A collection of brand new ghost stories by a strong selection of highly regarded authors, inspired by historic English Heritage sites; Eight Ghosts waA collection of brand new ghost stories by a strong selection of highly regarded authors, inspired by historic English Heritage sites; Eight Ghosts was a must-have, a book I just had to buy as soon as I laid eyes on a copy. It didn't disappoint. Although I liked some more than others, I enjoyed every one of these tales, with those by Sarah Perry, Stuart Evers, Kamila Shamsie and, particularly, Max Porter standing out as highlights.
The stories are accompanied by a short essay – 'Within These Walls: How the Castles, Abbeys and Houses of England Inspired the Ghost Story' by Andrew Martin – and a 40-page gazetteer of English Heritage hauntings. The book itself is a beautiful object; if you have a lover of ghost stories in your life, I'd recommend picking this up as a gift.
'They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek' by Sarah Perry (inspired by Audley End House and Gardens, Essex) Short but potent, Perry's tale is a pleasing chiller with an outcome that brings to mind the short stories of Daphne du Maurier and Shirley Jackson. The framing device, wherein the narrator is told the story second-hand by a friend, adds to the effect.
'Mr Lanyard's Last Case' by Andrew Michael Hurley (inspired by Carlisle Castle, Cumbria) Hurley is alone among the authors in choosing a historical setting; this story is set in the mid-18th century. In the time of the Jacobite trials, Lanyard is a prosecutor with a fearsome reputation, while the narrator is a clerk who observes his strange downfall. A tale of terror that fits a rather traditional mould – but the creepy capuchin monkey is a stroke of genius.
'The Bunker' by Mark Haddon (inspired by York Cold War Bunker) I was excited about this; York Cold War Bunker sounds so intriguing, and promised to inspire something a bit different from the other locations. However, I found the plot – in which a nurse begins to experience blackouts in which she appears to enter an alternative timeline (?) – unclear and unsatisfying. For me, this was probably the weak point of the collection.
'Foreboding' by Kamila Shamsie (inspired by Kenilworth Castle and Elizabethan Garden, Warwickshire) Right from the beginning, the character-building around Shamsie's protagonist Khalid was so powerful that I completely forgot this was a ghost story. The narrative is as much about Khalid's feeling of being trapped between two cultures and languages as it is about the hauntings at Kenilworth. His close bond with his sister, whom he often thinks of, proves to be pivotal to his fate.
'Never Departed More' by Stuart Evers (inspired by Dover Castle, Kent) A dissolute young American actress has been cast as the lead in Ophelia (seemingly a version of Hamlet with a focus on that character) and visits Dover Castle, where it will be shot, to prepare. Throwing herself into the role, she dons her costume and wanders the castle in character, reciting lines; when she meets a man dressed as a WWII-era pilot, she takes it all in her stride and plays along, even while the feelings she develops for the man – Edward – are very real. I loved the vivid imagery here; there's something of the fairytale about the description, Maya's blithe acceptance of strange sights, and the 'be careful what you wish for' culmination of the plot.
'The Wall' by Kate Clanchy (inspired by Housesteads Roman Fort, Northumberland) Since 'the fire', when she burned her school books in a bin, teenage Alison hasn't been the same. The narrator, her mother, struggles to get through to her and resents the fact that it seems easier for her husband, Simon. On a trip to Hadrian's Wall, the real nature of this family's problems becomes evident. While it's effectively bittersweet, this is a quiet sort of story that hasn't stuck in my mind as much as some of the others.
'As Strong As Death' by Jeanette Winterson (inspired by Pendennis Castle, Cornwall) Two women, Tamara and Jamie, are getting married at Pendennis Castle; told in vignettes, their story charts their relationship alongside the history of the castle, its romances and tragedies. It flows beautifully, despite being structurally choppy, but again, this one didn't really stay with me.
'Mrs Charbury at Eltham' by Max Porter (inspired by Eltham Palace and Gardens, London) The best is saved for last; I LOVED this. It's also the most audacious, choosing to centre a character whose attitude towards English Heritage contains a great deal of contempt. The titular Mrs Charbury is a stubborn woman who, in her twilight years, revisits Eltham, where she used to attend wild society parties thrown by the Courtaulds. It was also the last place she saw her sister, 'poor peculiar Delia', before the latter disappeared. Porter weaves the colourful history of Eltham into his story effortlessly, making it funny, intriguing and genuinely unnerving.
This is the tale of Chizuru Akitani, a girl who, at 12, ‘snaps’ and kills a classmate who has been bullying her. When she’s discharged from juvenile pThis is the tale of Chizuru Akitani, a girl who, at 12, ‘snaps’ and kills a classmate who has been bullying her. When she’s discharged from juvenile prison (an experience recounted in the prologue, which turns out to be the best and most powerful part of the novel), she changes her name to Rio, moves to the USA, becomes a nurse, gets married and has a daughter, Lily. In the story’s present day, 26 years on from her crime, she learns her father has died, and decides to return to Japan. The blurb hints at mysterious goings-on and secrets unearthed, but it’s much more mellow than that would suggest – perhaps oddly so, given its dark beginnings. The focus is always on Rio and her soul-searching; it’s clear we are supposed to regard her as a tormented heroine on a path to personal fulfilment, no matter how troubling her behaviour becomes. (Her victim and his family are barely acknowledged.) There’s also so much superfluous stuff about running in this book that I wondered whether the author had at some point wanted to write a running memoir and decided to smuggle that material into a novel. Still not sure why it was called Pull Me Under, either.
