In One Brief Moment All Eternity by Elif Shafak

I need to begin with a caution I don’t usually give: Elif Shafak’s engrossing new novel spoils the ending of “Madame Bovary” in its opening pages. Many readers have asked whether they should read Flaubert’s classic first, and if you want its ending kept intact, the answer is yes. That said, I don’t think it’s essential. Shafak has said she wanted readers unfamiliar with Flaubert or the 19th century to connect with the story, and I saw one Goodreads reader who had never read “Madame Bovary” name this among her favourite books of the year. Having read Flaubert’s novel twice myself, I found it heightened my appreciation. The book opens with Emma Bovary speaking back to her creator and puts him on trial for the way he portrayed her. Much of what follows plays on that porous boundary between the creator and the created, and on where imagination lies in between.

The novel spans the whole of Flaubert’s life, from a childhood in a Rouen household that was part home, part hospital, part morgue, to his death at Croisset in 1880. He became a writer in defiance of parents who wanted him to be a doctor, then a lawyer, and he was branded the “family idiot” even though he went on to become one of France’s greatest novelists. His life is told in close third person across five life stages, each chapter named after a colour and an object. Interspersed with it are thirty sections in the voices of women, some human, some not, some living, some dead. They include Eleanor Marx, the first to translate “Madame Bovary” into English, George Sand, an Egyptian belly dancer whom biographies treat as a footnote, and, in typical Shafak fashion, the city of Istanbul, syphilis and even a camel. These voices question Gustave’s judgement and memories while forming a web of surprising connections. All of them are caught up in an age of political upheaval and face the social pressures of the time differently. The bird on the gorgeous cover of this novel is the Simurgh of Attar’s “The Conference of the Birds”, the poem that gives the novel its title. It’s also the vision Gustave sees during his epileptic fits, and it holds a secret that only becomes clear at the end.

What moved me most was the portrayal of Gustave himself, especially as a lonely, bookish child. Shafak has described this as a book about loneliness and otherness, and she has spoken of being a lonely child who found companions in books. It’s funny how young Gustave feels so connected to his father’s library that he literally starts consuming the books. The tender bond with his nursemaid Julie, whose fabulous tales spark his imagination, is a reminder of how much children need to be told stories. Shafak depicts him as a synaesthete who can taste words. Some critics have speculated about this, though it has never been proven. It recalls Arthur in “There Are Rivers in the Sky”, and it ties in with the colours that frame the novel. His perceptions are also shaped by his epilepsy and later by syphilis, and Shafak notes the period’s misconceptions that blamed epilepsy on the mother or on too much masturbation. Gustave’s fantastical sensibility, mirrored in his early reading of “Don Quixote”, blends imagination with reality. I loved the description of him wanting to be a literary lizard, warming himself all day in the sun of inspiration, which sits nicely beside his painfully slow way of writing. Above all, he is an empathetic, romantic spirit who stops to ask downtrodden people about their lives, and their stories gradually feed into the creation of Emma Bovary. As Shafak writes, “Nothing human can ever be alien to literature.”

Shafak also explores the blurred lines of gender, a recurring theme in her work and no doubt one reason Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando” is among her inspirations. A tutor presents as a man in order to move through the world and achieve professional success. In a wonderful childhood scene, Gustave and his sister swap clothes to feel what it’s like to inhabit another gender, something he later carries into slipping into the skin of Emma Bovary. There are terrifying sections too, set during revolution and mass starvation, which show how turmoil can drive mobs to act out their fears on outsiders and scapegoats. Gustave witnesses the execution of a woman wrongly convicted of murder. “Is there anything more dangerous than certainty born of ignorance?” Shafak asks, which recalls the “Malady of Certainty” in her “Three Daughters of Eve”. The novel also considers how writers take revenge: “not with punches or swords but with words.” That idea runs from Emma’s opening tirade to Shafak’s own experience of being put on trial in Turkey for words her fictional characters spoke.

Where the novel falters for me is in some of the narrative voices. I understand that giving a voice to a city or a disease extends empathy beyond the confines of human consciousness, much as the fig tree did in “The Island of Missing Trees”. But some of these sections felt too laden with research, as if a writer had gathered a mass of details and packed them into a narrative, and they took me out of the story. Some critics have noted that the voices sound too similar. (Spoilers follow.) The ending offers one answer to this: Emma returns to reveal that Gustave himself wrote all thirty voices, and in Persian si-murgh means “thirty birds”. It’s a clever and artful turn that answers Emma’s opening complaint that writers betray their characters, since Gustave became each of them and turned imagination into an act of empathy. You could also see it as a fault. A novel whose premise is to decentre the male genius ends by recentring him as the author of it all, though of course Shafak wrote everything. For me, the reveal didn’t change my sense that some voices felt manufactured rather than convincing.

None of this detracted from my enjoyment, or from the novel’s insistence that without stories we’d each be much lonelier, and that solitude, as distinct from loneliness, can be a source of strength. As Shafak put it in an interview with Prospect, “I never believe fiction is a luxury—I believe it’s existential,” and in a time of so much conflict that feels especially true. Perhaps this novel isn’t as great as “There Are Rivers in the Sky”, and how much you connect with it may depend on your tolerance for her whimsy. But it’s a wonderful meditation on artistic creation and the lives of outsiders. It also does what all great literature should and sent me looking for more. I’m keen to read Eleanor Marx’s translation of “Madame Bovary” and Lydia Davis’s from 2010, having only read Alan Russell’s, as well as “Salammbô”, which Mircea Cărtărescu cited as a major influence when I interviewed him. I’d be delighted to hear what you think of Shafak’s most recent novel and whether you read “Madame Bovary” before starting it.

There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

First Impressions

This is an immersive epic which I grew increasingly emotionally and intellectually involved with as it went on. When I finally closed the book I looked up and realised I'd been so lost in it that I'd lost track of everything around me. I also realised it was an incredibly rainy day in London, with rain streaming down the window, which tied in perfectly with the novel's central theme as water is at the heart of it.

Tributaries Becoming a River

What I find extraordinary about this novel is how Shafak takes characters who seem quite different from one another, living in very different places and periods, and gradually brings their stories together in a deeply touching way. They begin to fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle or, more fittingly given the theme, like tributaries and bodies of water that slowly join to form one flowing river. I won't give away any spoilers, but I can sketch out the main threads.

The novel opens in Mesopotamia in the seventh century BC with Ashurbanipal, a despotic leader and military commander who was also an intellectual. He amassed a great library of clay tablets, many taken from other cultures and countries, and it's from tablets in that library that we know the "Epic of Gilgamesh." That ancient tale runs through the whole novel, and it feels miraculous that it survived at all, given how many transformations it went through along the way.

In Victorian London we meet Arthur, born into extreme poverty to a mother who scavenged valuables from the city's wastewater, and nicknamed "King Arthur" by the other scavengers. He feels like a Dickensian character, rising from humble beginnings to an intellectual career thanks to an extraordinary memory that lets him recall the distant past in precise, picture-perfect detail. He's also a synaesthete, experiencing tastes and smells when he sees words. These gifts are a double-edged sword: they open doors for him, but they also make him an outsider and an object of curiosity. It's fitting that Charles Dickens himself makes a brief appearance in a couple of scenes, while looking for a new publisher, which is a fun touch.

