Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

I was initially thrown by the description of this book as a spy novel. Instead of the moody suspenseful tale I was expecting I was surprised to find large portions of the book concern a philosophical treatise pondering the early years of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals. The novel is told from the point of view of a very confident and cooly guarded woman who uses the undercover name Sadie. We follow how she gradually infiltrates an anti-capitalist eco commune through the old friend of its leader and her movements around an agricultural area of France. Presumably the year is 2013 since the sounds of Daft Punk’s song ‘Get Lucky’ can be heard everywhere Sadie travels. A large portion of the narrative concerns her reading and commenting upon the emails of Bruno Lacombe, a reclusive mentor to the commune who lives in a cave and believes he hears voices. His musings are curious to read about but initially I found the overall mode and conceit of this novel disorientating and overly ponderous. Nevertheless, I steadily got into its deliberation about our origins as humans and where our motivations come from. It's also fun to follow Sadie who is supremely judgemental but also a fallible individual who gets tipsy on wine and meets a new gay bestie named Vito.

The reader doesn't know much about this narrator since her profession requires that she remain anonymous. However, she refers to her jobs from the past and why she had to stop working undercover for a US government body after romantically entrapping a young man by convincing him to commit acts of eco-terrorism. Even before the examples were specifically referenced in the novel I recalled the UK undercover policing relationship scandals from the past couple of decades. It's outrageous that there have been numerous cases such as this where officers used a false identity and became romantically involved with the subjects they were spying on and, in some cases, had children with them. So it's logical that Sadie must be a steely individual only concerned with executing her job even if this includes emotional manipulation and morally bankrupt behaviour.

She indicates at one point that she doesn't even have an opinion about the issues at stake because she is simply performing her duty. Sadie believes this justifies her actions but I get the sense that she enjoys feeling superior to those around her. Additionally, Kushner has fun with inhabiting such a judgemental voice as Sadie freely makes catty comments about other people's appearance and French life. At one point she likens terrines to cat food and observes that the older/more rural the Frenchman the higher his pants will be belted. She also points out that only in France will you find talk shows with famous writers as guests because it's the only place where people think writers are interesting. These sly observations provide some levity amidst the more ponderous passages of the novel. Sadie is also extremely confident about her appearance as being attractive but not having any especially remarkable features which will make her stand out and thus she can remain relatively anonymous. However, she does have artificially enhanced breasts which she refers to multiple times and takes pride in and which I assume she had done to aide her in seducing the subjects she's spying on.

Bruno can be a bit of a windbag in his messages and he has eccentric ideas, but I found some of his diatribes pondering the origin of humans and our motivations interesting. Though she's reading these messages looking for clues about potential acts of sabotage, it seems like it's also forcing Sadie to think more in depth about deeper issues. Kushner repeatedly refers to the image of lines of poplar trees as it seems to connect with this long view of history or successive generations of humans stretching back to our most primal form. Bruno's earnestness is also endearing as he's desperately seeking an alternative for the path our civilization has taken. I also have a natural sympathy for people who form intentional communities and different ways of organising themselves. In my early adulthood I even visited a number of communes and considered joining one. However, I eventually realised that it's incredibly difficult to successfully organise a community along new lines without repeating the same mistakes as mainstream society. This certainly seems to be the case with Le Moulin, the commune Sadie enters into where there is a lot of talk and ideals but little practical action. Sadie joins them under the pretence of translating the group's co-written book opposing Capitalism. However, she is really there to report on and monitor their activities in the lead up to a planned demonstration at an agricultural fair and try to provoke one member to take the protest to even further extremes.

Sadie expresses the view that people's belief systems are merely a superficial way to “shore up their own identity.” She goes on to say “The truth of a person, under all the layers and guises, the significations of group and type, the quiet truth, underneath the noise of opinions and 'beliefs,' is a substance that is pure and stubborn and consistent. It is hard, white salt.” This image of the salt at the core of our being becomes quite significant to her and recurs especially towards the end of the novel. Is this a cynical view by an embittered person who has chosen a profession of necessary loneliness with no fixed identity? Are the beliefs that people hold so dearly really only superficial and fleeting? Or does our unique make up and system of beliefs form who we are? I think Kushner is raising all these questions with no certain answers but offers them through the lens of an individual who positions herself outside both mainstream society and the counterculture of this commune.

It's endearing that Sadie comes to feel so fond of Bruno and protective towards him – even remarking that the commune doesn't deserve him. I think she recognizes a kinship with him in his extreme isolation and rejection of society. They seem to have come to the same conclusions but have different approaches to navigating life. They're also both keen on considering deep time by staring into a dark cave of great depth or gazing into the stars in the night sky. This touchstone with history draws them out of the present moment, the present circumstances of our civilization and the (to their minds) tragic trajectory of Homo sapiens. Sadie also seems to want to take the place of Bruno's deceased daughter – however, he doesn't know her and has no idea that she's been reading his messages. So the only connection she can have with him is to engage with his system of beliefs and look to the stars (even if they aren't really stars but satellites.)

As you can see, this novel's spy story is somewhat secondary to the larger questions it raises regarding humanity, individual motivation and the trajectory of our civilization. Those looking for a plot which adheres to the genre conventions of spy novels might be disappointed by this. However, I heartily enjoyed Kushner's creative take on this sleuth's tale as its increasingly dramatic story ponders many prescient issues from a unique point of view. It's also a fascinating character study about an individual with no regard for the people she deceives. Yet cracks begin to show as she is prone to drinking, popping pills and ocular migraines. Kushner also incorporates a good deal of humour in how she presents Sadie's perspective. Additionally, there's an increasing complexity to this spy whose self-interested stance is muddled by the missives of a mysterious guru. There is a slow build up in the story as the first half of the novel is top heavy with Bruno's emails, but “Creation Lake” develops a good momentum as it leads up to the dramatic resolution and a potential reckoning for Sadie.

The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright

There's a down to earth and relatable quality to Enright's writing which makes it so wonderfully engaging. It's a slight of hand which might initially conceal that the prose is very sophisticated and biting. “The Wren, The Wren” opens with a passage about the discomforting weirdness of inhabiting a body and consciousness which had me instantly chuckling in recognition. The story continues as a young woman named Nell relates the experience of unexpectedly falling in love. However, this is anything but a saccharine tale of romance as her relationship with a rural muscular lad turns into something that is both exciting and disturbing.

Her experiences show how love affairs and long term relationships involve varying degrees of power play – something which has been true for past generations of Nell's family as well. The narrative alternates between Nell's perspective and that of her no-nonsense mother Carmel who lives independently and has mostly avoided any committed romance. Both live with the spectre of Carmel's deceased father Phil McDaragh, a poet of moderate fame who abandoned his family and ill wife to move to America seeking more personal and professional success. His poems bookend Carmel and Nell's accounts. They're full of airy talk about love and nature. The more that's related about this family's history the more hollow and posturing they appear.

