There's a lot that's interesting in this short, engaging book, and early in Why I am Not a Feminist, Jessa Crispin makes some points that had me noddiThere's a lot that's interesting in this short, engaging book, and early in Why I am Not a Feminist, Jessa Crispin makes some points that had me nodding along. She opens her manifesto with a disparaging list of what feminism now is. It has become 'a decade-long conversation about which television show is a good television show and which television show is a bad television show'. It is 'a narcissistic reflexive thought process: I define myself as a feminist, so everything I do is a feminist act, no matter how banal or regressive'.
Crispin's main target is an easy one: the 'universal' or 'lifestyle' feminism of wealthy, white westerners, apparent in declarations of feminism from mainstream celebrities, expensive designer clothes emblazoned with feminist slogans, and campaigns for more female CEOs and politicians (that is, further elevation of women who are already extremely privileged). Her objections are understandable, but surely it's quite a widely held opinion that much of what typifies this 'feminism' isn't much more than a marketing ploy? Everyone will have different ideas about what's wrong with modern feminism, but but to my mind one of the main problems is the fact that different strains of feminism are locked in such aggressively siloed groups, within which questioning of the accepted doctrine is verboten. Crispin does address this briefly when she talks about 'outrage feminism' and social media pile-ons, but she seems nervous of really tackling the issue.
Sometimes Why I am Not a Feminist seems to contradict itself from one page to the next. Crispin suggests in one chapter that women should build alternative forms of family and community, in order to move away from the idea that children can only be raised within romantic relationships or by isolated single mothers. But by the final chapter, she's saying it's selfish to be concerned with one's own family and community. She claims women are not inherently caring, compassionate and nurturing – that this is an idea that has been imposed by patriarchal systems – yet repeatedly argues that such 'feminine' qualities are missing from society because women have long been excluded from positions of power. (It's worth mentioning also that all the 'evidence' here is anecdotal. Crispin says in the acknowledgements that she is indebted to various feminist writers, but no specific sources are cited.) She pays lip service to the idea of being more inclusive of marginalised groups but, again, doesn't explain how this might be achieved.
Crispin also, strangely, appears to misunderstand what the phrase 'toxic masculinity' means. Perhaps it's just poor wording, but the way she talks about it here makes it sound like she believes those who use it are saying all masculinity is toxic.
Ultimately, this is one of those books that goes on about all the problems with something – in this case a particular (quite narrow) brand of 21st-century feminism – but fails to offer a viable alternative. There are no solutions to be found here, aside from a few vague suggestions about resurrecting various radical feminist ideas and rejecting 'the system'. This seems a rather significant oversight for something that labels itself a 'manifesto'; it's really more of a polemic. It is thought-provoking, though, and I'm glad I pulled it out of my to-read stack for that reason, if nothing else.
Sweetpea is an absolute fucking scream. Profanity very much necessary; if you don't think I needed to use 'fucking' in that sentence, you definitely sSweetpea is an absolute fucking scream. Profanity very much necessary; if you don't think I needed to use 'fucking' in that sentence, you definitely shouldn't read this book.
If there are awards for 'x meets x' descriptions in book blurbs, some HQ copywriter deserves the equivalent of an Oscar for hitting on 'Fleabag meets American Psycho'. Part journal, part internal monologue, replete with swearing and ironically deployed slang, Sweetpea chronicles the uncensored thoughts and confessions of Rhiannon. An editorial assistant in her late twenties, she's frank and gleefully non-PC about her sex life, cheating boyfriend, boring job/friends, weirdo colleagues/neighbours... and the fact that she's a serial killer. That's right: when she isn't fantasising about offing her patronising boss or reordering the list of people she most wants to murder, Rhiannon gets her kicks by going out at night with her Sabatier knife and seeking suitable victims.
What makes this work? It helps that Rhiannon is oddly relatable and endearing. Aside from the murder thing, her life is so normal, right down to the fact that she shops at Lidl. She's smart and funny but hamstrung by ordinary frustrations: friends who talk about nothing but their kids; a promotion that never materialises; a nagging feeling that she 'needs' to lose weight. And on a deep, sick level, isn't Rhiannon just living every misanthrope's dream? Instead of running away from a would-be rapist, she plays along until she gets the chance to... well, I won't go into it, but it definitely makes her worthy of the 'female Patrick Bateman' label. She extracts prolonged, violent revenge on the girl who made her life hell at school. She doesn't have to suffer Tube perverts because she can threaten to slit their throats (and give them a glimpse of the knife to back it up). And if we've all mentally sketched out our kill lists every now and then, well, Rhiannon might just follow through on hers.
There may be a lot of blood and a bit of a dive into Rhiannon's troubled past, but this is definitely more black comedy than thriller. (There's also quite a bit of sex. Sweetpea is basically what I imagine that book Maestra would have been like if it was actually entertaining.) Rhiannon's blunt-and-breezy voice is a masterstroke, and her kill lists (Regina George meets The Bride? Adrian Mole meets Dexter?) repeatedly made me laugh out loud. I found it so hilarious, and loved Rhiannon so much, that the rating could have been five stars – but I was disappointed in a development towards the end, and the out-of-character behaviour that results in the wimpy ending.
Still an ENORMOUS amount of fun, though. Sweetpea is nearly 500 pages, but I flew through it in no time, pausing only to note down my favourite Rhiannon one-liners. Now I just need a sequel and a true-to-the-book film version.
I received an advance review copy of Sweetpea from the publisher through NetGalley.
I had pre-ordered Attrib. and other stories, and I read the first story one insomniac late night, as soon as I received it. I could hardly believe it I had pre-ordered Attrib. and other stories, and I read the first story one insomniac late night, as soon as I received it. I could hardly believe it was real; I thought it might have been a dream. I read it again the next day.
Attrib. is like that. It's so unlike what I was expecting. I'm so used to debut short story collections by women being deadpan and wilfully horrible, full of impassive descriptions of sex and depression. That's not to say I haven't loved some books fitting that description. But Attrib. just feels so fresh: there's a real sense of joy here, a palpable pleasure in the beauty of language and what it can do. Tiny moments spiral outwards in looping, sinuous language. Characters feel malleable, genderless, waiting to be shaped by the reader.
I can't help comparing Williams' voice(s) with Ali Smith's. I'm aware this is because my frame of reference for this kind of experimental-but-readable, free-flowing writing is small, but there you go: Smith is what I was reminded of. A little bit of Virginia Woolf, too.