The next thread follows Narin, a Yazidi girl who is about to be baptised on the banks of the Tigris in 2014, while her family and culture face growing pressure and real danger from military and political forces and the prejudice against them. And in 2018 in London we follow Zaleekhah, a hydrologist who has left her husband after marital difficulties and is moving onto a houseboat on the Thames at Chelsea. She comes from a very privileged, wealthy family. As the novel moves between these very different characters, their stories gradually link up.

Outsiders Who See Clearly

What connects them is that each experiences a great deal of loneliness and isolation, and each has a special ability or intelligence. They are slight outsiders, and I think that's why they see more clearly what's happening around them and begin to question the larger society, in which people are exploited and displaced. The final main character is a drop of water itself. We follow it through the centuries, with a consciousness and a memory, in a book premised on the idea that water holds memory as it passes through its many transformations. Water is so essential to life yet so misunderstood.

Whimsy and Wonder

This is where readers may divide. Shafak walks a fine line between whimsy and absurdity, especially in her recent novels. "The Island of Missing Trees" is partly narrated by a fig tree and by an insect, and some readers feel that tips too far into absurdity. For me, and for others, it's whimsical and a wonderful way of thinking outside the boxes of identity and consciousness we normally work within. That's what I find so moving about Shafak's writing: a heartfelt humanity runs through all her books, along with real sympathy for outsiders and people who don't conform to standard ideas of how a person should live or identify.

I read her whimsy as a way of saying we don't have to be stuck inside a narrowly human consciousness. We can become so accustomed to thinking of ourselves as a human race that dominates and controls the planet, when there are many workings and mysteries we don't understand, outside the mainstream narrative, that steer our lives in unexpected and fantastic ways. The novel has a great sense of wonder, playfulness and humour. One example is the lamassu, the Mesopotamian sculptures with a human head and a lion's body, which also have five legs. Several of them, along with many of the tablets from this famed lost library, now sit in the British Library. I want to read more about that, and about how the "Epic of Gilgamesh" has been passed down across centuries, both orally and in writing.

Hidden Rivers and Serious Themes

Zaleekhah's storyline describes the hidden rivers beneath London and every major city. We think of London and the mighty Thames, but there were many other rivers, which have been built or paved over or repurposed, and it was fascinating to see a map of them. For all its whimsy and humour, the novel also takes on serious themes through water. There's a lot on climate change and pollution, and on how we imagine we control rivers when we don't. Humanitarian crises are so often about a lack of water, with people in disadvantaged areas dying of thirst, and as climate change continues, water will become a major issue for many nations.

The Yazidi genocide is also depicted in the story, which I found heart-wrenching and which made me want to learn more. The theft of cultural artefacts features too, both in the ancient Mesopotamian library and in the contemporary British Museum, whose holdings were taken from so many cultures and remain a hotly debated subject. And there's organ farming, in which very wealthy people who need a transplant bypass the medical system and buy organs from impoverished or displaced people.

I think Shafak mostly strikes a good balance, handling these subjects while keeping the reader involved in the characters' lives. I felt so close to them that what they gradually saw around them, I was seeing too as a reader: the larger things at stake for many people, and the ways we are implicated in systems that should be questioned more. We become complacent because we're born or work our way into certain circumstances, or inherit a cultural outlook that makes us assume this is simply how the world is, and only gradually do we realise how it disadvantages others and what more sinister things we are part of without noticing.

The Reading Experience

The novel contains multitudes of stories and holds them all in one big epic tale. If you find the drop of water's consciousness, or the multiple storylines, a bit disparate at first, trust me that they all come together, and I found it incredibly moving how they form a whole.

Coincidentally while reading the novel I went to the Yoko Ono retrospective at Tate Modern, which sits right on the Thames. Looking out at the rain falling on the river, I thought of the river in this novel. Ono is such a singular conceptual artist, and some of her pieces appear as written prompts on the wall for viewers to carry out or simply imagine. One I read asks you to imagine a drop of water falling on a stone and watch until it eventually drills a hole through it, which of course would take many, many years. It connects so beautifully with this book, as another way of thinking about consciousness and narrative. Imagine being a drop of water, passing through solid and gas, rising into the sky and falling back to earth, perhaps swallowed and ingested along the way. That expands your mind beyond the limits of a single human life.

Verdict

That approach will work for some readers and not for others, and I know people who take issue with Shafak's work in this way, which is entirely fair. For me it was very moving and a wonderful form of storytelling, and I loved how the novel drew me through so many tales, periods and places to form one whole narrative. If you've read it, or want to now, I'd love to hear what you think.

The Wax Child by Olga Ravn (translated by Martin Aitken)

First Impressions

“The Wax Child” is extremely odd (in a good way) and it’s genuinely a wild ride. The overall story is easy enough to grasp, but a lot of its details are so curious and strange that I had to really focus to understand what was going on and what it all ultimately meant. And the impact of the story builds to something much bigger than just an individual tale from the past.

This book is a novel, but it also feels like a piece of poetry, not just in its language but in how certain phrases repeat and build a real lyricism, especially in sections structured like incantations or based on real historical superstitious practices woven throughout the text. It also feels a bit like a play, since Ravn apparently began working on this as a dramatic piece before it evolved into prose. It's a historical story, but I found it carries a surprising amount of modern relevance and urgency, and it functions, too, as a kind of horror story: genuinely horrific things happen in it, and its larger meaning and impact are quite terrifying in their own right.

Premise and Perspective

The novel begins in the late 1500s in Denmark, though most of it takes place around 1620–1621. It follows a woman named Christenze, but not from her own point of view. Instead, the story is narrated from the unique perspective of a wax child, an object Christenze creates out of beeswax mixed with human hair and nail clippings. It's such a different way of building a narrative about the past: most historical novels are either objectively or omnisciently narrated, or told from a particular character's subjective viewpoint, but here the narrator is an object with a strange kind of objectivity, formed from both natural and human elements, able to see into the minds and motivations of the people around it as well as into the natural world, without making value judgments. It has emotions, but no real point of view to impose on what it observes; it simply records.

Christenze, whom the wax child considers its mistress, is of noble birth but not wealthy, living a fairly humble life with a well-off woman desperate for children, who has lost fifteen of them to miscarriage or early infant death. After all this loss, that woman goes looking for a scapegoat and settles on Christenze, accusing her of witchcraft. That accusation forces Christenze to flee, and she ends up connecting with other women living on the margins of society, women quite different from the mainstream, and forms a real bond with them. The first half of the novel follows the connection that grows between these women as they live and work together, preparing fish, singing, sharing stories and superstitions. Every character in this book is based on a real historical figure.

The Witch Trials

Because of the patriarchy and misogyny of the era, alongside larger societal shifts, these women become targets and scapegoats in the witch hunts, something the book signals early on and that isn't really a spoiler given the imagery on the cover itself. The novel follows them into suspicion, persecution, and torture, rendered in small, carefully chosen details rather than extended, graphic description, which somehow makes it more horrifying: a red-hot pincer, a leg screw tightened further, a woman returning to her cell with a broken hand. Confessions are extracted this way, and women are made to give up the names of other women in turn.