Phil gave Carmel the dubious honour of dedicating one of his poems to her. It's a kind of gift but it also cements his girl and his relationship to her as something removed from reality. Enright seems to be disentangling the illusion created by fame with both this novel and her previous book “Actress” showing how the creation of public image and representation can be very different from personal experience. But really this issue of the spotlight being cast on a certain individual highlights and exaggerates issues we all have concerning authenticity. Through these women's accounts we see how lived experience is precariously removed from perceptions and representations of it – especially when these come from a dominant man. In turn, this skews self perception. Over the course of their story Carmel and Nell gradually find greater clarity about themselves and their family. The drama disentangles the mythology which has been built around a masculine poet and patriarchal figure.

One of Nell's statements which continues to haunt me is when she recalls how whenever she wanted a present Carmel always gave her exactly what she asked for. What she hoped for was a surprise. This story shows how our relationships with each other don't thrive if we only play out our expected roles as a daughter or son or mother or father. Instead we have to see the person as they really are: a unique individual who is constantly changing and trying to figure their lives out. This novel presents a meaningful family story where connections and relationships are tested in these charismatic individuals' ongoing quest for self-fulfilment.

Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks

It feels like some debut novels have been building up in an author's mind for their entire life. This is certainly the case with “Fire Rush”. In the bio for Jacqueline Crooks on the dust jacket it describes how she was involved in the music and political scene of migrant communities in 70s and 80s London and that she was “immersed in the gang underworld as a young woman.” This novel follows Yamaye through this same period of time. She spends her nights clubbing with friends at a venue which caters for the emerging dub music scene. But when a promising relationship is cut short because of a racist attack by the police, she's thrust into a movement of protest and criminality which eventually leads her to Bristol and Jamaica. At one point she muses “I wonder if one day I'll write a song, a sound memorial for the times we had. Those winter nights of music and heat, Asase, Rumer, Moose and me.” This innovative novel is that memorial because although it's fiction it is rich with the feeling of perilous young adulthood and prose which are infused with the music of British African-Caribbean culture. Reading it is a mesmerising, revelatory and utterly immersive experience.

What's immediately striking about this book is the voice of Yamaye which strongly captures her perspective as a creative young black woman in London. Both her narrative and the dialogue build a powerful sense of her personality and worldview. She resides in a housing estate with her emotionally-distant father, works a tedious job and longs for a connection with her absent mother. What gives her life is going to a club with her friends and chanting lyrics in her head which eventually burst out in public improv sessions when she takes to the mic. Although she finds inspiration and support from this community there's also an element of animosity. It's striking how she frames the slender options available to her when unwanted men grind against her in the club or when the police come knocking on her door. Also, her strong-willed close friend Asase is an ally but she also belittles Yamaye. On top of this is the larger threat of “Babylon” or the British establishment with police who target and spy upon both her and her community. It's inspiring witnessing Yamaye's growth over the course of the dramatic story. Although she experiences tragedy, heartbreak and violence she channels this into artistic expression. She also courageously fights to establish a space where she can feel at home.

There's a mural of black protest near to where I live in south London and its message really came alive for me when reading a section of this novel which features a march through Norwood that turns into a riot. These scenes are filled with evocative physical details and convey the emotional atmosphere of this confrontation in the streets. A visceral pain and anger for the way minorities have been systematically discriminated against and marginalized in this country is powerfully expressed throughout the story. Yamaye is deeply aware of the way her ancestors were subjugated on a day to day basis from the sugar she consumes to the nightmares that plague her. The story also meaningfully deals with the complexity of how to move forward as a society with options that range from complicity to flight to extremism. By following Yamaye's heartrending journey we experience the personal impact and difficulty of these larger events and debates.

The ongoing story lines of who might be snitching to the police in their local community and what happened to Yamaye's mother add compelling elements of mystery to the novel. Although I was fully engaged by this book, there were some elements of the plot that felt a little clunky to me. Circumstances surrounding a friend's incarceration are handled a little too swiftly, some encounters rely too heavily on coincidence and the ending came across as melodramatic. Also some of the short dream sequences dealt a bit too literally with the novel's central subjects. But these are minor quibbles considering the overall vibrancy of the utterly unique prose. It's a moving experience following the way Yamaye grows and transforms over the novel. This story may be set in the past but there is an urgency to Crooks' writing which successfully pays tribute to a movement and music scene which isn't part of mainstream history but whose influence is still strongly felt today.

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

Rape... murder... masochism... cannibalism... mutilation... sexual debauchery... incest... body horror... regurgitated sausages. Welcome to the medieval world as presented by Ottessa Moshfegh! Those who aren't instantly put off by such sordid elements will probably find that an over-indulgence in such bombastic grotesquery comes to feel humorous and absurd. Maybe it enhances rare moments of tenderness such as when a servant girl longingly dreams of her lost love or when a grieving beaten boy who never knew his mother suckles the empty breast of a kindly old woman. Or perhaps this fictional reimagining of past horrors comes to feel like a distorted mirror of the present where the majority toil under increasingly strained conditions while society's elite live in excess. Or could it just be there for shock value?

Whatever your interpretation of Moshfegh's writing it certainly inspires plenty of discourse. Her debut “Eileen” earned her credentials with multiple book award nominations and her musings of a sleepy heroine in “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” became a big bestseller. “Lapvona” has already received a range of praise and damnation in literary circles. There is a mesmerising quality to this author's storytelling which drew me into the world of its naïve adolescent protagonist Marek. At first this son of a shepherd feels sympathetic with his unfortunate ugliness, twisted spine and mop of untended red hair. However, his pitiful desire for his father's punishment soon gives way to lowkey aggression and cruelty as he passively listens to the pleas of a dying boy. Over the course of a year he finds himself in a surprisingly close position to the town's lord and governor Villiam.

Marek is central to this story of a feudal land set in an unspecified place and in some archaic time period where peasants toil the land and live with the hope that their suffering will earn them points in the afterlife. But it's just as much a tale of this town's range of other inhabitants and the narrative frequently shifts to follow their points of view. We gradually discover hidden familial relations and a sinister scheme which drives the general population to starvation while Villiam indulges in his endless gluttony and demand for constant puerile and perverse entertainment. There's also the sometimes-blind elderly Ina who is called a witch, converses with birds and served as a wet nurse to most of the village. Later on she even helps “prepare” the men to repopulate the area. And a mysterious tongueless woman is rumoured to be carrying the new son of God and this disrupts the unequal order of this viciously brutal community. The way in which the reader is privy to information which certain characters are ignorant about creates an excellent feeling of suspense within this horrifyingly vivid story.