Attrib. is a book I could have read in a single afternoon, but I held off, wanting more mental space to process and explore the language, and a chance to reflect on each individual story. It's a true original.
--- Favourite stories:
'The Alphabet', the above-mentioned opening story – the narrator is affected by aphasia, and is losing words.
'Attrib.' – inanimate objects speak volumes to a Foley (sound-effect) artist.
'Smote (or When I Find I Cannot Kiss You In Front of a Print by Bridget Riley)' – the title says it all, but this simple scene is brought to life in electrifying style. This has such rhythm and flow to it, I read it as something somewhere between a song, a long rap verse and a performance of a poem.
'Fears and Confessions of an Ortolan Chef' – the narrator's job involves (illegally) cooking ortolans, rare songbirds eaten (whole) as a delicacy after being drowned in brandy. The chef's partner has a certain, slowly doled-out reaction to this line of work, gradually causing them to question it.
'Mischief' – in a desert setting, the narrator looks for landmines, with the help of a trained rat. I think I can safely say this is the best rat-centric story I have ever read.
'Spines' – the most conventional narrative in the book, yet there's something incredibly hypnotic about it. A family (husband, wife and teenage son) holiday in a French cottage, and a hedgehog turns up in the swimming pool.
--- Favourite lines & passages:
One cannot spell eyes without having to also spell yes. This was always especially the case with you, and with yours. Incidentally, my dictionary is definitely getting smaller. This could be because I am moving away from it or because it is shrivelling. – 'The Alphabet'
I make a boiled sound because I am the first to admit that my spirit animal is probably a buttered roll and that I create characters and situations where I am brave for the same reasons some people love the stuffing of caught birds. – 'Alight at the Next'
Let's say a corsair moon would be doing scimitar practice above us and the stars would be like anvil sparks. – 'And Back Again'
I start to think that stealing looks at you while you sleep is like being in a kitchen and knowing where the knives are kept. – 'Fears and Confessions of an Ortolan Chef'
There was an imbalance to the scene on the shoreline generally, as if a note was being sung off-key or somewhere a pair of parentheses had been left unclosed. – 'Bulk'
Ostensibly a dystopian novel, but actually almost entirely about motherhood. Written in a spare style that has poetic qualities, thus very short; a quOstensibly a dystopian novel, but actually almost entirely about motherhood. Written in a spare style that has poetic qualities, thus very short; a quick read. I can't imagine a less interesting approach to dystopia, and the story left me cold, but that is a very personal judgement. Just not for me.
I received an advance review copy of The End We Start From from the publisher through NetGalley.
Helen Moran introduces herself as a thirty-two-year-old woman, single, childless, irregularly menstruating, college-educated, and partially employed. Helen Moran introduces herself as a thirty-two-year-old woman, single, childless, irregularly menstruating, college-educated, and partially employed. When I looked in the mirror, I saw something upright and plain. She wears clothes she finds in bins or left in the street, and her favourite word seems to be 'disgusting'. In her own opinion, she is a genius at being ethical. Her internal monologue is peppered with exclamation marks and swear words; she frequently announces things aloud to empty rooms. She envisions grief as a European man in his forties, average build and height, balding, with a red nose. 'Sorry to disrupt the peace', she explains, is her 'stock apology': it could mean so many different things to people. It could mean, I'm sorry, I made a mistake. It could mean, I'm sorry, I'll ruin you, bitch.
I was about halfway through Sorry to Disrupt the Peace when I realised who Helen reminded me of: Ottessa Moshfegh's eponymous Eileen. It's her distorted view of herself; the way she's prudish and perverted at the same time; the anger that explodes from her narrative at intervals; even her job, working with 'troubled young people' (she always uses this phrase), is similar. The weirdness and squalor of Helen's surroundings, for example the filthy state of her family home, also reminded me of Moshfegh's writing. Here are a couple of quotes that struck me as particularly Eileenesque in their rage and disconcerting frankness:
I was fine with genitalia in my face and blow jobs and spitting out their sperm, I was fine with rimming, I made my peace with it, and I was so angry. Underneath my peace there was an anger, an ugly anger, the force of it was formidable, and I was the one who had to live with it. Everything was bitter.
I've always identified with the victims, I identified with the underdogs, the colonised, the beggars and peasants, the bacteria in the sponge, the mosquitoes and the ants. I would get my revenge one day. Revenge on whom? someone might ask. I'll show you, I said to no one.
Helen is living in Manhattan when she finds out her adoptive brother has committed suicide. (Helen is also adopted, and she and her brother are both Korean by birth, though not biologically related.) She has such a bad relationship with her adoptive parents that she hears the news not from them, but from an uncle she barely knows; nevertheless, she immediately decides to go home to Milwaukee to 'support' them. There, she starts what she calls a metaphysical investigation into what happened to her brother, following clues found in his room and interviewing his friends.
I have always preferred to be in the background, an extra in the movie of my own life, but if people had to look at me at the funeral ceremony, at least I would be wearing a black turtleneck, which would convey a sense of mystery of the abyss.
As with many eccentric characters, we learn as much about Helen from the things she inadvertently lets slip and from others' reactions to her – often either horrified or concerned – as we do from her own words. When she bumps into the parents of one of her brother's friends, the father says It's not good to talk like this. You're upsetting her. Look at yourself, and it isn't clear whether he's talking to his wife or to Helen. When her own parents respond to her behaviour, there often seems to be a dissonance that points to Helen's unreliability, her warped perception. It works the other way, too: Helen's many eccentricities make it close to unbelievable that she's ever managed to hold down a job and live with a roommate.
Why wouldn't anyone admit that a life is not a life but a deathward existence?
So central is Helen's voice to this novel that I kept forgetting to care about the supposed plot, the 'mystery' of her brother's suicide. That was going to be my main criticism. But this thread is beautifully tied up in the last few chapters, as the veil of Helen's quirks is finally lifted to properly explore her grief and her brother's depression in a uniquely sensitive treatment of suicide.
Funny, sad, bizarre and unexpectedly tender. A fantastic debut, and a voice I won't forget.
This short, fast-paced novel explores the lives of four young women who are forever altered by a tragedy in their youth. When Sae, Maki, Akiko and YukThis short, fast-paced novel explores the lives of four young women who are forever altered by a tragedy in their youth. When Sae, Maki, Akiko and Yuka are ten years old, their friend Emily is assaulted and murdered by a man posing as an employee of their school. The murderer is never identified. When the girls are thirteen, Emily's mother Asako invites them to tea and gives them a choice: they must either find Emily's killer within the next fifteen years (before the statute of limitations on murder runs out); spend their lives performing penance for their inability to save her; or suffer Asako's revenge.
