Stone Yard Devotional strikes me as a very typical Booker book: chilly, elegant, balancing passages of banality against plainly stated emotion, with aStone Yard Devotional strikes me as a very typical Booker book: chilly, elegant, balancing passages of banality against plainly stated emotion, with a pinch of oddness. I really liked parts of it, specifically the way the narrator discusses her relationship with her parents and enduring grief over their deaths. At its strongest, this narrative can be haunting. Overall, however, I’m left with the feeling that it’s less than the sum of its parts. (Probably should note, though, that I read this by switching between the ebook and audiobook, which may have magnified the sense that it was disjointed and/or overly digressive.) ...more
Unpopular opinion time. I really wanted to love this, but I was often bored. As much as I appreciated the writing (lucid, precise), basically the entiUnpopular opinion time. I really wanted to love this, but I was often bored. As much as I appreciated the writing (lucid, precise), basically the entirety of Leigh’s story – more than 80% of the book – feels like exposition. We are close to her, yet she is still a blank slate. I think In Ascension would appeal to anyone who loved The Moonday Letters, and vice versa, as I came to the same conclusion about both: each book is impressive in its worldbuilding and vision as a work of speculative fiction, but frustratingly sterile and lacking in anything recognisable as real emotion....more
(3.5) I adored Sarah Bernstein’s debut, The Coming Bad Days. This second novel is written in a similarly distinctive style – opening lines: It was the(3.5) I adored Sarah Bernstein’s debut, The Coming Bad Days. This second novel is written in a similarly distinctive style – opening lines: It was the year the sow eradicated her piglets. It was a swift and menacing time. The plot, such as it is, is broader in scope, or maybe it’s just that it’s a little more unfocused, or felt that way to me. The narrator is a woman who sees her life as having been defined by obedience to her ‘many’ older siblings. In keeping with that, when her eldest brother asks her to stay with him in an Anna Kavan-esque ‘remote northern country’, she acquiesces without question. From there it unfurls in several directions: the brother’s ailing health, the suspicion of the locals, a thread of what seems like folk horror, and ultimately, a sort of reckoning with the weight of history. As in in Bad Days I found the writing very striking, but these pithy, glacial sentences are most successful when the narrative concentrates on the personal; less so when applied to bigger themes. A book for those who appreciate the eerie and ambiguous – it reminded me (again) of Fleur Jaeggy, and also Marie NDiaye’s That Time of Year.
I received an advance review copy of Study for Obedience from the publisher through NetGalley....more
Tan Twan Eng’s books are like sinking into a big, warm, cosy bed. I’m generally not a big fan of fiction about real people, but this story – about theTan Twan Eng’s books are like sinking into a big, warm, cosy bed. I’m generally not a big fan of fiction about real people, but this story – about the writer William Somerset Maugham staying with an English couple in 1920s Penang – is gorgeously written and gently absorbing. The plot incorporates the character of Sun Yat Sen, a real-life Chinese revolutionary, as well as an infamous murder and trial (which, in turn, was also fictionalised by Maugham!), that of Ethel Proudlock. It seems like these different strands should be difficult to reconcile but here, it feels effortless. I also really enjoyed the little Easter-egg-style references to characters from the author’s other novels.
I received an advance review copy of The House of Doors from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
Despite being nominated for the Booker, His Bloody Project didn’t make it onto my radar back in 2015. But after reading Graeme Macrae Burnet’s latest,Despite being nominated for the Booker, His Bloody Project didn’t make it onto my radar back in 2015. But after reading Graeme Macrae Burnet’s latest, the excellent Case Study, I was inspired to pick it up. There are some similarities between the two books: both are framed as a sort of investigation, both touch on themes that involve contemporaneous schools of thought in psychology, and both position the main character as an unreliable narrator. Here, that’s Roderick Macrae, a young crofter accused of multiple murders in a remote community in 1869. The two main narratives are Roderick’s own confession and an assessment of him written by a pompous criminal anthropologist; they’re surrounded by other material, including witness statements and an account of the controversial trial. On balance, I think I liked Case Study a little more – Project doesn’t seem to make the most of some of its most intriguing details. But its depiction of life in the village of Culduie is convincing, Roderick’s tale engrossing, and the various voices well-realised. It seems like it could easily be a true story, with the result that it feels something like a 19th-century serial filtered through the lens of modern true crime.
