The Secret Life (beginning) In the introduction to The Secret Life, Andrew O'Hagan explains that 'the leading figures in this non-fiction book, each ofThe Secret Life (beginning) In the introduction to The Secret Life, Andrew O'Hagan explains that 'the leading figures in this non-fiction book, each of whom is real or began real, depend for their existence and their power in the world on a high degree of artificiality'. The secret life of the title is that created by the existence of the internet, that 'marketplace of selfhood' where 'the average user [is] a ghost'. The subjects are 'both masters of the internet and victims of it', and these accounts are all examples of how 'an online self and a real self might constantly be at war with each other'. Each of the stories is a reworked version of an essay previously published in the London Review of Books, two of which (the first and third) I've read before. (I've linked to them below; the full versions are no longer available online unless you're a subscriber, but the LRB site lets you read an extract of decent length before you hit the paywall.)
Ghosting O'Hagan's account of his time as Julian Assange's ghostwriter, the outcome of which was supposed to be Assange's memoir/manifesto but ended up as Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography, disowned by its subject. It's utterly compelling, brilliantly revealing, horrifying and weirdly funny.
The Invention of Ronald Pinn Details O'Hagan's decision to create a fake persona after learning about undercover police officers repurposing the identities of the dead. He chooses Ronnie Pinn, who died in 1984 at the age of twenty, after coming across his grave in Camberwell New Cemetery, and experiments with how far he can take Ronnie's new life, from that which can be easily faked (an email address and Facebook account) to the not-so-simple (driving licence, passport). At the same time, he tries to trace Ronnie's history and find people who might remember him. An interesting concept, but left me with a lot of unanswered questions (O'Hagan mentions that he has access to an empty flat in Islington which he uses as Ronnie's address, but never explains how/why – is this standard practice for identity thieves? What if they don't have an uninhabited property conveniently to hand? Are the people who friend Ronnie on Facebook actually people who knew him in the past, or random strangers, or are they also fake?)
The Satoshi Affair Who is Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious supposed inventor of bitcoin? The answer may, or may not, be Craig Wright, a talented Australian mathematician and programmer of genius-level intelligence and significant eccentricity. In 2016, O'Hagan was enlisted as part of a complex corporate project, the culmination of which would be the 'big reveal' of Wright as Nakamoto. The resulting saga is complicated (nothing like reading about the mathematical principles of cryptocurrency to make me feel deeply, deeply stupid) but engrossing, a little thriller-like, a brilliant piece of reportage. In many ways this is the inverse of the Assange story, and in the end I felt sorry for Wright, who seems like someone who desperately wanted to avoid, but in the end could not help, becoming a celebrity (at least in tech and cryptography circles).
The Secret Life (end) I really enjoyed this book as a whole – it flows like a dream, it reads like a novel, and at their best the stories are riveting. That said, there are weaknesses. I'm not convinced it successfully addresses the themes laid out in the introduction, or that these three stories even feel much like they're about the internet or online selves. The Assange and Wright stories feel like they are more about personality, about how something like an individual's need to see themselves as a near-messianic figure (Assange) or ingrained need for total privacy (Wright) can harm an idea or cause that's much bigger than the individual. Sandwiched between them, the Ronnie Pinn story is very obviously a weak link, unsatisfying on two fronts: it doesn't say much about fake identities, but it doesn't go very deep into this man's real life either. Personally (not that anyone asked), I would've cut that one, expanded the others, and turned this into a book that simply revolves around two uniquely fascinating people – stranger-than-fiction tales that unfold like slow-motion car crashes.
I received an advance review copy of The Secret Life from the publisher through NetGalley.
I have no idea how to review this. I think it might actually be impossible to describe. The blurb sums up the plot well enough: in the late 1930s, twoI have no idea how to review this. I think it might actually be impossible to describe. The blurb sums up the plot well enough: in the late 1930s, two rival American expeditions find themselves in a stalemate over an ancient temple in Honduras, and when the objectives of one group can't be achieved without the assent of the other, the situation descends into a ludicrous stand-off. Twenty years later – with both groups still there – a CIA agent heads into the jungle to track them down. But that did not prepare me for the deranged blend of conspiracy and farce I found myself grappling with (and, perhaps inexplicably, enjoying).
Beauman's verbose style is familiar from his other novels, but here there's something looser about it, a rambling feel, a less snappy timbre. I often found myself reading a passage or a long run-on sentence with no clue what point it was going to end up making; having to flick back and forth to figure out where and when in the story I was; making it through two pages of dialogue before realising I was reading only one side of a conversation. This may well sound like... well, not much of a recommendation. Yet it's also true that I found the book gripping – perhaps precisely because I so frequently had no idea where the story was going, what it was about, or even who the protagonist was.
Madness is Better than Defeat is peppered with references to Heart of Darkness; it reminded me of Martin MacInnes' Infinite Ground and Kea Wilson's We Eat Our Own (both idiosyncratic jungle-set novels, the latter of which also involves the shooting of a film). Despite that, there isn't really anything else like it. If you relish the type of stories you cannot predict, that keep you on your toes – where the author is always about twenty steps ahead of the reader – this one's for you.
I received an advance review copy of Madness is Better than Defeat from the publisher, Sceptre.
30-year-old Mary is broke and sick. Though nobody has been able to diagnose her illness, she is weak, underweight, and beset by constant, chronic pain30-year-old Mary is broke and sick. Though nobody has been able to diagnose her illness, she is weak, underweight, and beset by constant, chronic pain. She's recently discovered a method that, miraculously, seems to help, makes her feel almost normal again – an esoteric form of treatment called Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia, or 'PAKing' – but it's prohibitively expensive. Mary is also on the run from her past, having fled her fervently religious parents, who brought her up in near-total isolation from every aspect of modern society. The experience has left its marks on her: she's still unusual in certain ways that make her a curiosity in a place like New York City, for example a limited understanding of popular culture. It's this last quality that makes her particularly attractive to Matheson, who interviews her for an 'income-generating experience'.
The job, it turns out, is acting as one of a series of Girlfriends (yes, the capital G is important) to Kurt Sky, an A-list actor/writer/producer/director. The overall project is called the Girlfriend Experiment; Mary is to play the role of Emotional Girlfriend. (There's also an Anger Girlfriend for arguments, a Maternal Girlfriend to fuss over Kurt, an Intellectual Girlfriend for in-depth conversation, even a Mundanity Girlfriend to sit around like human wallpaper. As for sex, that's the job of the Intimacy Team.) Kurt has mixed reasons for commissioning the experiment: he's obscenely rich, he's bored and creatively blocked, his meditation counsellor said it would be a 'healing experience' for him, 'but what he was really trying to do was help make a discovery that would help others, deeply alter the world'. What if the disordered emotional reactions within a relationship could be broken down, segregated, and thus perfected? Can the problem of romantic love, all its hysteria and destructiveness, be solved?
