The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

What a journey! I've probably devoted more time to Mantel's Cromwell trilogy than I have to any other series of books since I not only read all 2,009 pages of the novels but also biographical and historical writing to better understand this time period. Though it required a lot of concentration and effort it was definitely worth it. I'm going to miss Cromwell whose soul searching odyssey and unprecedented influence as righthand man to the King comes to a heart-wrenching conclusion in this final book. 

There's a building tension which Mantel incrementally ratchets up and impressively maintains as Cromwell's enemies increase and the politics become so heated over the course of this long novel. Factions within England plot against the ruling monarch amidst the new religious divide and the country's relations with other European nations always feels delicate. Although great promise comes with Henry VIII's new wife Jane Seymour, the King's dynasty is still not secure. The unashamedly classist English noblemen also grow increasingly resentful of Cromwell's influence and power; they never let him forget he's merely the son of a blacksmith without noble lineage. So there's a lot at stake. Mantel uses many fascinating historical details to describe this complicated period of time and bring it alive. It does take patience to follow, but Mantel tempers her narrative with a fantastic humour which prevents the story from becoming dry.

There's so much tantalising banter and innuendo between characters in the royal court or whispered in shadowy corners. This includes speculation about what happens in the royal bed, accusations of treason and hints about shifting loyalties. The dialogue is very funny and kept me consistently engaged, but it goes beyond mere gossip as Mantel shows how politics is so often about the spread of rumours whose presence gradually takes on such weight that the truth becomes irrelevant. It's what leads to countless (many innocent) people being imprisoned and executed in these novels. As was noted in “Bring Up the Bodies” those in power must also rewrite history to suit the ruling force's narrative and objectives going forward. So although this is a story very much rooted in the past, I can see parallels to how our current leaders use similar techniques to craftily mould the narratives of nations to suit their purposes.

As with the previous novels, although this story is closely based on history and the larger outcomes are known, Mantel includes a lot of surprising facts and occasionally she slightly tinkers with some of the historical elements to make Cromwell a more dynamic character. There are several shocking twists in this novel which are so engaging and add to the complexity of the story. One of the most notable is a figure who appears that Cromwell didn't know existed. But there are also delightfully weird details such as how Henry was in disguise when he first met Anne of Cleaves. So I found this a suspenseful story with many sumptuous elements. It's also obviously more emotionally involving than a reading a historical account as we follow Cromwell's emotions and the path of his thoughts as Mantel imagines them.

The author has a tremendous talent for writing about how the ethereal can intrude upon our psychological reality. As both Henry and Cromwell have got older over the course of the novels, the dead have a stronger presence in their lives. It's even noted how “He thinks the dead are crowding us out.” Naturally, their presence is felt more keenly when there are feelings of guilt and regret associated with those who have died and both protagonists wrestle with these unresolved emotions. Mantel has a fantastic way of creating an eerie atmosphere where the presence of the dead make themselves felt. It also gives a different perspective on history because if those people had lived the fate of many and the state of the nation would have had such a different outcome. Part of the tension is that in the moment obviously none of the characters knew what was going to happen and with so many potential ways that events could twist the reader feels their intense struggle to decide what to do. Of course, we have the privilege of knowing the ultimate outcome but in reading this novel we can see potential alternative histories such as if Jane Seymour had lived and convinced Henry to reconcile with the Pope.

However, the biggest point of tension in this particular novel is between Henry and Cromwell. While Thomas has always been a faithful servant, the King can't help being swayed by the whispers being made against him. Figures such as the crafty diplomat Chapuys ominously warns Cromwell about the perilousness of his position since he entirely relies on the King's favour. Equally, Thomas seems to develop a more refined understanding of Henry's position since no matter how close and personal their relationship becomes Henry is a monarch whose role occludes his state of being a mortal man. Thomas insists “What should I want with the emperor if he were emperor of all the world? Your majesty is the only prince, the mirror and the light of other kings.” But Thomas also realises that no matter how faithful he is “If Henry is the Mirror he is the pale actor who sheds no luster of his own but spins in a reflected light. If the light moves, he is gone.” It's only through exercising his deadly power that Henry is able to maintain his position as the absolute monarch. Thomas knows that “This is what Henry does. He uses people up. He takes all they give him and more. When he is finished with them he is noisier and fatter and they are husks or corpses.” Again, I couldn't help thinking of modern equivalents of tyrannical powerful figures such as the current US president or Rupert Murdoch whose colleagues often end up in jail and whose multiple children from different wives form a dynasty.

One of the most obvious questions with a novel this long is: does it justify its length? Certainly some sections felt slightly extraneous to me. Drifting too far into a side plot with yet another character I had to struggle to recall somewhat diluted the power of the central story. There's such a profusion of tales and fascinating figures surrounding this period of royal history that it must have been difficult for Mantel to sift through which ones to include and what to leave out. For instance, the story of Margaret Douglas and Thomas Howard could form a novel in itself and I wanted to know more about them. I can't really begrudge Mantel leaving it in because I'm sure if I reread the novel these characters would come more into their own, but perhaps including so many characters demands more patience from the reader than it needs to. I also think that reading this novel without having read the first two books would really lessen the impact of the story because many parts refer back to scenes from the earlier novels and the narrative assumes the reader is familiar with them too. Additionally, you really need to have read the two previous novels to fully see how Cromwell's character develops over the course of the series and why horrific scenes and figures from his childhood continuously haunt him.

Reading this magnificent series of books is such a worthwhile experience. If you're like me and feel slightly hesitant about how much they might demand from the reader I can assure you they certainly deserve the investment of your consideration and time. It's no accident they are so lauded and widely loved. The story of Henry VIII and his wives has been told and retold so often it seems nearly mythological, but by approaching the politics and meaning of this historical period through the lens of Thomas Cromwell is a brilliant way to explore the workings of power. It also reimagines the heart and mind of an individual who endured so much hardship and trauma I fell in love with his story. Mantel's writing shimmers with so much insight and beauty that becoming immersed in this historical world is a deeply pleasurable experience.