This novel is partly framed as the biography of Collins Braithwaite, a ‘forgotten 1960s psychotherapist’ (Braithwaite is the author’s own invention, bThis novel is partly framed as the biography of Collins Braithwaite, a ‘forgotten 1960s psychotherapist’ (Braithwaite is the author’s own invention, but his beliefs have similarities with those of R.D. Laing and the anti-psychiatry movement). That framing involves the author having been sent the notebooks of an anonymous young woman, written in the 1960s. Not only (she believes) did Braithwaite’s controversial method of ‘untherapy’ cause her sister’s suicide, but he also included an unflattering case study of her in one of his books. Armed with this knowledge, the woman starts visiting Braithwaite as a client, albeit not as herself; she creates a more worldly and seductive alter ego whom she calls Rebecca. Little does she know she’s playing right into the hands of her adversary, who believes that everyone has multiple selves. And as her story goes on, she finds it increasingly difficult to leave Rebecca on the therapist’s couch.
In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet pulls off the rare feat of writing two parallel narratives that are equally interesting and compelling. Braithwaite, while a repugnant character, is palpably charismatic; ‘Rebecca’ is charming and likeable in spite of (and possibly sometimes because of) her judgemental nature and tendency to fantasise. The details of Rebecca’s world are worthy of Anita Brookner or Barbara Vine, and the slow unfurling of her true nature is delectable. Having just finished Jennifer Egan’s brilliant The Candy House, I thought it would be very difficult to lose myself in a story again, but Case Study is just as engrossing.
I'm well aware I'm going to be an outlier on this one, but I'm not deliberately trying to have a contrary take – it just didn't do anything much for mI'm well aware I'm going to be an outlier on this one, but I'm not deliberately trying to have a contrary take – it just didn't do anything much for me. Feels a few years out of date despite its supposed up-to-the-minuteness; I found the tryhard Weird Twitter humour unfunny and the emotional beats predictable.
I'd wanted to read this since I first heard about it, and thought I was going to love it... but I actually kind of hated it, and more so the further II'd wanted to read this since I first heard about it, and thought I was going to love it... but I actually kind of hated it, and more so the further I read. It's just the same thing over and over again. Yes, the voice is effective, but it could just have been a short story if it's going to be this repetitive. Abandoned at 50%....more
From the start, I knew I was going to love this book. The opening line of Real Life already sounds like a classic:
It was a cool evening in late summer
From the start, I knew I was going to love this book. The opening line of Real Life already sounds like a classic:
It was a cool evening in late summer when Wallace, his father dead for several weeks, decided that he would meet his friends at the pier after all.
I was immediately gripped. And the book did not let me go until its final, bittersweet pages.
The story unfolds across the course of a single weekend as Wallace, a graduate student in the final year of his biochemistry degree, grapples with what his life is to become. He is the only black student in his class; already regularly dealing with racist slights, he is now faced with what seems to be a case of deliberate sabotage which forces him to restart a complex experiment from the beginning. As the first line tells us, his father – to whom he was not close – has recently passed away. Amid all this, he unexpectedly starts a hesitant relationship with one of his friends, a man who otherwise considers himself to be straight.
Wallace's dilemmas are very specific, very personal. Yet the story asks the sort of questions that, if not universal, are certainly relatable to many. How does one square the desire for solitude with the need for human relationships? What happens when you spend years devoting yourself to something – a degree, a job, a craft – only to find you are not quite sure it's what you want to do with your life? Many reviews (especially from white reviewers) focus on Wallace's identity as a gay black man, and I understand why, but I think to do so is to dismiss the are greatness of Taylor's writing about the more general stuff of (real) life. Forming and maintaining friendships. Being a person. Existing in a body.
Taylor writes with such fluidity and grace that I flew through the book. It's remarkable that Real Life takes so much time to describe, objectively, so little – more than 300 pages to relate the events of just a few days – yet it doesn't feel like there's so much as a scrap of superfluous detail. The minutiae of scientific experiments are related in almost hypnotic style. A chapter in which Wallace describes his childhood, the narration switching from third to first person, is a particular masterstroke, breathtakingly effective.