What Lacey does with this premise is a strange sort of alchemy: the very essence of what it is to be human seems to be woven into the fabric of her novel. Its perspicacity is entirely out of proportion to the high-concept setup, and Mary's tentative attempts to understand human behaviour – all of it as alien to her as though she actually were from another planet – are written with impossible lightness. This, I think, is what makes The Answers magic. If it's not always easy to believe that Mary knows so little about celebrities and films and TV after over a decade in NYC, it doesn't matter when the specifics of her situation allow her such unique insights, naive and profound at the same time, about love and relationships. Her observations are so clean and sharp yet somehow spiritual, suggesting a elevated level of understanding that's also a little askew, a little unearthly.
Take the very first line (how could you not read on?): There was at least one morning I was certain, though only for a few hours, that everything that could ever really happen to me had already happened.
Or this perfectly evocative description of something really innocuous: Voices from the street slipped in the window above her mattress. A sad woman was telling a story, voice thick from weeping, half her words too melted to hear, as another woman soberly consoled. Mary put the phone down and tried to listen – it was something about a guy, something about two weeks ago and Facebook and it's like she doesn't even know me and a text, a lost sweater or some lost days or something else lost – Mary couldn't be sure. Did her listening have any effect on the woman? Did the woman feel how her story, however incomplete, was landing somewhere? Something about listening from a distance, drowsy in bed and in the dark, made Mary's caring feel so pure.
I just loved everything about the way The Answers was written and put together from start to finish. It's broken into three parts, and is one of those books in which the writing is so consistently good that after the end of the first part, I felt bereft to be leaving Mary's point of view behind, and after the end of the second, I felt exactly the same about the third-person narration. There seems to be more and more fiction like this around* – I saw a bit of Alexandra Kleeman in Mary's inexplicable condition and the weirdness of PAKing, a bit of Luke Kennard's The Transition in the corporate surrealism of the Girlfriend Experiment, a bit of Jen George's stories in both – and I couldn't be happier.
(*Though there seems to be a common theme of blurbs for books like this really not doing them justice or pinning down what's great about them. Neither of the official descriptions (US and UK) for The Answers makes it sound half as good as it actually is.)
A woman and her unfaithful husband have recently separated by mutual agreement. Although the woman – our unnamed narrator – is in a new relationship, A woman and her unfaithful husband have recently separated by mutual agreement. Although the woman – our unnamed narrator – is in a new relationship, her ex-husband, Christopher, has asked her to keep the separation quiet for the time being. So when Christopher's mother Isabella calls with the news that he has disappeared while on a research trip in Europe, the narrator is placed in a quandary. Ultimately, she decides not to tell Christopher's family of their split, and accepts Isabella's offer to send her to Greece to track him down. In the small, beautiful fishing village of Gerolimenas, the narrator finds an abandoned hotel room, a handful of rumours, and an intimate, closed community.
A Separation reminded me of Vendela Vida's The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty – partly, I suppose, because it's about a woman alone abroad, but also because of the narrator's somewhat bewildering flights of fancy. Otherwise sensible, she makes huge leaps of imagination based on hardly anything; infers whole worlds of meaning from the look on a stranger's face. For example, she decides that Maria, an employee at the hotel, has slept with Christopher: there's a particularly effective sequence in which her mental image of this event is seamlessly intercut with interruptions from a waiter, illustrating how she is unable to stem the flow of her own thoughts as her mind sketches out the scene. Not only that, but she goes on to imagine that Maria is involved with Stefano, the local taxi driver; that the two have fought over Christopher; that Maria will grudgingly reconcile with Stefano, but dreams of being with a man like Christopher. At the time the narrator invents this fantasy, there's little evidence any of it is true. The fact that most of it is later proved correct lends a dreamlike, unreliable quality to the whole narrative, and simultaneously suggests the narrator knows more than she is letting on.
I found this theme of imagination and fantasy by far the most fascinating thing about A Separation. In a deceptively throwaway line, the narrator says her marriage to Christopher 'died at the hand of her imagination'. What does she mean by this, and what does it imply about the events that come later? We don't find out. She also condemns Isabella, Christopher's mother, for a mistaken assumption, seemingly unaware of her hypocrisy: 'I looked at her in bewilderment... the horror of other people's expectations... it was pure fantasy or delusion, an idea that had passed through her mind'. Many reviews mention that the narrator seems passive, but few touch on the fact that she is also wildly imaginative. To me, this is primarily a story about a woman's interior life. The narrator's account is so convincing that it's easy to forget there is hardly any proof of her imaginings; indeed, few reviewers seem to have picked up on this. That she comes close to having someone accused of a terrible crime because of an invented scenario shows exactly how far she is willing to let her fantasies take her.
'In daylight,' the narrator says towards the end, 'I can admit that my imagination was only seeking drama'. And a final quote: 'Imagination, after all, costs nothing, it's the living that is the hardest part'. (Yes, she really does mention imagination this often. When I searched the ebook for this word and its diminutives, I got 20 pages of results.) After finishing A Separation, I was left with an unsettling sense that nothing I'd read was quite what it seemed, that I would never know the truth. It's determinedly enigmatic: a story filtered through the mutable thoughts of a highly suggestible character.
Think of it as a short story collection, except all the stories are about the same person. All Grown Up follows Andrea Bern through different stages Think of it as a short story collection, except all the stories are about the same person. All Grown Up follows Andrea Bern through different stages of her life, non-chronologically, and is written as a series of vignettes. Most of them concentrate on Andrea in her late thirties and early forties: single, childless, working in an okay-but-not-brilliant job in advertising, renting her apartment. As expected, she struggles with the fact that people define her by these things, especially the lack of a partner and/or children. But the stories in All Grown Up also touch on those around Andrea, including the ones who, at first, seem to have golden lives. Her best friend's marriage falls apart; her brother's daughter is born with severe birth defects.
Of all the scenes in All Grown Up, the ones that have stayed with me most distinctly are those of Andrea just doing her own thing in her own time. Those that show what a gorgeous pleasure, what a glorious luxury, it can be to live alone. They feel revelatory; perhaps even revolutionary. She lives life on her own terms, and is allowed to do so. Hallmarks of the character, including her singleness, childlessness and lack of significant wealth, are not upended to service the plot. But parts of what make her such an effective character are the bad parts, the ways in which she runs away from responsibility and doesn't change when we, the reader, feel she's supposed to. Indeed, some readers may be frustrated by Andrea's lack of growth, but I loved the honesty of it – after all, people often don't change when they're supposed to in real life, either.
(It's interesting to look through critics' reviews of this novel. They vary wildly, and most focus on Andrea rather than the writing, plot or structure. Some see Andrea's life as self-indulgent, and glory in the unapologetic triumph of that; some see it as self-indulgent, and chastise her selfishness; some see it as pathetic and self-destructive. Many (not me) found her hard to like. It's hard not to feel that each interpretation – and I include my own in this! – says more about the reviewer than the book.)