You can also follow a journey I took to the Tower of London while discussing this novel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqAq-XYYiwg

The Fragments of my Father by Sam Mills

Being a carer for a loved one isn't always a strictly defined role like other professions, yet it's a vital service which helps support the most vulnerable people in our society. It's also a job that no one plans to take on until it's needed. When author Sam Mills' mother died in 2012 she inherited the duty of caring for her father who has grappled with serious mental health issues throughout much of his life. As she gradually becomes familiar with his particular form of schizophrenia, she also learns to deal with the extreme challenges and sacrifices involved with being a primary carer. Her insightful and heart-wrenching memoir relates her personal journey alongside a wider view of how mental health and the duty of carers have been managed throughout time. As society has progressed there's been a more enlightened and humane view of how to care for those afflicted with mental illness and support the people who take on the responsibility of care, but it's far from a perfect system and Mills makes a strong case for how it still requires more governmental and financial support. “The Fragments of my Father” broadened my understanding about the needs of carers and it will no doubt be a great source of consolation for anyone who has been in a situation where they've had to devote an extensive amount of time, energy and money caring for loved ones.

Since the struggles involved with care mostly take place in private it can be incredibly isolating. It's powerful how Mills describes this condition: “Being a carer can be a lonely duty; you can feel as though you are the only one in the world suffering in restrictions whilst everyone else around you are living lives of butterfly freedom.” She dynamically conveys how caring for her father takes a large toll on her personal relationships, professional life, finances and her own mental health: “I was not a full-time carer, yet my caring made my full-time work hard to sustain.” It's encouraging how meditation serves as a solitary activity which helps stabilize her amidst her daily whirlwind of duties.

As an author and publisher at Dodo Ink, Mills also poignantly considers how past literary lives were shaped by the duties of being a carer in the examples of Virginia and Leonard Woolf and Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. She describes their very different journeys and relationships as well as how these have been interpreted in competing biographical accounts. It’s a very different perspective on grief and illness from what was portrayed in “All the Lives We Ever Lived”, another memoir which filters personal family experience through the example of Woolf’s life and her fiction. Mills gives an insightful new view of these literary lives from the point of view of carer and how this strongly influenced the literature these writers produced. So, alongside Mills' own story, I found myself engrossed in her dramatic accounts of these authors.

This memoir very movingly frames the dilemma of a carer who wants to do the best for her parents but wrestles with the challenges that must be faced within this role. It presents such a beautifully dignified and loving personal portrait of both the author's parents alongside a strong political message. Mills notes how during times of austerity it's funding for those who need it the most which often gets cut first. Given the enormous economic recession we're facing as a result of the pandemic, this memoir also serves as a timely reminder to be vigilant about government policy in regards to care programmes and how the challenges and struggles that carers face behind closed doors can't be forgotten.

Conjure Women by Afia Atakora

Afia Atakora’s debut novel “Conjure Women” takes place on a Southern plantation and focuses on the life of Rue, a girl born into slavery. She’s the daughter of the community’s much-respected midwife and conjure woman Miss May Belle. Though she passes much of her knowledge to her daughter, changing circumstances mean that Rue’s craft is under suspicion especially when a new born boy with startlingly black eyes is believed to be a curse or haint Rue has brought upon them: “They had been waiting on reprisal, reprisal for freedom, for the joy of being free, and when that reprisal wasn’t fast coming, they’d settled on the notion that punishment was finally come in the black eyes of a wrong-looking child.” The narrative occurs in two alternating timelines before and after the Civil War - ‘SlaveryTime’ and ‘FreedomTime’. This builds a lot of tension in the story as many mysteries build and shocking revelations occur. It was gripping and I was drawn into the psychological complexity of the characters as the intricacies of their relationships unfold.  

There’s a curious doubling between Rue and Varina, the red-haired daughter of the plantation owner. Varina often plays with Rue but there is no question that Varina is the young mistress who is privileged and ultimately destined to own Rue. This creates a power play between the girls and though they seem to share an intimacy Rue is strongly reminded at one point that they can never be friends. Miss May Belle sews a flip doll that is a white girl on one side and a black girl when inverted and this emphasizes the girls’ connection to each other as well as the way they are like two sides of the same coin. As the war progresses and dramatic events occur Rue finds herself empowered in a way she wasn’t before. While they may be forced to be at odds with each other because of the circumstances, each girl is subject to different abuse and the natural kinship they’d might otherwise find with each other is disrupted by racial injustice. But this is just one of many relationships which are twisted by the gross imbalance of power. Atakora movingly explores these dynamics through the lives of her characters.

Miss May Belle and Rue’s power may be based in superstitious belief but this grants them a power they wouldn’t otherwise have. Yet what’s fascinating is the way they use their understanding of the circumstances to bring about change rather than through any conjuring spells. Miss May Belle understands that “Faith in magic was far more potent than magic itself”. Atakora shows how Christian belief comes to take precedence over the community’s belief in conjuring in the form of Bruh Abel who comes to preach to them. This novel gave me a new perspective on the mechanics of faith as well as a new point of view on the after-effects of the Civil War. It was also a great pleasure to read for its evocative language and the building suspense as the story plays out to a moving conclusion. An overall vivid, enthralling tale.

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

Having read “Wolf Hall” for the first time recently, I wanted to keep up the momentum by jumping right into reading the second book in Mantel’s trilogy on Cromwell. Like I said with the first novel, it’s impressive how the author creates such a suspenseful narrative despite my being aware of what was going to happen because it’s based on history. Having dealt with the sprawling mechanics of the events leading to Henry’s marriage with Catherine of Aragon being invalidated and England’s break from the authority of the Pope in the first novel, “Bring Up the Bodies” does feel like a more concentrated story because it deals almost solely with the downfall of Anne Boleyn. It’s clear she’s fated from the beginning of the book as Henry is casting around for excuses to dispose of her. But, again, I felt gripped wanting to know how events would unfold through Cromwell’s political manoeuvring. It’s both compelling and horrific seeing how his schemes lead some people to become entrapped in a bloody fate or compromise those close to them to save their own skin. Mantel is brilliant at dramatizing how, as the proverbial saying goes, ‘power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely’. 