What struck me most is how this persecution wasn't just superstition or mass hysteria, as it's sometimes framed, but part of a deliberate expansion of power. Christian IV of Denmark instituted laws and actively pursued these witch hunts as part of centralizing his authority, creating convenient scapegoats to position himself as protector of the righteous against supposed agents of the devil, while simultaneously imposing standardized behavior and belief that would knit the population into a unified, obedient nationhood. England and Ireland's King James I pursued similar witch trials around the same time, part of a broader pattern in how modern nation-states and power structures were forming, built in part on enforcing gender norms and conformity, with women who didn't conform serving as convenient targets. It's not hard to draw a line from this to how authority figures today still identify "bad people" to demonize, rallying segments of a population under a leader by scapegoating marginalized groups, transgender people among them, generating a kind of protective paranoia in the process.

Hypocrisy and Autonomy

I loved a section that exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of this authority: a woman convicted of witchcraft and awaiting execution is brought to the pregnant wife of the king, who asks for advice on ensuring a quick, healthy birth. The condemned woman recites a series of common superstitions, and the wife responds that she already knew all of that, it's common knowledge, only to be met with the unspoken irony that this same "common knowledge" is what got the woman condemned as a witch in the first place. Later in the novel, when Christenze is made to defend her own life in an unjust trial, she declares, "I love life. It belongs to me," a powerful assertion of the one thing she still has any claim to, at the same time as it's being taken from her. Ravn doesn't flatten these women into simple victims, either: Christenze at one point tries to set herself apart from the other accused women by invoking her noble birth, hoping it might spare her, and while she is treated somewhat differently in her execution, she ultimately meets the same fate. The novel is also honest about how some of this persecution came from other women, part of how patriarchy actually functions, including a heartbreaking moment where a young girl testifies at trial without really understanding that her words are helping convict the accused.

Ravn's Method

There's so much in this book that's enticingly strange while also being clearly built on real historical research. I loved hearing, in an interview, how Ravn described reading original documents from this period and being unable to make sense of one particular text until she realized it was actually a set of dance instructions, at which point she got up in the middle of a library reading room and started performing the movements herself to understand what was being conveyed. It's a funny image, and also a good encapsulation of her creativity as a writer: this book resists being pinned to a single genre, weaving together enough different elements to give a real, distinct understanding of this period of history and, in turn, our own present moment.

Verdict

Beyond the sheer immediate weirdness and pleasure of this unique story, which is satisfying in its own right, thinking through its larger implications made this feel moving and impactful to me. I think Ravn is a hugely talented writer; I also loved her earlier novel “The Employees”, which seems entirely different on its surface, a story set in outer space narrated by both humans and robots or beings somewhere between the two, but which shares this same technique of narrating from the perspective of objects or non-human entities, offering such a distinct outside view of the human condition. I'd love to know if you've read “The Wax Child” and what you made of it.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

For the past several years Strout has created a beautiful tapestry of novels about the intersecting lives of a number of her characters – most notably Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge and Bob Burgess in titles such as “Oh William!”, “Lucy by the Sea” and “Tell Me Everything”. So it's notable that she has written a new novel which is entirely outside of this set of books – although keen readers will notice there is an easter egg within “The Things We Never Say” that refers to a previous Strout novel and definitively establishes that this story is entirely outside of that fictional universe. Though the setting and characters are somewhat different, Strout's characteristic style of fiction persists. We follow idiosyncratic characters having conversations and privately contemplating the world. The narrative dips into the past and gives small snapshots into the future. The author has such a moving way of representing her characters' thoughts where memories intrude upon the present to produce a ruminative and lightly philosophical sensation. The genius of Strout's writing is that it is both highly relatable and profound as it guides the reader through what matters the most.

This new story focuses on Artie Dam, a history teacher who lives on the coast of Massachusetts. He's been married to his wife Evie over thirty years, has an adult son and enjoys taking meditative solo afternoon sailing trips. And in this strange new post-pandemic world Artie finds himself preoccupied with a sense of loneliness and the question of whether we really have free will. Not only does he contemplate the possibility of incompatibilism but he boldly raises this issue in casual conversation. Naturally many people are quick to bat away discussing such a ponderous question. Gradually Artie finds truer understanding with the people in his life by daring to speak about things which aren't normally verbalised, but this isn't a sure method of achieving real connections. The results are both surprising and humbling as the story concerns the nuances of human communication. Sometimes his exchanges are tenderly moving and sometimes they're just awkward in a way which is true to the ebb and flow of our personal networks. Some friends turn into strangers and some strangers become close friends. The central father and son relationship in this story is especially poignant. There is also a narrative tension as Artie discovers a dramatic secret about his family which may or may not completely upend his life.

The novel begins in the lead up to the 2024 US presidential elections and Artie has a terrifying feeling about what the result will be. In a conversation it's remarked “He's going to win, you know... People want authority. They crave authority. And she doesn't have the kind they want, and he does. In his cult following kind of way.” Everyone who has lived through this recent period of time will know exactly what is being said here. Though Strout possesses a seemingly gentle style of storytelling this novel is also excoriating about the present state of the country and the very real threats we may face in the near future. It's no coincidence that Artie is a teacher of history and his class openly discusses the lives of ordinary people from the Civil War and WWII. The anger and frustration with the state of our present times is palpable in this story. Artie witnesses bursts of violence and firm political lines being drawn. Yet surprising love can also be found between people who are seemingly diametrically opposed. What can we talk about and what can't we say? At one point it's stated: “to say anything real was to say things that nobody wanted to know. Or if they wanted to know, they would not care in the right way. Or even understand. It was a private thing, to be alive.” Though Artie is preoccupied with the question of free will, Strout seems more concerned with the question: what's happened to decency?

The SafeKeep by Yael Van Der Wouden

What “Call Me By Your Name” did for peaches, “The Safekeep” does for pears. I do love a good historically set novel with lots of twists and turns in its plot. So I found this very pleasurable and moving to read as it's a story that has multiple levels. It's a creepy tale with almost gothic “Rebecca”-esque undertones about the claustrophobia of being stuck in a house with someone you resent and feel a growing animosity towards. It's about sexual repression and the transformative experience of all that pent up desire being released. And it's about the weight of history, the calamitous after-effects of war and how to reconcile what has been lost and displaced.

There are a number of reveals in this story so I'll do my best to avoid spoilers. The novel initially centres around Isabel who seemingly has little motivation other than maintaining her deceased mother's house and its contents. It's the 1960s and Isabel lives a severely self-contained existence in a rural Dutch province. Isabel is a real piece of work. She's nasty and rude to almost everyone she meets. There is a special kind of humour and pleasure in reading about a character who so unapologetically brushes aside social conventions because she's someone I'd never want to meet but it's fun to read about her dismissive attitude towards everyone. I did feel this became repetitive at times in this first section of the novel, but overall she's a compellingly unlikeable character. Isabel fiercely guards both the house and its contents and finds it hard to keep a maid because she continuously lashes out at them with judgements and accusations. However, Isabel is little more than a caretaker for this building which belongs to her uncle and it will be passed on to Isabel's older brother Louis when their uncle passes. I enjoyed how small details about both her family life and the contents of the house are dropped into this early section of the novel hinting at a larger story and adding to the complexity of her character.