Unsurprisingly, this cruel ultimatum has an enduring impact on the children. Each girl blames herself for Emily's death, and through separate first-person narratives – each addressed to Asako – we find out what becomes of them in those fifteen years. Sae believes herself to be 'defective' and refuses to grow up. Maki, tormented by what she sees as her cowardice on the day of the murder, devotes her life to teaching, hoping she will be able to protect her students from any similar threat. Akiko becomes a recluse, spending time with nobody apart from her beloved brother Koji and his stepdaughter Wakaka. Yuka develops an obsession with the police, and begins shoplifting so they'll pay attention to her. Finally, we hear from Asako herself.
Penance has strong momentum and is initially intriguing; this is particularly true of the creepy first chapter. However, it runs out of steam somewhere in the final third, and Asako's 'explanation' is a little convoluted and not very satisfying. I liked this book, and it was an easy read, but I don't think it will stick in my memory for long.
I received an advance review copy of Penance from the publisher through NetGalley.
A sequel of sorts to Kobek's I Hate the Internet – though I can't help wondering whether this was written first, not only because it's set in an eA sequel of sorts to Kobek's I Hate the Internet – though I can't help wondering whether this was written first, not only because it's set in an earlier time period, but because it feels more conventional in structure and more naive and hopeful, less existential rage than an irreverent, oddly sweet coming-of-age story. It revisits two supporting characters from Internet, Adeline and Baby, and charts their evolution amid the dynamic milieu of 80s/90s NYC: Baby is a gay club kid/science fiction author (a unique multihyphenate if ever there was one) while Adeline, mortified by her wealthy, pushy mother, adopts an archaic Transatlantic drawl and ends up illustrating comic books under a Russian nom de plume. If all that makes it sound unbearably quirky, there's always a knowing sort of scorn in both Baby and Adeline's voices that makes it smart and sad and funny from start to finish.
The story is a wonderful heady romp through the New York in the decade between 1986 and 1996. It reminded me a lot of Garth Risk Hallberg's City on Fire (if 75% of the characters were cut and it was set 15 years later) with a side order of Party Monster and a dash of I Love Dick. Our leads cross paths with celebrities and notorious writers; they lace their narratives with anger, ennui and hope. They're platonic soulmates, and I rooted for their friendship as though it was an epic love story. The Future Won't Be Long is as acerbic as it is likeable, a sour cherry of a novel. I've probably done it no justice at all here but I really, really liked it – probably more than I did Internet, actually.
I received an advance review copy of The Future Won't Be Long from the publisher through Edelweiss.
A spectacular collection of essays – actually, not so much essays as sublime, feverish phantasmagorias that pull apart the distinctions between fictioA spectacular collection of essays – actually, not so much essays as sublime, feverish phantasmagorias that pull apart the distinctions between fiction, fact and surrealism, exploring the intersections of pop culture, queerness, self-image and what it means to be (or feel like) a monster. This Young Monster opens with a letter addressed to the Beast (of Beauty and the fame, of La Belle et la fame) and closes with a series of diary entries about Arthur Rimbaud. My absolute favourite was 'Spook House': in the form of an imaginary screenplay, it's like being educated about horror classics by costumed characters and trick-or-treating kids while immersed in a setpiece that's a combination of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Over the Garden Wall and Simon Hanselman's Megg, Mogg & Owl. Fox is an omnivorous consumer of media, a connoisseur of both high and low culture; the essays in This Young Monster reference mainstream TV shows and horror movies nearly as often as they do outsider art and arthouse cinema. This book made me want to read and see and hear everything mentioned, it made me want to write and create and rejoice in my own monstrousness. Exhilarating.
After the unexpected success of The Loney, high expectations surround Andrew Michael Hurley's second novel. Can it possibly live up to his award-winniAfter the unexpected success of The Loney, high expectations surround Andrew Michael Hurley's second novel. Can it possibly live up to his award-winning debut? In my opinion, it certainly does (and then some), but it is a very different animal. Readers hopeful that Hurley would continue to mine the seam of folk horror and weird fiction he so effectively employed in The Loney might be a little disappointed. Owing much to its rural setting, Devil's Day is a story about family and nature, imbued with unrest and tragedy; a bucolic tale that may owe a greater debt to Hardy than Aickman.
John Pentecost belongs to a Lancashire sheep farming family. Though he's moved away to Suffolk and married Kat, he feels a deep connection to his home community, the Endlands (the small cluster of farms, kept by the same families since time immemorial, can hardly be called a town). Yet the place also holds difficult memories: of being bullied as a boy, his mother's death, the strained relationship he has with his taciturn father. When his grandfather – a colourful local character known to all the Endlands as 'the Gaffer' – passes away, John is compelled to return home.
The road had always been at the mercy of the weather and he remembered the Cutting being nothing more than a dirt track that softened to butter in the autumn, and in the summer kicked up dust that marked its meander in a thick brown haze. After even the briefest of rainstorms, the top layer of it would run like a river and horses would have to trudge the miles knee-deep, dragging the carts like sledges. In the worst winters the valley could be cut off for days. After the Blizzard, it was weeks before anyone got in or out. By that time, what had happened there, what the Devil had done, was already fable.
To this day there's no road sign to the village of Underclough or the few houses of the Endlands. Anyone who needs to come to the Briardale Valley knows where they are, and if a stranger asks for directions then they're told to turn between the abattoir and the three beech trees that keep that part of the lane in permanent shade.
Local legend has it that a hundred years ago, the Devil disguised himself among the farmers' flocks and brought a terrible snowstorm to the valley. Thirteen people died – a catastrophic loss for such a small community. In the aftermath, a number of odd customs sprang up, and the Endlanders still observe them. Devil's Day falls around the same date as Halloween, and takes place the night before the Gathering, when the sheep are rounded up and brought down from the moors. The prize ram is crowned with a handmade wreath; there's a bonfire, and a stew made with the first lamb of spring; everyone is expected to dance and sing along to traditional rhymes. The Endlanders regard Kat with suspicion; for her part, she finds the apparent sincerity of their superstitious beliefs bemusing. John is more cautious. He doesn't necessarily believe in Devil's Day, but seems to find it wise to participate... just in case.