Randomly, I recently watched John Waters' film 'Desperate Living' for the first time. There are strange parallels to “Lapvona” in that both splinter away from reality to indulge in a carnival of debauchery centred around an imaginary feudal community. In the movie a mentally ill suburban housewife and her murderous nurse seek refuge in a shantytown ruled by an evil queen similar to Villiam in her insatiable appetite and pleasure in the suffering/humiliation of her subjects. Moshfegh and Waters make surprising but natural bedfellows in their invocations of immoral worlds filled with perversity and wild drama. Perhaps their rebellion against established orders show how continuous imbalances in society drive people to follow their most depraved instincts. Or that neither logic or faith hold up against the wilfulness of human experience which is always centred around the self. Towards the end of this novel, Moshfegh wryly comments “Right or wrong, you will think what you need to think so that you can get by.” Whether you applaud her, cancel her or allow yourself to be entertained by her writing, this is a writer who is unafraid of sticking a pitchfork in conformity.

Appliance by J.O. Morgan

I fondly remember being a child and going on the Disney World ride 'Carousel of Progress' which demonstrates through a singing audio-animatronic American family how technology has benefited and improved the lives of each successive generation. We can get so caught up in the belief that “progress” will be nothing but an asset for us as individuals and as a species. Certainly people in the past had poorer living standards and worse medical treatment – but how does progress impact the planet? In what ways does it bind us to capitalism? And how does it change our sense of being unique individuals? These are questions at the heart of J.O. Morgan's novel “Appliance”. Through a series of vignettes we follow the development of a device which can instantly transport objects (and eventually people) from one place to another. Think Wonka Vision but without the shrinkage. We follow the reactions and the impact it has upon a series of characters who are like bystanders to this march of progress which demands they integrate this device into their lives whether they like it or not. Though this may sound like a book with a Luddite agenda, it's more an emotional and philosophical examination about how we can get caught up driving forward our society more for the sake of it rather than to benefit the people who inhabit it.

Since each chapter moves to an entirely new set of characters the novel demands patience as it's necessary to reorientate to a new situation. But there is a pleasure in discovering how the technology has moved on and the way it is affecting the lives of these different individuals. From the outside one naturally wants to marvel at a rapidly-improving device which begins by transporting a simple plastic spoon and progresses to the point where it can zap whole cities to the moon. However, what's so clever about this novel is how it focuses on the dangers, frustrations and bewilderment it causes to those who live with it. As the device advances the infrastructure around everyone deteriorates to the point where they become wholly reliant upon this technology. Every resource must be mined to feed it even as most people increasingly don't understand it.

The story also teases out questions of authenticity. It addresses how we are biological beings which continuously regenerate: “The person we were yesterday is not composed of exactly the same stuff as the person we are today. Just as we can't be sure we are the same person who wakes up each morning, unless we stay awake all through the night.” If we can be wholly mapped and recreated elsewhere what aspect of our being is really individual? In each successive story the characters come to feel less authentically themselves and less intelligent. Those who protest against the system which demands they use this device find that their objections are met with indifference. Those who infiltrate the system find themselves being drawn into becoming a part of it. Everyone else blithely goes along with it though the quality of their lives doesn't necessarily improve. Though the premise of this story is like something you'd find in science fiction it feels eerily relatable and relevant to the world today. I got the creepy sense from reading this novel that technology would never need to become self-aware in order to enslave us as we're unwittingly allowing it to control us already.

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

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

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

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

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

Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett

We're accustomed to reading coming of age stories that attempt to faithfully reproduce the experience of growing up and the transition into adulthood, but “Checkout 19” by Claire-Louise Bennett takes a radical new approach. The narrative is an account of a young woman reflecting on her life thus far and roughly follows the linear trajectory of her development. Events such as period pains, moving to a rapidly-growing city, a tumultuous romantic relationship and a traumatic occurrence are recounted. However, her experiences have been refashioned by the process of memory till they feel like smoothed stones lodged in the gut: “I experience, every few years, an urge to recall this moment and the events that preceded it. Not only to recall it, but to write it down, again. Again.” We don't necessarily get a fully rounded picture of an event but an impression of the predominant feeling which remains because of certain encounters or experiences. Her account adheres to a different form of truth which is influenced as much by the imagination as it is by history. This is a life dominated by reading and writing which are just as real or more real than concrete experience. The story isn't so much a quest to know what is true, but a refreshingly honest account of this state of being. 

The reading life permeates her experience to the degree that when thinking back to certain time periods they are more dominated by lists of what authors she'd read or not read at that point rather the particulars of her circumstances. As I was reading these sections I found it geekily pleasurable mentally ticking off which authors I've also read, which I still want to read and which I've not heard of before. Moreover, Bennett writes in such a compelling and sympathetic way about the process of reading: “Certain written words are alive, active, living – they are entirely in the present, the same present as you. In fact, it feels as if they are being written as you read them, that your eyes upon the page are perhaps even making them appear, in any case, certain sentences do not feel in the least bit separate from you or from the moment in time when you are reading them. You feel they wouldn't exist without your seeing them. Like they wouldn't exist without you. And isn't the opposite true too – that the pages you read bring you to life? Turning the pages, turning the pages. Yes, that is how I have gone on living. Living and dying and living and dying, left page, right page, and on it goes.” This is such a gorgeous description of the dynamic way we interact with the text of books and why we connect so strongly to certain literature.

As she continues to read throughout her life she becomes aware of not only the sexism which permeates some literature but the gendered way readers are treated. This naturally draws her to only read female authors: “There came a point I don't know when exactly when I'd read enough books by men for the time being. It happened quite naturally – I don't recall deciding I'd had enough and wasn't going to read any more books by men for a while, it was just that I began reading more and more books by women and that didn't leave me much time anymore to read any books by men.” This is such a glorious way of putting to rest the assumed superiority certain male authors project, but equally Bennett skewers the way certain male readers arrogantly claim literature as belonging to them exclusively. “Women can't withstand poetry, seemed to be Dale's view. Women are beautiful and tender creatures and poetry breaks them, of course it does. Poetry rips right through you, makes shit of you, and a man can be made through you, makes shit of you, and a man can be made shit of and go on living because no one really minds, not even the man. The man likes it in fact, likes to be made shit of so that he can sit there and drink his head off and declaim one epithetical thing after another and all the other interminably taciturn men believe he is an exceptional man...” Reading this I found myself frantically nodding along recalling some self-consumed self-righteous male readers I've encountered.