What do you do when you already know what your problem is? What if it's not really a problem? There's no right or wrong way to be an adult. There's no secret stage at which you suddenly have it all figured out. Marriage and children aren't magical tickets to another plane of maturity and fulfilment. But if you don't have them, it might be hard to figure out what your purpose is going to be for rest of your life, and it can be hard, staring down the barrel of that gun, not least because you're supposed to act like you're absolutely sure you made the right decisions. Not achieving milestones doesn't mean you're in stasis: you're still a person; you continue to change. These are the truths that All Grown Up imparts, in writing that sparkles with cutting insights, killer lines, wonder and warmth.
If you've read and liked this, or just like the sound of it, I'd also recommend Nine Island by Jane Alison.
I received an advance review copy of All Grown Up from the publisher through NetGalley.
Once, for my birthday – I can't remember which one, some late-teens birthday – I asked for just about every book I'd been able to identify about the SOnce, for my birthday – I can't remember which one, some late-teens birthday – I asked for just about every book I'd been able to identify about the Smiths and Morrissey. Family and friends dutifully bought them; on my birthday, I unwrapped a pile of thick biographical paperbacks. And I never read a single one of them. I'm not sure I even opened some of them. They sat and gathered dust until I sold them on eBay years later. The one Smiths book of mine that ended up being-well thumbed was The Smiths and Beyond, a collection of Kevin Cummins' photographs of the band, which contains few words other than a scattering of well-known quotes.
I've always had this weird thing of not really wanting to know anything much about my idols, invariably preferring an idea of them I've assembled from scraps of information, their own work, even things as tenuous as a single picture. As a teenager, I imbued my image of Victoria Beckham with an intelligence and wit the press certainly didn't ascribe to her, but also held close to my heart her reputation as the quiet, moody, aloof Spice Girl. I'd essentially made her into a composite of things I both liked and hated about myself, an interpretation that was probably a million miles from who she really was. I regarded Amy Winehouse like a personal saint, but have read very little about her, though I do own hundreds of bootleg live recordings of the same handful of songs. I always felt her music and her voice told me everything I needed to understand, that her lyrics were a far better way to know her than any number of tell-alls. I think this way of seeing is also part of why I seldom participate in fandom, despite being fascinated by it as a culture. I want to carefully guard my personal interpretations of the things I love rather than open them up to others' analyses.
There is a point to all this that has to do with the book I'm reviewing, I swear. Actually, there are two. The first is that the subtitle of Massey's book, My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers, kept bringing me back to a Morrissey quote I half-remembered about how records or songs were his best friends when he was growing up, and that's what led me to this train of thought (although I absolutely can't track down the quote or anything like it now and am beginning to think I imagined it, or attributed someone else's words to him. Which seems quite ironically appropriate here). The second is that – as is made explicitly clear by the last essay of the collection – these essays are an exercise in personal mythology. They're as much about the author as they are her subjects. To put it another way, they're about the subjects not as they actually are, but specifically as the author sees them. There's an argument to be made that this is is a memoir-in-celebrities.
The essays often look at how female icons are interpreted at large – the ways in which the media tears some famous women apart and boxes others in to stereotyped categories – but they also deal with much more personal themes, touching on how Massey's adolescence, nascent adulthood and present life has been influenced by her icons. Those who bemoan what Slate called 'the first-person industrial complex' will probably not enjoy All the Lives I Want: it's a quintessentially millennial book, in both its critical approach to pop culture and its confessional nature. (On that note, Massey is candid about her eating disorder, and while it's clear her writing on the topic of celebrity bodies is cathartic, parts of some essays might make a tough read for anyone who has struggled with their own body image.)
The essays focus exclusively on women, ranging from fictional characters (the Lisbon sisters from The Virgin Suicides) to women writers (Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion) to contemporary pop stars (Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj). An essay about Amber Rose sits back-to-back with one about Plath; Massey dissects books, films and song lyrics, and examines stereotypes such as the 'crazy ex-girlfriend' trope. The titles are fabulous, for example 'Run the World: Amber Rose in the Great Stripper Imaginary' and 'Charlotte in Exile: A Case for the Liberation of Scarlett Johansson from Lost in Translation'. 'The Queen of Hearts' is an intriguing take on Courtney Love, positioning her not as the vulnerable, exploited figure many fans perceive, but embracing the negative image of her as a Machiavellian bitch. 'American Pain' similarly rejoices in Anna Nicole Smith's ascent to stardom despite her deprived origins and lack of demonstrable talent. 'Emparadised', which closes the collection, is the strongest and most personal of the essays, unpacking the impact of a fitful, destructive love affair as filtered through Didion's Play It As It Lays.
Some assumptions made here might be tenuous – but aren't assumptions and stubbornly-clung-to beliefs, often with very little root in fact, how we all understand and form 'relationships' with famous people who mean something to us? Regardless of whether you, the reader, were traumatised by the same 80s horror movies as the author, or cared about the media's skeevy countdown to the Olsen twins' 18th, Massey's book is a mirror held up to the way we understand the people we term our idols.
I received an advance review copy of All the Lives I Want from the publisher through NetGalley.
Filmmakers Meadow and Carrie are friends in their youth; as adults, both are successful in different ways, but they become estranged, and each has a dFilmmakers Meadow and Carrie are friends in their youth; as adults, both are successful in different ways, but they become estranged, and each has a different story about what happens. Innocents and Others is an enjoyable, meandering journey through the friendship between these two women, the films they make, and the lives of characters peripheral to them. There is much to admire here: it's beautifully written, and the descriptions of films are stirring and vivid. Spiotta describes several of Meadow's documentaries so evocatively that I feel like images from them are stuck in my head. But the story is disjointed, and while this is clearly a deliberate choice – mirroring the process of editing raw footage – it's frustrating. The dialogue, which doesn't flow like natural speech (why do these characters have such an aversion to contractions?), compounds the problem. There's something artificial, too self-consciously unreal, about the people in Innocents and Others. To continue the cinematic theme, I felt a little like they were being played by bad, wooden actors.
A solid start to 2017, but not quite the immersive experience I had hoped. Onwards and upwards!
This book has had one of the most effective marketing campaigns I've seen in a while. I've been keen to read it and looking forward to its publicationThis book has had one of the most effective marketing campaigns I've seen in a while. I've been keen to read it and looking forward to its publication for quite some time, despite my well-documented reservations about the domestic thriller genre. The hashtag #WTFThatEnding has been used to promote it on social media, and many ecstatic early reviews have been characterised by an enormous amount of enthusiasm about the plot side-by-side with a refusal to give up its secrets. This buzz has done a great job of making the book alluring to me despite virtually no knowledge about the nature of its promised shock twist – aside from suspicions based on a working knowledge of Sarah Pinborough's back catalogue...
