Men I Trust by Tommi Parrish

It can be difficult to allow someone into your life when you've been badly betrayed – especially when it happens again and again. In Tommi Parrish's graphic novel “Men I Trust” we're introduced to Eliza and Sasha, two women who have been differently used and abused by men. Eliza is a single mother, a recovering alcoholic and a poet who reads her writing aloud at open mic nights in a near-empty bar. Sasha is an occasional sex worker who has recently moved back in with her parents. She struggles with neediness and sometimes dips into her mother's prescription medicine. The two form an unlikely connection discussing their insecurities and the struggle to affect positive change in their lives. It's an intimacy full of all the awkwardness and hesitancy involved with early friendship or potential romance. By following their private moments of conflict and how their daily lives occasionally intersect, we see the challenges of real companionship and how difficult it can be to truly trust someone.

The drawings which accompany Parrish's poignant text develop a real emotional power as the story progresses. The characters' bulky forms contrast with their undersized heads in a way that emphasizes the uneasiness of inhabiting their bodies. Facial expressions are portrayed in minimalist detail in a way which is simple but effective. At times of high emotional tension the environment around them seems to bleed out into solid colours. It adds to the sense of isolation these women experience at different times. Though it feels like they should naturally find solace in their bond with each other, I enjoy how the story teases out whether this is a healthy relationship as boundaries are trodden over. The men these women are closest to may be toxic, but there isn't necessarily any more respite to be found in sisterhood. It's impressive when a story can subvert the reader's expectations to present a conclusion which is so thought-provoking and new.

A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding by Amanda Svensson (translated by Nichola Smalley)

Adult triplets Sebastian, Matilda and Clara are leading very different lives in different parts of the world. But when they get a call from their mother with the news that one child was accidentally switched at birth it makes each of them fearfully wonder who is the odd one out. The story isn't so much about finding the answer to this as it's more concerned with the meaning of familial bonds and potential hidden patterns which govern our existence. A diabolical game or an elaborate conspiracy might be at play. Or it might just be that life is messy and we're desperately looking for a grand design to make sense of it all. While each sibling is grappling with their own problems they gradually reconnect with each other. Hijinks and absurdities ensue. The novel is advertised as a joyful family saga but it comes across more like an unsuccessful mashup of a “Mamma Mia!” type comic family mystery and a philosophical investigation into the structure of reality.

Many of the central characters have conditions which make them experience the world in a way very different from most people. Matilda has manic episodes, Sebastian's patient/lover Laura increasingly only sees the world in two dimensions and scientist Jennifer Travis doesn't believe she has a soul. It's somewhat interesting reading about how these circumstances alter their perception about life and there were elements of many characters' stories I found engaging. But the way they all come together felt forced and unbelievable. I was eager to read about Clara's experiences travelling to Easter Island, but her connection to the characters she meets there was so unconvincing. Jordan, the inadvertent leader of a group of environmental pessimists, and adrift actress Elif both inexplicably latch onto Clara even though she's completely uncharismatic. Sebastian's affair with a married woman and Matilda's struggle with mothering her step daughter were more compelling. But as the novel steadily ushers the siblings back together for the zany conclusion any emotional involvement I had with their individual stories dwindled.

The central concern of this book is about the desire to make sense of life. Some characters and the mysterious scientific institute Sebastian works for follow a Cartesian method whereby they think the whole of life can be understood by looking at its individual parts and how they fit together. Jennifer Travis postulates that “the brain... it's logical, structured... it's an equation... That's what a human is. A puzzle with a limited number of pieces. They fit together with no need for a sticky soul to glue them together... There's a system in the madness... A system so magnificent it blinds us.” However, most of us instinctually understand that life is much more complex than this with innumerable mysteries inherent to its nature. So, unsurprisingly, she eventually “learned to live with being merely a big – admittedly rather complicated – equation swathed in biodegradable wrapping paper. But if you can experience love, Jennifer thought, feeling her heart rate quicken, you are experiencing something that really is completely and utterly illogical, that can't be explained as anything less rational than the wingbeats of the soul.” Though this is very elegantly put, it's a sentimental and uninspired revelation which takes too long to arrive at in a story which enjoys humorously meandering through its characters' experiences. So, while I didn't have a bad time reading this overlong novel, I ultimately grew impatient and found the ending dully simplistic.

Vista Chinesa by Tatiana Salem Levy (translated by Alison Entrekin)

The difficult details of what happened in our parents' lives before we were born often remain secret. This short, startlingly impactful novel is composed in the form of a letter which Júlia writes to her twin children. She confides in them about a violent incident which occurred long before they were conceived during which she was raped. In 2014, Júlia went on a run in the forest of Rio de Janeiro before a planned meeting about her architectural project of constructing an Olympic village in the city. She was sexually violated and physically attacked at gunpoint. The perpetrator was never found. Though she is aware that “now when people look at me they no longer see the body of a woman destroyed”, the damage is always emotionally present even if it is no longer physically visible. “That was my despair. The world went on, and my body, too, my work, my relationship, the things I wasn't sure about, my issues. My life was still there, even though it was over.” In describing her experience of surviving the attack, the police case which followed and the excruciating difficulty of life afterward we gain a complex and vivid portrait of the damage which persists after such a horrific assault.

The author notes at the end of the book that it was created through long conversations and a collaborative effort with her friend who was raped. They could have written a nonfiction account of her experience but it's fitting that it was transformed into a fictional narrative to more adequately represent the psychological reality of the victim. The style of the novel cleverly represents Júlia's state of mind to give a visceral understanding of her experience. Memories are both clearly present and jumbled. She's asked to describe what her attacker looked like for a police sketch and identify suspects from line ups, but it's moving how she conveys the agonizing difficulty of recognizing her attacker when “Looking in the mirror... I don't even recognise myself.” Sometimes sentences in the novel extend at a rapid pace showing the confusion of thoughts, emotion and her sense of time. Sections move back and forth between details of the attack and her life afterward. Though clarity becomes ever more elusive, while with her therapist she desperately thinks “If I talked about nothing else, if I only repeated the same story every day I came here, putting all of my versions together, maybe I'd get there. At some point, I'd get it all out and free myself of this past.” Sadly, there can be no escape from what happened to her but this account does a great deal to instil understanding.