In a dystopian future – it's impossible to say how distant – optimised citizens known as The Young live their lives in a state of extreme neutrality. In a dystopian future – it's impossible to say how distant – optimised citizens known as The Young live their lives in a state of extreme neutrality. The Young must always be In Balance. EOE (Excess of Emotion) is frowned upon; words used to describe strong feelings are flagged (indicated within this narrative by the use of colours). Thoughts and activities are monitored via The Information Stream, and displayed on The Graph for everyone to see. Mira A, named after a fluctuating star, is causing worrying irregularities, creating concern in the community.
I know all the capitalised Things and thought-policing might make this sound like a tedious rehash of common themes, but Nicola Barker's playful approach to language and form elevates it. H(A)PPY is partly a story about music: Mira A plays guitar, and her problems begin when she develops a fixation with a composition by the Paraguayan guitarist Agustín Barrios. The Stream bombards Mira A with information, a montage of historical accounts of Barrios and Paraguay, a flood that cannot be silenced. In the novel's more experimental segments, Barker twists and spins chunks of text as if conducting a musical performance.
As Mira A/Barker tells us, 'word' and 'soul' are synonymous in the Guaraní language. Mira A is subject to a system which demands perfection by obliterating the soul, in part by forbidding the words used to express emotion. In 1870, following the Paraguyan war, allied forces attempted to ban Guaraní, prohibiting it from being spoken or written in schools. The Young have forgotten the lessons of the past (or, as they'd have it, The Past), but these voices demand to be heard. As it turns out, H(A)PPY is not just an effective sci-fi novel but a stealth historical novel, commemorating those stories in danger of being erased from official accounts of history.
Reading Fleur Jaeggy (for the first time) after a couple of mediocre litfic novels was like having a glass of ice-cold water thrown in my face on a hoReading Fleur Jaeggy (for the first time) after a couple of mediocre litfic novels was like having a glass of ice-cold water thrown in my face on a hot day. Invigorating, refreshing and something of a relief, if not exactly what you would describe as pleasant.
Jaeggy writes in staccato sentences and writes of the indistinctly strange. Her prose is the kind that forces you to sit up straight and pay attention. A single paragraph can contain so much that you will need/want to read it five times before moving on to the next. This is partly because details sometimes seem to be mentioned randomly, or related in the wrong order, but read again and it will become clear every word is placed deliberately. With unnerving precision.
This collection reads like a classic, a book that could just have easily been written in the 19th century as today. Something about it put me in mind of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, though I couldn't quite tell you what. Some of Jaeggy's premises – such as that of the sinister 'The Aviary', a queasy story which culminates in a young man imprisoning his wife in a birdcage – reminded me of The Doll's Alphabet by Camilla Grudova.
In the second story, 'Negde', I highlighted a sentence because I loved it, but now I come to look at it again, I realise it's also a perfect description of the book itself: There is calm, a vague stealthy disquietude, some void. I can't stop thinking about that phrase – some void. How perfect is that! You need to be prepared to grapple with some void in order to read Jaeggy. You will navigate eerie stasis, and sense horror lurking between the lines. For me, this was a thrilling experience. Certainly an author I will be returning to.
--- Favourite stories: 'I Am the Brother of XX', 'The Last of the Line', 'Agnes', 'The Aviary', 'Tropics', 'Names'
Favourite lines and passages:
And now there is the nightmare, the one and only nightmare, of living. – 'I Am the Brother of XX'
I am twenty-five. I have done what was, according to my sister, important. But when I was eight I was a poet and a writer. And no one had told me that it was important to write. Since then I have only done things that were important, according to my sister – studying, graduating, succeeding in life. In the street I look at people passing by, while I should be going to talk to someone about a job. I tell myself that every one of them perhaps is succeeding in life... – 'I Am the Brother of XX'
Winter, the real season of the year. As in Saint Petersburg. "The wide river lay white and frozen like a continent's tongue lapsed into silence." So he wrote. An arcane hypoborean breeze on the branches of trees. Iosif can't help living in watery places. He is like a sailor. He plays with the lunatic wind star that pushes him towards the river. He liked the blue uniforms of navy officers and their coats with double rows of gold buttons. Like avenues at night, their lights receding. – 'Negde'
Caspar is seized by nostalgia. Nostalgia for the children in the portrait. The food repels him, he throws it to the dogs. He fills a glass with port. It is night. – 'The Last of the Line'
There is a stillness in the room, a sound from afar, almost a primary sound that wants to be listened to as silence. – 'The Last of the Line'
I bought little orchid plants. They came from Holland. From South America. I had seen them in the Mediterranean. Growing in the damp. White, with purple eyelets. Rosy, pale, an evil expression. Acidulous. Yellow. They last a long time. Not much earth. Not much nourishment. They reawaken in the dark, at night. Avid for company. When they wilt, they become small skulls in tuxedos. Tiny night birds. They look at me. I look at them. – 'Agnes'
The vegetation reeked of an eerie maleficent calm, a brutal calm. – 'Agnes'
The girl saw her thoughts on the window panes like insects swollen with blood on the walls of a room. – 'The Heir'
She smiled sweetly. It is not clear to whom. But from one window insects flew. – 'The Visitor'
What names do nameless things have? And what are they? And if they had a name, would that alone make them recognisable? – 'Osmosis'
The flush of spring, the scent was nauseating, tainted and too strong. The solemn and glorious instant just before dissolution. In a field he saw flowers with small purple wounds. – 'The Perfect Choice'
I was always struck by her ineluctable delicacy of spirit, if one might call it that, in her way of approaching others, especially friends. As though she knew with the precision of a mathematician all the nuances that might hurt or wound. – 'The Salt Water House'
Memories are not properly a past. – 'The Salt Water House'
American War is narrated sometime in the early 22nd century by Benjamin Chestnut; it's about his aunt, Sarat. (How Benjamin knows so much detail of SaAmerican War is narrated sometime in the early 22nd century by Benjamin Chestnut; it's about his aunt, Sarat. (How Benjamin knows so much detail of Sarat's life becomes clear at the end; his biographer's perspective allows for the inclusion of articles and documents that flesh out the story's context.) From her family's cabin to a refugee camp, from the tomboyish games of childhood to her teenage years as a rebel fighter and what she suffers as a consequence, the narrative follows Sarat for over twenty years.