There were plenty of other passages I connected with as well. In her childhood she describes the experience of being made to work in a group at school and how the result of these collaborative projects was disappointing compared to the quality work she knew she could do if working on her own. I definitely shared this kind of solitary work ethic. Even though I felt a strong connection to some parts of this novel, there were also other sections and tangents which eluded me and felt so abstract I honestly can't pretend to know what they are about. Perhaps my confusion partly comes from the unique way the author's account is a blend of the past and the fiction she wrote. When recounting a memory of a train journey she describes how: “I've a feeling I was wearing a green hat but I might be wrong about that, that might have been the woman I made up years later who takes a train to see friends of hers a day earlier than they expect”. Though this is intriguing and playful it can also be quite disorientating for the reader. Some parts of the book concern a fictional character named Tarquin Superbus whose quest to find the single sentence written in a library of otherwise blank books goes awry. As curious and bewitchingly whimsical as these sections are they felt at times like a distraction from the more interesting narrator's point of view.

Though the bulk of the novel is written in the first person, the opening and closing sections are narrated in the collective “we”. It feels like the individual is a twin being that is in constant dialogue with herself. She reinforces the validity of her point of view by agreeing and building upon it. This creates an oddly hypnotic rhythm which is reminiscent of a Beckett play. Part of me would have liked to see the entire novel written in this way. But then I would miss the forceful and directly personal way that this story is a celebration of books as they are exchanged, discussed, revered, dismissed and ignored. It does not just list authors but shows the physical presence of books, the room they take up, the difficulty in moving/keeping them and letting them go. It's also a testament of the impulse to create, to revise, to fashion out of experience an impression of life which is universal. It's the force which gives meaning to our existence when we're stuck in a job which is as tediously repetitive as scanning items at a store's checkout.

Actress by Anne Enright

I have a special fondness for novels that are about actresses/actors. Two of my favourite books are Joyce Carol Oates’ “Blonde” about the actress Norma Jean Baker who becomes the persona Marilyn Monroe and Susan Sontag’s “In America” about the Polish actress Helena Modjeska who helped found a utopian community in the late 1800s. I even wrote my MA dissertation on these novels and how both writers explore the borders between identity and performance in their stories. I also have a love for Anne Enright’s writing as few other current authors are able to write about family, love and national identity the way she can as exemplified in her previous novel “The Green Road” which is a fascinating depiction of all these things.

This means that “Actress” is the perfect novel for me and it fully delivered because I absolutely adored it. It’s told from the perspective of Norah, a writer who has written five novels and now feels ready to tell the story of her mother Katherine O’Dell who died at the relatively early age of 58. At the height of her mother’s career she was a great actress of Broadway and Hollywood and, at the lower end of it, found herself doing TV commercials and became the focus of a tabloid scandal. Though her mother’s star faded long ago and Norah herself is much older, the effects of that celebrity and the uneasy relationship it created between them are still something Norah wrestles with. In this story Norah tries to piece together a history of Katherine’s life and the real impact of her fame.

Something I find so engaging about Enright’s writing is that almost every sentence feels like it’s layered with a delicious form of irony. Norah’s backward glance at her childhood and Katherine’s life is coloured by this humorous point of view where certain things seem obvious now when they may have not been at the time. For instance, she understands now that her mother struggled with her finances though she continued to live as if she were affluent, many of the romantic men who hovered around her mother were in fact gay and when her mother made excuses for not spending time with her daughter after a show it was really because she wanted to be alone. These are things she probably intuitively knew at the time, but seeing things in retrospect makes them much clearer – or apparently so because it’s easy to place an interpretation on events which are long past. Nevertheless, I found Norah’s cynical tone about the whole artifice of fame and the theatrical world very amusing.

Part of Katherine’s struggle as an artist is that she finds herself typecast as embodying a certain romanticised view of old Ireland. Norah frequently comments on how Katherine feels pressured to uphold this image in her dress and dyed red hair. It’s upheld even more when her mother makes an advertisement for Irish butter which becomes infamous and Enright’s description of the over-the-top ad is hilarious. But it’s interesting how Katherine’s struggle to break away from this image also mirrors the country’s shifting politics and characters over the decades. Norah poignantly recounts her experiences during The Troubles and how these events make everything change but, at the same time, nothing changes: “A funny thing happens when the world turns, as it turned for us on the night we burned the British Embassy down. You wake up the next morning and carry on.” Through this story Enright gives a fascinating view on an evolving sense of what it means to be Irish.

I also really appreciate the dynamic way Enright writes about love and sex. The public endlessly speculate about Katherine’s sexual life as does Norah herself as she’s not entirely certain who her mother slept with or who her own father is. But the reader is drawn more into Norah’s own sexual history and relationship with sex as she describes her uninhibited views about it. When pondering the nature of sex she poignantly describes the complicated interplay between the imagination and reality and points out that there is a “difference between what happens in your head and what happens in the room. The big difference.” Interestingly, the novel is largely narrated in the second person as Norah is directing her recollections at her husband with whom she has a very complicated relationship.

Finally, I very much enjoyed the occasional commentary Enright makes about sleep and sleeplessness throughout the novel. She makes very relatable points about the inner struggle everyone has when waking up in the night and whether to go to the toilet or try to get back to sleep. I also liked her observation about how uncomfortable a bed feels when you’re trying to get to sleep but when you wake up in the morning it feels like the most comfortable place in the world. Enright excels at such pithy down-to-earth observations while also creating a larger family story with compelling ideas about identity. It’s what makes reading this author such an enriching and enjoyable experience.

Quichotte by Salman Rushdie

I was really looking forward to this novel as the subject matter intrigued me and I’ve been wanting to read more by Rushdie, but I ended up feeling mostly negative towards it. “Quichotte” is Rushdie’s modern day version of ‘Don Quixote’ and primarily concerns Ismail Smile (who dubs himself Quichotte.) He travels across the US on a foolhardy romantic quest to woo Salma R, a famous television personality. In the process he surveys how fiction has become fact and many facts are treated as fiction in this modern day America. This exposes the absurdity of this state of being and captures the tragi-comic position we’re now in while especially highlighting the contentious issues of gun control laws and a corrupt pharmaceutical industry. A certain character muses at one point, “America, what happened to your optimism, your new frontiers, your simple Rockwell dreams?” The novel is justifiably preoccupied with this doleful question.