Tatiana Salem Levy has an artful way of presenting individual experience framed by issues to do with nationality as in her previous novel “The House in Smyrna”. In this new book she shows the disconnect between the protagonist's life after her assault and the authorities' agenda. Police are more focused on closing the case than finding the right suspect. At one point the female investigator suggests that Júlia was partly at fault for jogging in an unpopulated area at a certain time of day. There's a buoyant attitude in the country surrounding the World Cup and Olympics while issues of public safety are being swept under the rug. Factors such as this shows why some victims of rape choose to not report or pursue justice because the continuing emotional trauma and further damage is too difficult. It reminded me of the clearsighted way Kandasamy's “When I Hit You” shows why reporting domestic abuse often results in further punishment for the victim. Levy's novel is full of bravery and insight in how it conveys the painful reality of sexual assault.

Cells by Gavin McCrea

Amidst the anxiety and tumult of the recent lockdown, being restricted indoors for long periods of time inspired many people to seriously reflect about both the past and future. Slightly before the pandemic, novelist Gavin McCrea (author of the excellent “Mrs Engels” and “The Sisters Mao”) had moved back in with his mother in Dublin during a writing residency. While there he worked to complete his second novel and care for his mother who showed signs of early dementia. As the country locked down, he found himself confined in the home and country which he'd previously vowed never to return to. Amidst the relatively peaceful daily routines in the rooms/cells of this small apartment, a tension mounted regarding unresolved issues to do with McCrea's uniquely challenging upbringing and school life where he experienced years of daily homophobic abuse. He deeply felt that “The problem was that I did not feel at home in my own home.” This account is his personal reckoning with that history, a confrontation with the woman who gave birth to him and an account of the formation of his distinct artistic sensibility.

It's a heartrending experience reading about McCrea's strife in his family and community which naturally leads to intense feelings of pain, suffering, anger, frustration and isolation. However, he is not self-pitying. Instead he seeks to articulate and understand his position and the factors which lead to this situation. There's a rare honesty in how he interrogates the past and the human body itself. He examines the light/dark in himself and those around him including his reserved father who committed suicide and the untrustworthy boyfriend who infected him with HIV. Rather than allowing these tragedies to overwhelm him, they add to his fuel for artistic literary expression. The blunt fact of his survival through these tribulations heighten the moments of rare joy in this memoir such as quietly watching his mother enjoy a book or taking tearful pride in seeing a stack of his novels on sale in a bookshop.

While it's admirable that he extends empathy and patient understanding to people who have wounded him (including a gang of homophobic Irish adolescent boys who violently beat him a few months prior to lockdown), I wish McCrea had spent more time recounting the ways in which certain people have enhanced his life. Figures such as a steadfast childhood friend and his supportive literary agent only get brief mentions. If equal weight had been attributed to them in this dissection of his life it may have given more lightness and balance to this largely elucidating account of trauma. Nevertheless, it's an extremely edifying experience reading this inspiring story. By making his life the subject, McCrea shows how the individual spirit is both beautifully fragile and frightfully robust. Not only does the title refer to our biological makeup, but also the emotional/physical state of being a prisoner in one's own home, country and society. McCrea describes the challenges and (sometimes) impossibility of escaping from these circumscribed aspects of being in a deeply relatable and intelligent way.

The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay

I always appreciate a non-stereotypical grandmother in fiction and Jean, the protagonist of “The Animals in That Country”, is foul-mouthed, hard drinking and sexual. She also adores her granddaughter Kimberly who is the only human with whom she shares a strong emotional bond. Her colleagues at the zoo where she gives guided tours don't think of Jean as a real ranger. She's estranged from her son. She's blocked from posting on certain websites. And her occasional lover is more devoted to his boyfriend. So it's only natural she feels a connection with the animals she cares for. She humorously makes up voices for them while guessing what the beasts are thinking and establishes what she believes to be a special kinship with a dingo named Sue. A mysterious disease quickly spreads across Australia that causes a pinkness in the eye and humans to hear everything that living creatures communicate. Life at the zoo is upturned. People go mad being bombarded with the thoughts of animals and most distance themselves from them as much as possible. When Kimberly's infected father takes her away to discover what whales are really saying, Jean sets out on a road trip to retrieve her alongside her companion Sue. This makes for a highly unique buddy journey as Jean gradually becomes more attuned to the surprising things that all the animals around her are really thinking and saying.

Gradually the text of the story becomes more populated by the animal speech which is a kind of garbled poetry mixed with a heavy dose of profanity. Though it seems like complete gibberish at first it gradually takes on more meaning and I enjoyed how this novel challenges the reader to enter the mindset of other species. Most often we project human consciousness onto animals when wondering what they're thinking but it's more likely that the pattern of their minds is very different from our own. Naturally, if we could actually hear everything the creatures around us are thinking we'd be more aware of the way we are dominating and abusing them. But this novel doesn't romanticise animal consciousness either. The creatures Jean hears are often selfish, crude or tedious. While this makes McKay's debut a really unique novel it also becomes quite confusing to follow the narrative of Jean's episodic journey. However, I was particularly struck by the emotional poignancy of the end. Though Jean is a feisty character her hard exterior conceals a loneliness dwelling beneath the surface and this becomes evident through the dilemma she's presented with at the story's conclusion. This dystopian novel is thoughtful and unsettling as well as moving in its depiction of alcoholism and alienation.

The Sisters Mao by Gavin McCrea

I was enthralled by debut novel “Mrs Engels” which shone a light on the experiences and insights of Lizzie Burns. She was a historical figure known primarily as the long-term partner of Friedrich Engels but she vibrantly came to life and into her own in McCrea's fictional account. It dramatically gave a personal slant on Marxism which can't be found in any history or philosophy book while telling a beautiful story. “The Sisters Mao” is not related to that first book in its characters or events, but it is a natural follow up in that it traces the effects of Marxism through the mid-20th century and describes personalities at the beating heart of this ideology. In many ways it's a much more ambitious and lengthy novel that spans multiple decades and countries while slipping backwards and forwards in time. The delicious secrets of its story are also deeply encoded in its structure which theatrically opens and closes. Its narrative also includes an “interruption” rather than an intermission. Performance is at the centre of this novel with all its bewitching flair and ability to convey truths that are dramatically revealed. The experience left me reeling in wonder and pondering its deeper meanings. 

