The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien

The Syrian refugee crisis this year has made us aware more than ever of the plight of groups of people who have been displaced from their homes and who have to seek refuge in other countries. War, dictatorial oppression and religious extremism give some people no choice but to seek a life elsewhere. In “The Little Red Chairs” Edna O’Brien refers readers back to one of the greatest regional crises in recent history. During the Bosnian war thousands of people in Sarajevo lost their lives as the city was attacked by Serb forces between 1992 and 1995. Many of these people were civilians caught in the crossfire. In 2012 an installation of red chairs in the capital city commemorated the loss of these lives - the most heart-wrenching of all being the 643 little red chairs representing the slain children. It’s remarked in this novel that “there was a time when Sarajevo was thought to be the biggest issue in the world, but that time was no more.” O’Brien takes us back to this time via a circuitous route where the reverberations of war and the people displaced by it are given life in her dramatic and emotionally-complex story.

In a small Irish town of Cloonoila a stranger arrives seeking shelter. This man who becomes an object of intense curiosity soon establishes himself in the town as Dr Vlad, a controversial healer practicing alternative medicine and sex therapy (a practice quickly censored by the disgruntled priesthood.) He’s a man who gradually integrates into the community as he’s desired by many lonely women and inspires friendship with his kindness. His vast learning and cultural interests charm many. Fidelma is a married woman who is most affected by the doctor as she craves a child her husband can’t (or won’t) give her. They engage in a love affair. However, Dr Vlad has a secret past which causes a cataclysmic shock in the community when it is revealed. Fidelma’s life is rocked where the events of the wider world flood into her own circumscribed reality leading to its total annihilation. Now this woman who was so established in her own community must seek refuge elsewhere. She embarks on a process of discovery both to better understand herself and the ever-changing world around her.

A memorial event of the Siege of Sarajevo's 20th anniversary. 11,541 empty chairs symbolized 11,541 victims of the war which were killed during the Siege of Sarajevo

More than any one person, this is a story that belongs to many different immigrants who have settled in Ireland or England. O’Brien gives us the voices of people who work in an array of difficult, low-paid jobs and meet in groups which try to help people who have been displaced, especially a group which supports women who’ve experienced horrendous levels of oppression. These voices burst vibrantly from the page and startle with the pure facts of their experience. We hear people who have escaped their circumstances and who are going through the process of building new lives. “They all carried memories and the essence of their first place, known only to them.” These voices aren’t meant to represent any political message, but show the world as a morally-complex landscape where sinister regimes have led to individual acts of desperation. It also shows how seductive it can be to oppress when you have been oppressed. Ultimately, the author presents how resilient people can be leading them to reinvent themselves and find new communities.

Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

The premise of Kevin Barry’s novel “Beatlebone” is irresistible. In 1978 John Lennon travels across Ireland trying to reach an island so he can scream. This is an island he purchased years ago hoping to establish an arts community there, but which has remained nothing but a weather-beaten desolate pile of rocks. Now the artistically-frustrated famous singer wants nothing more than to spend a few days there to practice his primal scream therapy he learned in California. But there’s a problem; Ireland gets in his way. His well-meaning philosophical driver takes him on his journey, but Lennon is diverted by the press which hounds him, drunken nights at the pub, a dog he dubs with the name Brian Wilson and a small new-age group living in an island’s dilapidated hotel who engage in a disturbingly confrontational practice called “the rants.” All the while Lennon craves nothing but solitude and to escape the newly popular sound of Kate Bush singing about her wily, windy moors. The sensational aspect of this tale gradually moves aside to reveal a deeply-effective meditation on the search for meaning. It’s also full of gutsy-good humour and some of the snappiest profanity-ridden dialogue you’ll ever read.

It’s fantastic the way Barry uses language to evoke place and the lives of his characters. His descriptive writing is so precise in conveying a particular mood. So, as Lennon and his driver are travelling along the coast at one point, we’re given the line “The seabirds hover watchfully with their mad eyes, all wingspan and homicide.” Its lines like this which heighten the mood and imaginatively draw the reader into a scene. The tone of the book also swings in sync with the emotional state of the characters so the narrative can go from stark realistic descriptions of Lennon’s quest to more fragmented parts when he comes under extreme distress. At one point the language breaks into a synesthetic rush matching Lennon’s state of mind: “the scent of the girls’ voices is on the air – their voices are coloured yellow and racing green.” There are many vibrant characters ranging from a drunken woman hilariously ranting in a pub to an emphatic guru trying to get John to emotionally open up. The dialogue is pitched so well that I felt like I could hear the characters in my head and picture the expressions on their faces perfectly.