If the novel had been confined to Ismail’s episodic tales I believe I’d have found this a much more satisfying and pleasurable read. However, Rushdie soon adds a meta-fictional layer where we learn that Ismail’s story is being written by another character named Sam DuChamp, a writer of spy thrillers who is trying out a new kind of novel. This creates another layer which begs the questions: are we writing our own stories or are our stories writing us? What happens when the stories we tell ourselves become both our mental and physical reality? While these narrative gymnastics might be good in concept they felt misjudged and too confusing to me. In addition, the stories of many other characters and sub-plots proliferate throughout the novel such as that of Sam’s sister, a famous London lawyer who has reached a pivotal point in her life. In itself her story is an interesting one but it felt swallowed by the grander self-conscious narrative being constructed. This results in all these tales feeling so over controlled (and sometimes contrived) that I seldom felt any emotional engagement.

It was difficult at times to intellectually engage with the novel as well except the occasional interestingly framed statement. For instance, many of the characters have family secrets and Sam feels this dilemma: “The narrative of your family which you had carried within you, within which in a way you had lived, was false. Or, at the very least, that you had been ignorant of its most essential truth which had been kept from you. Not to be told the whole truth, as sister with her legal expertise would know perfectly well was to be told a lie. That lie had been his truth.” So this builds to a larger question threaded throughout the novel which asks how much truth we’re able to bear both on personal, familial and national levels. If our fundamental beliefs about ourselves, our families and our national identity are shaken are we really happier believing in lies?

Too often these statements and ideas felt like they were pronouncements from Rushdie himself rather than any of the characters. The integrity of his characters is sometimes tested in Rushdie’s use of humour. There are some genuinely funny moments especially in scenes involving Quichotte’s whimsical frame of mind where his idea of the classics are TV dating game shows or when he becomes so delusional that he starts conversing through a TV with a newscaster. But, at other times, the humour feels like it’s being made at the expense of his characters such as when a doctor proposes treating Salma R’s mental health problems with shock treatments and she declares herself “unshockable” or how when she does receive those treatments she describes the experience as a Christmas visit from “sanity Claus”. These feel more like cheap gags rather than details building a believable character. Nor are they satirical statements with deeper meaning.

Since I primarily read this novel because it’s shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, it’s interesting to compare it to the novel “Ducks, Newburyport”. Both novels self-consciously consider topical political and social issues in America. And both novels have eerily similar climatic scenes of violence. But these books take a radically different approach to telling their stories. Ellmann’s novel is wholly consumed with the inner life and thoughts of her narrator (except for the sparingly-told tale of the mountain lion.) In contrast, Rushdie’s sprawling novel somersaults through the inner lives of many characters while self-consciously playing with narrative form. He even portentously declares his intention with this novel using the character of Sam who feels himself guided by Cervantes and Arthur C. Clarke. Sam seeks to frame his novel about Quichotte in a picaresque literary tradition: “the episodes of such a work could encompass many manners, high and low, fabulist and commonplace, how it could be at once parodic and original, and so through its metamorphic roguery it could demonstrate and seek to encompass the multiplicity of human life.”

Rushdie certainly manages to capture the multiplicity of life as well as many pressing issues, but this exhausting spoof about our tenuous relationship with truth loses a lot of the pleasure and solace to be found in fiction.

Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson

I can think of few classic novels that have had such a widespread influence on both popular culture and literature as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus”. Even if people haven’t read Shelley’s novel they have a sense of Doctor Frankenstein’s creation from the many films which have (mistakenly) portrayed him as a senseless monster. I even went to a show recently called Frankenstein: How to Make a Monster where talented young musicians from the BAC Beatbox Academy re-created the body of the monster in song as a way of describing terrifying issues and people they experience in everyday life. But Shelley’s characters, ideas and powerful story have also permeated the imaginations of so many novelists since the book’s initial publication in 1818. Most recently it’s been directly referenced and reimagined in the novels “Frankenstein in Baghdad” by Ahmed Saadawi and Jeanette Winterson’s latest novel “Frankissstein”. Winterson’s novels have always had strong ties to the work of past writers (most notably Virginia Woolf) but her recent novels more strongly incorporate this influence such as her remix of The Winter’s Tale in her novel “The Gap of Time”.

“Frankissstein” goes a step further creating a dual narrative which switches back and forth between a historical section where we see Mary Shelley writing her famous novel and a near future where a non-binary individual named Ry Shelley engages in a complicated romantic relationship with a secretive scientist named Professor Stein. The historical sections have a more philosophical feel as Mary engages in meaningful discussions with her husband, the poet Byron and other interesting figures from the time period. The modern section is much more playful as it initially begins at a convention where a madcap capitalist named Ron promotes the use of his advanced range of sexbots designed to suit everyone’s emotional and physical needs. There’s even a Germaine Greer sex doll! Meanwhile, Professor Stein gives a lecture about the future of humans in a post-human world and engages in some edgy scientific experimentation. While the tone of these two narrative threads sound totally at odds with each other they feel strangely cohesive – especially as the novel increasingly becomes concerned with questions about the advancement of our species, the meaning of consciousness and the complicated dynamics of love: “Love is not a pristine planet before contaminants and pollutants, before the arrival of Man. Love is a disturbance among the disturbed.” The novel also has a political edge engaging with issues to do with feminism, gender identity, ethics and Brexit.

One of Winterson’s greatest talents is mixing an ardent seriousness in her writing with a richly playful sensibility to form stories that are both engaging and deeply poignant. Initially I felt more emotionally engaged by Mary’s 19th century tale and her struggles with marriage, friendship, money and nationality. But as the story progressed I became more attached to the character of Ry (whose shortened name could be a part of the names Mary or Ryan.) Ry encounters prejudice because of their gender identity and also develops a strong sexual connection and relationship with Professor Stein who is frustrated because falling for Ry wasn’t a part of his plan. Both Mary and Ry find themselves oddly positioned in relation to men whose grandiose ideas about mankind’s advancement don’t encompass matters to do with the human heart. In a sense, Mary and Ry are a continuation of the same person who has changed through the centuries like Woolf’s “Orlando”. In this way Winterson brilliantly messes with the perceived linear nature of time and the way certain issues emerge continuously amidst society’s progression: “Our lives are ordered by the straight line of time, yet arrows fly in all directions. We move towards death, while things we have scarcely understood return and return wounding us for our own good.”

The novel also considers ideas about storytelling itself - both in forming fictional narratives and the narrative of history. Mary Shelley was in the unusual position of producing a brilliant novel so early in her life and its themes go on to haunt her as Winterson shows how her life plays out in subsequent years. I like how Winterson considers how oddly abstract experience becomes when it’s formed into a story: “Only in the living of it does life seem ordinary. In the telling of it we find ourselves strangers among the strange.” But I also appreciate how she confronts popular notions of nationalism and that the idea of Britishness is just another story we’re telling ourselves: “The timeless serenity of the past that we British do so well is an implanted memory – you could call it a fake memory. What seems so solid and certain is really part of the ceaseless pull-it-down-build-it-again pattern of history, where the turbulence of the past is recast as landmark, as icon, as tradition, as what we defend, what we uphold – until it’s time to call in the wrecking ball.” I think this notion is good to keep in mind when any politician cites historical references to support their own ideological campaigns.