The story primarily focuses on the separate stories of sisters Iris and Eva who are central members of a radical performance collective in London. In 1968 their theatre is on the brink of closure since the cat-riddled building which many drifters use as a squat will be condemned and the owner (who is also their mother) wants to take back control of the property. Iris ekes out a living and helps support the collective by selling drugs while drifting through counterculture parties. Meanwhile, Eva leads members of their group to Paris to join in the notorious demonstrations which occurred that year in protest against capitalism and consumerism. When reunited the sisters hatch a shockingly disruptive plan to make a statement and confront their mother Alissa whose once-progressive values have been abandoned as she's become a mainstream West End actress. The narrative also switches for long sections to simultaneously follow the story of Jiang Qing (also known as Madame Mao) in 1974 when she takes control of a directing a ballet which is being presented for a stately visit from Imelda Marcos and which Jiang Qing wants to slyly use to suppress her enemies within the Party. Though the threads of this plot are somewhat complicated to explain the story gives generous space to each of them making it enjoyable and highly intriguing to follow. Together they also present compelling points of view to consider against each other and the ways in which embracing certain political beliefs warp these fascinating women's sense of justice.

While “Mrs Engels” focused on how a loving relationship is intimately transformed by closely-held ideals, this new novel presents multiple mother-daughter relationships which have been deeply complicated by living out longstanding ideological beliefs. The intense bitterness Eva and Iris feel towards their mother revolves around an alarming incident which occurred in 1956 when the girls were still adolescents and the theatre collective run by their parents viewed Maoism as a great red beacon of light since Stalinism had proved itself to be an epic catastrophe. It's ominously stated how “This pain was the kind caused by a mother's hand, and the honey of revenge was the only medicine for it.” Jiang Qing and Chairman Mao's daughter Li Na is tightly controlled by her mother who draws Li Na into her scheme by using her as a translator when Jiang Qing has a tantalizing private meeting with Imelda Marcos. Natural sentiments become skewed by a belief in a larger system of thought: “Family feelings were not always correct. Sometimes they were a cloak for selfishness and counterrevolutionary urgings.” The parental bonds in this novel have been twisted amidst steely power plays and nurturing has been subsumed by hardened expectations of duty. It's both tense and moving how these interactions unfold. 

Subtle points of deep consideration are worked into this sweeping historical narrative and it raises many relevant contemporary questions about the way we live in larger communities. How do our ideals play out in reality? What visible and invisible power structures are at work behind larger events and figureheads? How does capitalism steer our motives? Also, these compelling and richly drawn characters made me wonder: how do we live honestly? To live honestly within society and with those who we are intimate with sometimes conflicts with the truth of who we are. And what happens when we struggle to be truly honest with ourselves about what we desire and want? An intriguing body artist named Doris within the story plainly states “Truth is always the best option, because it's the radical option, because it's true.” So many of the dramatic acts within this novel are gestures which aim to reveal a deeper truth which people can't see. Though they may be desperate and forgotten theatrical performances, it's a meaningful testament to the triumph of art over history. It doesn't matter that the acts or the performers are imperfect because, as Alissa opines, “society doesn't need perfect art. It just needs people who try to make art. Of any kind. Good or bad. People who are willing to fail, that's what helps societies grow and what, in the end, brings about change”. 

This tremendous and thrilling story reveals the hidden drama at the centre of our lives and our society. McCrea has previously stated that these novels will form part of a trilogy about revolutionary wives. If he continues with this project (as I hope he does) it'll be a monumental achievement. I remember in 2017 seeing a picture of the spouses of several NATO leaders at a conference that included a group of wives as well as Gautheir Destenay, husband of Luxembourg's first openly gay Prime Minister. I never want to be a politician or married to a politician, but if I was I'd much rather be Destenay sitting at a table with wives rather than presidents and prime ministers. Surely they have greater insight into what's really happening in their respective countries and the world than the men in power. Similarly, McCrea has cannily chosen to focus on feminine perspectives from these specific historical periods which is far more interesting and gives an entirely unique point of view about a political philosophy which shook our previous century to its core.

The Liquid Land by Raphaela Edelbauer (translated by Jen Calleja)

In recent years I've developed more of a curiosity about my family history and this naturally leads me to wonder how my ancestors were affected by larger global events. In trying to map out the story of my lineage I'm aware of how easy it is to construct fiction and fantasy out of traces of the past. This is an issue Maria Stepanova dynamically wrestles with in her poignant and meditative book “In Memory of Memory”. Austrian author Raphaela Edelbauer constructs a fascinating and richly imaginative story concerning this dilemma in her novel “The Liquid Land”. Ruth Schwarz is a physicist working towards completing her thesis for her PhD when she's informed that both her parents died in a car crash. Stunned and grieved by this news, she impulsively decides to travel to her parents’ homeland of Greater Einland – only this is an area that doesn't appear on any map. Her search leads her to a place that is bizarrely antiquated in its customs and governance, that's owned and ruled by an imperious Countess and whose lands and buildings are rapidly sinking into a mysterious hole. It's a surreal and curious journey that creatively explores the collective trauma of a community, grief and the bizarre workings of physics. 

There's something so moving about how Ruth constructs a loose map to this strange town. After she's informed by officials that there is no record of a Greater Einland, she hunkers down trying to recall any stories her parents once told her which might give clues as to landmarks or the geography that will lead her to this elusive place. In doing so, it also feels like she's desperately trying to piece together a past which she's now permanently severed from since losing her mother and father. The murkiness of memory means that she can't be certain of any facts. She's also heavily reliant on strong pain relieving drugs which seem to distort her perspective. Added to this is her knowledge of the bizarre nature of subatomic particles whose laws don't correlate with our normal understanding of time or space. Through Ruth's delightfully peculiar perspective, we frequently see objects without a fixed solidity and the clock moves at a different pace: “everything had proceeded so marvellously gooeyly.” All this leads her to follow a random guide on an “Alice in Wonderland” style trip where she arrives in Greater Einland. This is a place which seems to adhere to its own nature of reality. Not only does it have its own sense of time and space, but the town retains its own economic and political system that is more feudal.