John Lennon performing ‘Mother’ live

Amidst John’s quest to get to his island, Barry does something quite unusual a little over halfway through the book. He breaks for a while to speak directly to the reader about his research writing this novel and how he himself tried to emulate the experience he creates for Lennon in a cave. Patricia Duncker’s recent novel “Sophie & the Sibyl” uses a similar sort of authorial intrusion in her fictional narrative. It works differently in “Beatlebone” making Barry into more of a fictional character himself, but they both produce the similar effects of playfully breaking the fictional illusion and mixing the emotional tribulations of the author with the characters that they are writing about. Here Lennon’s artistic crisis in trying to produce meaningful new music is reflected in Barry’s struggle to write the novel he wants to. So towards the end it feels as if John’s speech about his new album could be coming from the author himself: “What’s it about? Fucking ultimately? It’s about what you’ve got to put yourself through to make anything worthwhile. It’s about going to the dark places and using what you find there.” The struggles of the artistic process are felt all the more dearly knowing Barry’s thoughts. I found that the interjection came at the perfect point in the narrative where the momentum of the journey was waning and it was enhanced by this dramatic shift.

I think any reader can empathize with Lennon’s drive for some solitude to reflect and make sense of how to progress further in the work he wants to do. The physical reality of the island isn’t ultimately what matters. It’s the emotional state of the person who journeys there and the radical confrontation with himself he must make in a lonely place where there is no one to answer to, no one to perform for and no reason to proceed other than to get out of the trap of his mind. Barry states with characteristic blunt humour: “The examined life turns out to be a pain in the stones. The only escape from yourself is to scream and fuck and make and do.” Sometimes we lose our momentum and purpose to continue forward in life. “Beatlebone” brilliantly and entertainingly explores a quest to find the way back to what we really want.

A Slanting of the Sun by Donal Ryan

Last year I read Donal Ryan’s novel “The Thing About December.” I was drawn in by the powerfully distinctive voice he’d created for the central character who is a sensitive loner. Some authors like Richard Ford or Anita Brookner are able to establish an engaging narrative voice which they repeat throughout multiple books and, while it may be consistently impressive, it doesn’t show much variation. I wondered if that would be the case with Ryan so I was somewhat hesitant to start this book of short stories. I was delighted to discover a rich array of characters throughout the many stories in this collection whose voices are all individually distinct. These characters range in age, class, sex and race to create a dynamic and layered portrayal of Irish life. It’s impressive that each story finds its own rhythm to relate a particular character’s point of view. We see the world through each character’s eyes as they see it. Brought together, the engaging voices in “A Slanting of the Sun” give a rich understanding of the world, tell a series of dramatically entertaining stories and honour the diversity of individual experience.

Since almost all of these stories are set in Ireland one of the most fascinating things about this collection is the sense of ebb and flow it portrays amongst the national population. There are characters with strong roots in Ireland who face the tough decision of whether to leave for London or Australia to seek out employment and a new life. Conversely, the story ‘Grace’ gives voice to a woman who left the Democratic Republic of the Congo under terrifying circumstances to find unofficial factory work and face a different kind of fear when riding the bus in Ireland. The story ‘Trouble’ portrays how certain groups of the population like Irish travellers face longstanding oppression and social stigma. Other stories like ‘Hanora Ryan, 1998’ show characters who live in the country as if time has stood still. In this story a woman recalls a man she admired and lost in WWI as if it were yesterday even though more than eighty years have passed. 

Many of the impassioned voices which narrate these stories seem to start in mid-flow so it’s only till you get through half their tale that you are able to sufficiently orientate yourself to the situation. I particularly enjoyed it when these stories made my sympathy unexpectedly switch away from the character narrating it once I grasped their full story. In ‘The Squad’ the narrator and his friends take the law into their own hands and find they must live with the consequences forever more. This movingly shows the useless life-destroying circular nature of violence: “All of naught, to naught, for naught, year upon year of moments, of time slowly marked, of silence filled with empty words.” The scale of injustices and crimes committed by protagonists vary from small instances of betrayal and theft like in ‘Losers Weepers’ to outrageous institutional abuse in ‘Nephthys and The Lark’ to horrific murder in ‘Retirement Do.’ These stories draw the reader in to really see the internal struggles of these difficult individuals giving you a more complicated understanding of situations which you might see more simplistically from a distanced outsiders’ perspective.