A quote on the cover from a New Yorker review describes Real Life as 'a new kind of campus novel'. That seems very apt. Its balance between detachment and deep emotion is probably the finest I have ever read. As a debut it is unbelievably good. I want to say so much more about it but I don't feel I truly have the ability to do its brilliance justice. I can't recommend it enough.
--- PS: while I'm not generally a big books-as-physical-objects person, the UK edition from Daunt Books deserves a special mention. Not only is the cover design stunning (and a vast improvement on the US original), it's beautifully bound and typeset – even the paper it's printed on feels lovely. (And if I hadn't picked it up in a bookshop and felt compelled to buy it, I might have read the book much later, or not at all.)
After adoring Harriet Said..., I knew I would want to read more by Bainbridge. But this particular title was not a deliberate choice – I found it in aAfter adoring Harriet Said..., I knew I would want to read more by Bainbridge. But this particular title was not a deliberate choice – I found it in a charity bookshop and picked it up along with a pile of other books. As it turns out, it’s really not my cup of tea.
The Bottle Factory Outing is a black comedy – at first, I thought, not black enough, but later events contradicted that impression – focused on Freda and Brenda, two women who share a bedsit and work at a wine-bottling factory. The pivotal event, the titular workers’ day out, brings to a head various tensions surrounding Freda’s pursuit of the factory owner’s nephew and Brenda’s attempts to evade two male colleagues; all this ends, incongruously, in tragedy. I loved the first chapter, but often felt like I was failing to properly grasp much of the rest, finding characters’ behaviour either incomprehensible or implausible. I suspect some of the humour is era-specific and hasn’t aged very well.
Probably two stars for my personal enjoyment of it and four for its actual quality – so, three as a compromise. (And I still intend to read more Bainbridge!)
Everything Under is about just that: the things that lurk beneath the surface, of a river, of a memory, of a person. It is a slow unspooling of a horrEverything Under is about just that: the things that lurk beneath the surface, of a river, of a memory, of a person. It is a slow unspooling of a horrifying and tragic story, a queer, found-family (sort-of) reimagining of a myth – I'd best not say which one, though it's mentioned in loads of reviews if you're curious. It should be unbearably disturbing. Yet it is also beautiful and ethereal, a story that casts life on the margins as both magical and ruinous.
Gretel and her mother Sarah are 'river people' who live outside society and outside the law. Gretel grows up using language she and Sarah have invented together, a two-person idioglossia that, later, will leave her feeling she can never quite mesh with the ordinary world. (She ends up being a lexicographer, a detail which, now I think about it, is perhaps a bit too on-the-nose, but it works in the context of the book.) Central to their vernacular is 'the Bonak', which is both a specific monster and a way to describe anything that frightens you. 'Last summer it was this stupid dog... ages ago it was a storm that nearly wrecked the boat and another time it was a fire.' It haunts Gretel into adulthood, though its meaning shifts.
When Gretel is 13, Sarah disappears. In the present day, they have been reunited, and Gretel has brought Sarah to live with her in a cottage 'not big enough to hold the two of us'; but Sarah has dementia and her memory, like her behaviour, is erratic. Gretel is trying to coax out of Sarah the story of her lost years and, at the same time, she is going back over her own memories. These are patchy too. She remembers someone called Marcus who came to live with them for a short time, but who he was, and what happened to him, is unclear. (The timeline is occasionally muddy and I admit I sometimes lost track of what order things had happened in – but honestly, this kind of obscurity suits the story perfectly.)
Everything Under is a hazy novel of magic and murk, isolation, legacy and personal legend. It casts the sort of spell that covers over its flaws: as mentioned above, a few of the details are rather too obvious, and some of the characters' actions seem clearly engineered to fulfil the plot's trajectory and not at all a natural consequence of whatever situation they're in. (I think, now, this is why I didn't find it more shocking.) But I'm only seeing this now I'm out of the story and analysing it; while I was immersed, its enchantment had me completely in its grip.
I received an advance review copy of Everything Under from the publisher through NetGalley.
Korede is a nurse whose beautiful sister, Ayoola, has an unfortunate habit of getting bored of her boyfriends and dispatching them with a large knife.Korede is a nurse whose beautiful sister, Ayoola, has an unfortunate habit of getting bored of her boyfriends and dispatching them with a large knife. Korede acts as her one-woman cleanup team. Whenever she questions Ayoola's explanations, she buries her doubts – blood is thicker than water, after all. But the stakes change when Ayoola starts dating Tade, the doctor Korede is infatuated with.