The location she arrives at initially has a beautiful charm, but gradually it becomes more sinister as the local population stubbornly avoid certain topics and Ruth is drawn into the Countess von Weidenheim's elite circle. Though it becomes a much more perplexing and ominous place, Ruth also feels a natural kinship to it knowing that her parents came from here and had a close, mysterious relationship to it. “I began to melt into the nature around the town. After just a few days I found my way around intuitively; later, after weeks, the forest had become an extension of my own body. In short, this was a long sought-after sense of belonging, an identification that connected me to the landscape. I would almost say; I'd found a home.” Yet, though she feels a tender sense of belonging inhabiting the house her grandparents once lived in, she becomes frighteningly disorientated at points as well. Ruth also grows obsessed by the mystery of what happened to this town during WWII and lists of the dead whose bodies have vanished. The townspeople seem to want to live in a constant present, literally disposing of their inconvenient pasts in the widening hole beneath their feet, but this refusal to face history means that cracks show everywhere and the entire town might sink into an underground cavern.

Interspersed with the primary narrative of this novel are occasional documents about the nature of physics or the history of certain events or people. I enjoyed how these add a background to the story and enhance the sense that there are deeper and more sinister things occurring in the background. It's refreshing to read a novel that's absurdist in character but also has something unique to say about our collective history and subjective interpretations of it. However this manner of storytelling comes with its own pitfalls which might make it troublesome for some readers. Logical questions about the size of this town's population and how much interaction it has with the larger world mostly go unanswered. The townspeople seem to be largely insulated but occasionally reference popular culture such as a master-builder who wants to finance a musical about Larry Fortensky, Elizabeth Taylor's seventh husband. Though the town isn't on any map, foreign labourers are still brought in to work on reconstructing buildings that are subsiding. Many practical questions abound and these not only slightly impeded my enjoyment of the story, but made it difficult for me to fully imagine this place. I understand it's not a realistic portrayal and we're so entwined with Ruth's skewed perspective that a logical comprehension of the place isn't the point, but it does niggle and gets messy. But overall the many pleasures this unique novel gives supersede these reservations.

I found Ruth's journey to be moving in many ways and I'm haunted by the numerous issues concerning memory and history that the story raises. The consequences of facing the complete truth of our collective past would probably cripple us, but, at the same time, in order to progress as a society it's necessary to acknowledge and learn from previous events. We constantly negotiate different approaches in how to manage this and much of this balance probably occurs on an unconscious level. I admire how Edelbauer's fiction engages with these dilemmas and uses an inventive strategy to get the reader thinking about them. It elevates this book above classifications like fantasy, mystery or psychological horror and puts it into a laudable category of its own.

The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischvili (translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin)

There’s something so satisfying about getting immersed in a big family saga. At over 930 pages, “The Eighth Life” may look intimidating from the outside and I had a few false starts reading this novel but as soon as I got caught up in the many stories it contains I stopped noticing what page number I was on. The novel recounts the tales of multiple generations of a family in the country of Georgia over the 20th century following them through the Russian Revolution, Soviet rule and civil war. Ever since reading the novel “Soviet Milk” and finding out more about the Latvian strand of my family history I’ve been interested in the effects the Soviet Union had upon Eastern European countries. Haratischvili’s novel gives a wide-scale perspective on this time period and region paying special attention to the negative effect these political changes had on the lives of a variety of women. Comparisons have been made to “War and Peace” and “The Tin Drum” but, from my own frame of reference, I'd liken it more to “Gone with the Wind” crossed with “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. 

The novel does an impressive job at balancing an overview of large-scale political and social changes over the past century alongside recounting the personal fortunes and failures of a particular family. Starting as a family of confectioners whose speciality is an irresistible secret recipe for hot chocolate, the descendants become involved in all levels of society from a commander in Trotsky's Red Army to the mistress of a fearsome leader to a defector fighting for Georgian independence to a singer that becomes a symbol of political resistance. At the heart of the book is Stasia who possesses superstitious beliefs about the cursed nature of the family's chocolate recipe and believes she can see the ghosts of dead relatives. The novel is truly epic in showing how family stories are built upon the tales of past generations and shows that radical transitions in society result in innumerable tales of personal strife.

A great pleasure that comes from reading a long novel like this is seeing how characters will change and reemerge over many years. A character that appears only briefly as a girl trapped in a perilous situation appears many pages later as an old woman who has achieved great success. We also follow the evolution of certain characters who may begin with certain personalities and values but who, in response to political events and personal strife, find themselves irreparably altered in their convictions and outlook. I felt like I truly lived alongside many of these characters who undergo so many changes over the years. But it also takes on a great poignancy following the subsequent generations who may repeat certain patterns of their ancestors' behaviour or might wildly rebel against what was expected of them.

There's a difficulty in the way political discourse and the history books have set up this dichotomy of East (Soviet Communism) vs West (Democracy) and how this shaped the way the populations of these geographical regions relate to and conceptualize one another. Of course it was a real ideological battle that brought us to the brink of nuclear war. But I also feel like this has set up an oppositional mentality which produces a lot of stereotypes and barriers. For instance, when Kitty leaves Georgia and eventually settles in England to become a successful singer the media and general public want her to be a victim of the Soviet Union: “She allowed customers to engage her in conversation, and played the part of the Soviet sensation to the hilt. She played up to people’s fears and projections, and accentuated them with more horrific details.” While she did suffer terribly under Soviet rule and while the Soviet Union's practices were horrific, I feel like the West often demonizes the entire region and its people. So it's enriching how this novel humanizes a family caught up in this time period, showing how they have to make difficult choices and choose certain allegiances in order to survive.