Listen to Donal Ryan read from the mysterious, chilling story 'From a Starless Night'

While I appreciated all of the stories in this collection, there are some which stand out as personal favourites. These stories in particular are impressive for the way they give a sense of the enormity of the universe and the place that particular life experiences have within it. The story ‘Sky’ is narrated by an aging, lonely man named William who is irreligious but doesn’t see the harm in sending his prayers up to the sky. He gets a computer in the hope of finding the nephew he lost touch with, but stuffs it in a closet and looks to the stars instead. ‘Ragnarok’ features a fairly average office worker who finds himself suddenly overwhelmed by emotion. In ‘Physiotherapy’ a woman recalls her life, the choices she made and creates a uniquely complex view of existence. This story also shows a breathtaking vision of how memory can make time into a fluid thing so all experience occurs simultaneously: “I’m seventy-seven and I’m twenty, my child is dead and he hasn’t yet been born.” The title story ‘A Slanting of the Sun’ shows a tremendously surprising instance of forgiveness and sense of kinship for someone who committed a horrendous crime. It’s also the story which closes this book and allows it to end with a hard-won, uplifting sensation.

I was struck many times throughout this book of short stories by the astounding beauty of certain sentences. It’s so accomplished how Donal Ryan can write from the points of view of characters with very different experiences and ways of speaking, but always draws upon language and phrasing which accurately pinpoints a subtly of feeling and pays tribute to the full complexity of human emotion. He can perfectly encapsulate a common feeling like the importance phones play in young people’s lives: “Her daughter’s world seemed compressed sometimes into the screen of that telephone; all of her tides turned at the pull of its gravity, her whole existence seemed wedded to it.” Or he can present a contradiction so that the character’s reasoning reflects his particular emotional state: “Cursed we are with health, my family, stout unfailing hearts, years to go till death for me.” All of it sings with a life-force which is enthralling and demands to be listened to.

What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell

So much of the greatest literature is made up of characters undone by desire. Most of it romantic and sexual. Desire that remains hidden or is revealed or explodes, that creates enlivening passion and that ultimately takes characters somewhere new or destroys them. Like in life, characters can be suddenly toppled by desire which can seemingly come out of nowhere and leaves them hanging upon a cliff edge. “What Belongs to You” is a love story about a man undone. But, more than that, it’s an ingenious exploration of the way desire causes seismic changes to our ever-evolving sense of identity. It shows how through desire a man is made to confront his past and decide how to carry on in the future. It asks how much of our relationships are based upon an exchange – emotional or monetary. It does all this through the engaging, sympathetic voice of an American expat living and teaching in Bulgaria and a rent boy he meets named Mitko. What on the surface appears like a simple story weaves into avenues of obsession, deep reflection and confrontations with stark reality. It’s an utterly arresting and deeply contemplative novel. It reads like the most intimate confession from a soul who has spent his life in hiding.

The nameless narrator descends into a cruising haunt beneath the National Palace of Culture. Here’s the perfect metaphor: the brazen lust that is concealed beneath the appearance of sophistication. There in the public toilets he meets Mitko who has the cheekiness, youthfulness, confidence and roguish good looks which bewitch this lonesome interloper. The narrator is verging on paunchy. He’s not old but aging. He lives so much in his mind “I felt that the best of me was words” that the tiresome labour needed to present himself like a peacock on the market doesn’t appeal. It’s more convenient to purchase sex. It begins as a standard financial agreement of money for sex attended by a heady mixture of excitement and shame. Greenwell describes the awkward mechanics of this encounter and how it’s in truth like every sexual encounter: “how helpless desire is outside its little theatre of heat, how ridiculous it becomes the moment it isn’t welcomed, even if that welcome is contrived.” Something about this boy in his early twenties and the connection they share makes this transaction develop into one which shakes the foundations of the narrator’s identity. The pair meet on several other occasions and questions arise about what motivates each of them. Is it lust, friendship or money? The tension reaches an untenable point and the two have a calamitous altercation which separates them.