Since the runaway success of Gone Girl and the explosion of emulators like The Girl on the Train, similar thrillers have often felt like they've been put together with a checklist close at hand. You could say that Behind Her Eyes is no exception. It's all here: the likeable average-single-mum protagonist; the deeply unhappy couple who appear perfect to everyone else; the new friendship that isn't what it seems. The multiple narrative voices, the flashbacks, the inevitable infidelity, and more mentions of wine than I could count. The difference is that it's done with impeccable skill and a sense of humour, tongue firmly in cheek. It's tremendous fun to read because it feels like it was tremendous fun to write. Pinborough tackles those cliches with infectious glee, single-handedly revitalising the genre with the addition of – well, it would be a spoiler to say.
If you hate this type of thriller, Behind Her Eyes is not going to change your mind just because there's a bit of something else chucked into the mix. It's too much of an accurate pastiche for that. On the other hand, if you're picky about them, this is a good one. It's a swift, entertaining read, and it shows how successfully a little bit of rule-bending can invigorate a tired template.
The opening scene of I'll Eat When I'm Dead depicts the discovery of a woman's body. Hillary Whitney is found in a locked office at her place of work,The opening scene of I'll Eat When I'm Dead depicts the discovery of a woman's body. Hillary Whitney is found in a locked office at her place of work, the luxury magazine RAGE Fashion Book. The verdict: death by starvation, a cautionary tale about what the quest for extreme thinness might drive an otherwise sensible woman to. What follows, however, is mostly an entertaining, frothy comedy-drama and send-up of the fashion magazine world. The plot features a couple of mysterious deaths, but there's also the question of who will get promoted to Hillary's fashion director role at RAGE, and a love triangle involving Cat, the editorial heir apparent who emerges as the novel's main figure.
There are a few nods to deeper issues, but ironically (or deliberately?) they're about as superficial as the features about feminism and ethical fashion often found in women's magazines these days. I never felt the book was sure whether it wanted to condemn or celebrate the fashion industry and its attendant excesses, and I grew fed up of the exhaustive descriptions of everyone's outfits and beauty regimes. It's also pretty difficult to care about the professional fates of super-rich people who got their jobs through nepotism in the first place anyway.
Despite its edgy title, I'll Eat When I'm Dead is ultimately a bit of a silly confection; think cosy crime with a side order of couture and sex, rather than the 'viciously funny, sharp and satirical' affair the blurb suggests. (If this had been published in the 90s, the cover would've been pink with a loopy font and an illustration of skinny legs in high heels emerging from a New York taxi.) I'd say it's far more chick-lit than thriller, but that's no bad thing. It's fun, feather-light and sugary – I would say 'like a meringue', but the women of RAGE Fashion Book would probably break out in hives at the mere mention of one.
I received an advance review copy of I'll Eat When I'm Dead from the publisher through NetGalley.
Charlotte isn't easy to write about. What exactly is it? The story is based on fact: the life of German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon, who was execuCharlotte isn't easy to write about. What exactly is it? The story is based on fact: the life of German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon, who was executed at Auschwitz aged 26. But it's clear that many of the scenes here are embellished, at least mildly fictionalised. At various points throughout the book, without breaking the flow of the narrative, Foenkinos talks about the process of writing Charlotte, his own fascination with Salomon, and the places he visited to get a sense of her life. This stitching together of genres and the use of the author's voice recall Laurent Binet's HHhH (the two books also share a translator, Sam Taylor). The author calls Charlotte a novel, but that doesn't seem quite right; it is, perhaps, a loose, creative biography.
It's also unusually laid out. Every sentence marks the start of a new line. On the page, it looks like a poem, but it doesn't read like one, although the simple sentences give it a distinctive style – clean and clear. In one of his asides to the reader, Foenkinos explains 'I felt the need to move to the next line in order to breathe. So, I realised that I had to write it like this.' The product of this method is straightforward and very easy to read. Yet the simplicity of the form is in contrast to the story told, which is filled with suffering, from the depression that plagued Salomon's maternal family line (at least five close relatives, including her mother, committed suicide) to her tragic death.
Salomon's autobiographical masterwork was named Leben? oder Theater? – Life? or Theatre? It is a collection of more than seven hundred pieces of art: a series of paintings, forming a narrative designed to be performed as a play, complete with dialogue and instructions for musical accompaniment. Through the work, the artist tells the story of her life and family history, exaggerating and distorting some details, and turning others into outright fantasy. Salomon's stepmother believed her relationship with eccentric musician Alfred Wolfsohn was mostly in the girl's head, while the prolific recurrence of his image in her work points to a deeper involvement. But the real answer is obscure: powerful art overwrites truth, perceived 'truth' is inevitably superimposed over art, and so on.
Charlotte, too, plays with the themes of life and theatre. It is a poignant, self-aware mixture of the two, imagining a way to fill the gaps in this fragmented story. Just as Salomon rewrote her own history, Foenkinos follows in the artist's footsteps, creating biographical fiction in a fitting homage to her magnum opus.
We never find out when exactly The Transition is set, but let's say it's 10 or 15 years from now, and its protagonists, Karl and Genevieve, are a vaguWe never find out when exactly The Transition is set, but let's say it's 10 or 15 years from now, and its protagonists, Karl and Genevieve, are a vaguely nightmarish but entirely plausible vision of how many university-educated millennials might expect to end up. In their mid-thirties, they're married and have reasonably well-paid jobs – Genevieve's a teacher, Karl's rather more dubious career involves ghostwriting students' essays and fake product reviews – but they're still renting a room in a shared house, both have massive amounts of credit card debt, and don't feel they can afford to have kids. When Karl's card-skimming leads to a conviction for fraud, he's offered a place on a scheme called 'The Transition' in lieu of a prison sentence. It means he and Genevieve will spend six months living with a pair of older 'mentors' who'll help them get their lives back on track; at the end of it, they're promised reduced debts, a downpayment on a 'dream home', and improvements in everything from their health to their marriage. Of course, he takes it.
I'm not the first reviewer to liken this book to Black Mirror – the ingenious-yet-credible technology in the background (driverless taxis, fridges that automatically reorder food) makes it a natural comparison – and I certainly won't be the last, but The Transition also belongs to a longer tradition of novels warning of the dangers of our immediate future and the horror of conformity. Stories like these often hinge on the idea that to live happily in the future society, one must adhere rigidly to an accepted set of behaviours; that humanity is lost in the march towards technological progress. And so it goes here: as the initially resistant Genevieve is gradually seduced by the benefits of the scheme, Karl is undone by his curiosity. His natural instinct to explore the mentors' home backfires when he discovers a locked cellar. And then a URL carved into the floor. And then a rumour about The Transition being based on a banned novel...
The interesting thing about The Transition, however, is that it isn't a condemnation: contrary to expectations, there's no preaching. What's particularly clever is that it's repeatedly anticlimactic, second-guessing its audience's anticipation of conspiracies, villains and shocking twists at every turn. All this at the same time as keeping the level of intrigue consistently high, throwing in new reasons for Karl to be suspicious of everyone around him, and introducing supporting characters who are used in brilliantly unpredictable ways. It all feels effortless, but when you step back and think about it, a stupendous balancing act is being pulled off here.