A way this novel spoke to me is in its portrayal of Kitty, a woman who leaves her homeland to settle in England. She makes a successful career there but feels a strong longing for her place of birth and family yet she can't return for political reasons. In reflecting about her mentality the narrator states: “Perhaps the most tragic thing about exile, both mental and geographical, was that you began to see through everything, you could no longer beautify anything; you had to accept yourself for who you were. Neither who you had been in the past, nor the idea of who you might be in the future, mattered.” This made me think about displacement as a radical confrontation with oneself. Although I'm much more privileged and fortunate than Kitty I can relate to her as someone who has spent a long period of my adult life away from my homeland. And I think at the moment, in this state of global lockdown where we are in a sense exiles within our own homes, many of us are forced to confront ourselves and what matters to us in a way we didn't have to when we were caught in the busyness of daily life.

I had the great pleasure of sitting down for a cup of hot chocolate with author Nino Haratischvili and translators Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin for a live discussion about their tremendous novel.

A common criticism I've seen made about this novel is that there's not much differentiation between characters later on in the novel, especially between the men who are often portrayed as villainous. Personally, I didn't feel this way except perhaps about the characters of Miqa and Miro who did feel very similar to me. And, though there are several male characters who act in a horrendous way, there are many prominent men from this period of history whose actions resulted in the torture and death of many people so the novel is merely reflecting that fact. I could also cite many men in the novel such as David or Severin who are more positive characters. Also, one of the many interesting things which emerged from speaking from the author is that she didn't see the character of Kostya as simply a villain despite the many terrible things he does. All the characters have strengths as well as flaws which makes them more fully rounded. But I think it's also right that the novel focuses more on female characters as these women’s stories haven't been as frequently documented in history books. 

It feels like a cliché to say that a novel contains a lot of heartache but ultimately has a hopeful message. But that's exactly what “The Eighth Life” does in its construct because the entire novel is narrated from the point of view of a descendant named Niza who recounts these many varied and dramatic stories of their family for her adolescent niece Daria. In honouring these lives from the past she both informs and makes space for the next generation. It's a way of reckoning with the tragedies of the past century and paving a way for the future through the ingenuity and resilience of the family who survives and can carry on that legacy. The novel poignantly demonstrates how what's to come hasn't been written yet.

At Dusk by Hwang Sok-yong (translated by Sora Kim-Russell)

From the description of this novel I thought it would be a standard mid-late life crisis story about a man contemplating what his ambition and success really amount to. But it turned out to be something much more subtle and nuanced than that with a clever twist at the end. Park Minwoo was raised in a working class neighbourhood surrounded by poverty and gang violence, but became a successful architect heading his own firm. Parallel to his story is that of Jung Woohee who is a 29 year old playwright and director struggling to earn a living by working the night shift at a convenience store while trying to realise her artistic ambitions. What’s so moving about these two story threads is the way they intertwine to say something much larger about how our values and desires can become so twisted over the course of time. While working to create a good life for ourselves and those closest to us we become enmeshed in society’s progress which has a way of paving over history and people who fall by the wayside. This novel says something powerful about how our collective and personal values change over time. 

Something I appreciated most about this novel was the detailed account of Woohee’s difficulty in making a living. She’s forced to work outside regular working hours for below minimum wage and live in substandard accommodation because if she makes any legal complaint she’ll lose her job and shelter. Instances of injustice like this occur all the time, but largely go unacknowledged and I appreciate fiction that deals seriously with this plight. Also, though Minwoo is now in a privileged position he’s portrayed in a complex and sympathetic way where his life is overcast with loneliness. An old friend is reintroduced into his life when he receives a request to call Soona who was the most desired girl in the small village of Moon Hollow where Minwoo grew up. He hasn’t had any contact with her for years. Now letters from her awaken memories of his childhood and make him consider how his achievements turned out very differently from what he expected. My initial confusion about why two different characters had the same name was eventually quelled when the intricate plot finally unfolded in a disarming and thought-provoking way. This is a book whose greater meaning will linger with me.

Insomnia by Marina Benjamin

We’ve all had those nights when we wake up in some dark hour and can’t get back to sleep no matter what method we use to try to trick ourselves back into unconsciousness. I’ve found watching a good nature or outer space programme can often lull me, but sometimes nothing works. Although I occasionally go through periods when sleeplessness plagues me night after night leaving me exhausted and bleary-eyed throughout the workday, I’ve never considered it to be a serious or chronic problem. But other people experience more severe cases that are seriously debilitating – such as my partner who has tried many different treatments.

Most books about insomnia offer advice or methods for overcoming it, but what I appreciate so much about Marina Benjamin’s short, impactful and beautifully-written book “Insomnia” is that she approaches the condition from a more philosophical point of view. It’s a deeply personal account because she’s someone who has suffered from insomnia for years and tried just about every scheme out there to sleep better. But rather than write a guidebook she offers a different kind of solace in how we’re all unified by sleep or the lack of it. She draws upon references from mythology, psychology, art and literature to illuminate how we often have an uneasy relationship with our night time selves.

I enjoyed how the author gives such a radically different look at the condition and the meaning of sleep itself. She challenges the conception of sleep as a peaceful state noting how the body can often be restless during the night and a realistic version of Sleeping Beauty probably wouldn’t keep her name if she were pictured snoring and sweating. She’s also mistrustful of viewing mindfulness as a form of tranquillity when she sees it as a tragic kind of stasis: “It leaves the world unchanged.” These observations are really helpful at encouraging us to rethink how we consider and relate to sleeping.

‘Empire of Light’ by Rene Magritte

She also raises many good points about the portrayal of women in relation to sleep in fairy tales and mythology. She draws upon a dizzying range of fascinating references, but they remain in context and illuminate different ways of considering sleep. I was most drawn to her reflections about the odd loneliness which accompanies insomnia but she observes how “Imprisoned within these solitary cells of wakefulness, insomniacs make for a strange kind of collective… No doubt we could easily spew a textbookful of shared anxieties. Yet we cannot commune with one another.” It feels like this relates to ideas (central to this blog) about how reading is such an essential lonely activity, yet it also unites us in a cultural conversation. Any solitary space where we can consider ideas with such concentrated intensity seems to come attached to a feeling of melancholy because those ideas won’t ever flourish as fully in the blunt arena of normality.