While I like to linger on many lines in Winterson’s novels (she’s a very quotable author) because she can poignantly encapsulate powerful ideas in few words, sometimes these grand statements pull me out of the flow of the story. The point of view can at times feel more like Winterson’s rather than her characters. There’s also occasional clunky lines such as a discussion about feminism where Mary self-consciously names her mother in a way that’s more for the reader’s benefit rather than for the characters she’s conversing with: “My mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, would not agree with you, I said.” Yet, these are minor quibbles I had with a novel I so thoroughly admire and enjoyed. I like reading novels which aren’t afraid to converse so self-consciously with stories that have come before. I think “Frankissstein” does this artfully while making a tale that is entirely new and immensely fun to read.

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

I've wanted to read more of Nelson's books since I first encountered her breakout 'The Argonauts' a few years ago. Her approach to contemplating certain ideas and their personal impact is so striking and thought-provoking. I picked up this book (first published ten years ago) because she gave a fascinating talk at the Southbank Centre in London. 'Bluets' considers her powerful attraction to the colour blue, its manifestations in ordinary objects and art as well as its symbolism in paintings, songs and writing. She originally intended its subject to remain within these boundaries and join in a literary tradition which considers colour. But when writing it she also included references to the break down of a love affair and her close friendship with a woman who has become a quadriplegic. Her musings weave through the analytical and personal to present a striking way of thinking about our perceptions, emotions and language. 

I've also always felt the appeal of the colour blue. It has a warmth to it but also induces a melancholy feeling. People have always remarked on how strikingly blue my eyes are. Once I was in a group where we were asked to organize ourselves in a line from people whose eyes are deepest brown to those whose eyes are the brightest blue. The group decided my eyes are the bluest and for some reason this felt like a great compliment to me. Nelson considers “Does the world look bluer from blue eyes? Probably not, but I choose to think so (self-aggrandizement).” It's a romantic idea but a ridiculous one. This is part of the reason I appreciate Nelson's point of view though. She takes her research and political views seriously but at the same time she playfully toys with the theoretical and enjoys the teasing pleasure that can be had with language.

I appreciate that Nelson describes how her collection of blue objects feels meaningful to her even though she can't recall their origins or significance. All that's left is their beauty. I think we have a similar relationship to cherished memories of events and people in our lives. There's a feeling that resonates when we recall them even if we can't recreate all the details of the past. She describes how “blue has no mind. It is not wise, nor does it promise any wisdom. It is beautiful, and despite what the poets and philosophers and theologians have said, I think beauty neither obscures truth nor reveals it. Likewise, it leads neither toward justice nor away from it. It is pharmakon. It radiates.” Quite often she describes experiencing the colour blue like a sensation that is beyond words – as are the feelings it generates. Therefore, she sets herself the impossible task of trying to describe something which can't be summed up, but what she provides instead are approximations and discussions around the meaning of the colour blue.

Nelson also engages in serious dialogue with writers, philosophers and artists from the past who have written about colour. Sometimes she looks to their texts for knowledge or support for her own theories. Other times she repudiates the folly of their reasoning. For instance, she takes issue with the way William Gass asserts we can't see what we really desire in reality and that it's better to look in fiction for it because there the desire can be perfectly encapsulated in words and our imaginations. Nelson asserts: “I will not choose between the blue things of the world and the words that say them: you might as well be heating up the poker and readying your eyes for the alter. Your loss.” There is both pleasure and pain to be found when engaging in reality with all its attendant imperfections. It'd be a mistake to close oneself off to its jagged contours.

In a way I'm surprised I found this book to be as emotional as it is intellectually stimulating. Normally I get frustrated when authors withhold details that convey the core impulse driving them to write about a particular subject. Nelson refers to the breakdown of her relationship only glancingly and yet I felt the weight of its enormous loss all the same. She describes the debilitating feeling of being alone: “I have been trying, for some time now, to find dignity in my loneliness. I have been finding this hard to do. It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one's solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem.” She also asks “what kind of madness is it anyway, to be in love with something constitutionally incapable of loving you back?” Perhaps it's not so mad to be in love with a thing that's so beautiful specifically because it's incapable of loving you back. If it can't reciprocate feelings it's also incapable of rejecting you.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Ottessa Moshfegh has a particular talent for writing about vile characters in an engaging way. Her novel “Eileen” portrayed an excruciatingly self-conscious protagonist recalling a dark mystery from many year ago. But where the protagonist of that novel was repulsed and embarrassed by her own body, the unnamed narrator of “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” takes easy pride in her beauty and size two figure. But she doesn’t see this as an advantage as she slyly observes “Being pretty only kept me trapped in a world that valued looks above all else.” She’s an art history graduate that comes from a privileged background who sets herself the goal of sleeping as much as possible for a year. Her reasons for this goal are elusive at first and appear to be nothing more than the whim of a jaded spoiled young woman, but gradually it takes on more poignancy as she describes her difficult relationship with her mother and the disappointingly shallow experience of working in an art gallery. This takes place in New York City over the years 2000-2001 and she seems to be asking during this ominous period in which George Bush Jr takes office whether it’s more sensible to sleep through life than live it. Reading this novel is perversely pleasurable with its weary view of the world and the narrator’s overwhelming devotion to her hero Whoopi Goldberg who embodies for her the idea that “Nothing was sacred.”

The narrator has an all-consuming scepticism about human emotions and can’t engage in meaningful exchanges. She reflects “I felt nothing. I could think of feelings, emotions, but I couldn’t bring them up in me.” Her only friend is an old college buddy named Reva who is perpetually insecure, suffers from an eating disorder and aspires to obtain the narrator’s privilege and waist line. But the narrator barely tolerates her and breezily ignores Reva when she confesses that her mother is suffering from cancer or that she has an unwanted pregnancy. Equally any emotion Reva displays towards the narrator is awkwardly accepted like when Reva hugs her at one point and the narrator observes how “I felt like a praying mantis in her arms.” The narrator regularly sees a quack psychiatrist named Dr Tuttle (when she doesn’t sleep through their scheduled appointment) but only in order to obtain worryingly strong doses of sleep medication to aide her in sinking into an unconscious oblivion. Hilariously her doctor can’t even recall that the narrator’s parents are both dead even after she’s told this multiple times and makes extensive notes.