Other than the maid the most human contact she has is with her younger brother Hendrik who has a teasing rapport with his uptight sister. Hendrik has lived away from this location since coming out to their mother who is now deceased. But Isabel studiously ignored the reality and reasons behind his leaving. It describes how “she could sometimes blur her eyes when looking at something – decide not to see it in full focus, decide to disengage.” This explains a lot about Isabel who uses self-denial when it comes to things that are emotionally difficult – both external and internal. Near the beginning there's a scene which sets this novel's plot into motion. Isabel's older brother Louis arranges a dinner for both Isabel and Hendrik to meet his new girlfriend Eva. (Interestingly in interviews the author has described initially writing this scene as a short story.) There's all the tension of the new girlfriend wanting to make a good impression and trying to get to know her partner's adult siblings, but in return the brother and sister are dismissive towards her because they see her as merely their brother's latest squeeze since he is a notorious womanizer. But there is a difference with Eva because Louis needs to travel for work and he informs Isabel that Eva will be staying with her in her carefully guarded house. Of course, Isabel is vehemently against this plan but she's not given a choice. So when rambunctious Eva moves into the family home it's like she is entering a powder keg ready to explode.

The house itself is like the central character in this novel. It is the safe keep which contains many possessions which are filled with meaning and it has witnessed many people and events passing through it over the years. I do like novels such as “North Woods” by Daniel Mason or “The Dutch House” by Anne Patchett or, indeed, “Rebecca”, where a house is itself a protagonist that possesses emotion. We're shown how The Safekeep has persisted throughout WWII and maintains a lot of secrets from both the personal lives of these characters and larger historical events. Isabel is a fascinating character who possesses a fierce determination to remain independent. There are small glimpses of her early family life and details strewn throughout her abode which I found intriguing as I wondered what the real story is behind Isabel and this house. It also builds a highly-pressured and stifling atmosphere where something eventually needs to break. But I never got a full sense of why Isabel is so fiercely attached to this house and its objects. I know she was following the direction of her deceased mother to maintain the house and she's extremely repressed so this was all she had, but as the full story of the novel is revealed this came to feel more like a plot device rather than something which would naturally occur.

Many readers have argued that the very end of the novel is too saccharine. I guessed very early on where the novel was going. Part of why I had a strong sense about this is because I knew the author is a big fan of Sarah Waters' “Fingersmith”. I'm sure anyone who has read that novel can see the strong influence it's had upon “The Safekeep”. The books are obviously set in very different time periods and contexts, but I couldn't help feeling like Van Der Wouden's novel is somewhat slighter compared to Waters' impressive yarn. The ending certainly didn't surprise me, but I think the author did a good job at showing how the conclusion for these characters is hard won. There was naturally a lot of mistrust and animosity because of their respective pasts and the lack of transparency between them. I don't think the ending is the main point of this novel as it's more about the tension of the story and what goes unspoken in our personal lives and the political workings/social attitudes of a nation in the aftermath of war.

I really appreciated Hendrik as a character and enjoyed the section where he and his partner Sebastian come to stay at the house. This loosened Isabel up which felt like a relief since her life with Eva was so stifling up to this point. I found it really moving learning of the conflict of Hendrik's early affair with the teacher and how he left the family home to be able to live honestly as a gay man. I wish there had been more about Hendrik and Sebastian's story, but I appreciate that the novel was necessarily centred on Isabel and Eva. If you've not seen this already, I'd strongly recommend reading Van Der Wouden's essay from several years ago 'On (Not) Reading Anne Frank'. It's really fascinating to discover she was never a natural reader and, even more so, her family history when she was an adolescent moving from Israel to the Netherlands and the anti-semitism she experienced there throughout her teens. It's interesting how this personal history could be interpreted as feeding into the underlying conflicts and simmering tension of “The Safekeep”. Overall, I really enjoyed this often gripping and atmospheric novel.

My Friends by Hisham Matar

“My Friends” is the story of a man named Khaled who grew up in Libya and moved to the UK to go to university. Here he and his friend Mustafa get involved in a London protest about Gaddafi's government and things become terrifyingly violent. This radically upends his life and cuts him off from his homeland. This novel keyed me into so many startling historical incidents that I previously knew little about. This prompted me to look up and learn more about these particular conflicts. It involves assassinations, tense political standoffs and revolutions. Though this all effects the main character in an extremely personal way, he's reflecting on it and usually distanced from it. So there's a melancholy and meditative tone to the book. It's also filled with so many heartfelt insights and brilliantly composed sentences – the kind that give such a unique perspective I often had to stop and mull them over.

It's a story of exile, trauma and friendship. It's about finding a home in literature and the text is peppered with so many great reading recommendations – especially the affinity Khaled develops for the great (equally melancholy) writer Jean Rhys. But it also shows how Khaled creates a sense of home and family with a precious few people who he connects with on a deep level. It's about a specific conflict in history, the oppression and terror of living under the spectre of a military dictatorship and how this can cruelly warp people's relationships to each other and destroy any sense of hope. This also speaks to the universal struggle of people trying to live their lives amidst “unreasonable men”. And it's about the persistence of love in Khaled's biological family even when they've been physically separated for many years.

It's also the story of a city and how London becomes Khaled's unintended home for decades. The present day action occurs only over a couple of hours in 2016 as Khaled walks through the city. In this way the novel enters in a tradition of London literature such as “Oliver Twist”, Virgina Woolf's “Mrs Dalloway”, Sam Selvon's “The Lonely Londoners”, Monica Ali's “Brick Lane” or Caleb Azumah Nelson's “Open Water”. These stories contain routes that can be physically traced on a map or in person. Since I'm lucky enough to live in London it really brought this novel alive for me to travel to some of these places to view streets, buildings, statues, memorials and artworks mentioned in the book. There's also a wonderful section where Khaled's friend Hosam takes him to view some London locations where writers lived and worked. In this way the book shows how a cityscape can be overlaid with real lives and fiction.

I was deeply moved by this poignant and beautifully written novel's meditations on life, friendships and a sense of place (especially in exile.) The story made me contemplate what action we're prepared to take when living under an oppressive system. It explores a number of options including writing fiction, speaking publicly, protesting or living in silent opposition. I find it especially poignant thinking of Khaled's father who chose taking a humble teaching position (compared to the career he might have had but which would have made him more a political target.) Though his contribution appears to be humble he's having an effect (as we know from people Khaled meets that highly respect his father) and his continued presence in Libya (rather than moving abroad) is a statement in itself. The struggle Khaled has maintaining a connection to his family especially under the paranoia of government surveillance is harrowing.

Khaled's friends become like his family in London so the fact that we know they have left him at the beginning of the novel amplifies his sense of aloneness and estrangement from his native land. Perhaps if they had remained instead of returning to Libya and moving to America he might feel more grounded in this life. So, given the events that unfold, it adds to the poignancy of how this novel is framed around his saying a permanent goodbye to his friend Hosam. Although I feel like there's a note of hope at the story's end there's a melancholy sense that Libya is not a place he'll ever be able to call home again: “It is a myth that you can return, and a myth also that being uprooted once makes you better at doing it again.”

Overall, I think this novel is excellent as a meditation on exile, the meaning of friendship over time and the longterm effects of trauma. It gives a personal take from the inside about a specific period of history and political conflict. This intersection between fiction and historical events which might not be widely known can be really rewarding and Matar has done an excellent job framing this story. The novel also raises more universal issues concerning how we think about nationality and our relationship to homeland. It's a celebration of literature and the deep connection we can feel to authors. It's a stunning achievement and I hope it gets some award attention this year.