Yet Cromwell also emerges as such a fascinatingly complex figure in her portrayal of him as a man of committed Christian faith who also feels such a strong loyalty to England and the King. Henry’s edicts mean these two convictions should be at odds with each other but Cromwell must act as if they are not. He must also rewrite history as they go in order to keep pace with Henry’s tyrannical desires: “Now our requirements have changed and the facts have changed behind us.” As seen in the hyperbolic pronouncements of world leaders in recent years, facts are something which people in positions of great power believe they can simply invent despite contrary evidence.

In a way Cromwell seems magnanimous in encouraging people to follow the path of least resistance in order to literally survive even if it means they must surrender their own ambitions, beliefs and freedom. Perhaps the key to his success is his willingness to cede all these things to the will and might of the monarchy and hope the benefits will follow. In this novel he does profit heavily from such loyalty, but it’s a dangerous game. It makes me even more curious to find out how he’ll inevitably fall out of favour in the third book. But Cromwell is also monstrous in selecting the most convenient people around to charge alongside Anne to bring about her downfall: “He needs guilty men so he has found men who are guilty though perhaps not guilty as charged.” In his position he's able to strategically orchestrate the removal and disposal of people in a way which best suits the King and his own interests. 

Alongside a reinforcement of the Tudor line it feels as if in these acts there is a simultaneous self-conscious anxiety about the meaning of Englishness and national identity. The disruption of England breaking away from the Catholic church in Rome has caused unrest which will continue to be felt in multiple ways and this creates an atmosphere of unease: “The feeling is that something is wrong in England and must be set right. It’s not the laws that are wrong or the customs. It’s something deeper.” Already it feels like there is a myth-making occurring as if there is some essential Englishness which can be got at or returned to which will join the nation together as a whole. But Henry, in his selfish wielding of power for his own lineage and vanity, has violently divided the country rather than given it a sense of cohesion. These are historic tensions which I think are still felt and manifest in different forms today.

This feels like a more reflective novel than the first as both Cromwell and other characters recall formative moments of their lives. And perhaps even more than the first book there is a feeling of the dead's presence amongst the living. Mantel chillingly creates an atmosphere of gloomy tension populated by ghosts: “When the house is quiet, when all his houses are quiet then dead people walk about on the stairs.” Yet, at the same time, many characters who've been targeted and accused of conspiring with or having affairs with Queen Anne are practically dead men walking since they will soon be tried and executed. The title itself refers to prisoners being brought out from their cells as if they were already corpses.

Perhaps it's because of the more concentrated story-line or the fact this novel is only two-thirds the length of the first novel, but I found reading “Bring Up the Bodies” a more brisk and easier experience. Again, there was some momentary confusion about the meaning of certain events or who particular characters are on my part but this narrative has a momentum to it largely due to the inevitability of Anne's downfall. I enjoyed it immensely and found many scenes gripping as well as chilling. I now feel primed and ready for Mantel's conclusion to this monumental epic.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

For many years I’ve felt ashamed about not having read “Wolf Hall”. I know it’s silly to feel shame about not reading or enjoying certain books even if they are some of the most critically acclaimed and lauded books of our time. There will always be great books I won’t have time to get to and I was initially put off from this novel because I started reading it when it was first published in 2009, but felt confused by the complicated politics of the Tudor period. It can feel tedious reading certain historical novels where I have to frequently put the book down to look up the meaning of a certain person or event on Wikipedia to feel like I really understand what’s going on in the story. So after about 150 pages I put it aside and didn’t go back to it. But, now with the third book of Mantel’s trilogy coming out soon, I felt it’s time to really immerse myself in it.

I’ve also greatly appreciated other books I’ve read by Mantel so she’s a writer I’m glad to make an effort for. This time I took steps to better prepare myself for it by reading the very detailed biography “Thomas Cromwell”. While I found MacCulloch’s book quite a bore it did give me an understanding of the most important people, events and politics portrayed in Mantel’s novel. So I read “Wolf Hall” straight through without stopping, even though the broader meaning of some scenes still went over my head. To my delight, it was a wonderfully enriching and enjoyable experience and I’m now eager to read more!

One thing that was really memorable for me the first time I tried reading “Wolf Hall” was the magnificent, emotional opening scene Mantel writes where Cromwell is a boy who has just been savagely beaten by his father. She captures the heart-wrenching physical and emotional pain of this incident. The image of Thomas as a vulnerable rejected young lad casts a shadow over the rest of his fascinating life and informs later scenes of the novel as Cromwell carefully navigates the choppy waters of court life, serving Henry VIII and being a key negotiator of the English Reformation.

It’s powerful how Mantel portrays his resilience, innate intelligence and ability to use his ingenious political skills to execute the King’s will where many of his predecessors failed. She describes how he understood better than most how to gather as much dirt on people as possible and how to use and ration out that knowledge in a way which would best benefit him and the people he represented: “A man's power is in the half light, in the half seen movements of his hand and the unguessed at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people, the gap you open into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.” Because Cromwell came from relatively humble beginnings, his savvy ability to ascend to such prominence and become one of the most powerful men in England is impressive but he clearly never forgets where he came from and people of the royal court never let him forget his origins either.

It’s moving how Mantel occasionally writes Thomas recalling his boyhood and the threat of his father so much so that the long-dead patriarch takes on a ghostly presence in his life. In fact, there many hauntings in the novel from Henry dreaming of his dead brother and Thomas feeling the continued presence of his deceased wife Elizabeth. It feels like death is an ever-present spectre in this time period as Mantel describes continuous threats of deadly fever/plague and public executions. Given the fearsome prominence of these threats it’s no wonder that the author writes her characters as if they constantly tread the line between life and the after-life.

Mantel interweaves a wicked humour throughout the narrative as well. She portrays scenes where characters will darkly parody the downfall of others such as the arrest of Cardinal Wolsey or mockingly re-enact dramatic conversations. Late in the novel she even pokes fun at how English weather is notoriously grey and rainy when Cromwell reflects how he would have been a better man if the weather were better. This adds a wonderful levity to a story which is weighted with so much bloodshed and seriously reflects on a pivotal turning point in England’s history.