My Sister, the Serial Killer is a fast, fun novel; it tells a dark story but keeps the tone light. Korede is sympathetic; Ayoola is palpably charismatic. (Usually, I can't stand the trope of a character everyone falls head over heels in love with, but here Braithwaite made me believe it.) The sisters have a complicated family background, and this keeps things consistently intriguing. The setting of contemporary Lagos is an added bonus.
If anything, I'd have liked more of everything. More of Ayoola's antics (perhaps some chapters told from her point of view?), more of Korede's day-to-day life at the hospital, more of the sisters' past, a better ending for Korede. Whether she revisits these characters or not, I'll definitely read more from Oyinkan Braithwaite.
(If you enjoy this, you'll probably also like CJ Skuse's Sweetpea, and vice versa.)
I received an advance review copy of My Sister, the Serial Killer from the publisher through Edelweiss.
The Mars Room is a politically motivated novel, described in its blurb as 'a bold and unsentimental panorama of life on the margins of contemporary AmThe Mars Room is a politically motivated novel, described in its blurb as 'a bold and unsentimental panorama of life on the margins of contemporary America, [and] an excoriating attack on the prison-industrial complex'. The protagonist, Romy, is in prison. As we see through meandering flashbacks in her inner narrative, her young life is turbulent and traumatic, exaggerated to extremes that, for most, will be unimaginable – going to hotel rooms with strange men at age ten, selling drugs at 12, later an on-off heroin addict. As an adult, she dances at the Mars Room, the least salubrious strip club in San Francisco. A customer begins aggressively stalking her. When she kills him, the context is deemed irrelevant, so she's never allowed to bring up the stalking in court – nor the fact that (she says) she was trying to defend her five-year-old son – and gets two life sentences.
Romy's backstory is interspersed with other viewpoints. A few of her fellow prisoners get their own chapters; a more detailed strand belongs to Gordon Hauser, who teaches at the prison, and who becomes close to Romy. There's also Doc, a crooked and sadistic cop who was previously involved with Bette – an inmate on death row in Romy's prison – and finally, Romy's victim. They're all effectively brought to life, but hard to engage with. Some developments are so predictable I could have seen them coming before I even opened the book. At least a couple of the narrators are intentionally loathsome, and the rest aren't much better. You might read with an appreciation of Kushner's approach, but is it possible to enjoy it?
Occasionally there's a diamond of a sentence. Romy: The ghost of my childhood lives in the back of buses. Gordon: The [Iraq] war was private. It was between each person and his computer.
At the moment, I'm going through one of those phases – I've had them before – where I read a lot of literary fiction and think, this is good, it's beautifully written, but what's the point? It might seem particularly harsh to say this in the context of something like The Mars Room, which aims to draw attention to real issues. But I just don't know how I feel, sometimes, about novelists putting themselves in the shoes of the most disadvantaged. The subject matter here is handled sensitively, and Kushner paints her cast in shades of grey, avoiding a straightforward dichotomy of good and bad guys; but I still felt manipulated, and I still felt there was an inauthenticity to some of the characters/their voices/both.
I received an advance review copy of The Mars Room from the publisher through NetGalley.
The Overstory is the second Richard Powers book I have read – after Plowing the Dark – and although I liked this a lot more, I find it equally difThe Overstory is the second Richard Powers book I have read – after Plowing the Dark – and although I liked this a lot more, I find it equally difficult to talk about. Perhaps it's simply the scope of it: the cast of characters alone is vast, and if I start trying to write a summary of each of them I'll be here all day. The plot is even harder to pin down. It is, of course, basically about trees. Trees as the extraordinary, underappreciated, misunderstood organism and life-force they are. Trees as an analogy for humanity. Trees as the guiding force that bring the people in this novel together and steer them towards various courses of action.
Billions of years ago, a single, fluke, self-copying cell learned how to turn a barren ball of poison gas and volcanic slag into this peopled garden. And everything you hope, fear, and love became possible.