In the end, as one character says, 'isn't the real lesson here that we're not very nice and we don't give a shit about each other?' It might not be the most inspiring message, but the way The Transition presents it makes a sardonic, warped and honest sort of sense. Regardless of the world they live in, these people are just people, doing things human beings have always done to survive and to protect those they love. The bad guys are just as human as the good guys. And even if our heroes behave awfully – as Karl and Genevieve both do, in very different ways – we can't help but root for them.
I received an advance review copy of The Transition from the publisher through NetGalley.
Right. Now we have 'domestic noir', we need a new genre name for this kind of book. The trashy literary thriller thing. The stories that fake depth wiRight. Now we have 'domestic noir', we need a new genre name for this kind of book. The trashy literary thriller thing. The stories that fake depth with verbs that seem to be drawn from a litfic-by-numbers crib sheet. The Girls and its sisters. Reading one of these is like finding a box of mini donuts in the reduced section at the supermarket, when the sugar's turned gummy but they're only 20p, or all of The Only Way is Essex being added to Netflix: it's rubbish, but you'd better believe I'm consuming the entire thing.
From the moment the opening line shamelessly apes Rebecca, it's all there. The faux-literary writing ('skitter' and 'thrum' present and correct), the gleefully loathsome characters, the what-is-this-doing-here sugary/steamy romance subplot. Reminders every five minutes that the protagonist is gorgeous, paired with disparaging descriptions of most other women in the story that make plain Lane Roanoke's disgust with anyone who has the nerve to be old, fat, or mousy. The self-conscious raciness: like last year's Girls on Fire (another prime example of the type), this is an adult novel written by a YA author, and it shows. There's the same evident delight in broaching taboo subjects, from suicide to incest, and pushing them as far as possible without ever actually generating more than a flicker of shock.
The premise is seemingly appropriated from Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects: a girl who got away returning home to a stultified town and the creepily intimate, fucked-up family she'd sworn to escape. One of the eponymous girls even carves out words with a knife in an attempt to exorcise her own demons, exactly like Camille in Sharp Objects, though Allegra Roanoke uses hard surfaces, not skin, as her canvas. The disturbing secret that makes the Roanokes 'special' is revealed pretty early, leaving the bulk of the story to deal with the mystery of Allegra's disappearance and the question of whether returned runaway Lane will reunite with the guy she dated as a teenager.
Of course there are sparks of good stuff, or I wouldn't have finished it, much less finished it in a day. One clever thing this novel does is to have its very seductiveness echo what the Roanoke cousins are exposed to. Even knowing about the sickness at the heart of the story, you can't help but feel a little bit of longing for the ramshackle fairytale mansion, the long country drives on summer days, the warm nights beneath starry skies... And of course it's compelling; these books always are; that's their saving grace.
I'm sure this book will be a success. But for me, it might as well have been written by an algorithm. If you haven't, read Sharp Objects instead: it's equally dark and twisted, but Flynn's style and characterisation are in another league.
I received an advance review copy of The Roanoke Girls from the publisher through NetGalley.
Radicals is 'an exploration of the individuals, groups and movements who are rejecting the way we live now, and attempting to find alternatives'. The Radicals is 'an exploration of the individuals, groups and movements who are rejecting the way we live now, and attempting to find alternatives'. The introduction sets the scene: an age of unprecedented progress and achievement, yet one in which globalisation, income inequality, climate change and the impact of the internet (among many other issues and developments) have caused the social, economic and political consensus to shift in ever-changing, often unpredictable ways. As in Bartlett's previous book The Dark Net, each chapter of Radicals makes a study of a particular individual or smallish group, using them to represent and explore wider themes.
– Chapter 1 follows transhumanist Zoltan Istvan on his (futile) attempt to run for president of the USA, travelling from the west coast to Washington DC in his campaign vehicle, the 'Immortality Bus' (it's designed to look like a giant coffin on wheels). – Chapter 2 revisits someone you might remember from The Dark Net: former EDL leader Tommy Robinson, who has attempted to reinvent himself as more of a respectable activist. This particular story finds him trying to start a UK arm of the 'peaceful' European anti-Islam group Pegida, along with ex-Labour and UKIP activist Anne Marie Waters and Liberty GB leader Paul Weston. – Chapter 3 sees Bartlett attending a 'weekend experience' organised by the Psychedelic Society, and investigating the evidence that controlled use of psychedelic drugs can provide positive spiritual experiences and be used to treat mental health problems. – Chapter 4 looks at the workings of Prevent, the UK's anti-terrorism initiative. – Chapter 5 tackles populist politics: swerving the more obvious US/UK examples, here Bartlett focuses on the success of Beppe Grillo and the Five Star Movement in Italy. – Chapter 6 is about communal living and eco-villages. Its main subject is Tamera, a rural Portuguese commune largely made up of German expats. – Chapter 7 is about activism and direct action. It concentrates on climate change activism and sees the author joining a Reclaim the Power protest and meeting anti-fracking groups. – Chapter 8 tells the intriguing story of Liberland, the newest country in the world, founded on disputed land (between Croatia and Serbia) and intended as the first free republic based on the principles of radical libertarianism.
The book I thought of most often while reading Radicals was Jon Ronson's Them, but Bartlett (mostly) avoids painting the people he encounters as humorous eccentrics. (Sometimes, however, their absurdities speak for themselves, as in a sequence when Anne Marie Waters turns out to be drunk during the launch of Pegida-UK, or one of the Tamerians claims she can communicate with wild boar through meditation. Sometimes they're a bit more disturbing – Tamera again: one of the senior members of the community gives a worryingly vague answer about its 'Love School', where children are 'accompanied' by adults through their first 'encounters and love experiences'.) Bartlett's writing is very straightforward, clear and fair, considering both sides of every argument and taking the radicals' ideas seriously. If there's a downside, it's that it can be a little dry in places – this isn't one of those non-fiction books that grips you like a novel might. That said, as someone who's used to racing through books, this was a welcome change of pace.
This shouldn't be confused for a comprehensive account of radical politics: it's more of a curated selection of (very different) fringe views, inviting the reader to consider which 'radicals' we might, one day, come to consider entirely reasonable. It's a thoughtful, considered study which perhaps doesn't match the sexier and more dramatic appeal of The Dark Net, but is no less engaging.
In a nutshell, this is the story of a woman unravelling after being left by her abusive fiancé. But I can guarantee you have never read a treatment ofIn a nutshell, this is the story of a woman unravelling after being left by her abusive fiancé. But I can guarantee you have never read a treatment of the theme quite like this. Indeed, I have never read a book quite like this.
My feelings about How to Be Human are so mixed that 4 stars seems an odd compromise. While trying to draft this review from possibly the messiest collection of notes I have ever had to work with, I repeatedly felt I should actually be writing two reviews – one positive, one negative. When I was a few chapters in, I made a note that I was finding it 75% mesmerising and 25% agonising. After finishing, I wanted to describe my reaction as 50% elation and 50% frustration. Apparently there's something about How to Be Human that makes me want to measure my (rhyming) emotions in percentages.