Towards the end of the novel I found it poignant how Mantel depicts the larger significance of the monumental changes of this time. Many fictional and historic accounts of the Tudors have revelled in the salacious scandal of Henry’s many wives and the political implication of England breaking from the church in Rome. But Mantel gets at subtler implications about where the general population would henceforth put their faith. The English Reformation forced people to choose if they would follow God or the King. This conflict obviously played out in many bloody battles, but also reverberated through the hearts of the entire nation. So I think it’s brilliant the complex way Mantel captures the larger psychological and social evolution to show how “England is always remaking herself.”

But, of course, the bulk of the story is made up of small moments and meetings between a few individuals who would steer the direction of the country: “The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms.” Through the dialogue of her characters Mantel shows the various powerplays at work, the promise of comradery or the making of enemies – when people will bend such as Henry Percy surrendering his engagement to Anne or when they will not bend such as Thomas More who refuses to plea for mercy. It’s especially exciting seeing what’s at stake in the meetings and exchanges between Cromwell and Anne Boleyn as well as Catherine of Aragon. And Jane Seymour appears in many scenes as well as if hovering in wait. Though this first novel only follows the tale up until the execution of Thomas More even I understand enough about the history to know that she will eventually become the third wife.

Admittedly, there were still sections of the novel which went over my head. Because of my ignorance about some of the intricacies of this historical period I wasn’t always certain about what events were taking place or who was being portrayed. There are many characters to keep track of and this can be especially difficult when so many are named Thomas, Mary or Henry. There’s even a semi-joke made at one point when Thomas becomes confused about whether Anne is talking about her sister Mary or Catherine’s daughter Mary I. But this didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the novel as I could follow the general progression of the story through the main players.

I’m glad I put in the effort to return to “Wolf Hall” because reading it was an exciting and rewarding experience overall. Even though I obviously know what larger events will happen in the second and third books because they are rooted in history, I’m very keen to see how Mantel further develops the characters she’s made out of these figures from the past. It’s strange to say, but I feel a deep tension now wanting to know what’s going to happen and how Cromwell will eventually meet his tragically inevitable conclusion.

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

“Lost Children Archive” must have one of the most unusual structures for a novel that I’ve read in a long time. It seems natural that Valeria Luiselli’s first novel written in English would chiefly concern the plight of immigrant children as her extended essay “Tell Me How It Ends” so powerfully laid out this harrowing dilemma. Since politicians often turn immigration into an abstract political debate, Luiselli has a tremendous ability for highlighting and reminding us how this is above all a human rights issue and makes us see the humans effect. The ramifications for children who are adrift and literally wandering blindly through this landscape with stringently guarded borders are incalculable because when they become lost in a political system “They are children who have lost the right to a childhood.” In this novel she expands this understanding and creates an artful story which traverses time and space to illuminate a new way of looking at what happens when our society loses its children.

At its centre, this is a road trip novel about a husband and wife driving with their son and daughter across America. They’re engaged in a project to capture and record the sounds of the country to better understand its nature of being. The couple’s relationship is also disintegrating and the closer they come to their destination the closer this family comes to separating. What begins as a deeply-felt intellectual reflection about the ways we negotiate children’s place in our lives turns into a tense search for those who have gone missing with hallucinatory twists. It sounds confusing and I’m still puzzling over the experience of it, but this innovative novel shines with so much humanity I found it utterly compelling and engaging.

Luiselli writes endearingly about private moments of family life – especially when confined in the restricted space of a car for most of the day. There are funny moments which take the mother out of her brooding and serious concern: “Children’s words, in some ways, are the escape route out of family dramas, taking us to their strangely luminous underworld, safe from our middle-class catastrophes.” It’s interesting how there’s a sense that this family is somewhat new to each other since both the father’s son and the mother’s daughter are children from previous relationships, but their bond and connection to each other is so strong. There is also a constant feeling of their anonymity since none of these family members are named (except for the girl who is nicknamed Memphis by the son when they pass through the Tennessee city.) The mother who narrates the first half of the book frequently makes up stories about their lives to tell the strangers they meet amidst their journey. So all these aspects of the book build a sense that they are both everyone and no one belonging everywhere and nowhere.

One of the ways the parents try to entertain (and distract) the children during their long car rides is to play an audio book of “Lord of the Flies”. The narrative of Golding’s tremendous novel has a powerful effect on the son who takes the story’s messages about struggle and survival to heart. But it also shows how Luiselli is forming a dialogue with the narratives of classic stories to come to a new understanding of how we structure society and the core values that should serve as the base of its foundations. “Lost Children Archive” additionally references and converses with the ideas of writers such as Walt Whitman, Jack Kerouac and Susan Sontag. There’s also a fictional book called “Elegies for Lost Children” in the mother’s possession which she reads aloud from and it’s quoted from at length in the novel itself. It’s the story of a band of children’s struggle to arrive at a new home while riding atop dangerous trains and being led by tyrannical guides.

Photo by Nan Goldin. “When I see the people of this country, their vitality, their decadence, their loneliness, their desperate togetherness, I see the gaze of Emmet Gowin, Larry Clark, and Nan Goldin.”

These stories are narrated aloud and they meld with radio news they listen to about the growing Mexican-American border crisis and reports of undocumented migrant children being flown out of the country. The mother is particularly preoccupied with these children’s futures, but the father is more concerned with the past as their ultimate destination is the southwest where he wants to search for any lingering sounds of decimated Native American tribes. In a sense the parents are tragically outside of the present and their anxiety over how to document the experiences of these displaced people reflect a general feeling that “Something changed in the world. Not too long ago, it changed, and we know it. We don’t know how to explain it yet, but I think we all can feel it, somewhere deep in our gut or in our brain circuits. We feel time differently… We haven’t understood how space and time exist now, how we really experience them. And until we find a way to document them, we will not understand them.” Equipped only with their instincts and some boxes of scattered maps, books and tools, the family are on a quest to learn how to capture this experience of the present. Until then, their ultimate endpoint and sense of home remains perilously uncertain – just as it does for all of us.

This is an absolutely fascinating, clever and complex novel which takes seriously the personal impact of politics and gives a new way of looking at the bonds of family.