Needless to say, the Endlands is remote and old-fashioned. It seems almost to exist outside time. My craving for the macabre dissolved as I found instead a more subtle evocation of dread in which attention to detail, the authenticity of the context, is key. Every moment of Devil's Day feels genuine; Hurley's restraint and ability to pace his story are awe-inspiring. There are quirks of language that recall The Loney. John's parents are always 'Mam and Dadda'; the Endlanders often refer to the Devil as 'the Owd Feller'. The place names are redolent of history and folklore – Fiendsdale Clough, Archangel Back, Reaper's Walk. The setting, its otherness, emerges as inherently uncanny. (For John, literally: this place is his home, yet he is forced to see it through the eyes of an outsider, his wife.)
At its heart, this is a novel about the relationship between man and nature. One might conclude that there is no God here, only the fruits of the land; no Devil, only the whims of the weather. 'Nothing was ever settled,' says John: 'Everyone here died in the midst of repairing something.' The 'corrosive urges of nature' are always trying to reclaim the farms. When we glimpse anything unnerving, unnatural, those moments are all the more powerful and strange for being contained within this pastoral diorama. Even the closing scene, ostensibly hopeful, is not without an underlying note of horror.
I enjoyed The Loney, but Hurley's sophomore novel is better in every way. I wanted to turn back to page one and start all over again the moment I finished it. For me, Devil's Day is one of the finest books of the year.
I received an advance review copy of Devil's Day from the publisher through NetGalley.
I don't know if the author is just insanely prolific or whether there's a huge backlog of her work to translate into English, but it seems there's a nI don't know if the author is just insanely prolific or whether there's a huge backlog of her work to translate into English, but it seems there's a new Yrsa Sigurðardóttir book every nine months or so, and here, like clockwork, is the latest. The Legacy is the first in the Children's House series. It introduces the central characters of Freyja, director of the Children's House refuge for traumatised and abused children, and police detective Huldar.
The Legacy has one of those devilishly clever prologues: set in 1987, it briefly depicts three young siblings being split up and sent to adoptive families. We know nothing about them, except that their background is so disturbing that a) the adults present can barely bring themselves to talk about it, and b) it's deemed best to separate the children before their reliance on each other becomes unhealthy. Flash forward to 2015, and the gruesome murder of a young mother – with her seven-year-old daughter the only witness – appears to have nothing to do with the opening scene. But, of course, they must be connected. If the opening hooks you, the compulsion to understand how 1987 and 2015 join up is what will drive you through almost 500 pages at speed.
This being a series, it also needs a thread that will be carried through to subsequent books, and here it comes in the shape of an unnecessarily complex set of entanglements between Huldar and Freyja, no doubt setting up what will eventually become a relationship. Huldar has also had an ill-advised hook-up with a colleague's wife, the consequences of which slowly unravel over the course of the book. Although some of this is more relevant to the plot of The Legacy than it first appears, most of it is pretty boring to read about. Whenever the narrative dwelled on either character's domestic situation, I longed for a return to the crime plot.
That said, the grotesque murders are the worst of both worlds: too obviously invented to convince, but more horrible than I want to read about in a novel. And when the murderer's motive is revealed, it turns out to be ridiculously convoluted. While I'll grudgingly admit the solution does tie everything together – including that prologue – it's so utterly unguessable that I found it frustrating anyway: not so much an 'ah, I see – ingenious!' lightbulb moment as a 'what, really?!' throw-the-book-aside-in-annoyance moment.
I wonder if the author feels more wedded to crime conventions when writing 'series' books than she does writing standalones, as without exception I have found the latter to be more original, more effective and superior in just about every way. I've also noticed that she always seems to weave at the very least a suggestion of some ghostly or supernatural element into her one-off books, something that's conspicuous by its absence here. I missed that dark, intriguing edge; the deaths in The Legacy aren't frightening, just horrible, and the plot is more than a little clunky. I will continue to read standalone novels from Sigurðardóttir, but I don't think the Children's House series is for me.
I received an advance review copy of The Legacy from the publisher through NetGalley.
Under the Sun opens with a brilliantly drawn scene depicting a series of moments in the breakdown of a relationship. Having moved to southern Spain toUnder the Sun opens with a brilliantly drawn scene depicting a series of moments in the breakdown of a relationship. Having moved to southern Spain to buy a finca – a country estate – with her artist boyfriend Michael, Anna has found this 'dream life' isn't all it's cracked up to be. While attempting to host a dinner party for two of Michael's snobby friends, Kurt and Farah, she finds her patience stretched further and further as she's shut out of conversations, belittled and made to look intellectually inferior, until she's compelled to blurt out a furious response. The scene ends there: it's perfect, a microcosm of all the frustrations lurking beneath the surface in an unbalanced relationship.
Fast forward 18 months, and Anna's single, alone in Spain and running a bar in Marea, a place derided by Michael as a 'ghastly little genteel town, stuffed with retirees from the Home Counties'. The finca has been left empty; Anna lives in a tiny apartment above the bar, sleeping in an expensive chair, a relic of her former life and the only thing she salvaged after Michael left. When a smooth-talking businessman named Simón appears on her doorstep and asks to rent the finca, she agrees without hesitation. She soon comes to regret this decision when it transpires Simón is actually subletting the building to a group of workers who may be illegal immigrants – especially when a body washes up on the beach and Anna suspects Simón is involved. All this plays out against the background of the 2008 financial crisis, with Anna finding she has little to no chance of selling her home, and nothing else to live on.
First chapter aside, the story just didn't grab me the way Moggach's excellent debut, Kiss Me First, did. It's all a bit flat, and with the supporting cast of British pensioners, there's a special-episode-of-Rosemary & Thyme feeling to the plot. (It reminded me a little of Deborah Lawrenson's 300 Days of Sun, but that has a much stronger sense of history and place.) What I found most interesting was Anna's relationship with Michael; long after it had been left behind, I longed for further exploration of their dynamic and how they fell apart. Meanwhile, Anna's whole post-Michael situation annoyed me – I have so many questions about so many money-related aspects of this story. Her decision to let Simón rent the finca is so stupid it's barely credible, and her continual drinking and wasting money when she's meant to have nothing is grating too.
At the risk of sounding like one of Michael's insufferable friends, I found Under the Sun rather pedestrian. The characterisation in Kiss Me First was so thrilling and surprising that I hoped Moggach's next book would be something more innovative. This is a good light read – great for what it is, but I did expect more.