You can listen to me discuss this novel more and show some of the locations mentioned in the story while reading passages aloud here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPwu3keS-UI

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

This novel grabbed hold of my heart! It's so emotional but also so well crafted and intelligent. What a special debut novel! The story and plot are so gripping. It contains many surprises and I want to keep this as spoiler free as possible because there are twists that had my heart racing: moments of tragedy, moments of kindness, moments of horror and moments of absolutely beautiful tenderness. This is embodied by an array of well observed and totally believable characters. Many are privileged English schoolboys but within that sphere they are so diverse and fascinating – not least of all the two young men at the centre of this book. And what I think makes this novel so special is not just the historical subject matter of WWI and the people tragically caught in these circumstances, but the way Alice Winn has structured this book. It's so clever and adds so much to the story.

The novel begins in 1914 at an English boarding school in the countryside. We meet seventeen year old boys: Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood. Gaunt has part German heritage and is more reserved, awkward and anti-war. Ellwood is part Jewish and is very popular and enthused to fight in the war. Neither of them are technically old enough to enlist, but, as with many young men back then, this did not stop them. They both love poetry (especially Ellwood who writes and recites it) and they've been harbouring a secret desire and love for one another. We follow as they separately go to war and the consequences of being at the centre of a conflict where millions and millions of lives were lost.

I was somewhat nervous going into this because I thought: do I want to read about war especially focusing on the point of view of privileged English schoolboys? But once I got into the story and got to know these characters I was completely enthralled. Part of what Winn shows so well is the way youth were manipulated into wanting to be remembered and glorified. This is what governments do to get the manpower for war and make young men enlist. At that tender age so many boys can be easily convinced to die for their country in order to be remembered forever. Part of this is national arrogance and believing they'd win the war right away. But there was also pressure from an organisation called The White Feather Movement which I hadn't heard of before this novel. These were groups of women that went around in public and any young man who looked fit enough to fight was handed a white feather to shame him into wanting to enlist. This was controversial even at the time – not least of all because sometimes feathers were given to soldiers on leave or veterans who were seriously wounded. So I was glad to learn about this element and strategy of war. And reading this book has made me want to read and discover more about this period of time.

Winn makes the characters of Gaunt and Ellwood feel so alive with their hesitancy around intimacy, their confused dreams about the future and what is possible for boys in their position with restrictions about what was socially allowed at the time. It was okay as long as the boys were popular and kept it behind closed doors, but they could not love each other openly. It feels so important for gay love tales to be inserted back into history through novels like these because these relationships did happen but they weren't often recorded or allowed to flourish because of social stigma. I won't reveal what happens between them or how their story together develops but it is so beautifully done. There are also many other really fascinating characters. Some are naively gun ho about fighting, some are understandably crippled by fear and the horror of what war looks like. There are bullies, there are hopelessly foolish boys, there are highly intelligent lads, there's a really interesting character with Indian heritage, there's a man from a working class background which contrasts sharply to most of the young men in this book and there is Gaunt's sister who is extremely intelligent and progressive but can't effect change because of the restricted possibilities for women at that time. All these characters are so convincing in their dialogue and actions while also showing the influence that classism, racism, sexism and homophobia has on their lives. The story depicts how these things still have an effect even on the battlefield where soldiers struggle to survive from moment to moment. The novel also demonstrates the tragic gulf in understanding between those who know what it's like at the front verses people who've remained in England. But also, even before the scenes at war the story shows the sinister bullying culture in English boarding schools where young boys are literally tortured in a perverse cycle which is believed to build character.

Something so unique about this novel is how Winn structures the story because it is not just a straightforward narrative but it's also composed of letters, articles and issues of the boarding school's published journal. And this is another reason why I was initially hesitant to read this book because I wasn't sure how these fictional newspaper articles could add to the story. But they definitely do and create such a powerful sense of the brutal consequences of war as some characters that the reader has grown to love or despise or even just know casually are listed under the casualties over time. To see them suddenly removed in black and white like this gives such a strong sense of what it must have been like at the time. But also, the gruelling task of soldiers writing letters to families to inform them of their husband's or sons' deaths while trying to make it personal. It is heart wrenching and so effective.

Running through this novel is the power of poetry. Not just in its creation and the ways it can encapsulate experience like no other but what effect war has upon the creative imagination. It's made me keen to read more by and about great gay poets of WWI such as Siegfried Sassoon. It's also made me keen to read George Eliot's novel Adam Bede. I've read a number of books by Eliot but not that one. And I won't explain how that novel has a role in this novel, but just read this novel and see. There's a really interesting prisoner of war camp section – again, no spoilers, but it's so suspenseful and vivid. And it's so compelling how it elicits sympathy for the German soldiers in this section who were technically overseeing the prisoners but many of these guards were less well fed and less experienced than their prisoners who relentlessly bullied them. Because no matter which side of the conflict these young men (who were still boys really) were on, they were led by their countries into perilous conflict and thousands were slaughtered. There's also a fascinating narrative shift at one point showing the other side of the battlefield and the other boys caught up in this hellish conflict.

It all comes together to create a war story and a love story like no other. And I loved it. There's so much more to say about this novel, but it's a masterful accomplishment. So impressive for a first novel – although, from what I gather from interviews Winn has been writing for a long time. I think it shows that this is a writer who has honed her craft and told a story she feels so passionately about. I don't want to make any assumptions, but I know Winn is married to a man so for a presumably heterosexual woman to write so beautifully about such complex gay characters with depth and understanding and to write about their sexual and emotional relationships so convincingly is stunning. I'd also recommend reading “The World and All That It Holds” by Aleksander Hemon which, coincidentally, is also a story of WWI about two soldiers in love with each other, but it's in a very different setting and it also has a very different style and approach. It's also excellently done. However, “In Memoriam” is a novel that completely captured my heart and I know I'll remember it for a long time.

Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson

Nelson's much-anticipated follow up to his debut novel “Open Water” follows a few formative summers in the life of Stephen, a young man making the uneasy transition from being a teenager to an adult. He leaves his beloved community in London for the first time to move to university and harbours complicated romantic feelings for a longtime female friend. He also has a knotty relationship with his parents. His father naturally wants a stable future for Stephen even if this runs contrary to his passions and this creates a lot of conflict between them. Meanwhile, he and his mother share a more straightforward free-flowing love exchanging memories while cooking together. It's highly relatable how the author describes the stumbling nature of this period of life where we struggle to understand who we are and what we really desire while testing the limits of our own agency. Nelson has a wonderful style of portraying the emotions wrapped up in this confusion and relating the interior process of his central character with such sensitivity. There are many heartbreaking and tender moments in the story informing Stephen's journey to more comfortably inhabiting his selfhood.

The novel's central metaphor of the sense of connectedness between groups of individuals is especially potent when considering the wider context of being black in modern day Britain. It's stated in the story that “we might build a small world, where we might feel beautiful, might feel free... outside of these spaces, we are rarely safe... the world was not built with us in mind, and that someone, at any time, might intrude upon our homes, crumbling our walls, making dust of our foundations. It's days like these which remind us that we don't have space, that the city feels like it's closing in, trying to magic us away, encouraging our disappearance.” Though they find comfort and security in their tight-knit community, Stephen and his friends are deeply affected by Mark Duggan's murder by the police in 2011. This historical incident makes them recall the extreme perilousness of their situation and sense of painful self-consciousness living in a largely white-dominated society. I was lucky enough to hear Nelson speak about this novel at Brixton Library and when discussing his earnest desire for his community to have safe spaces he was brought to tears. It's extremely moving how this desire is built into the story showing the pleasures and pains of creating such circles.