Mary is a newly single woman in her mid-thirties (though, deliberately or otherwise, the character is written in a way that makes her feel much older). It's the middle of a long, sticky summer. Living alone in a suburb of London, Mary has settled into a numbing routine. Nowhere particular to go; nothing much to do; no friends or close family to speak of; a dull and uninspiring job. The shadow of her ex, Mark, looms over everything, his absence palpable in what used to be their shared home. At first he is sketched benignly in Mary's memories, but as he appears more and more often, seeking to remind Mary that he's watching her, it becomes clear how repellent Mark is. He is half gaoler, half wheedling child, a sickening – yet horribly plausible – figure. Mary is caught between boredom and discomfort, and she develops a powerful obsession with a fox she regularly sees in her garden. Later, she also focuses her attention on her neighbours' baby daughter.
Mary appraises the fox as one would an attractive person. She tries to assign a name to him (she is never in doubt that the fox is male), testing out 'Red' and 'Sunset' before deciding simply to think of him as 'her fox'. It goes further. She tells acquaintances she is seeing someone, all the while thinking smugly of 'her fox'. At first this might be an in-joke, albeit one Mary only has with herself, but the delusion is soon proved to run deeper than that. And just when you think it can't get more disturbing than pages of borderline-erotic descriptions of an animal, there's the scene with Mary kissing the baby. I now understand what people mean when they say they need 'brain bleach'...
This is just such a deeply uncomfortable and disturbing book in so many ways. It never crosses that line into downright perversity, but then, part of what makes it so painful is the fact that it is always teetering on the brink. It's hard not to want something definitively horrible to happen, if only for relief from that inescapable pressure. Scenes are long, unnaturally stretched out, excruciatingly so; the way people talk – either using tired platitudes or getting worked up over very little – is incredibly irritating; a threat of violence hangs over every appearance Mark makes. How to Be Human feels like it's designed to make you squirm with discomfort at every single development. There's no denying it's all pulled off brilliantly, but I don't think I have ever written the word 'nauseating' as frequently as I did while making notes on this novel.
The sentences, like the scenes, are long and rolling, folding familiar language into surprising shapes. Cocozza occasionally slips into the fox's thoughts, using an effective combination of disordered words and weird neologisms to approximate his 'voice': He brisked his whiskers. The air poked damp and saline. Come fresh to stalk around the human Female with sly feet and rippety eyes. Spruckling toadsome. Just the thought made his shoulder fur thicken. The atmosphere is thick and hallucinatory. I have a very clear picture of the setting in my mind, and I can't imagine forgetting it anytime soon.
If you were to have a conversation with me about this book, you'd probably go away thinking it was something I hated. It's true that I spent a lot of my time reading it cringing, squirming and anxiously wishing the scene I was reading would just end. But it's also true that it knocked me off my feet, that I could hardly believe how audacious and original it was. I admired it; it got under my skin. (While the two are very different, it reminded me of my reaction to Joshua Cohen's Book of Numbers, a book that's maddening and offensive but also such an absolute fucking masterpiece that I'm completely unable to describe it without swearing. It also made me think of Beryl Bainbridge's Harriet Said...; that same dragging summer; that same awful dread...)
In the end, Mary remains as opaque and unknowable as she was at the start. So many things about the character, her behaviour and development are so unlikely that they can surely only be symbolic. It feels most rewarding to see How to Be Human as a sort of modern fable about isolation, the precariousness of happiness (and perhaps sanity), and exactly how infinitesimal the division between a comforting distraction and a dangerous delusion can be.
I received an advance review copy of How to Be Human from the publisher through NetGalley.
Cousins Matthew and Charlie set off to spend their summer at the latter's second home, along with Charlie's wife, Chloe. Charlie, a former banker turnCousins Matthew and Charlie set off to spend their summer at the latter's second home, along with Charlie's wife, Chloe. Charlie, a former banker turned 'ethical investor', is a multimillionaire; Matthew, a restaurateur with no current job and vague dreams of opening a 'gourmet food truck', has not been quite so successful (though this is one of those stories so stuffed with unimaginably privileged people that Matthew still has the sort of lifestyle most of us can only dream of). To make matters more complicated, Matthew is possessed of an odd combination of feelings towards Chloe. He's attracted to her, but it's not as simple as desire alone: she is 'an idealised composite in whom daughter, sister, cousin, mother, mistress, friend and mystical other half were all miraculously commingled'. But rather than being (as you might imagine) seethingly jealous of Charlie, he 'had no actual designs on Chloe, and in fact believed in her and Charlie's marriage almost as an article of religious faith. It was something he considered absolutely right and absolutely fixed'.
Still, the friendship between Matthew and Charlie is volatile. After a severe falling-out when they were schoolboys, they've only become amiable again over the past ten years. Matthew still feels burned by that experience, and is well aware he is enormously in debt to his cousin in a number of ways. When Matthew starts to suspect Chloe is having an affair – and an investigation of her comings and goings seems to bear out his fears – the stage is set for disaster. The tension will slowly simmer for quite a while first, though...
The Fall Guy makes you believe it centres on a simple and surely universally relatable moral dilemma: if you found out your friend's partner was cheating, what would you do? (What if you secretly liked the partner better than the friend? What if your relationship with the friend was already uneasy?) It pulls you into those questions, then spits you out as it forces Matthew into an ever-worsening spiral of poor choices and lies. The protagonist's innate shiftiness, remarked upon by other characters as well as being apparent to the reader, becomes an asset, as does the use of third- rather than first-person narrator. You're distanced from Matthew enough that you're able to feel disgust at his actions – but the relentless focus on his point of view, his obsessiveness, his panic, makes you feel like you're colluding nevertheless.
Lasdun's style has such a smooth, easy flow to it here. I know it's an odd word to apply to writing, but I'd describe it as unobtrusive; it was like I was reading without realising I was reading, and I flew through the story at a speed that continually surprised me. In several ways, it seems absolutely effortless. A gripping, glittering novel.
I received an advance review copy of The Fall Guy from the publisher through NetGalley.
I read this in one stretch, which I think was the best way for me to read it, not because I couldn't put it down, but because I could easily have lostI read this in one stretch, which I think was the best way for me to read it, not because I couldn't put it down, but because I could easily have lost interest if I hadn't committed to consuming it in a single gulp.
A much-hyped debut for 2017, Little Deaths opens on a woman in prison, and then tells us how she got there. Ruth Malone is a cocktail waitress who lives with her young children, Frankie and Cindy. One day, Ruth goes to check on her kids and discovers they are not in their bedroom; soon afterwards, they are both found dead. We learn about Ruth from her own point of view, and also that of Pete, a journalist who becomes fixated on the case and infatuated with the woman at its centre. This is quite a slow story, an unfolding of events rather than a web of lies and surprise twists. But the same question hangs over every scene. Did Ruth murder her children? And if she didn't, what happened?