The narrator is plunged at this stage of his story into the past. Here he describes in heart-aching detail his coming of age: the development which led to his estrangement from his country and family. Greenwell gives the most touching, incisive and searing account of a boy’s expulsion from his father’s affection. What begins with a naturally easy and affectionate physicality between the two is one day suddenly broken. The boy learns to hide his same-sex desire and when it inevitably comes out in the open he receives the condemnation which eviscerates his identity. He states: “As I listened to him say these things it was as though even as I laid claim to myself I found there was nothing to claim, nothing or next to nothing, as though I were dissolving and my tears were the outward sign of that dissolution.” All the characteristics which make up his essential self including his bond with family level out his sense of being and leave him with nothing. Yet, as he finds later when conversing with his half-sister (who is differently but equally damaged) there are unsavoury characteristics of the father which cling to them regardless of their socially broken lineage. “Even these desires, I thought as I listened to my sister, seemed to descend from my father like an inherited disease.” Here are Ibsen’s Ghosts which arise at the most unexpected times to plague the narrator who believes he sufficiently distanced himself from the past of his upbringing, but finds patterns of behaviour and compulsions affecting his present.

The National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria

There are more echoes of Ibsen in the final part of the book when Mitko unexpectedly returns. The narrator must deal with the consequences of this past relationship. It forces him to question again what he really desires and what we owe to those who we’ve given our heart to: “that obligation to others that sometimes seems so clear and sometimes disappears altogether, so that now we owe nothing, anything we give is too much, and now our debt is beyond all counting.” The part a loved one has played in the formation of the self is inestimable, yet not all relationships were made to continue. Those emotional debts are seldom repaid. The conflict Greenwell creates in this story touches upon all the insecurity, regret and longing we continuously carry for lost love.

“What Belongs to You” is so intriguing for the way it contains a lot of ambiguity, but also manages to pinpoint the centre at which desire both destroys and necessarily transforms us. To encounter another person and make a connection in such an intimate, personal, all-consuming way makes you radically confront your conception of yourself. You must ask who you are and what you want at the most fundamental level. And, if you can’t find an answer, you must live continuously in ruin – until the next object of desire or a deeper self-understanding offers an opportunity to build yourselves back up again. These tensions are played out through the meaningful relationship between the narrator and Mitko. I was very moved by this beautiful, disarming and perceptive novel.

Read an interview between Garth Greenwell and Jonathan Lee about "What Belongs to You" here: https://www.guernicamag.com/daily/accessing-the-ecstatic/

The Looking-Glass Sisters by Gøhril Gabrielsen (translated by John Irons)

I’m not sure what it was about “The Looking-Glass Sisters” which had me excited about it several months before Peirene Press even published it. Something about a story of two sisters in an old, dilapidated house that’s isolated in the far north of Norway captured my imagination. Reading it became an especially good experience because shortly after finishing the book I went to my first Peirene Press book club. This is held in London at Persephone’s lovely bookshop. It’s been ages since my own book club disbanded so it was a pleasure being able to discuss the book in detail over wine, cheese and biscuits with a group of clever fellow readers. This novel is particularly excellent for a book club because its filled with so much ambiguity and opinions about it varied wildly amongst our group.

The novel is narrated from the point of view of a disabled woman who is dependent on the care from her sister Ragna in everyday daily tasks from eating to bathing to dressing. It’s been this way their entire lives and the women are now middle-aged. Their parents died when they were teenagers; we never know how or why they died. The sisters’ routines filled with bickering feel wholeheartedly like they’ve been exhaustively enacted over a lifetime and you quickly get the sense of how intensely intertwined the existence of these sisters has become. It’s as if they are no longer two separate bodies: “Over the years, through conflicts and confrontations, we have shaped, kneaded and formed ourselves into a lopsided, distorted yet complete organism.” This is the most perfect description for the feeling of their co-dependency and echoes the eerie sense that one cannot exist without the other. They can’t escape each other any more than they can escape their own reflection when looking in a mirror.

Or so the narrator believes. One day Ragna disrupts the claustrophobic and solitary life they share by bringing home a rather gruff man Johan. Is he an agent of chaos that destroys their relationship or a partner that could be incorporated into the household if it weren’t for the narrator’s jealousy? The answer isn’t clear because the narrative is filtered so totally through the narrator’s subjective and frequently paranoid consciousness. Having never left the house and being trapped in the physically limited routines of her day, the narrator lives primarily in her imagination. There are echoes of Charlotte Bronte's mad woman in the attic as reimagined in Jean Rhys's novel and also Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper.' Her whole understanding of the world comes from her sister, the dusty standard education text books left from her early life and library books – which the narrator must badger Ragna to exchange. Indeed, she seems made up more of words and lives more in the mind than in her physically-limited body.