We first encounter Sarat as a six-year-old girl in Louisiana circa 2075, as the Second American Civil War is beginning. Its cause is the South's refusal to accept the Sustainable Future Act, which bans the use of fossil fuels. The nation splits between the United States in the North and the secessionist Southern states. Further divisions exist in the South: 'the Mag' (Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia) forms the heart of the 'rebel Red'; the surrounding states are viewed with suspicion; South Carolina is quarantined after the outbreak of a plague nicknamed 'the slow'; Texas is subsumed by the Mexican Protectorate.
While I was reading American War, the phrase good old-fashioned storytelling continually popped into my head, without me really understanding what I (or some rogue part of my brain) meant by it. There was something about it that reminded me of certain books I read as a child, like Watership Down by Richard Adams – books that seem content to take their time weaving a make-believe world, books that trust you to have the patience to memorise invented terms, understand the tensions between myriad rival groups, and keep referring back to a detailed fantasy map. This dystopian America is richly realised, full of the sort of detail that might make a less interesting and/or well-written novel drag. Whether you find the wider picture believable or not, the details make it so.
After I finished reading the book, I kept thinking of another phrase. I felt as though I'd emerged from it. Emerged. A bit weatherbeaten, a bit changed, unlikely to forget these characters, with the same slight sense of disorientation you get when you come out of a cinema into a bright sunny day. It is completely absorbing and emotionally wrenching. I was surprised by how fiercely I ended up rooting for Sarat and how desperate I was to know more about the history of this version of society. (I just couldn't get enough of the 'factual' inserts, which include extracts from textbooks, history books and memoirs, news articles from the early days of the war, legal documents, letters and interviews.)
Having read this, I'm really surprised more people aren't talking about it – it seems to have been published in the UK with little fanfare and next to no social media buzz. For those interested in reading more diversely, it seems a perfect fit: it's by a non-white author, has a queer black female protagonist, and deals with topical themes of a) how class cleavages and the North/South divide impact US politics and b) how climate change might affect Western society and the international balance of power. Lest that sound too much like it's just ticking boxes or preaching about ~issues~, it is also in-cre-di-bly well-written, immaculately constructed, and moving. One of my books of the year, for sure.
(Rating would be 4.5 stars if that were possible. This didn't quite have the intangible quality that would tip it into personal favourite territory; nevertheless, it is a novel I feel I will be thinking about for a long time.)
I received a review copy of American War from the publisher through NetGalley.
This concise and straightforward primer on post-truth politics and culture is basically an essay organised into five chapters (the paperback is a pleaThis concise and straightforward primer on post-truth politics and culture is basically an essay organised into five chapters (the paperback is a pleasingly compact, pocket-sized book). Inevitably, d'Ancona talks a lot about 2016, the year post-truth exploded, and its two political juggernauts – Trump and Brexit – but the main thrust of his argument, frequently reinforced, is that while it may be tempting to believe the post-truth/'fake news' era will die whenever Trump leaves office, such an assumption is dangerously reductive. Instead, he sees the 'shock' triumph of both campaigns as the natural result of an underlying trend involving the collapse of trust in authority, rejection of scientific evidence, the spread of conspiracy theories and a tendency to prioritise emotion above truth. It's a decent introduction to a thorny subject, even if there are some dubious points: for example, I'm leery of the way the book lays the blame for the current political climate at the door of postmodernism. Towards the end it briefly goes off on a tangent in the vein of 'well if everyone would just get off their smartphones and social media and engage with their communities...' – surely harking back to the same imaginary idyllic past that d'Ancona's main objects of criticism have so successfully invoked.
Overall, a good summary whose flaws don't stop it from being informative and useful – but if you've read a handful of longform pieces on this topic, I don't think you need to buy it.
Six years ago, I loved Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child; I leapt on The Sparsholt Affair as soon as it was published, not least because I thouSix years ago, I loved Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child; I leapt on The Sparsholt Affair as soon as it was published, not least because I thought it sounded rather similar. The story is split into five parts, spanning a period of about 70 years. It opens with a first-person account set during the Second World War, with a group of Oxford students lodging together after being evacuated from their colleges. Freddie Green, who narrates, is the nexus of a group that also includes Evert Dax, the gauche son of a somewhat famous author, and aspiring artist Peter Coyle. All are mutually fascinated by a new student, David Sparsholt, and both Evert and Peter are determined to seduce him.
In the second segment, David's son, Johnny, is 14 years old and grappling with his own sexuality. It's Johnny we follow for the next half-century, as he too is drawn into the orbit of Evert Dax et al. He unwittingly circles back to the encounters David had at Oxford, and must reconcile his perception of his father with what he discovers. In the first section, Freddie uses the phrase 'the Sparsholt affair' repeatedly to describe his friends' blatant desire for David; in part two, the affair is rather more literal; but what most people mean when they refer to it is a scandal involving Sparsholt senior. We're made aware this was something shocking enough to have been newsworthy, but the details remain murky for quite some time; indeed they are never fully elucidated.
The scandal – like many pivotal events in the book – happens off the page. The Sparsholt Affair is fragmented; the reader must work to put it all together. Characters speak in fragments, too. They misunderstand one another, or their sentences tail off. This fluid style may be true to life, but it can be difficult to interpret on the page, sometimes making for stilted and confusing reading. As I worked through the chapters, often with a stronger sense of duty than pleasure, it began to dawn on me that The Sparsholt Affair was much less like The Stranger's Child than I'd hoped. It lacks the scope and grandeur of its predecessor, there are few truly memorable scenes, and frankly, Johnny Sparsholt is just not a terribly interesting person.