“Wherever she went, everything around her became a parody of itself, gauche and ridiculous. That was a comfort to see. Thank God for Whoopi. Nothing was sacred. Whoopi was proof.”

It’s rational to assume at first that the narrator’s desire for sleep is connected to the loss of her parents, especially her emotionally absent mother who she only ever felt close to when they were unconscious in the same bed. But this easy interpretation of the narrator’s goal is refuted when she reflects about her mother’s death: “the particular sadness of a young woman who has lost her mother – complex and angry and soft, yet oddly hopeful. I recognized it. But I didn’t feel it inside of me. The sadness was just floating around in the air. It became denser in the graininess of shadows.” Instead of building relationships or looking for a sense of self-worth when she’s conscious she only seeks to lose herself in an endless stream of rewatched VHS tapes of movies from the 80s and 90s. It gives her a temporary sense of detachment from reality that can only be perfectly realised in “Good strong American sleep.”

While it can be enjoyable to indulge in the narrator’s frank and nihilistic view of the world, the novel took on more poignancy for me as I pondered why Moshfegh set it at this particular point in American history. It’s a period leading up to an event which is ominously foreshadowed throughout the novel when it’s casually mentioned the narrator’s ex-boyfriend works in the Twin Towers. It ultimately began to feel like the author wished she could wake up from the string of tragic events and toxic culture that has plagued the country in the 21st century thus far and dismiss it all as a nightmare. Looking at it this way, it begins to make sense that the narrator considers “I would risk death if it meant I could sleep all day and become a whole new person.” The great tragedy of this novel is that the narrator can’t ever escape herself or the history she’s trapped in.

The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner

Something unsettled me amidst reading Rachel Kushner’s novel “The Mars Room” which focuses primarily on a young mother named Romy Hall who has just been convicted for two life sentences. We’re given a highly detailed and unflinching look into the lives of an array of individuals who have been incarcerated in a California state prison for women. Scenes veer from instances of horrific violence and suffocating devastation to humorous depictions of the women’s characters and interactions. This tragicomic balance is no doubt both true to life and necessary for a novel’s structure, but it felt somewhat voyeuristic in a way that made me uncomfortable.

That there is a whole population of people locked away from public view and the justice system is fraught with problems is something that shouldn’t be ignored. I believe fiction can be a means by which we can better empathize and understand the lives of people who were born into and are trapped in circumstances radically different from our own. And I have no doubt about the sincerity or meticulousness of Kushner’s labour in creating a novel that sympathetically represents people whose voices are too often ignored or suppressed. But I felt there was something awkward about the way she’s rendered these lives with such artistic control by also incorporating different third person narrative strands about a few male characters. While it didn’t stop me from being emotionally engaged at points or admiring many of the insights “The Mars Room” gives, it left me somewhat estranged from what I felt the core of this novel was trying to do.

Kushner has spoken in interviews about her proximity to correctional facilities such as this, friends who are serving long prison sentences and how Romy’s background is similar to girls she knew in her own childhood. There’s a potent logic in how we follow Romy’s journey from first being processed into permanent incarceration where she reflects about large swaths of her coming of age in a side of San Francisco much different from the popular understanding of that city in the 70s and 80s. This is a place of gritty urban decay, poor education and violence that almost inevitably leads Romy into a life of drug addiction and working at a strip club. However, interspersed with her memories and present experiences in prison are accounts of a dirty ex-cop named Doc and a Thoreau-loving man named Gordon who encourages inmates to get their GEDs while occasionally getting too touchy feely. These sections didn’t make much of an impression on me other than making grand statements that Kushner couldn’t give in the confines of Romy’s tale and serving as devices to feed into the plot working towards the novel’s somewhat melodramatic conclusion.

The content and musings within these third person accounts about men are sometimes interesting but jar against the larger narrative about Romy and other female inmates. For instance, at one point Gordon muses how “A man could say every day that he wanted to change his life, was going to change it, and every day the lament became merely a part of the life he was already living, so that the desire for change was in fact a kind of stasis that allowed the unchanged life to continue, because at least the man knew to disapprove of it, which reassured him not all was lost.” The devastating logic of this is really meaningful and speaks to universal ideas about human nature. Nevertheless, it felt too often like Kushner was striving to faithfully balance the lives of men against the female population of the prison. The only instance where it felt really effective was towards the end in how she rendered the misogynistic thought process and self-justification of a male stalker. But overall the balance Kushner tried to strike faithfully depicting all her characters’ stories felt unwieldy to me.

Romy recalls going to a museum and sees Henri Matisse’s painting ‘The Girl with Green Eyes’ which she feels connected to.

I gravitated towards Romy’s voice the most and wanted to stay with it. There are many punchy short lines which brutally convey the way a prison environment leads to paranoia and isolation: “You can’t believe anything people say. But what they say is all you have.” Kushner also has a skilled way of emotionally drawing you into this character’s experience and then stating how you are still really different. At one point Romy observes “A lot of history is not known. A lot of worlds have existed that you can’t look up online or in any book, even as you think you have the freedom to find things out that I cannot, since I don’t have access to the internet.” I admire the way she makes a large statement about the hidden aspects of history and then reminds the reader how Romy is excluded from trying to research information in the way we’re now accustomed to because she can’t search for things online. The way in which the reader is drawn into relating to Romy’s human experience but is also made aware of the significant differences in terms of opportunities and freedom is really powerful. I just wish Kushner had stayed true to that rather than striving to create a panoramic view of society like in a Dostoevsky book who she heavily nods towards in this novel.

For a different look at the lives and mentality of people in prison, I’d really recommend reading the anthology “Prison Noir” which is a collection of powerful stories written by people who are in prison or have been incarcerated.

Everything Under by Daisy Johnson

Daisy Johnson's debut book of short stories 'Fen' was a bewitching example of how modern-day real-world issues could be given a darkly imaginative fairy tale spin. So I've been greatly anticipating her debut novel which references both 'Hansel and Gretel' and the myth of Oedipus. Before reading it I went to see Johnson speak at a Waterstones event focused on modern reimaginings of myths (since it's a literary trope so in vogue at the moment given recent novels from writers such as Kamila Shamsie, Madeline Miller and Colm Toibin.) It was a relief to hear Johnson explain that she wrote “Everything Under” in such a way that no knowledge of the Oedipus myth is necessary to understand this new novel since my only familiarity with Sophocles' tragedy is mainly through the complex made famous by Freud. Nor have I read the original fairy tale of 'Hansel and Gretel' since I was very young. 