The first half was my favourite. The first half takes its time introducing the characters, their histories, their strange little links to the world of trees. I loved the way Powers shows us these solitary people, or couples or families, as separate units yet part of a greater network – just like the trees, naturally – and celebrates their differences. At this point, I wrote a lot of notes about how much I appreciated the disparate ways these characters find happiness and fulfilment, how the book almost felt like a 'feelgood' novel without any of the smugness, judgement, or celebration of conformity that would usually imply.
The trouble with creating such varied characters and then drawing them together is that it can't help but feel just a little bit contrived. This is where the second half was a little weaker for me. I was relieved that The Overstory didn't go the whole hog – I was worried for a while that every single character would wind up in the same place, acting as the same sort of ecowarrior. But there are, I think, missteps: Douglas and Mimi are perhaps two of the weaker figures in the book, and their relationship never made any sense to me, but perhaps, when I think about it, this is because they didn't make an awful lot of sense to me to begin with. (This isn't as much of a criticism as it sounds; one of the strengths of Powers' writing is the ability to paper over the cracks in characters, so you don't notice things about them are implausible or odd until you really start to pick them apart). I loved Neelay's plot strand, and could have read an entire book just about him (is it significant that of all the characters, he has the least interaction with the others?)
You're studying what makes some people take the living world seriously when the only real thing for everyone else is other people. You should be studying everyone who thinks that only people matter.
The Overstory is a beautiful meandering saga that delights in language as much as rich characterisation – a more humane Jonathan Franzen, or a more mature Joshua Cohen. It combines wonderful nature writing with all the poignant drama of human life and an emphatic, though not overpowering, message. I found it more accessible and more powerful than Plowing the Dark. I am certain it will win awards. It's not entirely perfect, and it requires a certain amount of commitment, but it can truly be described as a rewarding and revelatory novel. (Try reading this and not looking at trees differently afterwards.)
I received an advance review copy of The Overstory from the publisher through NetGalley.
A few days ago, I read an article that proclaimed Mohsin Hamid's forthcoming Exit West, out next March, 'the first post-Brexit novel', but it looks liA few days ago, I read an article that proclaimed Mohsin Hamid's forthcoming Exit West, out next March, 'the first post-Brexit novel', but it looks like Ali Smith will be beating him to it. [I wrote this last week and have just noticed that yesterday's Guardian review by Joanna Kavenna says the same thing. Well, without mentioning Hamid's book. That'll teach me to be lazy about finishing reviews!!] Autumn, due to be published next week, is so firmly rooted in the fervent immediate aftermath of the vote that a) it already feels slightly out of date and b) you can't help but find yourself speculating about how it will read in the future. It feels like you should read it now, and quickly.
All across the country, people called each other cunts. All across the country, people felt unsafe. All across the country, people were laughing their heads off. All across the country, people felt legitimised. All across the country, people felt bereaved and shocked. All across the country, people felt righteous. All across the country, people felt sick. All across the country, people felt history at their shoulder. All across the country, people felt history meant nothing.
The language, wordplay and knowing humour here are as wonderful as one would expect from Smith; the love story at the heart of Autumn didn't quite convince me, or perhaps it wasn't left enough room to convince me. Still, the relationship between Elisabeth, a lecturer in her thirties, and Daniel, 101 years old and Elisabeth's beloved friend and neighbour since her childhood, works well as a thread that runs through a wider state-of-the-nation portrait of Britain, filled with tragicomic scenes or juxtapositions of scenes (Elisabeth struggles to get a new passport because of absurd regulations about the size of her face in the required photograph / Elisabeth repeatedly witnesses the virulence with which immigrants, non-white people and even European tourists are told to 'go back home').
This novel seems fleeting and patchworked, like something flashing past, but also like a mixtape. Is it fleeting like the transitional season of autumn itself? Is that also a part of why it focuses so hard on a fraught, still-shifting and unfinished period in current history (can you have current history?) It is, after all, part of a planned quartet, collectively entitled 'Seasonal'. It will be interesting to see where the sequence goes, and how Autumn will turn out to be connected to the others, but I think I might be more inclined to read some older Smith novels first.
I received an advance review copy of Autumn from the publisher through NetGalley.