The greatest strengths of The Sparsholt Affair lie half-hidden in its details: tiny moments and seemingly throwaway observations that capture experiences you might previously have supposed too infinitesimal to define. I enjoyed many small things about this book, and often marvelled at Hollinghurst's powers of description. But I'm afraid I found the bigger picture – the story as a whole – a bit of a drag.
First, a bit of scene-setting – this might look and sound like a thriller, but context is important (and may be crucial to enjoyment where this novel First, a bit of scene-setting – this might look and sound like a thriller, but context is important (and may be crucial to enjoyment where this novel is concerned). In the world of The Dying Game, it's 2037. There was a Second Cold War in 'the early 2000s', leading to the creation of the Union of Friendship, of which the Protectorate of Sweden – where this novel is set – is a part. The political situation is less clear, but we know there is an all-seeing, all-knowing 'Party' whose influence extends far beyond government. The protagonist, Anna Francis, works for a foreign aid organisation and has recently returned from a major aid mission to Kyzyl Kum. By all accounts, it was a success, and has even made Anna a little bit famous. But an early scene shows the Party has information they can use against her, and her interior monologue suggests she's experiencing (undiagnosed and untreated) PTSD. Anna's narrative also reveals her infatuation with an inscrutable colleague, Henry Fall.
With all that in the background, the plot is as follows: Anna is 'asked' (i.e. instructed) to go to Isola, a tiny, largely inaccessible island, where she will help with the recruitment process for an elite Party unit, the shady 'RAN group'. Her task: to pose as a murder victim. Only she and a doctor, who'll examine Anna and confirm her 'death', will be in on the fact that it's a setup: the rest are candidates. Once she's 'dead', Anna will be concealed in a hidden observation area from which she'll watch the others and report on how they cope with this high-stress scenario.
Things begin to go awry when Anna sees a familiar face among the candidates, and from there the situation spirals wildly out of control. There's a bit of a And Then There Were None vibe to it – people getting picked off, nobody knowing who to trust, and, of course, the remote island.
Perhaps the soft-dystopia angle serves to make the main thrust of the plot believable, but let's face it, there have been far more improbable thrillers with far more mundane settings. The details of this backdrop are what made the story work for me, but may be offputting for those who would prefer a straightforward thriller. I loved some of the smaller details – one of Stockholm's 'most buzzed-about restaurants' is popular partly because of its reputation for 'almost never having power failures' – and I felt Anna's coldness worked perfectly for her character arc.
Intriguing and surprising. This is Avdic's fiction debut; I'll keep an eye out for more from her.
I received an advance review copy of The Dying Game from the publisher through NetGalley.
Reading this book was like riding a somewhat shoddy rollercoaster. You get on, and at first it's exciting, but after a while you realise it's similar Reading this book was like riding a somewhat shoddy rollercoaster. You get on, and at first it's exciting, but after a while you realise it's similar to one you rode a while ago, and that one wasn't very good. Then you decide that, since you can't get off the thing, you may as well try to enjoy it anyway. And in the end, although it's not a great experience, you have to admit that you had a certain amount of fun.
The Dark Net reminded me why I usually avoid this type of lurid fantasy-horror: to me it feels like the trashiest of trash, more intellectually bankrupt than a whole pile of identikit thrillers and chick lit. Books like this inevitably hook me at the start, when they're all about atmosphere and creepiness and establishing character, but when they begin their slide into the ludicrous, my interest wanes. That said, there's something inescapably compelling about such over-the-top tales, and as you might doggedly watch a daft horror film through to the end (while rolling your eyes at every new, ridiculous development) I did want to finish it.
In this particular case, gigantic hellhounds, possessed serial killers and a Portland secretly riven by turf wars between keepers of the 'Light' and 'Dark' are all thrown into the mix well before the dark net demons of the title make an appearance. (In fact, the blurb is kind of misleading – the dark net element becomes crucial in the last act, but prior to that, most of what happens has nothing much to do with the internet. The protagonist is a woman whose defining characteristic is that she's a technophobe who can barely send an email.) In a style that seems to be typical of the genre, actions are very kinetic in this book. Nobody ever presses or opens anything, they 'punch', 'snap' and 'thumb'; nobody ever writes, they 'scratch down notes' – a persistent detail that makes it sound like all the characters are using cheap fountain pens.
I hoped this novel would fulfil my cravings for clever, subtle digital horror, something like Alexander Weinstein's Children of the New World or Luke Kennard's The Transition with a little more of a horror edge. I've read some good short stories on this theme: 'Feature Development for Social Networking' by Benjamin Rosenbaum, 'The Game' by Joanne Harris, 'Friends' by Richard Crompton and (as mentioned in my newsletter) an episode of the podcast The Magnus Archives titled 'Binary'. But this has more in common with the likes of Joe Hill's NOS4R2, David Wong's John Dies at the End, and Grady Hendrix's Horrorstör – which is to say that it's entertaining, but too far-fetched and blood-spattered for my taste.
This would have been a two-star book, but a couple of things bumped it up for me towards the end: 1) there wasn't any romance in it, despite a fairly obvious pairing – kudos for that – and 2) I loved the epilogue.
I received an advance review copy of The Dark Net from the publisher through Edelweiss.