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli

This short and powerful nonfiction piece by Valeria Luiselli is such a poignantly constructed insight into the immigration crisis/debate in America now. Luiselli relates her experiences working as a volunteer interviewing thousands of children from Central America who have been smuggled into the United States and are seeking residency/citizenship. She asks them questions from an intake questionnaire created by immigration lawyers that will play a large part in determining if the children will be granted status to remain or face deportation. Going through the questions one at a time she explains the way the immigration system is designed to keep as many people out as possible without accounting for these children’s vulnerable situation or America’s role in the creation of this crisis. At the same time, she relates her personal experiences as a Mexican immigrant whose own ability to work was restricted because of a delay with her visa. It’s an achingly personal book that makes a strong political statement. It skilfully asserts something that shouldn’t need to be stated, but which we need to be reminded of in a political climate that overwhelmingly seeks to vilify immigrants: that these are children who have suffered through hell and that by treating them as criminals we are only adding to their trauma.

Luiselli’s justified anger and frustration about the situation these children find themselves in is palpable throughout the book. As a volunteer whose main job is to translate the children’s answers and who can do nothing to assist or change the outcome of their cases she feels that “It was like watching a child crossing a busy avenue, about to be run down by any of the many speeding cars and trucks”. It’s striking how government policies don’t seem to recognize the human faces that Luiselli meets, but implements decisions based on strategic ways of restricting vulnerable children’s ability to fairly state their case and strip them of their humanity. In fact, it was shocking to learn how the Obama administration worked with the Mexican president to implement immigration policies in Mexico to more effectively prevent immigrants from other Central American countries from getting to the US in the first place. Given the current president’s stance on immigration from Central America it’s terrifying to think how even greater walls are being created to keep out children who face continuous abuse, slavery or death in their own communities.

People in the US are made to feel that these problems belong to the Central American countries, but the issues of drug wars, arms trade and gang violence are intimately tied with US history and its policies. Luiselli reminds us how “No one suggests that the causes are deeply embedded in our shared hemispheric history and are therefore not some distant problem in a foreign country that no one can locate on a map, but in fact a transnational problem that includes the United States – not a distant observer or passive victim that must now deal with thousands of unwanted children arriving at the southern border, but rather as an active historical participant in the circumstances that generated that problem.”

Threaded throughout this book is the request from Luiselli’s daughter to know how the stories of these immigrant children end. Of course, all of their stories are just beginning so in response she says “Sometimes I make up an ending, a happy one. But most of the time I just say: I don’t know how it ends yet.” I greatly admire the clear-sighted observations found in this book and its tremendous heart. 

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor

I have very conflicted feelings about “Reservoir 13” by Jon McGregor because I admired so much about its technique and ingenuity, but I often wasn't engaged by the story in that satisfying way I hope a novel will make me feel. The novel centres around 13 year old Rebecca Shaw who goes missing and the effect her disappearance has on the local village. It traces the reverberations of this occurrence for over a decade recording small slices of the villagers' lives and the changing seasons as well as speculation about what happened to Rebecca or “Becky” or “Bex.” In this way, the novel accurately reflects what it's like to be vaguely aware of a missing girl and periodically see references to her in the media over time. It's poignant how a missing child never ages, but remains a peripheral presence in our consciousness while we continue to grow and change. Despite computer generated sketches that speculate how Rebecca might look if she aged, the villagers mentally see the girl preserved in her youthful form and she exists fundamentally as a haunting unanswered question.

McGregor depicts a large cast of characters in a glancing way where we receive intimations about life developments, but never delve into any one character's psyche very deeply. Over a long period of time we see friends make plans for the future, follow different paths in life and reunite for awkward catch-ups. Marriages break up, optimistically come back together and fizzle out again. In this way, the novel gives the most extraordinarily accurate sense of village life where we have a vague awareness of major life changes for a certain group of people, but never truly get to know them. A novel which produces a similar effect (but has a very different style and nature) is Joanna Cannon's “The Trouble with Goats and Sheep” which also concerns a community's reaction to a missing person. It makes a poignant commentary about the natural way we socialize, make assumptions about others and never get the chance to truly engage with them on a meaningful level. It’s also really beautifully written but there are lots of mundane details about the multitude of characters’ lives alongside details that clue you into larger issues those characters are dealing with. Because I didn’t feel like I really knew the characters in depth, I cared about those mundane details even less than I would in a novel where there are a few central characters I got to know really well. If that were the case, I’d be okay with treading water waiting for a more interesting plot development or psychological insight. But, in “Reservoir 13” I felt like I didn't grasp who many of the characters were until page 200 or so – at which time there was so little of their story left in the novel it's like I barely ever knew them at all.

No doubt a rereading would yield a more fruitful understanding of the characters involved. The first time I read Virginia Woolf's “The Waves” I had difficulty distinguishing between the six central characters – partly because the oddball poetic language blurred them into one at first. It's only been through multiple re-readings that each character has crystallised into a distinct individual with many layers of psychological depth. In the long run, that made the novel feel so much more rewarding and also turned it into my absolute favourite novel. The comparison between these novels is apt because McGregor's novel also follows a small group of adolescents' lives as they grow up and in doing so poignantly captures the flow of time and paths in life. Woolf also traces how the sun rises and crosses the sky in her novel while McGregor gives equal weight to changes in nature. Frequently descriptions of characters' lives are interspersed in the same paragraph with an observation about developments in the lives of local animals like birds and foxes. So while we witness characters give birth, change jobs and suffer, we also witness over the years bats who breed, feed and hibernate. This gives an even more fully rounded portrait of what it's like to live in a community.

Each section begins with a new year and a description of fireworks in the village. 

Alongside descriptions of specific characters McGregor also refers to the lives of peripheral individuals in a striking way. A man moves to the village and people think of him as “the widower” even though no one knows the specifics of his situation. It turns out that his wife isn't dead at all; they are merely separated. Yet, the community still think of him as a widower and never get to know many more details of his life. The false impression about him has been cemented in the public's consciousness in a way which is both tragic and comic. A similar impression is given of the missing girl's parents who are viewed from a distance in a way that we can see hints of their painful conflict, but don't really fully understand or know them. A different but equally meaningful effect is created when we get a slight understanding of the domestic abuse a mother receives at the hands of her mentally/behaviourally-disabled child or the fear of a woman who escaped a painfully destructive marriage or a man's conflicted feelings about his son's homosexuality. Other characters are hesitant to intrude upon these characters personal lives making the reader feel the excruciating sting of isolation.