(Review originally published on my blog, July 2016)
The Many takes place in a seaside town gone to seed, a half-derelict place in which bountiful catch(Review originally published on my blog, July 2016)
The Many takes place in a seaside town gone to seed, a half-derelict place in which bountiful catches have become the stuff of legend. Most fishermen have abandoned their boats; those who do still venture out either return empty-handed, or bring back meagre hauls of lean, deformed fish. Newcomer Timothy Buchannan has moved into the house previously occupied by Perran, who died in an accident at sea some years ago. The house has been in disrepair ever since, but the locals don't take kindly to Timothy's arrival, and so insistently refer to the place as 'Perran's' that soon even Timothy finds himself doing the same.
Why has Timothy chosen to come to this decrepit town? The answer is found in a series of flashbacks: to Timothy's past (we discover he has been to the town before, with his partner Lauren, now inexplicably absent and perpetually about to 'join' him there) and to the memories of Ethan, a fisherman whose grief for Perran is still raw. Ethan acts as a second main character, his sadness and anger initially providing more solid foundations for the plot than the ambiguity around Timothy.
This is a slippery kind of story belonging to the same emergent trend as Andrew Michael Hurley's The Loney. It's tempting to categorise it as horror, but I don't know whether that would strictly be correct. There is certainly a folk-horror influence, with echoes of The Wicker Man in the townspeople's combination of mistrust of and interest in Timothy; the atmosphere, with its gloomy horizons, just-out-of-reach dread, and of course the sinister house, is suggestive of gothic fiction; the misshapen fish, polluted waters ('the chems') and mysterious visitors from the 'Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture' lend it a sci-fi edge. (Though I'm thinking of low-budget British TV sci-fi rather than the box-office-blockbuster/space opera kind.) Yet the story is too opaque to fit into the codes of any one genre, and few, if any, conclusions can be drawn about what it all means. It's a book in which everything seems to represent something else, but those meanings are not spelled out.
The Many unfolds like an unsettling dream, shifting illogically, asking the reader to accept leaps from reality to what seems like it may be fantasy (or may be a matter of perception). But it's not just a strange fable, there is humanity in it too: Ethan's palpable grief for Perran; the locals' struggle to adapt to a world in which their former livelihoods have become obsolete; the touches of tenderness in Timothy and Lauren's scenes together. Its portrayal of a community left behind by technology and bureaucracy, suspicious of the threat represented by 'outsiders', is recognisable and timely – perhaps even more so now than the author may have intended....more
I deplored silence. I deplored stillness. I hated almost everything. I was very unhappy and angry all the time. I tried to control myself, and that
I deplored silence. I deplored stillness. I hated almost everything. I was very unhappy and angry all the time. I tried to control myself, and that only made me more awkward, unhappier, and angrier. I was like Joan of Arc, or Hamlet, but born into the wrong life—the life of a nobody, a waif, invisible. There's no better way to say it: I was not myself back then. I was someone else. I was Eileen.
When I was in the middle of reading Eileen, I wrote on Twitter that it was one of the realest portraits of self-loathing I've ever read, and I still think that's the best way to describe it in a nutshell. The paragraph above, taken from the first couple of pages, is a perfect summary of the dark, twisted ambience that pervades both the story and its narrator.
Said narrator is Eileen Dunlop. She looks into the past to tell her story, speaking from what's probably supposed to be the present day, but recalling a younger version of herself, and the action, such as it is, unfolds over the course of a week in 1964. Living in a town she calls 'X-ville' with her alcoholic, abusive father, Eileen constantly dreams of escape. Her job is as 'a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys', which she refers to, also pseudonymously, as Moorehead. It's here that she meets the glamorous Rebecca, and those fantasies of freedom start to seem more plausible. In her own words: 'In a week, I would run away from home and never go back. This is the story of how I disappeared.'
Eileen is saturated with self-loathing and self-obsession. Everything about her body, her very existence, is excruciatingly embarrassing and disgusting to her, but at the same time she revels in it with a kind of mordant glee. She is fond of - even obsessed with - thinking and talking about her (and other people's) bodily functions. She has an aversion to washing (she tells Rebecca, 'I like to stew in my own filth sometimes. Like a little secret under my clothes'), and a laxative habit; she chews chocolates and spits them back into the wrappers. A virgin at 24, she's frequently preoccupied by sexual fantasies, most of them about a colleague - Randy - whom she spends her weekends stalking.