What the plot reminded me of, more than anything, was the case of Amanda Knox – both the real story (fairly fresh in my mind because of the recent Netflix documentary) and the many fictionalised versions that came after it, chief among them Cartwheel, an excellent novel by Jennifer duBois. There is the same sense that Ruth is suspicious because she doesn't behave as a woman in her position 'should'. That her attractiveness in itself makes her untrustworthy. She doesn't cry; she goes shopping for a new dress the day after her daughter's body is found. She's always perfectly composed, fashionably dressed, made up. In the weeks and months after the crime, she goes out drinking and sleeps around. She seems almost nonchalant, and that angers women and disgusts men.
There is a strong sense of emotional detachment throughout the book, which means horrifying developments – the deaths of the children and the reveal of their killer – lack the impact they should have. Holding a character at arm's length from the reader is always a tricky balancing act (how's that for mixed metaphors), and here, Ruth's development suffers for it. We can't know too much about her, because then we'd know whether she did it, but I think we're supposed to sympathise with her. And it isn't that I didn't sympathise with her, exactly, but she always felt like a ghost. A blank space. A person you hear about second-hand from someone else. Not a full-colour, warts-and-all character leaping off the page, making you race through the book to find out whether she's vindicated in the end. (view spoiler)[I didn't much care if she had to stay in prison. Flint perhaps gets her exterior heartlessness too spot-on in that I actually felt she (Ruth) didn't truly care either. (hide spoiler)]
For me, Pete's obsession was a really interesting angle: when we catch glimpses of him from other characters' perspectives, it becomes clear his fantasy of pursuing the truth is just that, and he is, in fact, basically stalking Ruth and becoming increasingly deluded. But Pete's story is mainly told from his own point of view, and there is little exploration of his motives.
Meanwhile, the most successful element of Little Deaths is its recreation of a gossipy working-class neighbourhood in 1960s Queens. I was very surprised to discover that Flint is British; the novel and its characters feel quintessentially American.
While this is a decent debut novel, I can't help but feel such an emotive premise should create the sort of story that provokes stronger reactions: a plot that moves you, characters to love or loathe. It's strong on atmosphere and period detail, but, like Ruth Malone, it has an emptiness at its heart.
I received an advance review copy of Little Deaths from the publisher through NetGalley.
Ties is brief and bracing, a portrait of a marriage falling apart after too many years of being held together by the finest threads.
It opens with a seTies is brief and bracing, a portrait of a marriage falling apart after too many years of being held together by the finest threads.
It opens with a series of letters from a woman, Vanda, to her estranged husband, Aldo. We know from her phrasing that he is writing back, at least sometimes, but we don't see his replies, so we're left with a one-sided chronicle of broken, ferocious rage. Aldo has left Vanda for a younger woman, offering little explanation and even less consideration of the couple's two children, Sandro and Anna. At the time of her final letter, four years after their initial separation, Aldo has finally expressed an interest in establishing a relationship with his son and daughter.
In the second part of the book, we get Aldo's point of view – decades later. He and Vanda are now elderly; they also live together as husband and wife, so we know the estrangement must have been temporary. The two of them have returned from holiday to find their flat ransacked and their possessions strewn about. As Aldo tidies up the mess, he finds Vanda's letters along with some old photographs, and his thoughts are pulled back to memories of their separation, his affair, his secrets, how the years have weighed on both of them...
Finally, we hear from Aldo and Vanda's daughter, Anna. In adulthood, she's as broken and bitter as Vanda was in the first part of the book. In fact, it becomes apparent that she and Sandro have both been twisted beyond repair by their parents' mutual resentment. The only ties that counted for our parents were the ones they've tortured each other with their whole lives. A simple story from their childhood – about Aldo teaching Sandro to tie his shoelaces – becomes a shape-shifting motif, illustrating how the family's memories clash and diverge, how they have each painted a different picture of their mutual history.
Ties is a very different animal from First Execution, the first (and so far only other) Starnone novel to be translated into English. Where that book was metafictional and provocative, with the author inserting a version of himself into a plot driven by political and philosophical ideas, Ties takes a more traditional narrative approach, and ruminates on themes common in literary fiction: romantic and familial relationships, the nature of truth, and the damage wrought by quietly destructive behaviour. It is, however, similarly elegant and intelligent in tone and style, and despite having a different translator, it feels as though it has exactly the same voice – recognisably Starnone's.
Starnone is married to Anita Raja, who was 'outed' as Elena Ferrante in Claudio Gatti's infamous NYRB piece last year. Starnone was even suspected of being Ferrante himself at one point. A thorough, interesting review by Lili Loofbourow in The Week compares Ties to Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment, suggesting that the books are in dialogue with each other; that Ties is the counterpoint to Days. I can't comment too much on this: I started Days a while back but never finished reading it; I haven't read anything else by Ferrante. But it's certainly a compelling vantage point from which to analyse the novel (though I would disagree with Loofbourow's assertion that the reader is pushed towards sympathising with Aldo, and that Vanda's fury is offputting. In fact I 'sided' with Vanda throughout the book, and found Aldo totally unsympathetic – his inability to understand how abandoning his family might impact his children is so complete it's almost comical. It's not that Starnone tries to make his protagonist's awful behaviour palatable, more that Aldo is deeply fascinating in spite of it).
I've noticed lots of talk about Ties in book-orientated media, no doubt due to the Ferrante connection. Let's hope this hastens the translation of Starnone's other novels into English, because after two five-star reads, I want to get my hands on every single one.
I received an advance review copy of Ties from the publisher. Many thanks to Daniela Petracco and Europa Editions UK.
As ever, reading a Death in Paradise novel is like being enveloped in a warm, comforting hug, but I was disappointed by the lack of development here –As ever, reading a Death in Paradise novel is like being enveloped in a warm, comforting hug, but I was disappointed by the lack of development here – while very much aware that lack of development is, for many, entirely the appeal of these cosily enjoyable books and the whole essence of the character of DI Richard Poole. As the mystery of an unidentified man's murder unravels, a shift in Richard's attitude is teased through his consideration of a sartorial change; there's also a tantalising moment of flirtation between Richard and Camille. But ultimately, nothing really changes. Indeed, the fact that nothing really changes ends up being the punchline of the Richard's-wardrobe subplot.
At this point, the characters' identifying characteristics are firmly established: Richard is stuffy and indignant; Camille is level-headed, with a fiery streak; Dwayne is cheeky; Fidel is enthusiastic. Personally I would prefer to read a Death in Paradise story that expanded on their personalities and developed their relationships beyond what we've already seen in the first two seasons of the show. I appreciate, however, that this is not what most fans want out of these stories: they want a nice enjoyable crime scenario with each original cast member playing out their role exactly as expected, topped off with a Christie-esque gathering and reveal. Which is what Death Knocks Twice delivers, and it's fun! But, you know, I want to get under their skin a bit more, and I will be croaking out a request for romantic Richard/Camille scenes with my dying breath.
