bedside. Instead of pestering him to change like Ebenezer Scrooge’s ghosts they are an entirely benign presence who he finds comforting. However, this also feels tragic as all he has in his life are spectres rather than real people such as his wife with whom he found “the more he looked the more impossible it seemed that she should be his wife at all.” David would prefer the version of his wife that he imagines over the real woman and consequently ends up entirely alone.

Extinct Great Auks

The same is true of the narrator of ‘Three Thousand, Nine Hundred and Forty-Five Miles’ whose male lover leaves her because he’s uncertain about their relationship. Greengrass has a startlingly beautiful way of describing her feeling of loneliness and her desire for a physical/emotional connection with strangers she sees around her. She imagines how the man she loves finds a new partner and has a fulfilling new life. Yet, when he eventually returns, he can’t live up to the fantastically successful version of him that she’s created in her mind and no longer desires the real man before her. Such ironic twists and explorations about the tension between reality and the imagination are a great strength of Greengrass’ writing.

I felt deeply involved reading the skilfully written stories in “An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It” – not least of all by the solemn, meditative feeling that the stark and chilling title story left me with. These stories meaningfully explore the modern individual’s crisis of alienation and belonging through a creatively wide range of characters, locations and situations. It’ll be fascinating to see what Jessie Greengrass writes next.

The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney

Looking at the Baileys Prize longlist, one of the novels I was most excited to see was by Lisa McInerney who I had read recently in the brilliant anthology of Irish women writers “The Long Gaze Back”. Her story 'Berghain' is full of spit and fire as it follows a young man's drug fuelled night out. It struck me as so forceful how she wrote from a male character's perspective about experiences not often explored in fiction. Her direct style and subject matter is reflected in this novel “The Glorious Heresies” about the lives of several struggling individuals in modern day Cork. At the beginning of the novel, we meet fifty-nine year old Maureen who has just murdered a man in her apartment. Her gangster son Jimmy calls upon his estranged old friend Tony to help him clean up the mess. Several people are drawn into this incident and its consequences reverberate through their lives over a number of years. At the heart of this novel is Tony's teenage son Ryan who struggles to find his place in this post-financial-crash Irish community. With powerful wit and insight, McInerney weaves a story of the underbelly of society exploring the ways these individuals are hampered by their country's social system and religious traditions.

There is a lot of bad behaviour in this novel and a good amount of cursing. Though the characters aren't excused from participating in folly that leads to violence, substance abuse and antisocial behaviour, the author shows how their choices are inhibited by the society they live in. A prostitute leans on drugs and alcohol to distract from the hate she receives from clients. A boy acts out at school because nobody notices the mental and physical abuse he receives from his father. A mother sets a church on fire many years after being forcefully separated from her baby born outside of wedlock. A single father commits heinous acts to protect the six children he struggles to raise and support.

Through Ryan we see how a boy with intelligence and artistic promise (he's a talented piano player) is slowly drawn into a life of crime and gang violence. He needs nurturing, but his development is perverted by abuse received from both men and women. His tenderly drawn relationship with his girlfriend is slowly warped. What's worse is that he's aware of his life falling into cliches so that “The predictability of his transformation hurt him terribly. He hated it.” Yet, as badly as he'd like to escape his circumstances he's unable to break out of them because of the relationships he's locked into and institutions like the court, school and church that fail to see how vulnerable he really is.

'Streets of Cork' photo by Donncha O Caoimh

Of course, as difficult as life is for the men in this book, life is even harder for women. It's explained how “they divide up the women into categories,” said Maureen. “The mammies. The bitches. The wives. The girlfriends. The whores. Women are all for it too, so long as they fall into the right class. They all look down on the whores. There but for the grace of God.” The prostitutes are at the bottom of the social ladder and suffer the most. The character of Tara Duane who used to be a prostitute is a particularly interesting character as someone who tries to be savvy and gain leverage in the community, but ultimately fails and participates in abusive behaviour as she's convinced of her own righteousness.

Most fascinating of all is Maureen who has strong independent opinions and exists in a privileged place as the protected mother of a feared gangster. As someone who has returned to Ireland after living in England for many years, she can see the corruption and hypocrisy from an outsider's perspective. She realizes she's made mistakes but she sees clearly how the church has hoarded power and abused its position. At one point she has this powerful confrontation in a confessional booth: “Oh, Father. I know I’m sorry. What about you? Bless me, Ireland, for I have sinned. Go on, boy. No wonder you say Holy God is brimming with the clemency; for how else would any of you bastards sleep at night?” She's someone who has entirely lost any faith in the church and its ability to heal: “there’s nothing there. No confessor, no penitent, no sin, no sacrament. Just actions to be burned away.” There is a strong disregard for the symbolic powers the church once possessed as in one scene where a runaway prostitute Georgie sniffs cocaine off a bible and observes that these books are “Mass produced and made of dead trees; there’s nothing special about them.” The ferocious anger for the way religion has failed to support people when they are at their most vulnerable is palpable throughout the book.