Menmuir's first published work since his Booker-longlisted debut The Many, Rounds is a short story which reminded me very much of Alison Moore's work.Menmuir's first published work since his Booker-longlisted debut The Many, Rounds is a short story which reminded me very much of Alison Moore's work. (Appropriately, the praise quoted on the cover comes from Moore herself.) A 19-year-old girl, Alice, is moving into her first rented house, a place she has misgivings about before she even steps over the threshold. There's the ugly carpet, the pink bathroom that makes her feel nauseous, the stack of old newspapers the letting agent told her they'd remove. As she sits in her dad's car outside, she's distracted by the sight of a little girl on a bike – smiling, she thinks, with 'satiated ferocity', a phrase she recalls from a poem read at school.
Rounds is full of atmosphere; it's one of those stories that feels like it sits a little way outside reality, yet it would be difficult to say why. It also folds the very real horror of anxiety and panic attacks into a tale that may, or may very well not, be about an evil presence. I've read the last page three times, and each time I've had a different idea about what actually happened. This small story packs enough of a punch to merit re-reading and analysis; I'm looking forward to reading more of Menmuir's short stories in future.
(I read this along with another Nightjar Press chapbook, Fury by DB Waters, which is reviewed here. The stories are excellent companions to each other.)
Fury is a short story which, like a lot of good horror, takes common tropes and twists them into something blisteringly original. It's a disconcertingFury is a short story which, like a lot of good horror, takes common tropes and twists them into something blisteringly original. It's a disconcerting take on both body horror and the haunted house, opening with an unnamed male character summoned to a property on a 'call-out'. We might deduce he's a forensic scientist, judging by the way he approaches the scene: 'automatically, he put on the whites. He pulled on his gloves.' Immediately, he feels attracted to this new-build home, as if it's somewhere he's been many times before. His boss's instructions make little sense to him, and a turning point comes when he realises that the terrible damage to the house and its residents is not the work of a human being...
It's a nice change to read a Nightjar story that marches confidently into horror territory, rather than trading in ambiguity and suggestion (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course). It's perfectly compact, the short story an ideal medium for such subject matter. The imagery conjured up by Waters' prose will stick with me for a while.
(I read this along with another Nightjar Press chapbook, Rounds by Wyl Menmuir, which is reviewed here. The stories are excellent companions to each other. )
Moving Kings is like a more palatable, less brilliant version of Cohen's Book of Numbers. It's shorter, and not nearly as offensive or frustrating; buMoving Kings is like a more palatable, less brilliant version of Cohen's Book of Numbers. It's shorter, and not nearly as offensive or frustrating; but nor is it as ambitious, audacious, or freewheeling. It could, kind of, be an interlinked collection of short stories focusing on a loose knot of characters that includes removals mogul David King; his distant cousin Yoav, late of a compulsory stint in the Isareli army; Yoav's tinderbox squadmate Uri; and, tangentially but critically, an addled Vietnam vet whose dilapidated Bronx home the King's crew come to clear. These little dives into their consciousness probe the Jewish experience, the immigrant experience, the male experience. It isn't the staggering trip that Book of Numbers was but there are still some delicious sentences. Even when Cohen uses typical litfic-speak he somehow elevates it: 'past the natural gas plant's twinkling, the pressure vessels rose like foreign moons roiling with oil'. While Moving Kings is unlikely to make my end-of-year favourites list, it has consolidated my resolution to (eventually and probably rather slowly) make my way through Cohen's back catalogue.
'Record of a Night Too Brief', the first story in a collection of three, can only be described as a series of dreamlike events. It opens with the narr'Record of a Night Too Brief', the first story in a collection of three, can only be described as a series of dreamlike events. It opens with the narrator realising that 'the night was nibbling into me'; she starts running and immediately transforms into a horse, with onlookers clapping and exclaiming 'the Night Horse has arrived'. She's later forced to eat huge quantities of strange food by 'an array of gentlemen', chased by a talking monkey, quizzed by a crowd of demanding kiwis, and almost turned into a fish by a petulant child. Some bits had me rolling around in hysterics, particularly the Weird Twitter-esque episode in which the narrator meets a man with moles stuffed down his jacket (he is, in fact, a mole himself, but trying to conceal the fact); asked what she 'feels is the most important quality in a man', the narrator replies 'that he's loaded. Loaded with moles...', causing the moles to explode out of his jacket 'in a continuous stream'.
As these bizarre vignettes play out, a fractured narrative is unfolding, concurrently, in alternate chapters. These involve the narrator's relationship with a girl, first introduced as someone she encounters in a fast-moving crowd. Different versions of the same scene then repeat, in which the narrator and the girl are fashioned out of one another but also consume each other. The narrator is always searching for the girl, but finds many versions of her are not quite up to scratch. They could be lovers, or the same person. Similarly, in the more nonsensical interludes, the narrator often seems to become some animal or other, then segues back into being human without appearing to find anything unusual about the situation.
In the second story, 'Missing', the narrator's brother disappears – literally. Referring to him as 'brother no. 1', she explains that 'disappearances happen all the time in my family', and that it's likely he is still in the family home; it's just that he's incorporeal. Again, people are interchangeable: since brother no. 1 was on the verge of being married when he disappeared, brother no. 2 simply takes his place. A number of strange traditions define the behaviour of the families in this story, for example reverence of a large ceramic jar which is said to contain the spirit of an ancestor, the idea that a family household must (at whatever cost) be made up of five people, and the keeping of magical pipe foxes as pets. It can be read as a satire of tradition – even more effective in translation, when the reader is less likely to be intimately familiar with the culture and religion the author is depicting. (Not to mention the fact that, compared to some of the things that happen in these stories, the traditions seem pretty reasonable.)