I received an advance review copy of Under the Sun from the publisher, Picador.
If I was in the habit of saying 'what did I just read?' after finishing a particularly odd book, I'd certainly say it about The Doll's Alphabet. I fleIf I was in the habit of saying 'what did I just read?' after finishing a particularly odd book, I'd certainly say it about The Doll's Alphabet. I flew through the whole of this short story collection over the course of a long train journey (I often read fiction quickly, but even I was surprised at how swiftly I made it through this) and, afterwards, felt like I'd experienced something like a sensory overload. Motifs recur so frequently throughout these strange stories that the book left me with a jumbled mental image of weird objects: dolls, sewing machines, particular types of food (toast with golden syrup, various tinned things), factories, insect-like body parts. Some of the stories are flash fiction, between a sentence and a page in length. Others take plenty of time to flesh out their grubby dystopian worlds. They tend to focus on women; there's a lot of sex, a lot of it disturbing; a lot of power play between the genders. Yet, in spite of all this dark weirdness, The Doll's Alphabet is so charged with absurdity that it can't help but be extremely funny at times.
'Waxy', probably the most-discussed story from the collection, is packed with its own proper nouns: it's frowned upon for a woman to be without a Man; women work in Factories and take care of their Men, while Men study Philosophy Books and take Exams. There's a post-war feel to this world – the outdated gender politics, the rationed food, the posters saying things like 'A GOOD LADY DOES NOT LET HER MAN LOITER'. In 'Agata's Machine', the title character constructs (using an old sewing machine) a contraption that makes visions of mysterious men appear – as if in a silent film, except these images have minds of their own. In 'Unstitching', women step out of their skins; in 'Edward, Do Not Pamper the Dead' (what a title!), the dead keep on eating, smoking, reading newspapers. But I think my favourite might actually have been 'The Gothic Society', just over a page long, in which gothic motifs and objects spontaneously appear throughout urban environments: possibly elaborate acts of vandalism, perhaps a sort of plague, like a prolific weed. It's typical of Grudova's stories that it ends without conclusion.
Sharon and Mel meet as art students at an upstate New York college. They're a couple of working-class misfits in the midst of a crowd of bored rich kiSharon and Mel meet as art students at an upstate New York college. They're a couple of working-class misfits in the midst of a crowd of bored rich kids, and they bond over their shared love of animation, beginning a working partnership that will define their lives. From there, I thought the story would go on to explore the evolution of their friendship step by step, but in chapter two we unexpectedly flip forward to Sharon and Mel ten years later, just starting to taste the first fruits of success and tentative fame. Mel is a whirlwind of swearing and drinking and drugs and one-night-stands, always the last and loudest girl at the party. Sharon is locked in an endless and perpetually unsuccessful search for love, with a string of unsuitable boyfriends and unrequited crushes behind her. Sharon always narrates, and the reader learns of her secret project, the only thing she keeps from Mel. She calls it 'The List', an illustrated compendium of men – partners, flings, objects of lust. The List is a path back into Sharon's childhood, to trauma she has tried to suppress.
The Animators is the story of Sharon and Mel's partnership, of how both women are shaped – and irreparably damaged – by their personal histories, of the emptiness in Sharon's heart and how she seeks to assuage her loneliness. But more than that, like all good stories of art and artists, it's about the all-consuming, terrifying, destructive and redemptive power of the impulse to create. I tore through it; this is a very easy book to read and very quickly becomes engrossing. I never could've predicted where the story was going to go. There are so many emotive moments, yet very little sentimentality. Some of the smaller, quieter details – Sharon's awareness of her body, not love or hate but always an awareness, and her feeling that she is 'the most alone person I know' – ring so true. This is unfiltered, honest narration, a startlingly convincing voice. I also liked that Whitaker often depicts elements of women's lives and behaviour that would traditionally be considered 'masculine', but this is never self-consciously signposted or made out to be a big deal, it's simply there.
When I first heard about The Animators, I thought it sounded very much like Dana Spiotta's middling Innocents and Others – so much so that the resemblance, along with the dread phrase 'female friendship' in the blurb, would have put me off trying it if I hadn't received an email from the publisher with automatic approval for an advance copy on NetGalley. Like Innocents and Others, it's about two women who are friends in their youth and grow up to become successful filmmakers. It also has similarities to The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, another story about making films and the potentially devastating fallout of using your life as inspiration for your work. But I liked The Animators more than these books: in fact, they both look worse in its shadow. It's so alive with passion, sadness, drama and intimacy, and even though the two protagonists both pissed me off at times, they never felt anything less than vividly real. I'm glad I took a chance on this one.
I received an advance review copy of The Animators from the publisher through NetGalley.
I think this book might have worked better for me if I'd read it before Elif Batuman's The Idiot. Batuman and Rooney give their narrators similar voicI think this book might have worked better for me if I'd read it before Elif Batuman's The Idiot. Batuman and Rooney give their narrators similar voices: sharp, clear and deadpan but excessively self-aware. Both use email conversations to map out the development of a relationship. Both novels are told from the perspective of naive, supposedly intelligent young women who appear largely passive, falling into particular courses of action more because of the lack of a viable alternative than any great impetus on their part. When I say 'supposedly intelligent' here I'm really only referring to Rooney's Frances: she seems little more than a poser when juxtaposed with Batuman's protagonist Selin, who is imbued with such palpable intellectual power that her observations and ideas crackle off the page.
The plot follows Frances and Bobbi, her best friend and ex-girlfriend, as they become entangled with an alluring older couple. Initially this is mainly because Bobbi is pursuing Melissa, an artist, but soon Frances enters into an affair with Nick, Melissa's actor husband. The whole story is told from Frances' point of view.
This is a character-driven novel, and for me, the characters were the problem. On a personal level, I hated (most of) them; on a critical level I felt they lacked the necessary depth to make the plot work (in particular, I did not believe in Melissa and Nick as a thirtysomething married couple). When I think about it, Frances is true to a lot of what I remember about being 21 – her thoughts are self-absorbed, self-flagellating and gullible, her conversations filled with mildly endearing, very performative intellectual posturing – but for whatever reason, she made me roll my eyes with exasperation rather than feel nostalgic for that period of my own life.