I received an advance review copy of Death Knocks Twice from the publisher through NetGalley.
(This review contains references to a plot point which some may consider a spoiler. However, it's so central to the book that there'd have been no poi(This review contains references to a plot point which some may consider a spoiler. However, it's so central to the book that there'd have been no point in me writing any kind of review without mentioning it. You have been warned.)
Tom is a talented young footballer who has always seemed destined for stardom. He's spent years training with a local Premier League club, with the implicit assumption they would ultimately sign him. But that doesn't happen, and instead, Tom moves hundreds of miles away from his family home to join a League Two team only ever referred to as 'Town'. He is quiet and private – a natural player but, perhaps, an unnatural footballer. Raisin's penchant for the bleak lends itself perfectly to the world of third-division football, a strange halfway house between Premier League glamour and the muddy drudgery of local leagues; a world where teenage boys can earn more money than their parents ever have, but still be living out of Holiday Inn hotel rooms and getting takeaway from the local chippy every night.
However, that is not the whole story. A Natural is certainly a narrative of growing up, becoming an adult, surviving alone, but it is also a narrative of sexual awakening and repression. Tom is gay, though at the start of the novel he has buried that knowledge deep. It isn't immediately apparent that his sexuality differs from the other players' – only that the laddish way they perform sexuality, pulling paralytic girls in clubs and getting blowjobs from strippers in front of their teammates, makes him uncomfortable. Later, when Tom begins to sense a (reciprocated) attraction to Town's groundsman, Liam, internalised homophobia is conveyed through language and draws you into the character's disgust at himself. When Tom and Liam first kiss, the description is unpleasant: Tom experiences spasms of revulsion and a fleeting desire to hurt Liam; he momentarily feels 'certain that he was about to be sick into the man's warm stinking mouth'.
Tom and Liam do embark on a sort of relationship, but it is stunted by Tom's paranoia and discomfort. Running in parallel with this is the story of Chris Easter, once the golden boy of Town, whose star is fading; and his wife Leah, as lonely and isolated as Tom in her own way and, incongruously, Liam's best friend. Their fates slowly interweave, building to an undeniably contrived climax that's probably the weakest thing about the book. Throughout, A Natural eschews the dialect-led style of Raisin's previous novels in favour of calm, plain, straightforwardly descriptive prose. It would be workmanlike if it didn't flow so smoothly.
Let me get all millennial-hot-take on you for a second: as many critics have noted, Raisin's novels are about men and masculinity, but I see them as feminist. With A Natural, it struck me that he writes about how traditional notions of masculinity, patriarchal norms, and – in this case – heteronormativity all fail men who, for whatever reason, don't conform. With Sam, the protagonist of God's Own Country, we see how one stereotype becomes another: how the bullied, awkward outcast turns becomes the creep, the stalker, the rapist; how emotion is pushed down and turned inward until it becomes a twisted and deformed thing. In Waterline, Mick is the proud tradesman whose skills have become redundant, and whose pride and stoicism lead him to bottle up his grief and reject help until there is nowhere to go but down.
Compared to Raisin's previous leading men, Tom gets a relatively upbeat ending. There's a brutal sort of happiness about the final lines. But does his success come at a cost? I watched Moonlight a few days after I finished A Natural, and couldn't help drawing parallels between the film's protagonist, Chiron, and Tom, imagining a similarly stifled adulthood for the latter. The scenes of Tom and Liam's holiday in Portugal – the only time Tom allows himself to actually be himself – are difficult to forget: glimpses of genuine joy amid the sadness, shame and denial.
A Natural interrogates our ideas of what it means to 'be a man'. How far have we really come with acceptance of that which is perceived as 'other' – especially in a closed world like that of football, wherein a traditional conception of masculinity is central to the identity of the sport itself. Tom's story is quietly brutal in its examination of the damaging limits of such ideas, and unflinching in its depiction of the consequences for individuals. It feels damning but also intimate: a point is made, but the characters are far more than mere pawns.
I received an advance review copy of A Natural from the publisher through NetGalley.
I loved the first book of Louise Welsh's Plague Times trilogy (A Lovely Way to Burn, 2014) but felt rather more lukewarm about the second (Death is a I loved the first book of Louise Welsh's Plague Times trilogy (A Lovely Way to Burn, 2014) but felt rather more lukewarm about the second (Death is a Welcome Guest, 2015). So I approached No Dominion with a stronger sense of duty than excitement, only to be met with a brilliant third instalment that wraps the series up perfectly. It seems to combine the strongest elements of its predecessors – the thrilling high-energy plot and imaginative power of Burn, the maturity and character development of Guest – into an enthralling road-trip narrative that ranks as the best literary dystopia I've lost myself in since Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven.
No Dominion is set seven years after the events of the first two books, with both Stevie and Magnus now settled on the mainland of Orkney. Stevie is president of the island; Magnus has returned to his roots as a crofter. Meanwhile, Shuggie, Magnus's adopted son, is fifteen years old and starting to show signs of rebelliousness. It doesn't help that he's infatuated with Willow, a pretty, defiant girl whose adoptive parents are the abrasive Bjarne and jealous Candice. As the portentous prologue warns, The adults did not foresee that there would be a price to pay for keeping the children ignorant.
To cut a long story short, a trio of newcomers go missing along with a gaggle of the island's children, and Stevie and Magnus set off on an odyssey to track the kids down and, hopefully, bring them back. Sometimes it's like Mad Max: Fury Road relocated to Scotland circa 2025; at other points, especially the early scenes on Orkney, it's more like a historical novel set in a small, self-sufficient community. There are hymns to lost technology, scenes of nature reclaiming urban environments, high-octane action sequences, surreal touches and quiet, disturbing moments (I won't forget that scene in the kitchen at the Petrol Brothers' castle anytime soon). Welsh's writing is so smooth and assured, the narrative such an unstoppable powerhouse, that you never think to stop and question anything.
When you've read the other books in a series, it's really difficult to separate yourself from memories of them enough to assess them individually, but I feel pretty sure No Dominion could be read on its own. There are some little things it might be helpful to have existing knowledge of: Magnus's past as a stand-up comedian now seems so incongruous it's a shock to see it mentioned even when you are familiar with his backstory. (In fact, I'm now wondering whether the implausibility of gruff, taciturn Magnus as a comedian was a factor in my indifference towards Death is a Welcome Guest.) On the whole, however, No Dominion is strong enough to stand alone as a self-contained story.
A novel I didn't rate at all has been doing the 'for fans of Station Eleven' rounds this summer, but No Dominion is much more deserving of that comparison. It's a vision of a disastrous and destroyed future, it's an exciting yarn, but it is also deeply human: the relationships between the characters feel like they really matter. I might easily have given up on this trilogy, but I'm so glad I read this book.
I received an advance review copy of No Dominion from the publisher through NetGalley.