Finally, there's 'A Snake Stepped On'. A young woman, known only as Miss Sanada, treads on a snake on her way to work. With that, the snake transforms into a woman in her mid-fifties, and tells her: 'you stepped on me, so now I don't have a choice'. The snake-woman then moves into Miss Sanada's apartment, a development the protagonist decides to treat as though it's perfectly normal. The snake claims, nonsensically, to be Miss Sanada's mother. It turns out having a snake-person living in your house is fairly common, and they'll keep trying to tempt you over to the 'snake world'. They're not the only ones: Miss Sanada's great-grandfather was seduced away from his family by a bird-woman. 'I'd heard this story from my mother when I was a student in middle school,' the narrator ruminates, 'and I remember thinking it was a very odd fable. It didn't seem to have any point to it.'
Is that perhaps something that could be said of these absurd, fantastical stories, too? They confound and disorientate because they have no anchor in reality at all. 'Record of a Night Too Brief' is a slippery hallucination from start to finish, and while the other two begin more innocuously, they soon descend (ascend?) into surrealism. They have other things in common: the narrator is always – as far as we can tell – a young woman, and each tale features uncomfortable scenes that blur the lines between familial and sexual intimacy. There's a persistent preoccupation with people shrinking or growing larger, in a literal, Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole sort of way; and, of course, the animal-human transformations.
If you think you can keep a hold on a narrative through its more ordinary features, you'll soon be proved wrong, as they will invariably be usurped. The stories assume you, like the characters, will take bizarre developments in your stride. Along with Camilla Grudova's The Doll's Alphabet, Record of a Night Too Brief is one of the most peculiar – yet entertaining – books I've read in recent times.
I received a review copy of Record of a Night Too Brief from the publisher through Edelweiss.
Evening Primrose is the journal of Masechaba, a young doctor in South Africa. She sometimes talks about her life – the chronic endometriosis she suffeEvening Primrose is the journal of Masechaba, a young doctor in South Africa. She sometimes talks about her life – the chronic endometriosis she suffered as a girl, her brother's death – and sometimes about her work – the sheer exhaustion of life as a junior intern, the guilt that accompanies her inability to conjure sympathy for every patient. She writes in brief sketches, addresses her journal entries to God, and punctuates parts of her narrative with passages from the Bible.
Within the first few pages of the book, a particular scene had me hooked. As Masechaba thinks back to the day she graduated, she recalls the starry-eyed enthusiasm she shared with her peers:
A rumour had started that car companies would be waiting at the back of the hall after our graduation ceremony, and brokers waiting to give us mortgages without deposits, as our titles were surety enough. Someone else had said there would be financial advisors, too, handing out platinum credit cards with our names already printed on them. I knew this was all nonsense. But I kept turning my head, just in case.
As a working class kid who excelled at school, I had similar thoughts: a degree would be like a golden ticket to a banquet of career opportunities, my biggest problem would be choosing which glittering path to take – I just didn't have a clue. So my heart immediately broke a bit for Masechaba, that naivety and idealism. Such illusions are soon crushed. Hospital work is an endless, thankless slog: she's always tired, always overworked, unable to save everyone. She hates it, then hates herself for hating it. She's disappointed by her colleagues, who are racist towards patients from outside South Africa and disparaging towards white South Africans.
Nyasha, Masechaba's Zimbabwean colleague and flatmate, says black South Africans remain in thrall to white supremacy. Masechaba's mother says kwere-kweres (foreigners) like Nyasha use black magic and will steal everything from her. As the story progresses, instances of xenophobic violence increase, and Masechaba feels their effects reverberating through her life and work. Irritated by Nyasha's prejudice, and simultaneously desperate to prove to her that most South Africans do not condone the violence, she starts a petition to demonstrate her hospital's stance against xenophobia. This brings Masechaba to the attention of the press – and that's when the plot takes a sharp, brutal turn.
Evening Primrose portrays a South Africa in which dangerous tensions lurk just beneath the surface, the country's unrest mirrored in the environment of the hospital. Yet Masechaba's viewpoint is absolutely key – not just as a black South African woman and a doctor, but specifically as a woman with endometriosis. The condition defines so much of what Masechaba feels, and it's even what compels her to become a doctor in the first place. In one scene, Masechaba has to apologise to Nyasha when a colleague says she could get sick if she drinks from the same bottle as a Zimbabwean. Nyasha is nonchalant: [She] shrugged. 'It's just a period South Africa's in,' she said matter-of-factly. 'Growing pains.' Masechaba tries to make a joke, turning the phrase into 'period pain'. But of course, for Masechaba, period pain is agonising, constant, and remains a threat even when she's able to treat her condition with medication. She sees the pain and bleeding as a 'beast' that 'was only sleeping, and could wake at any moment' – perhaps a fitting metaphor for her country's 'growing pains', too. (Underlining the significance of this scene, the book was originally called Period Pain, and it's interesting to see the violent bright red of the South African cover in contrast to the innocuous pale pink of the UK version.)
Masechaba's voice moves from wry and witty to broken and raw. Though this is a slim novella, there's no doubt it packs a punch, and the ending is sure to be divisive (I'm still not sure how I feel about it). Evening Primrose is truly powerful, interweaving the personal and the political to great effect, and I'd particularly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in South African literature.
I received an advance review copy of Evening Primrose from the publisher, Sceptre.
I only meant to read a sample of Hunger, but I found the first few chapters so compelling that I had to read on. The author opens with some clear statI only meant to read a sample of Hunger, but I found the first few chapters so compelling that I had to read on. The author opens with some clear statements: every body has a story, this is hers; it is not a weight-loss memoir; not a motivational book, nor a 'success story', but simply a true story. From the beginning, she is disarmingly honest and open. She talks about her struggle to accept her size and her experiences as a fat woman, but this is much more than just a book about food, weight and body image. Subtitled 'a memoir of (my) body', Hunger is just as much a memoir of mind.