“The Glorious Heresies” is an energetic and dynamic story depicting members of society who aren't often given a voice. For this reason, McInerney's writing reminded me of books by Kerry Hudson and, for the way it depicts communities entrenched in violence it reminded me of the LA novel “All Involved”. It speaks of the challenges the current generation faces while showing an understanding of the weight and influence of the past. In fact, the past continuously bleeds into the present as a character named George observes “We’ve more history than we’re able for.” Instead of looking to the age-old institutions for support and inspiration the newer generation's experience is refracted through video games or popular TV shows like The Sopranos or The Walking Dead. McInerney writes powerfully about issues affecting us here and now. I felt drawn into her characters' lives and tremendously moved by this strikingly forceful novel.

Death is a Welcome Guest by Louise Welsh

When I’m aware that a book was written as part of a series I usually only like to read them in the order that they were published. This is the case whether or not the series of books have clear character/situation cross-overs or only have thematic links. I worry about missing hidden meanings or references which link them up – plus the geeky side of me thinks things should only be read in order. There have been recent publications by Kate Atkinson and Jane Smiley which I’ve really wanted to read, but avoided because they are part of a series and I want to read the first books before reading these new ones. Unfortunately, the amount of reading time required to consume these series in total means I keep delaying starting any of them. This is also why I didn’t read Marilynn Robinson’s “Lila” when it first came out – since it’s the third book in a series in which I’ve only read “Gilead.” I still think “Lila” is one of the best books I’ve read this year which makes me glad I didn’t keep putting it off. So I’ve also taken a punt with reading “Death is a Welcome Guest” which is the second book in the Plague Times trilogy by Louise Welsh. The first book in the series “A Lovely Way to Burn” came out last year, but I never got around to reading it. I may have missed some things by reading this book first. But, from what I can tell, this dystopian novel about a plague which hits modern-day UK stands well on its own.

The novel follows Magnus, an up-and-coming comedian who has just received a big break opening for a more famous performer at the O2 arena. After his opening night he tentatively engages in a night of drunken debauchery despite having witnessed a tragic and worrying death earlier that day. Through a terrible misunderstanding, Magnus winds up in prison. While he’s incarcerated all hell breaks loose outside. When he finally emerges back into the world with the help of his mysterious cellmate Jeb, they find a plague evocatively known as "the sweats" has swept the nation sending society into chaos. Much like some other plague-centred dystopian novels and films I’ve read/seen the first half of the story is primarily made up of a series of desperate chases as the characters try to adjust to and find a place within this radically transformed landscape. The second half follows the burgeoning formations of a new community in an isolated location and presents a series of moral conundrums as the survivors grapple to form a cohesive plan for the future. This seems to be a natural format, but it’s one where I often find the thrill of the first half to be the best part. I found this to be true with the movie 20 Days Later and I feel it’s true for “Death is a Welcome Guest” as well. Magnus and Jeb’s flight through a ravaged city filled with decaying corpses that takes them through London Underground tunnels and high-class hotels is well executed and effectively tense. But the second half becomes overtly ponderous. It’s not that I don’t find the sociological dilemmas which arise in a highly pressurized situation interesting. There’s just something about it which feels too contrived. In the case of this novel, Welsh explores issues of capital punishment, religion and suicide wrapped in a murder-mystery set on a grand country estate.

The most effective and haunting story-line of this book is Magnus’ painful memories of his cousin Hugh’s suicide. The lingering feelings of despair and resentment he holds over this loss casts an interesting colour on the events which come after the onset of the plague. Unfortunately, the social issues begin to dominate the story and take precedence over the characters’ development. Interestingly, this review by Jane Jakeman in The Independent came to the opposite conclusion. Overall, I felt it’s well written and I was sufficiently intrigued to follow the story all the way to the end. However, it doesn’t have the innovative power or focus of another recent plague novel “Station Eleven.” I wonder if the other two books in the Plague Times trilogy reflect back on the themes of “Death is a Welcome Guest” or form any satisfying narrative links between them. I’m intrigued, but I’m not sure I’m sufficiently motivated to read them to find out.