One of the most powerful aspects of the novel is how it relates Stephen's feelings of ambiguity about his faith, heritage and family. Though he's uncertain in his beliefs he finds such strength in attending church: “it doesn't feel like I'm playing but taking part in something spiritual, something I didn't know I needed.” Equally, he's drawn to visit his parents' birthplace of Ghana reconnecting with family there and his heritage. In these scenes Nelson conveys a wide-eyed wonder for the surprises his character discovers there as well as a sense of connectedness to aspects of the culture. It's especially effective how Ghanaian words are incorporated into the novel as it reflects how he and his family speak to one another but also Stephen's discomfort with the limitations of language: “I came to both languages through violence: the Ga I speak was warped and muted, many years ago, after British invasions, the same invasions which are the reason I speak English. Language, then, has always struck me as less tool than burden. It's always caught between somewhere, something always lost between expression and emotion.” Returning to his family's homeland also inspires a new sense of empathy for his father who he fell out with. The way the narrative voice shifts in the later part of the novel to reflect this understanding is very moving.

This novel is imbued with a lyrical quality with certain phrases and images which refrain throughout the story. It makes sense that the narrative would be structured like this because music and dance is such an integral part of Stephen's life. He's an aspiring musician and it's something which connects him with his community, family and heritage. However, the recurrence of some lines can at times seem like the author is stretching for profundity. The feeling which accompanies reading a novel is different from listening to music so it's not easy to fit this sensation into a narrative. Also, Nelson has a tendency to over-explain and psychoanalyse his characters in a way which isn't always necessary when physical detail and dialogue would feel more impactful. Certain scenes stand out in my memory more for the straightforward exchange taking place when all the attendant feelings are implicit within the situation. Nevertheless, there's a beauty and power to Nelson's use of language which is so original and moving. It's exciting how fiercely artistic he is in his photographic and filmmaking pursuits alongside writing fiction showing how these forms of expression can blend into and inform each other. I'm a committed fan.

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

It's been several years since Strout first started writing about this particular reflective heroine beginning with “My Name is Lucy Barton” and continuing aspects of her story through the books “Anything is Possible” and “Oh William!” - though I'd say this new novel is the most straightforward sequel yet as events follow directly on from the end of that third novel. Lucy's later life becomes even more entangled with her first husband William as the recent pandemic hits America and they go into lockdown together in a borrowed coastal house in Maine. Lucy recounts her difficulty navigating this intense period of time and describes new discoveries regarding her personal history and events to do with her family life.

By now Lucy has come to feel like an old friend. I have a deep affection towards her but I also find her slightly irritating. She has a particular idiosyncratic way in which she sifts through the past alighting upon significant moments she remembers with great clarity while other aspects of her personal history and life seem mysterious to her. Of course, this is very relatable and it's what gives Strout's stories great humanity. But Lucy's ponderousness and low self-esteem can also be trying. This is certainly deliberate as William and her adult daughters occasionally express their impatience with her. However, as we come to understand the continuing impact her impoverished and difficult familial relationships have had upon her life these aspects of her personality make much more sense.

My experience of this novel was influenced by reading the entire book aloud to my husband while we were on a recent long road trip. It really brought the story to life as we laughed or gasped at certain parts and discussed it in between sections. As always I'm delighted at affectionate jibes Strout makes about life in Maine such as how fiercely cold it gets, but there's also a particular reason why Lucy intensely hates being cold. Strout also doesn't shrink from revealing darker aspects of Maine life such as the insular nature of some of its citizens who are hostile to outsiders. Since Lucy's narrative is quite straightforward and chatty it made reading it aloud particularly pleasurable. I think there's also a deceptive simplicity to Strout's writing which touches upon really profound subject matter from the evolving nature of love to deep political divisions in America while also representing the foibles and peculiar details which make us human.

Barton drops in plenty of “catch up” information throughout this novel in case readers haven't read or have forgotten details from the previous books. So it can certainly be read as a stand-alone book. However, I can't imagine coming to this novel without having read the previous books and my appreciation and understanding of it was certainly enhanced since I've travelled the entirely of this extensive journey with Lucy. A knowledge of Barton's entire oeuvre is also handy as characters from her previous books such as “The Burgess Boys”, “Olive Kitteridge” and “Olive, Again” make appearances in this new novel. Knowing something of these additional characters gives Lucy's interactions with them an added poignancy and also gave me a feeling of being fully immersed in the fictional alternate universe which Barton has created.

Many dramatic things occur in this novel and shocking secrets are revealed. There's an acknowledge irony to this since it's also about a period of time stuck in a house where circular routines are established and nothing of significance seems to occur for many months. It's an ideal time for mulling things over and Lucy also develops some strong connections with a few local individuals. The story builds to quite a moving conclusion where Lucy arrives at certain revelations. At the same time, she knows the future is always unclear and she becomes equally sure that she knows nothing. This really embodies the quiet genius of this character and it's no doubt why Strout has a continuing preoccupation with Lucy's story. One of Lucy's mortal fears is how we never know when we might see someone for the last time. I don't know if this will be the last book to feature Lucy Barton, but I'm certainly glad to have encountered her again and this latest novel has given me an even deeper appreciation for the previous books.

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

Some literary writers create a character who they continuously return to in a series of books and (because that character is an author) seem to be an obvious foil for the writer themselves. “Oh William!” is the third book in a series after “My Name is Lucy Barton” and “Anything is Possible”. I'm not trying to suggest Lucy is directly based on Strout's own personality and past – I think it's more that she's become a way for the author to chart feelings of what ageing and experience do to a person over time. Since it's been five years since we readers were first introduced to Lucy we're also older and more experienced (if we've been following her story since the beginning). In this new novel Lucy becomes an even more more dynamic and rounded character as we learn more about her history, her point of view and her continuing quest to understand her position in the world. 

This book picks up with Lucy later in her life after the death of her beloved second husband. When her first husband William discovers he has a half-sister Lois whom he's never met he invites Lucy to join him on a journey to Maine where Lois lives and where his mother Catherine had an early first marriage which she ran away from. It's a road trip novel, but it's also about the complex evolution of Lucy's relationship with William over time. This isn't about will they or won't they get back together. It's more about the meaning they have in each other's lives and how the people who know us the best can both support and stultify us. In some ways, it's also about the contrast between Lucy and her mother-in-law Catherine's lives. Both women came from very impoverished families but grew to succeed and inhabit respectable positions in the world yet they inhabit adulthood with very different levels of confidence.

Strout is a master at describing great subtlety of feeling using language and a style of writing that's very approachable and enjoyable to read. A large part of the pleasure of this book derives from having read the first two novels so I'm not sure I'd recommend reading this new book without having read the previous books. However, for me, it's a joy returning to Lucy's voice and disconcertingly existential point of view. She describes how “I have always thought that if there was a big corkboard and on that board was a pin for every person who ever lived, there would be no pin for me. I feel invisible, is what I mean.” Yet her understanding and sense of self grows over the course of this story and ultimately leads her to admit “I am not invisible no matter how deeply I feel that I am.” William sometimes has an abrasive demeanour and this journey reminds her of that and why they separated, but they also share a history and a heightened sense of intimacy. For instance, they still use pet names with each other. It's these interactions and the sense of a longstanding bond with William, her daughters and others which cement her place in the world rather than the accomplishments which come from being a successful author.