In painful scenes – which must have been unimaginably difficult to write – Gay revisits the trauma that led her to begin overeating and had a lasting impact on her life. She talks about her struggles with self-loathing, her relationship with her parents and siblings, and how her gender, race, and specific cultural background (she is from a Haitian American family) have informed her experiences and self-image. She portrays her 'lost years', when she ran away from home and the prospect of a university education and fell into a series of short-lived – often destructive – relationships. There's no neatly wrapped-up resolution here, just a raw, messy, human story with a lot of struggling and glimmers of hope.
In recent years, rising concerns around diversity and feminism have ensured that some progress has been made in changing the narrative around what types of bodies, particularly female bodies, we see as 'acceptable'. Nevertheless, it's still all too easy to feel you've somehow failed if you're not joyously and loudly happy with your body. What if you're ambivalent about it? What if that ambivalence makes you feel guilty and creates even more of a vicious circle of self-hate? What if one's weight and how they feel about it is bound up with past trauma and mental health issues? Gay's account feels necessary. I was struck by the lucidity of so many statements and questions she makes/asks, for example:
'What I know and what I feel are two very different things. Feeling comfortable in my body isn't entirely about beauty standards. It is not entirely about ideals. It's about how I feel in my skin and bones, from one day to the next.'
'Intellectually, I recognise that I am not the problem. This world and its unwillingness to accept and accommodate me are the problem. But I suspect it is more likely that I can change before this culture and its attitudes toward fat people will change. In addition to fighting the "good fight" about body positivity, I also need to think about the quality of my life in the here and now.'
'What does it say about our culture that the desire for weight loss is considered a default feature of womanhood?'
When I first heard about Hunger, I had the impression that it was going to be an autobiography-cum-recipe book, born of the freeform cooking posts Gay used to do on her Tumblr, though I can no longer remember whether that was ever actually announced or whether it was just an assumption I made. I mention it because the book doesn't have much in the way of a structure: it's not a chronological memoir; there are lots of short chapters, some of which feel like they have a theme, some of which don't. The upside of this: it enhances the sense that you're reading an incredibly personal piece of writing, a stream of consciousness with minimal editing. The downside: it is occasionally repetitive, and some phrases which initially seem poignant become slightly irritating through overuse.
It's the honesty and clarity of Gay's prose that makes Hunger such a propulsive read. Her style is addictive – so simple, very easy to read, yet she says and reveals so much. I really love her writing, and I love the way she comes across as an individual. After finishing Hunger I really wanted to hug her (although she's not a hugger, and for that matter neither am I!) and I'm sure many, many readers will feel the same.
A scrappy outsider accepted, precariously, by a privileged clique; the golden allure of wealth and exclusivity; a terrible and deadly secret. Give me A scrappy outsider accepted, precariously, by a privileged clique; the golden allure of wealth and exclusivity; a terrible and deadly secret. Give me variations on this theme from now until death and I will be perfectly happy. The Party is like The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Secret History and Brideshead Revisited got together and had a beautiful, twisted child. Our narrator, Martin Gilmour, is a bitchy sociopathic narcissist – so naturally, I adored him.
At boarding school, Martin is an outcast. His background doesn't match up to the other boys', and he struggles to understand boundaries and codes of behaviour, which stops him from making his mark by way of charm or humour. Everything changes when he impresses golden boy Ben Fitzmaurice and the two quickly become best friends, so inseparable that Martin spends summers with Ben's family and, eventually, they head to the same Cambridge college together. 25 years later, Ben, now outrageously rich, is hosting a party. The guestlist is star-studded; there are even rumours the Prime Minister will attend. Martin's invited, but he's chagrined that he and his wife, Lucy, have had to make do with a Premier Inn hotel room rather than being asked to stay at the Fitzmaurices' sprawling manor. After all, he and Ben are like brothers. At least, that's how he sees it.
Opening with a scene in which Martin is questioned by the police, The Party bounces between Martin's version of the history of his friendship with Ben, pages from Lucy's notebook, and, of course, the party itself. Along the way, questions are slowly answered – often in ways you wouldn't expect – and new ones are thrown up. What is the secret that has bound obsessed Martin and reluctant Ben together as 'best friends' for a quarter of a century? What lurks behind the facade of Martin and Lucy's marriage? And what happens to lead Martin to that police interview room?
I love stories like this and I love protagonists like Martin, but I've been burned by bad pastiches many times, so it's exhilarating to find a novel in which plot and character are pulled off with such breathtaking skill. It's much harder than it looks to write this kind of narrator successfully: get it wrong and you're left with nothing but shallow nastiness. Here, as calculating and cruel as he may sometimes be, the reader is always on Martin's side. (Well, this reader was, anyway.) There's also Lucy. The unexpected nuance written into her chapters is its own kind of masterstroke. The narrative is so powerful that she could easily be sidelined – the dowdy woman who has to take a back seat to her husband's fixation with Ben, the butt of their friends' jokes, a person with no interior life of her own. Not so here. Her development took me by surprise, and after finishing the book, I find the thing I'm still thinking about the most is the complicated and really quite beautiful relationship between Martin and Lucy.
I loved every page of The Party and I never wanted it to end. It is meticulously structured – tiny clues meted out so you're utterly gripped while the plot always stays a couple of strides ahead of you – and Martin and Lucy are both brilliantly realised characters. Read it on the beach, read it on a rainy day, read it on your way to work, whatever – just read it.
I received an advance review copy of The Party from the publisher through NetGalley.
Alice Wells, a middle-aged ex-librarian, is at something of a crossroads. She's recently been made redundant, has split from her husband, and her teenAlice Wells, a middle-aged ex-librarian, is at something of a crossroads. She's recently been made redundant, has split from her husband, and her teenage son is growing up fast. Having always nursed ambitions of becoming a writer, she tracks down a distant, and now elderly, relative, Orla Nelson. Orla is a distinguished author – while she only ever penned one novel, a dark coming-of-age story titled In the Lost Province, it has come to be regarded as a modern classic. Alice hopes to write about their shared ancestor, the silent film actress Hattie Soak, and with Orla's endorsement, Alice's book might just become the success she's always dreamed of.