In contrast to the likes of The Idiot and Stephanie Danler's Sweetbitter, which offer fresh, provocative and delightful reinterpretations of the coming-of-age plot, Conversations with Friends is the sort of book that makes me think maybe I should stop reading fiction about people younger than me. Almost everyone in it is irredeemably narcissistic, pretentious and nowhere near as smart as they think they are. I wanted to slap Frances and punch Nick. The disproportionate ire aimed at stories about women who have affairs has long been a pet hate of mine, but in this case, I could find absolutely no sympathy for Frances and just felt irritated every time she got bogged down in her emotional distress over Nick. Unfortunately, this makes up an awful lot of the book.
The narrative is always best when it moves away from Frances and Nick's relationship. An episode in which Frances is taken to hospital is lucidly realised, and in general Rooney's descriptions of sickness and pain are powerful. Bobbi is intriguing, though the tight focus on Frances doesn't quite allow enough room for the reader to see the charismatic figure other characters treat her as. (I'd have preferred the story – or at least part of it – to be told from Bobbi's perspective.) So yeah – I loved Rooney's writing here, she's so talented, and incredibly young to have written a novel so poised and polished. Despite the issues I had with Conversations with Friends, I'm really looking forward to reading more from her. I just hope she writes about less insufferable people next time.
I received an advance review copy of Conversations with Friends from the publisher through NetGalley.
Glaxo is a compact, arresting novel, a sharp jab of a story. The setting is the dusty Argentinian town of Chivilcoy; the title comes from the 'Glaxo fGlaxo is a compact, arresting novel, a sharp jab of a story. The setting is the dusty Argentinian town of Chivilcoy; the title comes from the 'Glaxo factory' that looms menacingly over it. At first it seems that nothing of note could ever happen here, but peel back the layers and there is a simmering tale of lust, betrayal and revenge. It unfolds through four stories, told by four of the five main players over forty years (though not in chronological order).
The first part, Vardemann's story, is broken up into miniature chapters, littered with odd instances of repetition, and language that seems to loop strangely. There are sentences like this: 'Just the blackened metal drums, burning with fires that never before seemed to exist by day, with the fires burning that don't seem to be there during the day.' It produces a surreal effect, such a strong impression of clearly demarcated, consciously acted scenes – little plays, almost, within the story – that I was strongly reminded of Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence and the other films in the Living trilogy. At the same time, Glaxo kind of feels like an old-fashioned Western, too, something encouraged and underlined by frequent references to the 1959 movie Last Train from Gun Hill. As the story progresses, its initial halting – at times near-comical – unreality falls away, until you reach the last segment, Folcada's story: a single long paragraph, an expletive-ridden stream-of-consciousness rant, spat out like the confession of someone whose rage has never abated.
It's a shame Miranda, who is in some ways the catalyst for the violence in Glaxo, has no voice here. Almost always reduced to a racist nickname, she remains on the margins even as she unwittingly influences the lives of everyone else in the story. But in a novel about the interior world of masculinity, maybe that's the point. Those who arouse suspicion (women; the American Mormons living on the edge of town) remain as tragically obscure to the reader as they are to the men of Chivilcoy.
Do you ever read two (or more) completely unrelated books, in quick succession, that seem – somehow, by coincidence – spiritually identical? This has Do you ever read two (or more) completely unrelated books, in quick succession, that seem – somehow, by coincidence – spiritually identical? This has happened to me recently with Iain Reid's I’m Thinking of Ending Things and Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream. (I'm tempted to add Jen George's short story collection The Babysitter at Rest too, since it's insistently dreamlike and illogical, but it's too irreverent to be a true match for the others.) Both Ending Things and Fever Dream are very short novellas that can easily be read in their entirety in an hour or two. They share a sense of shifting nightmare logic and a horrible compulsive darkness that makes you burn through the pages in search of an answer. Both feel predominantly like horror stories despite the absence of many of the genre's typical hallmarks and the fact that they are not packaged as horror.
Fever Dream opens with a disorientating conversation; I had to read the first page several times. Eventually it becomes apparent that the narrator, Amanda, is lying in a hospital bed and answering the questions put to her, with some urgency, by a boy named David. She is telling a story, or rather recounting things that have happened to her, while David is trying to identify 'the important thing', 'the exact moment when the worms come into being'. What worms? Well, exactly. It doesn't seem likely they are actual worms, but in this aptly-named novella you can never be sure.
A narrative emerges, taking place just a few days earlier. Amanda and her young daughter, Nina, meet David and his mother, Carla, while on holiday. Carla claims there is something wrong with David, and then she, in turn, tells Amanda a story. When David was three, he was poisoned after drinking contaminated water from a stream. Carla took him to 'the green house', where a local woman performed a 'migration': sending David's soul into another's body so he could continue to live. Since then, his body has been inhabited by the spirit of another. So Carla says. What happens to Amanda and Nina after this is what leads to Amanda's hospitalisation and David's demand that they pinpoint 'the exact moment', 'before time runs out'. Though some aspects of the story seem meaningful to Amanda, David dispassionately skips over anything he deems unimportant. Some details are recurring motifs: Carla's gold bikini, Nina's cuddly toy mole. Then there's the matter of the 'rescue distance', Amanda's obsessive idea of how far she can safely be from her daughter in case of an emergency.
It's quite a strange thing to read a story where you fear the ending but feel a desperate need to get to it. Fever Dream made me feel sick, but I can't tell you why. It really is like a nonsensical dream from which you wake with a great sense of dread, as though you've had a terrible nightmare, even though the details weren't particularly horrifying in themselves. I'm really not sure I understood it, and reading other reviews, including those from professional critics, I'm not convinced many other people did either. It teases some dreadful shock but never shows its hand. In the end, that lack of an answer, the fruitless search for understanding, is the real horror.
I received an advance review copy of Fever Dream from the publisher through NetGalley.
The Possessions might conceivably be set in a parallel universe, separated from ours by a mere hair's breadth. In this world, everything's the same – The Possessions might conceivably be set in a parallel universe, separated from ours by a mere hair's breadth. In this world, everything's the same – people eat, drive, use the internet and mobile phones, go out to bars, live in shabby apartments – except for one thing. At organisations such as the Elysian Society, the dead can be brought back to speak with the bereaved. Clients pay for sessions with 'bodies' like our narrator, Eurydice (Edie for short); they must bring something that belonged to their lost loved one. After taking a drug referred to as a lotus, the body 'goes under', surrendering to the spirit of the deceased, who can then talk with their partner, relative or friend as though they've never been away. Afterwards, the body remembers nothing. At least, that's how it should work.