I bought my copy of this novel at my local farmer's market at which Peirene sometime have a beautiful book stall.

The narrator’s fantasies do get quite intense and graphic. They veer from the heatedly sexual to the repulsively scatological to the furiously suspicious as she believes Ragna and Johan are plotting to put her away in a care home. Again, it’s never clear whether these are her projections or if they occur in reality. I appreciated the occasional respite from the narrator’s frantic descriptions and thought process when Ragna interjects some dialogue that questions her sister’s logic. There are also occasional moments when you see some real fondness between the sisters. However, most of the time, their relationship is destructive and weighted under long-standing resentments.

“The Looking-Glass Sisters” is in many ways a mesmerizing read, but it’s also highly unsettling. It’s disturbing to think that intensely co-dependent relationships between family members can break down so severely and the disturbed areas a consciousness can drift to when a life is lived entirely in the imagination. There is a sense that the narrator’s psychology can parallel our own internal lives when we believe the world to be a certain way. Rather than the disabled sister it could very well be the author speaking to the reader towards the end of the book when she states this story has been about the sisters but “also about all of us who have lapsed into laziness and fantasizing, hidden away in a room closer to the sky than the earth.” Viewing the story from this perspective it does take on a much more personal meaning. It made me consider the way in which my own imagination works in tandem with reality and the amount of dependency I have on other people. This book left me thinking. Gabrielsen is a highly intriguing writer.

The Green Carnation Prize 2015 Shortlist

Recently, I met with my fellow judges in Foyles’ beautiful flagship store in London where we had an in-depth discussion on the twelve books we’d chosen for the Green Carnation longlist. It was difficult to whittle this stack down to a shortlist because they are such a diverse and interesting group we all heartily recommend. But, after much debate, (helped along with some slices of cake) I’m proud to announce we’ve come up with a shortlist of six books!

Here we have a novel that reaches across time to shake hands with George Eliot, a fictional reimagining of the author's great-grandfather's exile, a personal & urgent non-fiction account of the drug war that's torn our society apart, a multi-voiced tale from Jamaica that includes complex & original gay characters, a lively & entertaining narrator who provides an essential counter-point to the birth of Marxism and a personal & poetic memoir about family.

Sophie & The Sibyl by Patricia Duncker (Bloomsbury)
A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale (Hodder Books)
Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari (Bloomsbury)
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (One World)
Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea (Scribe)
Stammered Songbook by Erwin Mortier (Pushkin Press)

Click here to read more about the Green Carnation Prize’s history
Click here to find and purchase all the nominated books from Foyles

Have you read any of these books? What are you interested in reading from this list? Are there other books you’d have liked to see listed? Any thoughts on the list as a whole?

I would love to know your thoughts. It’s going to be a challenge choosing a winner from this fantastic group.

After the Parade by Lori Ostlund

It’s not often I come across a novel where my opinion of that book transforms so much over the course of reading it. By and large, I abide by the fifty page rule. If I’m not getting much out of the book by that point I put it aside. Yet some novels only reveal their logic and reasoning as the story becomes fully formed. I felt this way about Colm Toibin’s novel “Brooklyn” especially. It’s beautifully written, but I didn’t really see the point until towards the end when I was suddenly absolutely gripped and realized what a brilliant book it is. “After the Parade” begins with an arresting and original premise. As the book opens we meet a man in his early forties named Aaron leaving his partner Walter, an older man that he’s been in a relationship with for over twenty years. Aaron embarks from this point on a journey of self discovery into reconciling his own past and finding the strength to fearlessly create a different kind of future for himself.

Lori Ostlund is an engaging writer who creates lively, complex and deeply-sympathetic characters. More than anything, this is a book dedicated to outsiders. It pays tribute and memorializes the struggle of people who feel ostracized from mainstream society because they are different or, as one character perceives them, a “band of misfits.” There are characters who are overweight, queer, Jewish, stricken with long-term illnesses and foreign students learning English as a second language. But the novel doesn’t portray these characters in a way that is only interested in serving the plot. They are written as fully-rounded people who possess their own flaws and make their own mistakes. It also skilfully shows the way projections about people impact an individual’s own psychology about the way they see themselves: “Once people thought they knew you, it was almost impossible to change their minds, which meant that it was almost impossible to change yourself.” One of the most compelling characters and the person that changes the most is Aaron’s mother Dolores who seems at first to be rather meek housewife living under an abusive patriarchal figure, but who develops into a deeply complex, conflicted and compelling individual. I was driven to read more of this book because I found the characters so engaging.  