All this means that I've been really moved thinking about what Jon McGregor did in the structure and style of this novel. It's a revelatory depiction of what it means to live in a community and society. But, at the same time, when I was actually reading it I found my mind so often drifting to other things and I found it difficult to concentrate on. McGregor's successful stylistic choices effectively convey powerful meaning, but at the expense of a wholly immersive story. So it depends what kind of reading experience you're after. If you want a book you can meditate on and get more out of by reading it a second time around, “Reservoir 13” is a great book. But it's not the kind of novel that pulls you into the text so that you entirely forget that the world exists around you – at least, it didn't do that for me reading it for the first time.

My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent

One of the most horrific of human betrayals must be the abuse of a child by a parent. Not only does this warp a young person's development, but normalizes cruelty to the degree where a child might then inflict it upon others and themselves. Debut novel “My Absolute Darling” by Gabriel Tallent gives a startlingly new and heart-wrenching look at the way a child is made to feel dependent upon her father's abuse. Fourteen year old Julia is raised by her single father Martin in a rundown house on the California coast. The only other familial contact she has is with her decrepit but kindly grandfather, Daniel. She goes by the nickname 'Turtle' but Martin more often affectionately calls her 'Kibble' or 'My Absolute Darling.' Martin is very scholarly and often reads philosophy, but he’s prone to paranoia as he has extreme survivalist beliefs. Their shack is filled with an arsenal of weapons which he frequently trains Turtle in using. She’s a very adept student who can load, clean and accurately fire a range of guns. As Turtle prepares to go to high school and grows older, their isolated home life becomes more strained and intolerable. This is a mesmerizing story full of courage, dramatic scenes and insight into the formation of a severely damaged young individual’s identity.  

Tallent has a curious writing style which treads somewhere between a hyper-realized reality and an elevated intellectual drama. The story is highly attuned to the natural world. Frequently scenes are filled with rich descriptions of the plants and animals that surround their rural house. This reminded me of the kind of detail found in recent novel “The Sport of Kings” by C.E. Morgan or the pastoral scenes found in books by Émile Zola. Turtle’s psychology is presented in a complex way to show her skewed perspective of the world that’s been tainted by Martin’s oppositional personality and overbearing ideology filled with hate towards women. For instance, when she sees a well-meaning girl at her school she thinks: "I will grow up to be forthright and hard and dangerous, not a subtle, smiling, trick-playing cunt like you." The blunt unmediated reality of her inner and outer life are so forcefully presented, yet the trajectory of her story and interactions with others feel more akin a highly stylized drama. The closest comparison I can make is to the film ‘The Night of the Hunter’ which pays close attention to the details of nature and children’s loss of innocence under an insidious masculine figure. It’s both concretely realistic and saturated by an elegiac filter that makes it feel mythic.

The most fascinating way the novel deviates from being truly naturalistic is in the social interactions Turtle has with a couple of boys she meets on a hike. Brett and Jacob are just a little older than her, yet they are so learned that they frequently drop literary allusions into their discussions and reference classic literature. This is a consistent trope throughout the novel with Martin who often applies philosophical stances to their situations or even how he names a hated spider that inhabits their house Virginia Woolf. It’s through the friendship that Turtle strikes up with Brett and Jacob that the reader is keyed into a whole level of society surrounding her which Turtle is excluded from. The landscape which felt totally wild, untamed and impoverished through Turtle’s eyes reveals itself as an ordered and privileged place filled with affluent houses and valuable property. This realization forcefully smacks the girl: "Turtle has always known that other people grew up differently than she did. But she had, she thinks, no idea how differently." It’s tremendously powerful how the author presents this shift, yet it also felt slightly jarring. Brett and Jacob’s characters are so idiosyncratic that it’s difficult to believe the bond they hurriedly form with the aloof and combative figure of Turtle.

The greatest power of this novel is in its evocation of Turtle’s development and conflicted psychology. Her father insults her horrifically leading her to hate her personality, her intellect and her body. At one point she thinks "the slit is illiterate - that word undresses her of all that she has knotted and buckled up about herself; she feels collapsed – every bitter, sluttish part of her collapsed and made identical to that horrible clam." Yet she thinks his behaviour is justified and she mentally defends him: "she thinks, you are hard on me, but you are good for me, too, and I need that hardness in you.” Martin alternates physical, mental and sexual abuse with declarations of how much he values her and how they stand as a pair in opposition to the world. This makes Turtle feel that she has no purpose or value outside of this enclosed severely dysfunctional relationship. The author shows how this inner conflict plays out through torturously tense scenes and how painful it is for Turtle to imagine a life without her father’s dominant presence: "She thinks, I don't even know what all right would look like. I don't even know what that would mean."

Watch Gabriel Tallent discuss his inspiration for writing My Absolute Darling.

Other recent novels such as Hanya Yanagihara’s “A Little Life” and Eimear McBride’s “The Lesser Bohemians” have shown the long-term effects of abuse for difficult individuals. But I think “My Absolute Darling” gets a fascinating new angle on this harrowing issue capturing the powerful emotion of a damaged individual’s trajectory. Tallent shows the way a person’s instinct can help guide her towards realizing what’s right for her life. Even though this is an intensely dramatic and sensational story that’s definitely nothing like my own life, I found myself connecting with and relating to Turtle’s shifting internal logic. It’s challenging to reconcile the way you perceive and value yourself in relation to how others’ react to you. Learning to take on and process what others make you feel without letting it distort your sense of being is monumentally difficult. “My Absolute Darling” inhabits this struggle so powerfully.