Edie has been a body for five years, an unusually long career in this industry. She's the closest thing the Elysian Society has to a teacher's pet: renowned for her reliability, she's the boss's favourite, but has no life beyond her job and is mocked by colleagues for her strict adherence to rules. She succeeds because she has made herself empty and unobtrusive, nothing but a blank slate for spirits to animate. So it's no coincidence the appointment that will change her life begins with the application of uncharacteristically bold lipstick. Patrick Braddock is a handsome young widower whose wife, Sylvia, drowned two years ago; the lipstick is hers. Or, rather, was hers. Edie is instantly drawn to Patrick, and attraction quickly turns to obsession. Soon she's hanging around outside his office and creating a shrine to the Braddocks on her bedside table. And then she begins to feel flickers of Sylvia's presence outside the safety of her appointment room...
There are multiple mysteries here. First, Sylvia's death, an obvious question mark. Second, the riddle of an anonymous murder victim, mawkishly dubbed 'Hopeful Doe', whose violent death and lack of identity make headlines in Edie's town. Third, Edie's own past, which she's scrubbed clean from her memories as well as her records – she's obviously running from something. The fast-moving and very addictive story is replete with symbolism (references to Greek mythology are everywhere) and powerful description (the author evokes heat so well you can almost feel the humidity dampening the pages). The work of the bodies is written in a way that's clearly designed to draw parallels with sex work. The title might refer to the box of Sylvia's belongings that Patrick gifts to Edie, or to the dark rumour, passed around like an urban legend, about the worst thing that can happen to a body: permanent possession.
The Possessions is so entrancing that it definitely skirts five-star territory, but a few flaws kept me from falling head over heels. Edie's relationship with Patrick is a bit too heavy on the soft-focus romance; I could never bring myself to root for them, no matter what Patrick was hiding. And when the awful-secrets-of-Edie's-past reveal finally comes, it's been built up so much that the details seem both anticlimactic and contrived (it didn't make much sense to me that anyone would think she was a terrible person because of this, rather than just feeling terrible for her).
Those reservations aside, this is a really good book, completely absorbing and eminently readable; a very modern sort of ghost story, as pacy as the best thriller and as glossy as a blockbuster movie (it's crying out to be made into a film). Recommended.
I received an advance review copy of The Possessions from the publisher through Edelweiss.
If you've ever wondered what The Secret History would have been like if the plot revolved around Shakespeare rather than Classics, wonder no longeIf you've ever wondered what The Secret History would have been like if the plot revolved around Shakespeare rather than Classics, wonder no longer. Written by a former actor and scholar of Shakespeare, it's set at a conservatory for the performing arts in an otherwise nondescript Illinois town, where the lives of the central characters, seven fourth-year drama students, centre on 'Bardolatry'. Their semesters are organised around auditions, rehearsals and performances of Shakespeare plays, and Shakespeare plays only. They often converse using Shakespearean language and quote slabs of verse at the drop of a hat. Inevitably, they find all that resentment, lust, tragedy and power play bleeding into their real lives, too.
When we meet our narrator, Oliver, he is about to be released on parole after ten years in prison. The officer who arrested him is on the verge of retiring. The two cut a deal: Oliver will tell the story of 'what really happened ten years ago', on the condition that it will all be off the record. We then flash back (of course) to the autumn of 1997 (of course). We meet our players: the imposing Richard; his beautiful girlfriend, Meredith; louche, wisecracking Alexander; likeable James, the best actor of the lot; Wren, an ethereal waif and Richard's cousin; and the enigmatic Filippa. Oliver is an outsider (of course), though in this case, it isn't that he's from a relatively uncultured middle-class background (well, he is, but he's not necessarily unique in that), rather that he believes himself to have no natural aptitude for any specific Shakespearean archetype (unlike his peers). Given how the story begins, it's no spoiler to say one of the group ends up dead in mysterious circumstances (of course). There are ill-advised romantic entanglements, debauched parties, reams of secrets (of course x 3) and many scenes in which the lines between life and art are irretrievably blurred.
I lapped up the setting and the incidental details (the students live in a building called 'the Castle'! It has a library with a log fire! They perform Macbeth on the beach at Halloween!) which made If We Were Villains overflow with the same cosy, nostalgic glow of comfort that, say, the Harry Potter books provide. Though I did think the characters were interesting from the get-go, I found them a bit harder to get to grips with. It took me a good two-thirds of the novel to feel I had some sense of Oliver as a person rather than a blank cipher. There is literally zero chemistry between Oliver and Meredith, and Meredith in general is an unevenly balanced, unlikely character; she proves it isn't just male authors who struggle to write nuance into the ~sexy girl~ stereotype. My rating might actually have been lower if the chemistry between Oliver and [redacted] – which is palpable from their very first minor interaction – hadn't turned out to be part of the plot.
This is pretty much just echoing what Karen said in her review, but I'll say it anyway: if you're a veteran of stories of this type, If We Were Villains offers nothing earth-shattering, but it is likely to captivate you. It's not without its flaws, it's not going to change your life, but it's stuffed with beguiling detail and is a bloody good mystery. I enjoyed it very much.
With the abrupt sadness of The Idiot's final sentence, I felt a near-physical wrench, as if forcibly separated from someone who had swiftly become a gWith the abrupt sadness of The Idiot's final sentence, I felt a near-physical wrench, as if forcibly separated from someone who had swiftly become a good friend. I probably read the second half of the book too quickly – I loved it so much, and wish I'd taken more time to savour it – but once I'd started, I just couldn't stop.
The eponymous idiot is 18-year-old Harvard freshman Selin (though with all the Russian influences popping up throughout the story, the title is clearly intended to evoke Dostoyevsky's masterpiece. Especially as both centre on a figure of extreme naivety, unprepared for 'real' life). It goes without saying that Selin is far from idiotic, but any high school overachiever will recognise the disorientation of being plunged into a university environment and finding your remarkable talents are no longer remarkable, your outstanding intellect is just the norm, and whatever previously made you special now seems childish and insignificant. Of Turkish descent, Selin is surrounded by a truly multicultural, multilingual and multitalented cast of supporting characters, all of whom (she thinks) are better equipped to handle the strange vagaries of adult life and relationships than she is. Repeatedly, Selin experiences a revelation I remember well from that time of my life, and still sometimes get a sense of even now: it seems everyone else has, at some point, mysteriously learned codes of behaviour that remain obscure to her, and which she's unable to internalise just by observing.