Marina Benjamin playfully refers to her partner as Zzz (because he often is asleep while she’s still awake.) It creates a unique sort of estrangement being perpetually awake while your partner is asleep and this adds another dimension to the loneliness of insomnia. She observes how “Zzz is next to me, but miles away. In those lonesome hours when I fear I might drown in a well of unspecified longing, I sense a danger that my most intimate space might also become my most alienated. Estranged from the night, I am locked out of my own rest. If I reached out to Zzz would I even find him?” It feels only natural that the overactive sleepless mind becomes consumed with paranoias, fears and poetic turns of thought. Being exposed to too much night we think of the daytime and night time self as being two distinct states of being, but this impactful book does a lot to creatively bridge the space between them.

Felix Culpa by Jeremy Gavron

Part of me was so drawn to reading “Felix Culpa” simply for the sheer audacity of its creation and out of a curiosity to see how it would work. This is a novel that’s composed almost entirely from the lines of other works of fiction by (approximately) eighty authors as varied as Italo Calvino, Willa Cather, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack Kerouac, Cormac McCarthy and Mary Shelley. In poetry this is known as a cento where different verses or passages from multiple authors are composed into a new order. Jeremy Gavron forms in this fictional collage experiment a story about a young man named Felix who mysteriously died after he was arrested in a botched robbery. The narrator is a writer/teacher at the prison where Felix was incarcerated and he embarks on a mission to discover more about Felix’s life and what happened to him. Amidst his travels to interview people Felix encountered he slides into his own epistemological crisis and radically alters his life. It’s a moving tale in itself, but through the very nature of its innovative construction it also poses fascinating questions about the meaning of narrative and the way in which readers connect with fiction.

I think one of the greatest works of art produced thus far in the 21st century is Christian Marclay’s video art installation ‘The Clock’. This is a looped 24-hour video montage that takes scenes from hundreds of films and television shows featuring clocks that are synchronized to show in real time. In doing so, these pieces of disparate video footage link up in a mesmerising way and meaningfully comment upon the way we are all caught in the flow of time. It’s interesting how when we’re confronted with a series of fictional works that are artfully mixed together we begin to imaginatively form narratives in our heads. As I was reading “Felix Culpa” I became aware that I was filling out scenes or adding details to characters based only on a few suggestive phrases that Gavron has paired. Of course, this is what we do all the time when reading fiction. But, somehow, because I was aware that this narrative was a construct of preformed sentences, I had a greater self-consciousness about the active role I play as a co-creator of the fiction that I’m reading.

Some sources used for the text of Felix Culpa

In the course of reading this novel I also became more aware of the playful ambiguity of language and the plasticity of sentence construction. Lines or phrases that mean something in one context can come to mean something entirely different in another. Again, this is something fiction does all the time and part of its great beauty is how it can mean many things all at once. In this novel lines are spaced out with gaps in between them to demarcate how they’ve been taken from different sources. This also has the effect of highlighting passages and the reader must take an infinitesimally small pause in going from one line to another. This is something that’s often done in poetry, but in this book lines consciously flow together to form a cohesive narrative. So a line like “Time comes to leave” stands on its own. This has a meaning within the story where it’s time for a character to depart to go somewhere else. However, staring at this line on its own it also takes on connotations of how time is fleeting, that a moment only arrives to depart. But, in reading these lines on their own, I also often felt curious about how this line might have been used in its original story.

What’s impressive about “Felix Culpa” is that this elaborate self-conscious assembly of hypertext doesn’t detract from the pleasure of the story Gavron forms himself. I felt totally emotionally drawn into this tale and sympathised with Felix’s struggles in life as the narrator uncovers piece after piece about the journey that led to Felix’s untimely death. This character is formed more through an outline than through direct descriptions of Felix himself, yet the reader is still keyed into the ambiguities of Felix’s heart and mind. I grew to feel a sense of loneliness in Felix where his circumstances led him to make poor choices and end up in isolation. I haven’t felt this way about a character since reading about the nearly silent figure of Stevie at the centre of Rachel Seiffert’s brilliant novel “The Walk Home”. Felix’s struggle is something that the narrator of the novel also connects with and his obsession with Felix’s plight says something significant about the unspoken crisis in the narrator’s own life. This novel is a richly rewarding work of art.

The Parcel by Anosh Irani

This novel was published at the perfect time for me. I'd read Arundhati Roy's sprawling new novel “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” over the summer. While I admired so much about her impassioned writing, I was disappointed that she didn't concentrate more on the full story of Anjum, an intersex character or hijra whose story begins the novel. Then, more recently, I read Shobha Roa's book of short stories “An Unrestored Woman” for the Anna & Eric Book Club and one of the stories which struck me most was 'Blindfold' about the madam of a brothel who purchases young girls to turn them into prostitutes. Both these stories left me eager to better understand characters like these and learn more about these aspects of Indian society.

Coincidentally, Anosh Irani's “The Parcel” is essentially a blend of these two tales as it follows a character named Madhu, a 40 year old hijra whose years of prostitution in the notorious Kamathipura red light district are behind her. While she lives in a household with other intersex individuals, she's been reduced to begging on the side of the road to earn money. Madhu also works for Padma, a fiercely independent madam of a local brothel. Madhul helps new girls (who are frequently purchased from their families in Nepal) to adjust to a life in prostitution and accept their new situation. The novel follows the way she indoctrinates one such ten year old girl and the dramatic changes that occur within the house of hijras where she resides. It’s an arresting and incredibly thought provoking story that totally gripped me.

The author presents such a difficult dilemma for the reader from the very beginning novel. Madhu is someone who has been rejected by her family and encountered brutal challenges throughout her life just to live as a woman. This makes her very sympathetic. Yet, she embarks on a job to indoctrinate a new girl to Padma’s brothel by psychologically, physically and sexually breaking her in. These torturous actions amount to the most heinous kind of mental manipulation; at one point she says to the new girl Kinjal (referred to as a parcel and kept in a cage): “Each time you think of your mother, I want you to hold these bars and ask yourself one question: What feels more real, your mother or these bars?” Her process for breaking this girl’s spirit is intended to make Kinjal’s miserable fate more bearable than if she were thrust into a bedroom and subjected to multiple clients. That’s how Madhu reasons it is an act of charity to train them. It’s also meant to ensure the girls don’t fight back and consequently they will be more valuable for the brothel’s business.