The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie

In the past several months I've been thinking a lot about how my parents have influenced who I am. It's only become evident after some time and distance while making my own life in adulthood how patterns of behaviour can be seen in relation to how I was raised and how I reacted to them. I don't want to ascribe blame for any of my shortcomings on my parents' actions. It's simply interesting to observe and try to understand how the alchemy of nature and nurture influence attitudes and values throughout life. This novel acutely observes how “A life could be spent like an apology – to prove you had been worth it.” I believe that if we don't frequently reflect on the way our families have made us who we are the self becomes wayward, acting out in reaction to the past rather than working to better realize who we are in the present.

“The Portable Veblen” is about a couple who meet and marry, but it's much more a story about families and how two people can forge lives of their own coming out of very difficult family situations. Veblen is a thirty year old woman who lives on the remote edges of Palo Alto working secretarial temp jobs to fund her passion for translating Norwegian literature and studying her namesake Thorstein Bunde Veblen, a Norwegian-American economist. She freely quotes William James and sees herself as a curious kind of “travelling scribe” recording the lives of those around her. She meets and quickly falls in love with Paul Vreeland, a thirty-five year old research scientist who is on the brink of discovering a revolutionary new method for relieving cranial swelling and brain damage from head trauma. They want to marry soon, but planning a wedding isn't simple with families like these.

Veblen's mother Melanie is a hypochondriac who seems to have a new chronic medical condition every day and has a fierce emotional attachment to her daughter. Melanie's husband Linus, Veblen's step-father, tiptoes around his wife trying not to upset her and caters to her frequent unreasonable whims. Veblen's father Rudgear has been living for years in a mental institution as he suffers from PTSD and barely recognizes his daughter on her infrequent visits. Because Veblen has needed to take on a caring role for both her parents she still clings to childish fantastical notions of fictional lands filled with animals. It means she talks to squirrels.

Paul was raised under very different circumstances where his anti-establishment parents lived in a type of commune that grows marijuana. When they aren't engaged in sessions of chemically-induced escapism, most of their care and attention goes to Paul's mentally disabled brother. This upbringing has in turn made Paul very independently-minded and ambitious to gain approval from the establishment. However, his aspirations to achieve recognition in medical technology and bring his device to fruition entangle him in a corrupt system that his parents were rightly suspicious of. Alongside the story of his evolving relationship with Veblen is a plot about a corrupt medical industry that values profit over people's health care.

Thorstein Bunde Veblen

There are many cringe-worthy tragicomic scenes in this book as the couple meet each other's families and try to navigate how they can successfully integrate them into the life they want to build together. Importantly, the author doesn't mock the parents in this book or make them targets of derision for the ways they may or may not have fucked up their children. McKenzie takes care to show how they are capable of catering to their children's wellbeing when it's really needed. There is a tenderness of feeling present amidst the chaos as Veblen declares at one point “But you love your family, what can you do.”

It's interesting how McKenzie can introduce surprising moments of self-reflection amidst her narrative. As the characters' lives teeter on the brink of losing all control she can suddenly stop and ask searching questions which probe how the past and family life might influence the way her characters relate to their partners: “Was it possible to love the contradictions in somebody? Was it all but impossible to find somebody without them? Had her mother made of her a ragged-edged shard without a fit?” There is an endearing feeling throughout this novel of desperately trying to make sense of one's life while facing the challenges of life and trying to forge honest meaningful relationships.

McKenzie also has a fascinating absurd slant on the world. The squirrel Veblen maintains an occasional dialogue with becomes an important character himself and bends the plot of the story. Interspersed with the text of the story are occasional photos depicting a variety of things that Veblen either sees or imagines which make the reader more immersed in her view of the world. There’s an intriguing urgency to this author’s narrative which is more concerned with what her characters are thinking and feeling moment to moment rather than creating an organized structure to their journey or finding a clear consistent focus. She allows for moments of pause such as this: “She relaxed and watched a family at a table nearby, the parents feeding the children, wiping their mouths, cleaning their hands, a father and mother and two children, the unit of them unsettling to her, though she couldn’t say why. She looked away, at an older man eating by himself, and that unsettled her too. She wasn’t sure how to live.” Rather than developing her characters, McKenzie allows them to wade in uncertainty in a way which is strikingly poignant and meaningfully blunt.

“The Portable Veblen” is a curious book in that it isn’t afraid to keep asking questions for which there can be no solutions. I felt really connected to the story because of that and enjoyed the humorous and relevant journey of psychological insight it took me on.

Green Glowing Skull by Gavin Corbett

Who are you? Are you the physical body you inhabit, the family/country you were born into or the person that you believe yourself to be? Trapped as you are in your own consciousness the boundaries between these states of being flow effortlessly from moment to moment. In other words “One day you’re yourself, the next you’re not quite.”  Traditional narratives construct stories that lead you through a character’s journey that often hint at the tensions between that character’s internal and external reality. Gavin Corbett breaks all those walls down in his novel “Green Glowing Skull” so the separate containers of identity all slosh into one riotous head fuck. It’s absolute chaos, but it’s also true.

I know that all sounds abstract, but it’s what I think the novel is really about. I’ll try to give an approximate summary of the story. An Irish man named Rickard Velily moves to New York City where he meets two older long-time Irish immigrants named Denny and Clive. The later was actually born as a woman named Jean Dotsy. There is a belief about Ireland that “The country’s gone to ruin and there’s no going back. The rot has set right in deep now.” Aidan Brown (nicknamed “Quicklime”) is a man who works for a charity seeking to convince “valued” Irish expats to return to their native land. He tries to target Clive who persistently resists his entreaties. Rickard, Denny and Clive form a tenor group singing folk songs that remind Irish expatriates of their homeland. Many of these expats meet in the city’s Cha Bum Kun clubhouse which supports Irish men freshly arrived in the city who are in need of housing. The historic clubhouse might be in its final days with a billion dollar offer on the table for the property which could give these men personal freedom, but also sever the ties to their native country. The story also contains wild shih tsu who prowl the city’s sewers like vermin, exploding heads and a man that turns himself into a bowling ball.