A vibrant and forceful character called Clarence keeps the spines of all his books turned inward. I tried this with my own shelf. The effect is unsettling.

What I found difficult about the process of reading this novel were the abrupt time shifts which occur so frequently throughout. Scenes move back and forth between the present, past and many points in between. Going back to Aaron’s earliest childhood the reader learns in pieces about traumatic events which divided his family and led him to form a relationship with Walter. It can be somewhat confusing to travel in your imagination over these constantly shifting landscapes in time. It made me long for a linear story about Aaron’s life and wonder why Ostlund didn’t compose the novel this way. It’s only later on in the novel that Aaron’s changing personality shows why these memories of the past are spread throughout the narrative. The past informs the present in some important ways so it can’t be composed in a straight line. The significance around events at the beginning take on a deeper, more nuanced meaning once the reader understands the way he eventually developed into a man who abandons a loving, supportive relationship. The way this novel is composed makes a bigger statement about individual responsibility and survival than if it had been written as a straightforward coming of age story.  

I won’t deny that part of what drew me to this novel was the personal connection I felt with its protagonist. Being a man in my late thirties, it’s easy for me to relate to Aaron. He’s at a point in his life where he feels like a full adult and independent from his experiences growing up, yet he still finds himself haunted by his upbringing and curious about how the repercussions of certain events still influence his current behaviour. However, I don’t think you need to have such personal parallels with Aaron to get just as much as I did out of this novel. It shows how we often like to blame others for the situation we’re in. At one point a character confronts Aaron stating “You wanted Walter to be wrong so you didn’t have to be, but there isn’t always one person who’s right and another who’s wrong. Sometimes – usually – it’s not that easy.” “After the Parade” demonstrates through its powerful story the way individuals grapple with the grey areas of life. Like all the characters in this heartfelt novel, we must negotiate with ourselves on a daily basis about how much we’re willing to compromise and whether we have the strength to fully face an uncertain future without fear.

Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume

When middle aged loner Ray comes across a notice for a dog up for adoption he impulsively acquires this one-eyed pet who quickly becomes his closest companion. The narrative is entirely composed of Ray speaking directly to this dog. He finds it easer to speak to his pet over people because “there’s no need for the weighing and measuring of words, no need to listen to the way they stand in the air after my voice has finished.” This sounds like it might become an achingly sentimental tale, but it turns into a deeply sobering, atmospheric, pain-ridden journey about Ray and his canine companion. It’s not often I’ll enjoy reading a book that withholds so much about its central character – for instance, I had issues with Rachel Cusk’s much-praised novel “Outline.” For the majority of “Spill Simmer Falter Wither” we know little about Ray’s past or circumstances. While learning to care and communicate with his dog, Ray reflects on life and the detritus surrounding him in his dilapidated home. When bits of the past come to the forefront they do so with shocking emotional force since the rest of the narrative is so sedate. The story builds to a sensitive depiction of a deeply lonely existence.

Ray’s persistent focus on the present leads to frequent emotionally-charged dreams which he describes in detail. His unwillingness to reflect back on the past is due to his steadfast choice to remain consciously ignorant about his own family life. He reasons that it is “better to be content with ignorance, I’ve always thought, than haunted by the truth.” Equally, he avoids any chance at difficult confrontations. So when his dog attacks another dog (and possibly a young child) Ray flees his own home with the dog rather than face having his pet confiscated by the authorities. The majority of the book is made up of his directionless travels, squatting in his car and the people/things he encounters on their journey. He fears being held to account for his dog’s actions just as he fears facing the truth about his family and his past so he wanders around the fringes of society, but always remains attentively observant.