Of course, this process of training Kinjal is incredibly harrowing to read about and Madhu’s actions are sickeningly sinister. But gradually her logic is revealed. This is someone who has fought with her body for her whole life: “The body was the enemy. The more you loved it, the more you thought of it as a part of you, the more it blackmailed you.” She’s had to learn to mentally separate herself from her physical being. Madhu has also been socially and economically dependent on the charity of other people as she’s held within such contempt by the majority of society. It’s fascinating how the author goes into the history and cultural attitudes towards hijras who are religiously held in high esteem for possessing special powers, but simultaneously they are social outcasts and frequently reviled. Madhu’s goal is to drill Kinjal in abandoning all hope because Madhu has learned that hope is more of a hindrance for people in their dire condition. That certainly doesn’t make her logic right or her actions permissible, but it does make them understandable. It made me so eager to follow Madhu’s journey to see whether or not her beliefs would change, learn more about her past and discover what would happen to Kinjal.

Photo by Shahria Sharmin

Irani also has a fascinating way of portraying the city of Bombay (later Mumbai) in a state of economic, social and religious flux. Property moguls are snatching up the dilapidated buildings in their area for developments: “Bombay hadn't yet become its savage sister. It was bubbling and brewing toward its new avatar, but hadn't fully imploded.” These purchases often mean the owners can move away with a bundle of money, but the poor (particularly hijras and prostitutes) are left with nowhere to go after being ejected from their long term residences. This has a personal effect upon Madhu and her gurumai, the elderly hijra who became a mother figure/mentor for Madhu and recognized what Madhu was before she knew it herself. These larger changes within the city have an impact on their lives and it gives the story a thrillingly tense momentum as the date for Kinjal’s initiation with her first client draws near

 “The Parcel” is such a fantastically moving novel. Madhu’s story raises so many meaningful questions about identity, social responsibility and the plight of those who are rendered voiceless. As different as I am from Madhu and despite some of her contemptible actions, I found myself falling in love with her character. It’s so easy to take for granted being born into a gender that feels like it naturally suits you. Irani powerfully describes Madhu’s path towards becoming a woman and the painful consequences of standing up for who she is. I love literature like this and Sara Taylor’s novel “The Lauras” that provoke us to question our assumptions and understanding of gender lines. Irani pulled me into Madhu’s experience and really made me feel the full complexity of her life. This is undoubtedly one of the most heartbreaking and fascinating novels I’ve read all year. 

Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton

This isn’t your typical historical novel, but its protagonist Margaret Cavendish wasn’t your typical 17th century English aristocrat either. Attendant to Queen Henrietta Maria and married to William Cavendish, First Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, she could have spent her days reclining on a chaise lounge. Instead she engaged with the scientific, literary and philosophical ideas of her day by writing her own essays, plays and unconventional romances. Danielle Dutton has written an inventive fictional portrait of her life by delicately inhabiting this girl who grows up relatively care-free sketching stories and sharing a close relationship to her siblings. But she’s rudely awakened to the hard realities of the world when she experiences the death of family/friends, political conflict and torturous medical treatments that were meant to help her conceive after marrying. Gradually she’s inspired to make her thoughts and feelings known by publishing books which invigorate and challenge society. Showing a radical determination she declares: “I had rather be a meteor, singly, alone.” In pursuing her writing and ambition to be famous, this woman with a penchant for couture fashion achieved a level of notoriety and lasting influence on disparate groups of people over time – everyone from Virginia Woolf to Siri Hustvedt to animal rights activists.

Dutton tells Margaret’s story using a spare, impressionist style of narrative which recounts parties she attends and large societal shifts around her. While this feels at times confusing as it jolts through the ballrooms of history, it builds a meaningful feeling for Margaret’s developing sensibility and unique view of the world. She feels curiously estranged from her circumstances and seems to half live in a counter-world of her own creation (The Blazing World). Through depictions of her meditative writing process and desire for fame, Dutton shows how she strives to connect with the actual world around her. That she practically demands that everyone pay attention comes across as both brave and arrogant. However, the author clues the reader into the quiet centre of Margaret’s life through her distinct style of writing. So, even as the story rapidly progressed through the years, I felt wholly sympathetic for her struggle to be both seen and heard. This culminates in an emotional scene where Margaret became the first woman to attend a meeting at the Royal Society of London.

Margaret Cavendish who was branded by the public "Mad Madge"

It’s fascinating how Margaret’s relationship with William Cavendish is depicted. He’s a man who was thirty years her senior and she inhabited an unsteady social/familial position being his second wife. Although he’s renowned as a man of high social standing and wealth, she discovers he secretly struggles with enormous money problems. This obviously creates challenges for them, but he’s amenable to her desires and fancies. William supports her writing but he’s nonetheless susceptible to the misogynistic prejudices of the time. It makes it difficult for Margaret to reconcile her feelings about him so that sometimes “He appeared to her a stranger wearing her husband’s skin.” It could have been easy to depict William as a certain type of villainous character, but I admire how Dutton treats him with the same level of empathy as she does her charismatic heroine.

It’s interesting to think about this book in comparison to Alexander Chee’s recent novel “Queen of the Night” which also depicts a flamboyant society woman from history (the Comtesse de Castiglione). Both meditate on the degree to which cutting-edge fashion and an obsession with self-image present different aspects of these women’s unique personalities. However, where Chee is dramatically expansive and lingers on sumptuous detail, Dutton is intensely concentrated. Overall, “Margaret the First” is a lively creation which crystallizes the lavish interior reality of a historical woman and the challenges she faced to make her ideas known amidst stultifying social conventions. It spoke to me strongly about the tension between our inner and outer world, the challenge of bridging the gap between the two and the slow burning effects of ambition. At one point she ardently contemplates “I have made a world, she thinks, for which nobody should blame me.” This feels to me like an incredibly liberating statement because it radically declares the validity of our individual perspectives and private being apart from other people’s expectations and judgement. “Margaret the First” is an inspiring, joyous novel that pays tribute to the complexities of our interior lives.