I looked so boring, lifeless, immune and unaffected, but in truth I was always furious, seething, my thoughts racing, my mind like a killer's.
Eileen epitomises what I couldn't help but think of as the messiness of being a woman, the ugly flipside of a societal preoccupation with female bodies and sexuality. She is all rage - pure, unruly emotion - and while she is repugnant in many ways, it's difficult to hate her. Her combination of torment and immaturity can be heartbreaking. She speaks frequently of her 'death mask', a blank face she uses to hide the uncontrollable hatred and confusion burning within, though she seems conflicted about whether she wants people to be fooled by it or see right through it (probably both), whether she wants the death mask to function as camouflage for her inner turmoil or a signal of it. Of a shop assistant, she says:
My death mask didn't seem to perturb her at all. It always peeved me when my flatness was met with good cheer, good manners. Didn't she know I was a monster, a creep, a crone? How dare she mock me with courtesy when I deserved to be greeted with disgust and dismay?
She feels differently about the boys at Moorehead. She sees them as her equivalents, treats them with a pity that comes off as self-indulgent when she tries to draw parallels between their suffering and hers. But through this, we also get a sense of how desperately she needs an outlet for her feelings:
I hoped they saw right through my death mask to my sad and fiery soul.
No surprise, then, that she's instantly drawn to Rebecca - Moorehead's incongruous new 'director of education' - like the proverbial moth to the flame. A figure straight out of a classic movie, she's all glamorous airs and insouciant smoking, wrapped in elegant coats and talking in femme fatale cliches, 'hair rippling behind her, eyes like daggers'. It's all an act - we see that when Eileen notices the literal cracks in her armour, her chapped lips and 'scraggly' hair - but Eileen is seduced because she wants to be, and because of her profound naivety.
The way she talked was so canned, so scripted, it inspired me to be just as canned. "Say." People didn't really talk like that. "A cocktail." If she seems insincere, she was. She was terribly pretentious, and later, in hindsight, I felt she'd insulted my intelligence by selling me her scripted bunk. "Darn it all." But at the time I felt I was being invited into an elite world of beautiful people.
Readers hoping for a plot-driven mystery may be disappointed. This novel is a character study (a superb one), and the whole point of Eileen is the character of Eileen. The other characters matter in the sense that her interpretations of them matter. It may have noir influences and thriller pretensions, but the denouement is the weakest part of the book, because it stops focusing solely on Eileen's interior life and jumps into dramatic events that don't quite work. Rebecca's actions and motivations feel hastily cobbled together; Eileen increasingly seems like the only real person among a cast of caricatures. Added to which, the stakes just aren't very high: due to frequent, if brief, references to her life after these events, we know all along that she did get out of X-ville and that, if she did do something terrible, it's likely she never got caught.
This could have been an instant favourite - and I get the feeling Moshfegh will write something I'll unequivocally adore in future - but its flaws are a bit too big and its omissions a bit too disappointing. (I'd love to have seen Eileen's obsession with Rebecca develop over a longer period of time, with the former interpreting everyday interactions as evidence of a meaningful bond between the two; I'd also like to have known more about what kind of life she went on to have.) It doesn't fully embrace its brilliance as a character study, and in trying to be more, it becomes less.
This review is already longer than I would like it to be, but I could write endlessly about this book and its narrator, could've included many more quotes. Eileen joins the ranks of unforgettable female characters who inspire both sympathy and repulsion - characters in whom we see our worst selves uncomfortably reflected. If you were fascinated by Barbara in Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal or Nora in The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud, Eileen - and Eileen - might be your perfect match....more
The premise: This unique dystopian tale is set 'in a world where people cannot form new memories, and the written word has been forbidden and destroyed. In the absence of both memory and writing is music.' The plot centres on Simon, a young man who arrives in London seeking the truth about his parents' fate.
First line:I've been standing here forever. My arms and legs and head and even my bones are heavy with sleep.
What I read: Part 1 (chapters 1-3).