This is a profoundly solemn novel. What redeems it from being bogged down in its own misery is the beauty of Baume’s writing and the tender depiction of Ray’s care for his dog. The author never sentimentalizes this relationship. There is a lot of detail about the grit and griminess of living (especially in the enclosed environment of a car.) Whenever Ray comes close to speculating that his dog might possess some deeper understanding, the reality of their situation and his dog’s instinctive reactions repositions their connection safely back in reality. There is something refreshing about the way Ray staunchly refuses to view his life through any kind of religious or cinematic perspective as a way of consoling himself that he belongs in the world. He remarks “No one is watching us. Nobody even knows where we are.” This is the bare, cold truth of reality when we have no loved ones, family connections, community or god. This is a man unafraid to acknowledge his extreme hermetic existence, find he has no place in the world and carry on living regardless. However, his guardianship of the dog over the course of a year gives his life new meaning and ultimately allows him to acknowledge and put his past to rest.

Montaigne by Stefan Zweig (translated by Will Stone)

Several years ago I read Zweig’s biography of Balzac and it remains one of the best biographies I’ve ever read. Balzac led an impassioned, rigorous and tragically bumbling life that is great fun to read about. But what was so gripping about this book was the tension between Zweig who was evidently a writer of high ideals and his subject Balzac who was a brilliantly gifted writer with frivolous values. Zweig was a man dedicated to art and a freedom of spirit. Balzac desired status and fortune and only wrote so prolifically to get himself out of the enormous debts he accrued through get-rich-quick schemes. Thus reading Zweig’s intense frustration at Balzac’s indifference to his obvious talent and foolish striving for material goods and pretentious society is incredibly compelling to read about. Zweig is a thoroughly subjective biographer who makes his opinions known in a way that works so well more than a biographer trying to present an objective portrait of a life. He sticks to the facts, but focuses on aspects of his subject’s personal history and the statements their work made which he deems important to our culture and that have the most relevance to where he was in his own life.

“Montaigne” is a biography which is almost more compelling for what it says about Zweig than it does about his subject. Translator Will Stone gives a thorough and intelligent introduction to this brief book which is more a sketch of Montaigne’s life than a comprehensive account. (His biography of Balzac was much more extensive.) Normally I get impatient with such introductions and want to get to the real text of the book I’ve bought. But Stone’s account gives vital information about where Zweig was in his life when he wrote about Montaigne and why he was so drawn to this subject at this point in his life. Zweig famously retreated to a house in Brazil to escape the increasing influence of Hitler’s rise to power and the authoritarian forces threatening Europe. Despairing about the state of the world, he and his wife committed suicide in 1942.

“What Montaigne seeks is his interior self… which Goethe labelled the ‘citadel’, where all access is prohibited… This citadel, which for Goethe was only symbolic, Montaigne erects with real stones, a lock and a key… the famous tower of Montaigne.”

This biography was written in the crucial year before this act and the psychological cracks show in the text. The first section of the biography is an impassioned account of Montaigne’s high ideals. The values which he believed Montaigne exhibited are ones which felt so crucially relevant to Zweig’s own life that he seized upon him as a subject for the highest reverence. Zweig feverishly states: “Only he whose soul is in turmoil, forced to live in an epoch where war, violence and ideological tyranny threaten the life of every individual, and the most precious substance in that life, the freedom of the soul, can know how much courage, sincerity and resolve are required to remain faithful to his inner self in these times of the herd’s rampancy.” It’s as if he’s leapt upon Montaigne as a life raft in a time where he felt hemmed in by the ideological forces of his time which threatened the civilization Zweig valued so highly.

Zweig focuses on only the most crucial facts of Montaigne’s life, those which are relevant to him, and skips over huge chunks. What he seizes upon is gold and wholly engaging. No doubt if Zweig had lived longer he would have written much more extensively about this famous essayist. I can feel very sympathetic to Montaigne’s abrupt removal from his family and public life in his late thirties since it’s the same age I’m at now. Montaigne retreated to a tower to study, read and write while blocking out the everyday distracting realties of the world as much as possible. As a great reader Montaigne felt “Books are my kingdom. And here I seek to reign as absolute lord.” It’s interesting the way that Montaigne’s life played out – because, of course, however much we try to completely retreat into books the world draws us back into it. Montaigne’s reading tastes suited Zweig perfectly as he remarks “Concerning Montaigne’s judgement on books I am 100 per cent in accordance.” Thus Zweig found in Montaigne an intellectual kinship across centuries and found strength to stand against the tyranny of his own time. More disturbingly, it’s possible that Montaigne’s reasoning might have heavily influenced Zweig’s own decision to end his own life. This can be intimated in the line: “the last freedom: in the face of death. Life hangs on the will of others, but death on our own will.”

This is such a fascinating book for what it says about both its biographer Stefan Zweig and its subject of Montaigne. I’m now inspired to go out and read more by both of these fascinating authors.