The Sacred Combe by Thomas Maloney

There’s a special pleasure in finding something another reader has left in a used book. While reading you might come across a train ticket, a receipt or a passage in the text that’s been emphatically underlined. Suddenly you find yourself connected to an unknown reader from some period in the past. If you have a curious and imaginative mind you might wonder if the previous owner read this book while on a busy journey or alone in a study. Did she/he finish it? What did she/he think about it? It’s a unique feeling of connectedness that’s entirely different from the enjoyment of cracking open a pristine new book. “The Sacred Combe” is a family saga told not by immersing the reader in specific stories about different generations, but providing flashes from their lives which have been left in their enormous library. The narrator and the reader of this novel must piece together their story from what scraps of personal information different family members have left within the books that they read.

The central story of Thomas Maloney’s compelling debut novel features an undeniably alluring job for any serious book lover. Banker Samuel Browne turns to reading for comfort and to take his mind off from the collapse of his personal life when his wife suddenly leaves him. He tackles Edward Gibbon’s multi-volume enormous text “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and finds within it a cryptic advertisement to volunteer in someone’s private library. When his brief phone application for the job is accepted he leaves his London life for a rural northern location. Here he meets an elderly man named Arnold Comberbache who presides over Combe Hall, a 230 year old collection of books which is “one of the finest private libraries in the country.” A vital personal letter has been hidden somewhere in this library by Arnold’s ancestor Hartley. Thomas is charged with searching through each book one by one. Along the way, he unravels the fascinating history of the Comberbache family by discovering notes written in the books’ margins, letters tucked between the pages or intriguing references to significant events. He also has the pleasure of nosing through a plethora of rare and unusual books!

During his patient search, Samuel meets the remaining people who are associated with the historic hall such as the punctilious housekeeper Miss Synder or the mysterious young scarred artist Rose who help fill in missing details not found in the texts. He also explores the large estate which includes many hidden curiosities such as a special temple in the forest built to appreciate light and the movement of celestial bodies. Samuel’s complete immersion in the story of this family which is entangled with a mystery about one of the great poet’s of the age provides a way for him to escape the desolation of his marriage and start anew. It’s an escape into a meditative space. It is observed how “When the cordons of habit are withdrawn, the unruly forces of the mind strike out in new directions. Our own thoughts can seem almost as unfamiliar to us as our new surroundings: reason itself begins to turn in our grasp.” In the alien environment of Comberbache family’s historic abode, Samuel gains a valuable perspective about what he wants in life and finds himself unexpectedly entangled in the family’s complex narrative.

Maloney does well to avoid any clichéd resolutions to the novel. Instead he creates an intriguing conclusion which can be interpreted in different ways. This book isn’t about neat resolutions, but a process of discovery. There are moments when the story about the family becomes somewhat convoluted – especially because many of the Comberbaches have the same first names (something Arnold himself admits is confusing for archivists). But patient readers will be rewarded with a complex puzzle to uncover scandalous events involving opium, infidelity and plagiarism. “The Sacred Combe” is a cleverly-structured moving meditation for anyone who isn’t sure what step they should next take in life. It’s a richly immersive bibliophile’s fantasy. Appropriately for its subject matter, this novel also has a gorgeously designed cover itself.

Fever of Animals by Miles Allinson

It's sobering to find as we grow older we not only accrue a collection of memories, but an awareness of the things we might have done if we'd made different life decisions. So this historic time and imagined time coexists simultaneously in our minds. We're all the more aware about what might have been when thinking about people we once knew intimately but aren't close to anymore. We recall the futures we envisioned together and how differently everyone's life turned out from how it was imagined.

The protagonist of Miles Allinson's “Fever of Animals” (who is also called Miles) has come to a difficult point in his life. Now in his early thirties: his father has died, he's abandoned his ambition to be a painter and he's separated from his longterm girlfriend Alice. He's filled with uncertainty about his future. One evening he's having dinner in an Australian restaurant when he sees a mysterious painting called Night with Horses. Something about this artwork speaks to him so profoundly: “It is a painted moment composed of many moments, of many tiny decisions. And yet through this slow accumulation, something rare has been fixed in time, like a corridor through which this secret force still pours out.” He becomes obsessed with tracking down its painter and understanding what happened to this artist's life. He learns it was created by a surrealist named Emil Bafdescu who lived his later life in obscurity before walking into a forest one day and disappearing. It's as if by solving the mystery of what happened to Bafdescu Miles can find a meaning in his wayward, uncertain life.

It's easy to relate to Miles who describes his early years and university life which were filled experimentation, high ideals and exciting discoveries. He's conscious of how his attitudes at the time consisted of a lot of posturing and judgement: “Self-righteous indignation was, in those days, my favourite emotion.” He and his friend Kas wanted to make important artworks that were informed by significant movements like surrealism, but said something important about their own time. Eventually, Kas developed a career and settled down. Miles travelled the world with his highly intelligent girlfriend Alice who helped support him while he worked on his paintings. Eventually their relationship breaks down and she marries a man named Wido in Berlin. Miles feels like he alone is holding onto the ideals he and these people shared.

Bafdescu is a fictional artist, but the author convincingly creates a story of how he was heavily involved in the European Surrealist movement from the 40s till the 60s. Allinson writes Bafdescu into the history of real artists like Ghérasim Luca. The character of Miles spends his time travelling around Europe piecing together the scant amount of information that still exists about Bafdescu and writing speculatively about what happened to the painter. Meanwhile he recalls incidents from his past and sets out to find Alice who has stopped responding to his messages.

There's a charming indignation about Miles who feels that people shouldn't give up on their ideals, yet he also has the humility to know that compromise doesn't necessarily equate to betraying what you believe. He looks back upon the way an artistic movement fizzled out because of war, political shifts and changes in the personal lives of its progenitors: “Surrealism had run its course. You have to grow up eventually, I guess. Death is real. Ordinary life is too powerful.” Through an arduous journey searching supposedly haunted forests and cities where he doesn't speak the language, Miles tries to unlock the mystery of what happened to Bafdescu but really yearns to understand what happened to his idea of himself. In doing so, Miles Allinson says something special in this novel about time, self-perception and art's ability to connect the present and past.