This is also a story about the process of memory. Although Lucy is sincere and open we're made to wonder if her memories are entirely true when she makes statements such as “It is easy to recall this now, but in my memory it is true.” There are emotionally painful subjects she often prefers to avoid and self consciously states she doesn't want to talk about or discuss anymore since they were already covered in the first two books by Strout (and the memoirs Barton has written within the story.) But there are moments and experiences she naturally circles back to as they were pivotal aspects of her life which have influenced and haunt her. These can be small details such as Catherine's tangerine coloured couch which takes such a presence in her recollections of her mother-in-law. Or she alights upon striking metaphors for encapsulating more universal experiences of the past. I love how she describes the feeling of “the curtain of childhood” around her when recalling the terror and frustrations of youth. This so accurately captures that feeling of being shrouded in naivety when we're young.

However, despite there being many poignant moments and this being such a pleasurable book to read I don't think it's Strout's best. The story itself is quite meandering and leisurely so it doesn't feel as focused as the previous novels. This is partly due to the style of narrative where we so closely follow Lucy's thought process and reasoning. Some sections end too wistfully with lines such as “But who ever really knows the experience of another?” Nevertheless, I personally enjoyed the experience of reading this book so much because it felt tremendously comforting and contains some poignant reflections. There are also points of reference and in-jokes about the experience of being in Maine such as the fact Mainers eat their meals so early which makes Lucy wonder: “When does anybody in this state eat?” But primarily I appreciate the thoughtful distinction this story makes between inhabiting somewhere and feeling like you belong. I know it will be enjoyable to go back to the previous two books and read this series in order to pick up on more clues and follow Lucy's gradual transformation. So, while this new novel might not be among the best books I've read this year, it is one of the most pleasing.

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

This is the third novel I've read by Elif Shafak and I love the sheer heart and humanity of her fiction. Her work does what the best writing should which is to give a voice to the voiceless and start a conversation about divisive social issues which affect us all while telling an engaging story about characters I grew to really care about. “The Island of Missing Trees” is part love story and part history of recent deadly conflicts in Cyprus. Greek Cypriot Kostas and Turkish Cypriot Defne are teenagers who form a strong romantic relationship in a taverna. When war breaks out their world is torn apart. Many years later in England their teenage daughter Ada struggles to come to terms with her parents' past and she's also dealing with the fact that a video of her experiencing an emotional outburst/breakdown has gone viral. This may sound like an obvious device for exploring the personal ramification of national discord, but like Ada who claims she understand the division which ravaged her parents' lives there is much more to the story and intricacies which require deeper consideration. Gradually we get the full tale of Kostas and Defne's past which is especially heartrending because it also involves another tragic love story about the gay proprietors of the taverna they meet in. It's a vibrant and sweeping saga that I got fully wrapped up in with all its moments of humour and sorrow. 

One of the most surprising and delightful aspects of this novel is that it's partly narrated from the point of view of a fig tree. And she has lots of opinions! It's very playful the way the tree comes to comment upon the story of these characters' lives as a silent witness while also giving a wholly new view on the situation. Since her conception of time and the interrelationship between all living creatures and the natural world is very different from humans she is able to stand somewhat outside the emotional and political drama of these characters (although she has her own love interest). At the same time she's been physically at this story's centre since she grew in the middle of the taverna and a cutting from her branches was taken to England to flourish in a new form. In this way Shafak meaningfully weaves in commentary about environmental issues which have affected Cyprus over the years on top of the human casualties sustained because of the war. Another point of view given by the narrative I really appreciated was that of Ada's aunt Meryem who comes to stay with the family in England and becomes involved in her niece's life (despite the teen's resistance). She maintains her superstitious belief despite Ada's judgemental attitude and the two come to establish a touching bond. It enforces the fact that Shafak's stories are at heart a celebration of family, love and individuality in all its beautifully varied forms.

The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed

How do we deal with the knowledge that an innocent man was executed by the state because of the colour of his skin? The response from many people in Britain would most likely be that this was a form of institutionalised racism which isn't found here today. Or you might find this fact sadly unsurprising given the way non-white men are still profiled and marginalized in this society – as depicted in “Open Water” by Caleb Azumah Nelson. In her novel “The Fortune Men” Nadifa Mohamed fictionalizes the case of Mahmood Mattan, a Somali-born merchant seaman who was arrested and executed for the murder of a shopkeeper in 1952 despite overwhelming evidence proving his innocence. With emotive detail she depicts the diverse community of Cardiff's Tiger Bay with its West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. Mahmood is a petty thief and a gambler who is far from saintly, but he's not a murderer. The question which drives this story isn't so much whether or not Mahmood can get a fair trial, but why was he persecuted and how are immigrants and non-white individuals still persecuted today? 

What's so powerful about Mohamed's style of writing is the intense way she depicts how Mahmood's perspective and state of being is shaped by the social attitudes around him. He has learned to physically shrink himself in different ways such as making himself invisible to avoid racist abuse or how his stomach has shrunk so that he won't feel hunger so acutely. At any moment he's aware that he might be the victim of vicious malice by a passing stranger because of his appearance and that there will be no recourse for the abuse which is inflicted upon him. He consciously avoids witnessing certain things because he knows “It doesn't pay to see something you're not meant to.” Mohamed also gives considerable space in this story to the perspective of a Jewish family who experience a tragic and violent loss which occurs while they're at home. The agonizing pain of their situation and the hard-won freedom they've found in this Welsh community after emigrating from Eastern Europe is sympathetically shown. The author evokes how these different factions of Tiger Bay live and work within the constrained limits of a larger power structure.

I think it's important how Mohamed chose to highlight and write a novel about this case from history rather than create a fictional character who is purely virtuous. Mahmood gambles with money he gets from benefits. He shoplifts items to give to the people he loves. He's capable of invoking the same racial slurs which are inflicted upon him. His marriage deteriorated and he doesn't always support his children as much as he should. The challenges and tribulations of his childhood and young adulthood are dynamically recreated in the middle of this novel so we get an understanding of how this is a man that's learned to ride the wave of chance and do what he has to in order to survive. He is not perfect, but, like all of us, he strives to be a better person and likes to imagine he's a more upright citizen than he is. Since he intrinsically knows this Mahmood believes the justice system of this country will see it too and doesn't see the need to defend himself against charges which are patently false. But the police need a culprit, the courts have found a scapegoat and the community is willing to lie in order to get a reward. This is the tragedy which leads to his execution and no one would accept such an injustice if it happened to their own son, husband or father. So why do we accept that it happened to Mahmood?

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

Recently I was sorely disappointed by the novel “The Hummingbird” which tells the story of a married man who has never been able to be with the true love of his life. I was reminded how much the structure of a novel can really impact how successfully it conveys its subject when reading Miranda Cowley Heller's emotionally-intelligent first novel “The Paper Palace” because the central story is the same as Veroensi's but much more effective. Elle Bishop is a happily married wife and mother staying at her family's summer camp in Cape Cod. On the evening before the book's opening chapter, she finally had sex with Jonas, a man she's been in love with since she was a teenager but who she's not been able to be with for complicated reasons. We follow the fallout of this over a 24 hour period while getting the story of her difficult family life and events leading up to this disarming experience. We also come to understand the dark secret which simultaneously binds her to Jonas and keeps them physically apart. It's an absorbing and evocative story that realistically details the foibles and frailties of its characters in a way that made me fall for them and deeply care about the testing dilemmas that they face. 