So I went into reading this novel focusing purely on the story itself rather than how it relates to these classic tales. I wasn't disappointed because I'm so drawn to the universal themes she writes about, her characters who are outsiders on the margins of society and her strikingly distinct writing style. The beginning is so powerful in how it beautifully describes the sense of how we are tied to a sense of home which has forgotten us. However, I was quite confused throughout sections of this novel which jump through large periods of time and between characters. The story involves adoptions, gender fluidity, the disorientating effects of dementia and an elusive mysterious river monster named 'The Bonak'. But, by the end of the novel, I was fully engrossed and moved by how the pieces of the story slid together to form an impactful conclusion. It's the sort of book which I know will benefit from a rereading now that I understand its characters/plot better and the classic myths which were reworked into its structure.

A character named Gretel is at the centre of the story which primarily focuses on her quest to understand the past she's consciously forgot and find her mother Sarah who she's been estranged from for many years. The reason for Johnson's jigsaw style of storytelling seems to be rooted in a belief of how memories are necessarily distorted and also on a philosophy of life which is asserted by a character named Charlie. He claims that “life is sort of a spinning thing. Like a planet or a moon going round a planet… Sometimes it’s facing one direction but only for a second and then it’s spinning and spinning, revolving on its base so fast it’s impossible to really see. Except sometimes you catch a glimpse and you sit there and you know that’s what it would have been like if things had gone differently, that is the way it could have been.” Her characters can clearly envision different paths for their lives but find themselves curiously fated to follow trajectories that lead to dissolution and loneliness because of the bodies, families and circumstances they are born into. They are fettered by the past rather than liberated by a deeper understanding of it: “The past was not a thread trailing behind us but an anchor.”

It's interesting how Gretel's profession as a lexicographer seems to be a reaction against the instability of her upbringing where she and Sarah were so isolated they created a language for themselves: “They cut themselves off from the world linguistically as well as physically. They were a species of their own.” It's a compelling example of the way groups of people continuously splinter off from society, form cultures of their own and fold back into larger civilization to better inform and transform it. Just like time and language, gender and sexuality are never constant things in this novel. I really appreciated the complex way Johnson shows how her characters feel their way into inhabiting their bodies and expressing who they really are. Unlike most coming of age stories, there's a dark-edged violence to the anticipation of sex for Gretel when her mother Sarah gives a condom demonstration using a knife which tears through the material. Johnson excels at creating disturbing and tantalizing imagery which shakes the reader out of a complacent understanding of the world and this novel is a wondrous black gem of a book.

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

This novel made me feel nostalgic. Set at Harvard in the mid-to-late 1990s Elif Batuman’s “The Idiot” follows a freshman named Selin as she navigates the uncertain territory of college life, young love and finding a direction in life. I went to college at this exact same time in Boston (at a much smaller, non-ivy league school) and shared many of Selin’s experiences of starting to use email for the first time and riding on the T or the MBTA subway around the city. Selin comes from a privileged Turkish background and vaguely wants to be a writer (although when her first short story is published she finds no joy in it and even feels embarrassed.) She studies literature and languages: Russian, in particular. A large portion of this novel is taken up with the intricacies of campus living and then follows Selin to Hungary where she attempts to teach English in small villages. It’s plot is somewhat aimless – just as Selin’s life is somewhat aimless as she grapples to find meaning and purpose. This is the kind of book that is bound to frustrate and bore some readers (I definitely felt this way through some parts), but it also has a bewitching sense of humour and an endearingly oddball sensibility.

Something I really enjoyed in the first section of this novel were periodic exercises in Selin’s Russian class that involved learning the language through ‘The Story of Nina’. This is the journey of a fictional character named Nina who seeks to find a man that she loves who has moved away to work. There’s a special kind of absurdity in exercise books about characters acting out situations for the benefit of demonstrating grammar and phrases for students of language. They state things in non-realistic and obvious ways. This was the basis for Eugene Ionesco’s classic absurdist play ‘The Bald Soprano’ where two English couples out of a ‘learn English textbook’ The Smiths and The Martins converse in a way that is increasingly bombastic and fragmented. Selin feels an odd connection with Nina’s ongoing saga: “Of everything I had read that semester, ‘The Story of Nina’ had somehow spoken to me the most directly, and had promised to reveal something about the mysterious relationship between language and the world.” It shows how Selin isn’t just seeking an academic career, but longs to better understand an individual’s relationship to their experiences and how those experiences are coded in language.

Selin also tests the interplay between language and life in a relationship she develops with fellow-student Ivan. Although they know each other in reality, they form a different kind of intimacy through email exchanges. It’s somewhat ironic that Selin wryly comments that heroines in great Russian novels and even ‘The Story of Nina’ are about heroines who primarily obsess over a man. Yet, that’s exactly what Selin does as well. But this is only natural in someone who has just gone to university, hasn’t had sex and becomes preoccupied with the idea of romance. It’s her draw towards Ivan which compels her to travel to Hungary to teach in a programme that Ivan is connected to. This estrangement intensifies the displacement Selin already feels in her new adult life. She describes how “being alive felt like some incredibly long card game where you didn’t know if the point was to get cards or lose them, or what you had to do to get cards or lose them.”

Selin states that "I finally identified with a painting in the Picasso Museum. Titled 'Le Buffet de Vauvenargues'"

Batuman has a knack for describing the awkward transition into adulthood with unerring accuracy. For instance, as we grow older we develop a very different feeling for the passage of time. Selin describes at one point how “I kept thinking about the uneven quality of time – the way it was almost always so empty, and then with no warning came a few days that felt so dense and alive and real that it seemed indisputable that that was what life was, that its real nature had finally been revealed. But then time passed and unthinkably grew dead again, and it turned out that that fullness had been an aberration and might never come back.” This reflects how as adults we start to become much more aware of the transitory nature of large life events and how the deadness of time in between can be compounded by an increasing awareness of our own mortality. 

The kinds of pleasures and insights found in “The Idiot” feel like they would vary depending on where the reader is in life and also someone’s reading mood. I’ve heard responses from students who have identified so strongly with this novel and consequently loved it. Academic life is curiously removed from reality which causes a sense of crisis in some students who might suddenly realise like Selin that “I really didn’t know how to do anything real. I didn’t know how to move to a new city, or have sex, or have a real job, or make someone fall in love with me, or do any kind of study that wasn’t just a self-improvement project.” While this novel gave me a lot of nostalgic twinges, many of the student experiences are far removed from my reality so I couldn’t help feeling impatient with long passages obsessing over the dynamics of social groups or the tedium of waiting for the cafeteria to open. At times I enjoyed sinking into the meandering feeling of it and the dry humour of Selin’s observations, but, as it’s such a long novel, it often felt like it indulged in these experiences too much.