Selin never really knows what she's doing. Many of her decisions, such as the choice to start learning Russian, and later to teach ESL, are made almost randomly, when she has little idea which path to take. (She does know, instinctively, that she is a writer, but feels doomed, rather than destined, to this fate. She carries the weight of personal note-taking and emailing as though it's a compulsory task, and dissects her thoughts and others' words like they're homework. When a short story of hers wins a prize, she's dismayed: 'I didn’t want anyone to think I thought it was good'.) Central to Selin's development throughout the book is her close, tense, peculiar friendship with Ivan, a slightly older student she meets at the aforementioned Russian class. She becomes infatuated: her decision to spend the summer teaching English in Hungary, his home country, is a result of that.
I spent the entire book hoping Selin and Ivan wouldn't get together, hoping Batuman would resist the allure of making good on the will-they-won't-they tension that pervades their interaction. And then I came to the end and found that all along, I had wanted them to be together after all. Their relationship – well, Selin's side of their relationship – reminded me of a quote, attributed to Kurt Cobain, I'm always seeing superimposed across photographs on sites like Pinterest and Tumblr: thank you for the tragedy; I need it for my art. The sense that at this age, a part of you craves the suffering and drama of rejection, because it fits who you feel you are, and because it's easier. If you're an introverted, arty teenager, an outsider, a virgin, then moping and yearning (and writing about it) are what you know; you wouldn't have a clue what to do with reciprocation. Incidentally, with Ivan, Batuman expertly captures the speech patterns of someone who speaks excellent English as a second language; he really does have a palpable voice.
THIS is a real coming-of-age story, not all the pulpy crap that gets churned out about 14-year-olds having orgies in the woods or whatever. Selin is so precisely an 18/19-year-old freshman: the perfect mix of naive and sarcastic, rebel and conformist, book-smart and ignorant. I loved her. (There's also something beautiful, and so refreshing, about love remaining unrequited in a narrative like this.) I'd love to quote lots from this book – I feel Selin's words would communicate the charm of the novel far better than I can by talking about it – but of course I can't, for now, because I read an advance copy.
Another really important thing about The Idiot that the above probably doesn't communicate at all: I found it hilarious. I honestly choked with laughter at some pages; a couple of times, I became so hysterical that I had to stop reading for a while to calm down. Selin has that dry, witty type of humour that makes the most banal asides into laugh-out-loud lines, and just the way she describes basically anything, the view from a window, the way people look, their voices... oh, man. I can't even explain it. You definitely have to read it.
For me, The Idiot was a perfect cocktail: a protagonist in whom I saw myself reflected at every turn of the plot; a particular sense of humour; subtle subversion of tropes I get sick of encountering in fiction. I want to read it again. I need to read it again. I will buy a physical copy when it's published. I will buy copies as gifts for other people, too. It's the sort of book I want to recommend, not by shouting about it to anyone who'll listen, but by seeking out those I know will appreciate it and ardently pressing it upon them.
(Supplemental: Christian Lorentzen's fantastic interview with Batuman at Vulture. Her description of rereading stuff you wrote when you were much younger is bang-on. 'When I was younger, the content was embarrassing to me, so I devised a style that was supposed to mitigate it. As an adult, the thing I found most embarrassing was the very style that I thought would mitigate the embarrassing content.')
I received an advance review copy of The Idiot from the publisher, Penguin Random House.
A quarter of the way into this 400-page debut, we know that our narrator is an eccentric philosophy graduate named Alice Hare. We know that she was adA quarter of the way into this 400-page debut, we know that our narrator is an eccentric philosophy graduate named Alice Hare. We know that she was adopted; that her birth mother died when she was a baby, and her birth father was/is in prison; that she has a strained relationship with her adoptive mother, and that her adoptive father, a brilliant physicist, disappeared (possibly deserted the family, possibly committed suicide) when she was a child. We know Alice has lived in England, Japan, and New York City. We know she is obsessed with a slightly older woman, a writer called Mizuko Himura, whose social media accounts she tracks with the zeal of an addict; she also alludes to the two of them having had a relationship, although it appears to have come after the start of Alice's fixation. We know Mizuko is now in hospital, recovering from encephalitis.
But there are so many things we don't know, too. Whether Alice's obsession with Mizuko is a product of lust, envy, hatred, or some combination of the three. How/why she found her in the first place. Whether what ultimately afflicts Mizuko is a coincidence, or even real (Alice initially describes it as a parasite that may have wiped memories of her specifically from Mizuko's memory). Relatedly: to what extent Alice is telling the truth. To what extent Alice is a villain. And what is this novel; what is it about? At various points it seems to be: a Bildungsroman; a family saga about the shared elements of Alice and Mizuko's histories (absent fathers, combative mothers, a connection to Tokyo); an internet stalking thriller; an unreliable-narrator character study; a gently humorous portrait of wealthy hipsters in their Manhattan bubble; and literary fiction that bounces around ideas about physics, philosophy and mortality.
Sympathy does not give up its secrets easily. It's disorientating, hard work, a tangled knot of threads you have to unravel. I can imagine many readers finding it frustrating. I've seen it described in a few places as though it is a thriller, but that is very wide of the mark; it's meandering rather than propulsive. Sometimes a purpose threatens to emerge, only to vanish back into the morass. At one point Alice talks about mise en abyme – though, characteristically, she does not give the phrase, only its acronym and translation:
It was a French phrase meaning, in its literal sense, "placed into an abyss". Mizuko did her own version of this on her Instagram, taking a picture of herself holding the picture of herself, and again and again as the picture got smaller and smaller... When it occurs within a text, it gets to the point where everything becomes unstable, a loop that takes you back to where you started.
Sympathy itself may be seen as an example of mise en abyme. There are lives within lives, identities within identities – juxtaposition of digital and real personalities; stories families tell about themselves versus the truth. Alice describes the internet as a place where 'nothing stays private and nothing goes away... like the wave – the back catching up with the front.' While Mizuko lays her whole life bare on her continually-updated accounts, and uses her past as material for her fiction, Alice's monologue taunts us with the elusiveness of its author. Two significant aspects of Alice's identity – her race and sexuality – are hinted at and danced around but rarely addressed directly, even by the character herself, despite her penchant for overthinking. The narrative does indeed end up back where it started. After reading her story, what have we really learned about Alice?
I received an advance review copy of Sympathy from the publisher through Edelweiss.