Each chapter feels perfectly measured to show how the small details happening in the present day are impacted by the past. It's compelling how we come to understand the dynamics of Elle's relationship to her mother, her husband Peter and Jonas as the novel progresses. Though the story is told in Elle's voice, I understood all the characters' points of view and felt sympathetic towards them even if I didn't necessarily agree with the choices they make. This gradually builds upon the meaning of the intense encounter which proceeds the novel's opening and creates a tension concerning what Elle will do now that she and Jonas have turned their intense feelings for each other into a physical expression. I was particularly taken with Elle's mother who is such a complex, opinionated and peevish individual. It's totally understandable that Elle would find her difficult and irritating, but she's the kind of forthright individual who is wonderfully entertaining to read about. Although I was a little skeptical about some of British dialogue from Englishman Peter, it felt realistic how he has an easy and affable relationship with his mother-in-law which Elle can never achieve.

Being from New England, I particularly appreciated the way the author beautifully writes about the natural environment of this summer camp and how the structure of this rural community changes over time. There's something endearing about Elle's deep affection for this location despite the painful memories associated with it. The novel also movingly describes the twisted structures of sexual abuse and the poisonous way these occurrences can become secretly weaved into a family's life. It feels like this story offers a new point of view about this difficult subject matter so it's a thought provoking as well as a heartfelt book. I was also completely absorbed by its humour, sensuality and well-judged narrative tension. Given that the author works on different TV Drama Series and that this debut has been snapped up as a Reese Witherspoon choice, it seems likely that this novel will get a screen adaptation. Often reviewers can be snippy about how novels can sometimes feel like they were written only for this purpose, but I think the innovative structure of this book which is perfectly suited to its story makes it an utterly compelling read.

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

I loved reading Yaa Gyasi's debut “Homegoing” so much that I felt a slight sense of trepidation picking up her second novel “Transcendent Kingdom”. Could it live up to the quality of the first book? The answer is yes, but it also surprised me because it's a very different novel and a more self contained story of family life. Instead of creating an expansive saga about multiple generations as she did in her debut, this new novel is about the collapse of one particular family until only the narrator is left. We know this from the beginning and it's riveting and moving to gradually learn how this promising young woman comes to be left all alone. It's also a story that gives an impactful personal take on larger issues. There have been many books about the tensions between religion and science, but “Transcendent Kingdom” eloquently ponders it from a unique perspective asserting “this tension, this idea that one must necessarily choose between science and religion, is false.” Narrator Gifty had a strict Christian upbringing and now studies neuroscience. Using lab mice she researches the mysterious workings of the brain and whether hard-wired behaviour can be altered within all that grey matter. Her work is primarily motivated by a need to find answers about why she lost members of her family to drug addiction and depression. Of course, there's no easy answers but she also meaningfully considers the psychological and sociological factors at play. It's a tremendously meaningful story that completely gripped me. 

The question of faith can't be so easily dismissed when someone is raised to whole-heartedly believe in a certain religion. Gifty certainly sees through the hypocrisy and frequent misinterpretations of the Bible as practiced in the Alabaman community she was raised in. However, Christian practice and belief is a deeply encoded part of her personality so that she feels “'I believe in God, I do not believe in God.' Neither of these sentiments felt true to what I actually felt.” She's experienced the brutal way that some people use religion to justify their own prejudices (whether that's Christians in Alabama or Christians in Ghana) as well as the intolerant attitudes of budding young students who dismiss any notion of religious belief. It frequently leaves Gifty feeling painfully isolated as her distinctive sensibility doesn't allow her to feel like a part of either of these groups. These attitudes also don't reflect the way religion was practiced by her family in their home – especially in times of crisis. It leads her to the complex notion that “My soul is still my soul, even if I rarely call it that.”

It's moving how the narrative becomes a reckoning with the self as the story is interspersed with pieces from a diary Gifty kept growing up. These are her conversations with God where she desperately asks unanswerable questions but they're also a thoughtful attempt to understand the world around her. The tenderness of this child self paired alongside the more hardened solitary scientist she is today creates a heartbreaking picture of a sympathetically lonely woman. Therefore the defensive, withholding way she conducts her personal and romantic relationships (with men and women) makes sense and I felt for her stance. The circumstances she grew up in and her self consciousness about society's superficial assumptions also means that she ardently wants to be viewed as an individual freed from identity labels: “I didn't want to be thought of as a woman in science, a black woman in science. I wanted to be thought of as a scientist, full stop”. 

I was very struck by the tense relationship with her brother Nana who becomes addicted to opioids after he sustains a sports injury. The story portrays the agonizing pain of trying and failing to help a loved one overcome addiction. But it also confronts the attitudes surrounding drug addiction and how it's often connected in the US with racial prejudice. Gyasi is quite rightly excoriating about the behaviour of the community that celebrates Nana's athletic achievements and coldly turns their back on him when he becomes entangled in addiction and can no longer play basketball. This judgemental attitude is something Gifty wrestles with herself reflecting how “I would look at his face and think, What a pity, what a waste. But the waste was my own, the waste was what I missed out on whenever I looked at him and saw just his addiction.” This reminded me of the continuing stigmas fostered by America's “war on drugs” as described in “Chasing the Scream” by Johann Hari. Gifty comes to understand the suffocating social factors which encourage Nana's addiction and contribute his tragic downward spiral. The legacy of shame she feels from this is powerfully depicted. 

This is a brilliantly accomplished novel which is captivating in the way it shows the methodical way its narrator searches for answers to complex, deeply-felt questions.

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

I love a good love story. So few novels about love get the right balance between poetic feeling and poignantly rendered realistic detail. But Caleb Azumah Nelson confidently combines these elements to produce a debut that's beautifully distilled yet expansive in what it's saying. It's about two young black British people who meet in a pub in South East London. Their relationship starts as a friendship and tenderly eases into romance. They're in their early-mid twenties and trying to maintain their artistic aspirations while earning money. He's a photographer and she's a dancer. Nelson narrates the story in the second person to focus on his perspective. This gives the compelling effect of being at a distance at the same time as being privy to his innermost being. It's like the act of being photographed itself where you feel curiously both inside and outside yourself at once. There's a lot in this book about the act of seeing which develops in nuance and meaning with the impactful refrain: “It's one thing to be looked at, and another to be seen.” There's a freedom in truly being yourself but there are consequences that come from such vulnerability. “Open Water” powerfully captures the longterm effects of two specific people who really see each other as uniquely beautiful and endearingly flawed individuals. 

The story references and pays tribute to the influence of current writers like Zadie Smith and Teju Cole – in the case of Smith through a literal meeting with her at a book signing. As well as giving a sweet nod to these figures it makes complete sense that the male protagonist is guided by these writers' words as he ponders what it really means to inhabit a black body. It's powerful how his story shows the complicated formation of his masculinity as he's expected to be both tough and sensitive, grateful for his opportunities as well as resigned to the knowledge that he's undeservedly feared. Momentary respite from these pressures is elegantly captured in fleeting encounters with other individuals at Carnival Sunday or in a barbershop where there's a shared understanding of this ever-present burden. There's a swirl of experiences described in brief, emotionally charged chapters from getting a takeaway after a night out to a joint being shared with a near stranger to tearfully watching the film of ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ to the sobering intrusion of being stopped and searched by the police. And there's also the heat and romance of this young man and woman alternately finding and losing one another. This is such a short book but I feel the resonance of all these moments and sensations like memories.