The overriding preoccupation of this entertaining and wild novel is national identity. In many ways it’s a familiar tale. Someone from Ireland moves to New York City. It’s a story that’s been told in many forms – even in recent great novels like “Brooklyn,” “Academy Street” and “We Are Not Ourselves.” Corbett resists traditional forms of narrative because he doesn’t want his protagonist to “feel like a tragic cabbage-scented character in a Irish rural drama.” Rather, the three main characters pursue their singing which conjures Ireland as a place more powerfully as a state of mind than a physical location. It’s stated that “It was a dream Ireland, yes, they both admitted, finally and without any provocation; but it was an Ireland that they once had been prepared to fight and die for to make real, just like those Young Irelanders.” Equally, the New York City that these immigrants come to is also a state of mind, something Rickard wanted to enter into after seeing it portrayed in his favourite film. The trouble is that the reality of either place doesn’t align with how people imagine it to be. People cast about desperately and without a home to call their country. They lose their heads.

Klein Blue IKB_191

There is also a sense in this novel that technology is changing our consciousness, the way we communicate and even the physical world. There is a coding underlying reality. Back in Ireland, Rickard worked for a company which harvested redundant text from the internet. “The world of information, he was told, was not just a paperless one but a wireless one now too. The medium was the air – even matter – itself; its bore limitless. Moving in three dimensions these days was to move through a fourth dimension, and for it to move through him.” There is a curious sense of synaesthesia which occurs when someone sees a string of nonsense lettering, numbers and symbols where that can instantly translate within the mind into a colour. Corbett also has a talent for combining humour and social observation with playfully-expressed nonsense. A colleague of Rickard’s enthusiastically decrees that “we stand on the threshold of a new conceptual framework for non-augmented non-experiential eventfulness.” This could be the nonsense speak of a corporate ethos, but here it’s revealed to be the gibberish it really is.

I have a particular fondness for absurdity in literature and I loved this novel. Some of my favourite books are Eugene Ionesco’s only novel “The Hermit” and Samuel Beckett’s novels which twist identity and time so that the physical world becomes wildly distorted and, consequently, a more accurate representation of the loose foundations of the stripped-down consciousness. Corbett’s writing unapologetically takes similar liberties disregarding what is realistic for what feels right. However, I often found in this novel that just when I felt I was being taken to the brink where I couldn’t comprehend what was happening at all, Corbett reeled me back in with absolutely tender and honest scenes. For instance, there is a section of dialogue between Denny and his wife where he says: “Do you know what is great about you? I can tell you things that I don’t tell myself.” This is such a romantic and true way of expressing how we reveal ourselves to those we love when we can’t even understand who we are, yet it doesn’t deviate from Corbett’s absurdist style.

“Green Glowing Skull” is a wholly-original, cleverly-filthy and entertaining novel that shifts your perspective of reality.

Blood Relatives by Stevan Alcock

Casting a bleak shadow over Stevan Alcock’s coming of age tale set in the late 1970s about a teenage boy named Rick, are listings of The Yorkshire Ripper’s victims. Peter Sutcliffe murdered thirteen women and attempted to murder several others. Each chapter in “Blood Relatives” is titled with the name of one of Sutcliffe’s victims. This causes the reader to feel the fear which filled the public consciousness over the five years during which these attacks and murders took place in the Yorkshire area. Adding to this understanding of Rick’s milieu is the language of his voice which recreates the regional dialect of Leeds. This makes for a fantastically evocative narrative about Rick’s development as a man who engages with the punk and gay movements of the time.

Rick works with his friend Eric on a truck that delivers soft drinks to eccentric locals. He spends time talking with these colourful characters receiving bits of local gossip and even psychic predictions about who the Ripper will strike next. He has a special affinity to the prostitutes they visit and humorously remarks at one point “I asked Eric why all our breaks were wi’ prozzies. He said prozzies make better tea.” Rick feels an affinity to the prostitutes because they are outsiders from mainstream society which is how he feels in part because of his homosexuality. He senses that they are equally vulnerable remarking “The distance between t’ prozzies and us gays didn’t seem to be much greater than between two gateposts; if it worn’t prozzies that some maniac wor killing it could just as easily be gay men, and the public reaction would be t’ same – they got what wor coming to them.”

In the “Studio 54 of t’ North” Rick and Tad dance to Thelma Houston’s ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’

It’s unusual and refreshing to read about a gay character that is so forthright and unequivocal about his sexuality. Even if Rick can’t bring himself to come out to his mother, he boldly tries to find a place for himself within the gay community. Later on Rick reflects that “For me… I thought, ‘Brilliant, I’m different. Special.’ I thought, ‘Yeah – this is all right, really.’” There are endearing and relatable scenes where Rick seeks out gay pubs/meetings and takes on lovers. He quickly finds how fickle men can be once their lust is satiated; his unrequited romantic yearnings harden him and contribute to him creating a punk persona. He frequents clubs and a squat that includes many more vibrant and outrageous characters. Through these encounters he even uncovers a deeper understanding about the past and hidden facts about his own identity.

Inextricably intertwined with the manner of speech used in this novel are notions of the battling ideologies and commonplace racism/misogyny/homophobia of the time. Here’s an example of the language in this narrative: “She wor wearing a trowel-load of slap over t’thin vaneer of abuse doled out by hubby Don, and a pong so raking I thought I’d gag if I so much as flared a nostril.” In addition to the horrendous acts of violence perpetrated by Sutcliffe, Alcock suggests there are untold amounts of violence against women happening behind closed doors. There are also references in the story about discrimination against people of colour in the community. Asian men are seen as segregated even within the queer social groups. A gay man from Iran is shunned by his family and the English with ultimately tragic consequences. It’s remarked that “Black guys wor always getting stopped even though t’Ripper wor plainly a white man.” Rick himself experiences instances of homophobia and near violence because of his sexuality. Yet, he is also (in smaller ways) a perpetrator who attacks a man he hooks up with and when speaking with “respectable” women about prostitutes he feels “It didn’t seem like owt that a woman should know.” This all adds up to a sober understanding that Sutcliffe’s actions weren’t an anomaly, but an extreme consequence of the pervading attitudes of this time and place.

“Blood Relatives” is an extremely endearing and sensitively written story of a young man’s development. More than that it’s an intelligent dramatization that exposes the narrow-minded attitudes of a particular time and place. By evoking such a distinctive voice the reader is drawn into what it really felt like to be in Leeds during the late 70s and experience this period of rapid social change in Britain.