Would I read the rest of it? If you've read any reviews of The Chimes, you're probably already aware that one of its most-talked-about features is Smaill's creative use of language. Right from the start it's clear this book has its own vocabulary, filled with familiar-but-altered words: prentissed, objectmemories, woolfat. Musical terms feature in abundance - for example, Simon uses 'presto' to mean 'quickly' and 'lento' to mean 'slowly', and some of the words I thought were invented, such as solfege and tacet, turned out to have musical meanings when I looked them up. All of this requires maybe a little more concentration than average, but it's not particularly difficult to figure out what the words are supposed to mean when you're seeing them in context, and the narration develops its own pleasant rhythm very quickly. Already I can envision this world and feel slightly enchanted by it; the main character is engaging and the mysteries brought up by this society's very existence have me hooked (it's set in London, so is this a future version of our world or an alternate reality?) My concerns that the book might be similar to a not-great dystopia I read a while back (The Ship) have melted away. This one's a definitely-maybe. ...more
Following two men working in a rural, near-deserted South African hospital, Damon Galgut's The Good Doctor is an ambiguous story, in which nothing hapFollowing two men working in a rural, near-deserted South African hospital, Damon Galgut's The Good Doctor is an ambiguous story, in which nothing happens, and everything happens; a book of thick and palpable atmosphere. Frank Eloff is the long-established deputy director of the hospital, perpetually waiting for a step upwards to the top spot, a move that has been repeatedly promised, but never quite happens. At the beginning of the story, a new junior doctor, Laurence Waters, arrives - having apparently insisted upon this location, despite the fact that there are so few patients, the existing team find themselves with hardly anything to do. Laurence is everything Frank is not: endlessly upbeat, hopeful and incredibly, perhaps even wilfully, naive. But he also has a sinister streak, and when the two doctors are forced to share a room, Frank finds himself more and more distrustful of Laurence.
The plot also weaves in small stories that build up a picture of the surrounding area and its people. Built to serve the capital of a now-defunct homeland, the hospital is located amongst arid wasteland and an entirely deserted town. It's a setting Galgut exploits to full effect, creating a vivid image of an eerie, empty backdrop perfectly suited to the lost individuals who inhabit it - 'a strange twilight place', as Frank calls it. Secondary characters come into their own as representations of this place's limitations and its chequered history. There's Maria, a local married woman with whom Frank has had a long-running, erratic and distinctly odd affair; Tehogo, a hospital orderly who exerts an inexplicable power over the other staff; and 'the Brigadier', the self-styled former dictator of the homeland, who may or may not still be alive and exists as a shadowy presence on the fringes of both the town and the story.
The book opens with Frank's first impression of Laurence: 'The first time I saw him I thought, he won't last.' Later: 'I wanted to say, you're very young. I wanted to tell him, you won't last.' Yet lonely Frank finds himself unable to reject Laurence entirely - the newcomer is 'like two people', one an unwanted, clingy shadow, the other a much-needed confidant. There is always something vaguely disturbing about Laurence's presence, and always some suggestion he is not quite telling the whole truth about his own past; at other points, there are hints of an always-formless sexual tension between him and Frank. These various suggestions remain, for the most part, suggestions, and The Good Doctor never reaches the simmering pitch of a thriller. Despite that, it's an engrossing story that had me completely captivated from the first page onwards.
Who is 'the good doctor' of the title? It could be either Laurence, with his puppy-dog optimism, or Frank, who is far more down-to-earth, realistic and practical. But the book keeps the answer from us, highlighting the characters' faults - Laurence's damaging and possibly deliberate guilelessness and Frank's jaded, unhelpful cynicism - too clearly for either to be truly worthy of the name. There again, The Good Doctor is also, arguably, an allegory, with the protagonists' attitudes illustrating different approaches to the 'new' South Africa and the flaws within them. Frank is stuck in his ways and resists change, unless it benefits him. Laurence, on the other hand, wants to enable change, but goes about it in all the wrong ways, blindly doing what he thinks is right or useful rather than what is actually necessary or helpful to the impoverished community. Both men struggle to relate to their non-white colleagues, and in the end this will play a pivotal part in their respective failures. Near the end, Frank's boss Dr Ngema confronts him about his innate racism, but he resists, and thereafter the two are simply 'carefully nice to each other' - he still hasn't learned.
I loved the graceful voice and controlled tone of this spellbinding novel. Nominated for the Booker Prize in 2003, it's lost none of its power and feels incredibly fresh. I can't fault it - undoubtedly the best book I've read this year so far....more
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