The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction – Best of the Best

The Women’s Prize for Fiction has turned twenty and to celebrate they are hosting a live event at the Piccadilly Theatre in London with past judges and readings by famous actors to debate books from the past 10 years and crown one as the “best of the best.” (They are only considering the past 10 winners because they had the same competition on the prize’s 10th anniversary.) Let me begin this post by stating the obvious. Each of these books is already a winner. These are all important novels that deserve to be celebrated – no matter my opinions about the quality of some over others. I’ve been a long-time fan of this prize and I revel in the opportunity to celebrate brilliant female authors. The point of this event and any prize is to debate and discuss books that deserve attention in a compassionate, caring and fun manner.

Choosing a favourite between these ten books is particularly hard because they are all so good. The only two out of these ten winners I haven’t read are “Home” by Marilynne Robinson and “The Road Home” by Rose Tremain. I need to rectify this as from reading Robinson’s novel “Lila” this year and Tremain’s book of short stories “The American Lover” last year, I admire how skilled and intelligent each of these novelists are so I should get to their prize-winning titles.

Maybe I should start by commenting on which books from the ten I liked the least or have stuck with me the least since reading them years ago. I remember Tea Obrecht’s “The Tiger’s Wife” to be a really imaginative and moving novel, but I can’t remember much detail about it. For me, the best fiction is that which makes a long-term impact where scenes or characters or quotes will stick with you for many years. Although I read Zadie Smith and Adichie’s novels years before Obrecht, I can still recall some things about these other novels better than “The Tiger’s Wife.” Perhaps if I were to revisit it I’d feel differently now.

I do remember certain scenes and characters from A.M. Homes “May We Be Forgiven” and, while there were aspects of it I admired, overall I didn’t think it worked totally as a novel. I’ve written about this novel on the blog before and I still believe that Homes' style of writing makes her a better short story writer than a novelist. When Homes book won in 2013, I had been hoping Barbara Kingsolver’s novel “Flight Behaviour” would have won instead. Again, perhaps if I were to read the novel again my opinion would change.

It’s interesting that the winners for the past two years have been quite edgy, experimental novels. In “A Girl is a Half-formed Thing” Eimear McBride creates her own form of narrative that seeps out somewhere from the sub-regions of consciousness. It’s not speech or straightforward thoughts or an outside perspective, but the deep inner language of experience mixed with memory. Equally, Ali Smith is the triumphant trickster of language (as her new short story collection “Public Library” I reviewed yesterday again shows) and in “How To Be Both” she uses a specific form to get at subjects few other writers can. Not only does she make us question the multi-levelled meanings of words, but the construction under which we read since the book can be read from back to front or front to back. Plus it’s fun! It gets people talking and asking: which way did you read it around?

Barbara Kingsolver’s “The Lacuna” had me from the opening of the book. A boy likes to spend his days doing nothing but reading and snorkelling in the sea. This is my ultimate dream life! What follows is such a winding, beautifully-plotted novel with richly fascinating figures from history like Frida Kahlo, Leon Trotsky and J. Edgar Hoover who highlight some of the most important ideological struggles in the past century. This is a big novel that I was swept away by and didn’t want to end. Madeline Miller’s “The Song of Achilles” is simply a gorgeous novel taking two mythological figures and creating for them a male-male love affair which is poignant and fully realistic. This is such a passionate, tragic and beautiful story which I totally fell for.

However, if I’m forced to pick one Best I think it would have to be Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Half of a Yellow Sun.” It’s a phenomenally epic novel that I believe to be one of the best novels about both love and war written in the past ten… twenty… however many years. The writing is precise. The scenes are vivid and memorable. The characters are lively where each one possesses complex, personal points of view. It gives the world a totally different perspective on a national tragedy by showing specific aspects of the civil war in Nigeria in the 60s as well as making universal statements about the victims of war. I was mesmerized reading it and finished feeling shaken by the story. It’s a classic. Tomorrow I’ll be fascinated to see if the judges agree with my choice.

So those are my thoughts about these novels. What do you think? Which would you choose as your best out of the ten?

Kate Mosse gives a fantastic summary of the prize’s history and the reason why it’s so important to have a fiction prize for women here.

Past judges have come back to discuss each book in turn on BBC’s Women’s Hour here.

The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction site has a comprehensive reading guide for all ten winners here.