Things don't quite go to plan for Alice: Orla is crotchety, impatient and suspicious, refusing even to answer Alice's overly chummy emails at first. When they do begin to converse, Hattie's story unravels, tragic, bloody and mysterious all at once. The actress was on the cusp of success when her husband and children were murdered and she disappeared without a trace. The film she'd just shot, Maisie Runs with the Hounds, has since been lost. It isn't long before strange echoes of Hattie's life begin to surround the two women: visions, voices, inexplicable interruptions. There's also the matter of a film historian who is obsessed with Hattie, claiming to spot the actress's image in films made long after she vanished.
The Night Visitors cleverly exploits the tensions involved in co-authoring while, of course, being an example of collaborative work itself. Orla is haughty and self-important, but her arrogance is a mask concealing deep fears of loneliness, old age and helplessness. For her part, Alice has a gigantic chip on her shoulder about her lack of university education and writing experience, and is painfully aware of how banal her life must seem to Orla, whom she treats with both reverence and spite. Each woman's character is slowly revealed as their bickering about Hattie strips their performative layers away.
Told entirely through emails between Alice and Orla, The Night Visitors is a fantastic example of how a good old-fashioned ghost story can be updated to a modern setting without losing any of the subtlety and tension associated with the genre. There's something of both Susan Hill and F.G. Cottam – two of my favourite writers of ghost stories – about The Night Visitors. It's very sinister, but Ashworth and Hirst take the time to lay the foundations for a proper story, creating investment in the plot and questions about the characters' intentions as well as a spooky atmosphere. I absolutely relished it.
A completely mind-warping novel in which people patiently take turns to speak in improbably fully-formed stories about their bizarre pasts; seemingly A completely mind-warping novel in which people patiently take turns to speak in improbably fully-formed stories about their bizarre pasts; seemingly ordinary characters suddenly turn out to be crime-fighting superheroes, some of them aliens; people melt and disperse into the air. Dear Cyborgs interweaves two plotlines: the initially down-to-earth tale of a boy losing touch with his childhood best friend; and a convoluted tale of good and evil narrated by one of the aforementioned part-time superheroes. The chapters are punctuated with indecipherable riddles, all addressed 'Dear Cyborgs'. There are always stories within stories in this book – a detail that turns out to be key to understanding it. We have the characters' monologues, recalled memories, dream sequences, imagined conversations, many 'origin stories', and even an extract from a novel one of the characters (who may be a fictional construct in the first place) is reading. Political protest and civil disobedience serve as motifs throughout all of them. There are odd yet endearing moments of modern realism, when the more fantastical scenes are grounded by a mention of a couple meeting on OkCupid, or someone's friend-of-a-friend being a blogger. I kept having to flick backwards and reread several pages to remind myself whether what I was reading was supposed to be real, imagined, a dream, or fiction-within-fiction.
If I had to sum it up in a sentence: Communion Town meets I Hate the Internet in an alternate universe. I don't know that I understood all of it, but I did like it, very much.
Wry, deadpan observations from a Chinese-American PhD student whose career and relationship are in a state of flux. (If the narrator of Chemistry wrotWry, deadpan observations from a Chinese-American PhD student whose career and relationship are in a state of flux. (If the narrator of Chemistry wrote that sentence, she'd no doubt follow it up with a knowing aside about the scientific meaning of 'state of flux'.) Chemistry is charming and droll, but slow-moving, if it moves at all.
It's interesting to read something like this – the ubiquitous millennial postgrad 'what am I doing with my life' narrative – from the perspective of a scientist, rather than someone who's done an arts degree. That, plus the narrator's difficult relationship with her Chinese heritage (often typified by her demanding parents), provides a unique angle. The rest of it is good, but has been done before: a dryly funny voice, job/career/workplace angst, a frustrating-to-read-about relationship the protagonist obviously needs to leave, etc.
A promising debut, definitely, but one that drags and lags more than such a short book should. My motivation for reading on was less 'I really want to know what happens next' and more 'when I've finished this, I can start something else'. I blame Elif Batuman; after the utter luminous brilliance of The Idiot, every other novel about a student seems unsatisfactory.
Eat Only When You’re Hungry is a story about dysfunctional people and their place in the world. Its protagonist is Greg, who at the beginning of the bEat Only When You’re Hungry is a story about dysfunctional people and their place in the world. Its protagonist is Greg, who at the beginning of the book is setting off to look for his son, Greg Junior (aka GJ), who’s had lifelong addiction problems and many stints in rehab, and now seems to be missing. This search turns into a kind of oddball road trip. Along the way Greg contemplates his past and current relationships, failures as a father, and self-image: he is fat, he hates himself for it, and the longer we spend with him, the more it becomes clear he has a poisonously bad relationship with food (and probably an eating disorder).
Six years ago I read Hunter’s two short story collections – Don’t Kiss Me and Daddy’s – in quick succession, and loved both; I still recommend them all the time. I didn’t get on quite as well with her first novel, Ugly Girls, and the same goes for this. I think it’s perhaps because, in a novel, the pace is (necessarily) slowed right down. For a story about a man searching for his missing son, Eat Only When You’re Hungry has little urgency to it, and the frantic urgency Hunter is capable of creating is one of the main reasons I fell in love with her writing. It’s not at all bad: I enjoy reading about people with ordinary lives who fuck things up; I don’t necessarily find it depressing, and while Greg and those around him have their issues, I found them more believably human than they were unsympathetic. But whatever I wanted from it (maybe something more colourful, more extreme in its most dramatic moments?) I didn’t quite get.