I Am China by Xiaolu Guo

Anyone who loves reading knows that language can connect two people across divides as wide as continents, political systems, genders and centuries. The commonalities we discover when there is a chime of understanding can make us feel less alone. Suddenly, the words on the page feel more alive than the physical world we inhabit. That’s the experience of Iona in this novel. She’s a young translator living in a tiny apartment above London’s Chapel Market in Islington. Having long separated herself from the remote Scottish island she grew up on, Iona is content with working on translation jobs she’s been commissioned to write and occasionally bringing home sexual partners for a brief fling before showing them the door. One day she takes a job translating a jumble of Chinese letters and diaries that an editor Jonathan was handed while on a business trip. Slowly Iona begins to untangle the story of Jian and Mu, a Chinese couple who are separated but who maintain a strained correspondence over multiple counties. As Iona becomes more engrossed in the translation she has a “feeling that her own life has abandoned her.” The journey of this couple isn’t just a painful love story, but encapsulates the ideological divide for a new generation of Chinese citizens.

Jian is an artist/punk musician who feels guilty that he didn’t perish with his fellow students in the ‘89 Tiananmen Square massacre. He tries to find domestic harmony with poet/performer Mu, but they have different views about being political engaged. With Jian’s commitment to making a statement and fostering societal change he writes a manifesto that leads to him becoming separated from his love and cast out of his native country. As Iona continues with her translation she becomes desperate to know what became of these two passionate complex individuals and uncover the secrets which lead all the way up to the highest echelons of Chinese political power. Their story is one which could easily have disappeared with the attempts at censorship from the Chinese government and general Western indifference to the plight of refugees and immigrants. Iona is committed to making their story known.

The accounts switch between Iona’s experiences in 2013 and letters and diary entries between the Chinese couple over about two decades. Interspersed with the narrative are images of the Chinese text Iona is translating as well as occasional photographs or album covers. Letters are also reproduced in the text including (hilariously) an exchange between Jian and Queen Elizabeth. I find it really effective in a novel like this when photographs and documents can make the detective work of a mystery feel more tangibly real. It’s especially relevant for “I Am China” as the novel is particularly concerned with the question of translation. Even though I can’t read Chinese it’s interesting to see the characters on the page in a particular handwriting accompanied by Iona’s multiple translations of possible meanings. It lays bare the intersection between two cultures and frames of mind to find common understanding. The author describes that “it’s like Iona is building this bridge again, through her reading, her translation.” The place where two minds meet is through the cipher of language. When there are differences in language it must be modulated to most closely match the original author’s meaning rather than necessarily give a literal translation of the words.

Travel naturally makes people contemplate questions of identity as they are out of their natural environment and suddenly immersed in a culture whose values and way of life are different from their own. Thus when Jian and Mu travel through countries as different as America, the UK, France, Switzerland and Greece they become highly conscious of their sense of being. They question what it means to be Chinese and how that national identity melds with their own understanding of themselves. One issue is the way in which the political ideology of the collective filters into the Chinese citizen’s sense of identity which is very different from a Western sensibility more founded in individualism:  “Perhaps it is possible to live without yourself in China, but not in the West. Unless one invents oneself.” Equally Iona begins to lose her “self” when becoming immersed in the couple’s most private thoughts. The author uses this as an opportunity to ponder the philosophical question of identity: “To be a person is to imagine being someone, and the someone you imagine most of the time is what people call ‘you.’ How strange to be in time and space with something called a ‘character.’” The degree to which the “self” is malleable depends on the strength of one’s own character. When this is challenged or intruded upon by opinions of others that core of being wavers and identity forms anew.

Xiaolu Guo is a writer highly interested in the intersection between the personal and the political. Her story documents different strategies one can take when wanting to challenge the structures of power one lives under. It traces the path of the immigrant with the accompanying feelings of intense isolation and the fragile hope of love carried over long periods of time and through foreign lands. It’s moving to see how her characters mature and become more conscious of what is most essential in life. She also testifies to how the weight of ideology can crush the lives of individuals in the single-mindedness of its overbearing logic. She questions “Do ideologies die as people die? I hope so, for the sake of peace.” The resounding effect of “I Am China” is a longing for connection and understanding that cuts through the dogmatic principles of any ideology that curtails individual freedom. It’s a moving and deeply-engaging read.

Read an excellent interview with Xiaolu Guo about the origins of her new novel and her documentary work: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/30/xiaolu-guo-communist-china-interview

Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction Winner Prediction

I attended the readings by the authors shortlisted for the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction tonight at the Southbank Centre. Each author gave excellent readings as did the actor Charles Dance who stood in for Donna Tartt. Most authors got the chance to discuss the inspiration or process that went into writing their novels. I don't know why the event was only an hour long. It could have easily gone on twice as long to give everyone the chance to really talk in more depth about the brilliant variety of novels competing for the prize. Nevertheless, the readings and brief questions gave a good taste of each book. It was particularly pleasing to hear questions from the audience directed primarily at Eimear McBride as I assumed most of the questions would go to the more well-known authors. One man asked her if she was influenced by Robert Frost's poetry as he thought he detected hints of his style in her writing to which she hilariously replied, "No, never read him. Sorry."

So, who will win tomorrow?

Truthfully, I loved reading all the novels and I'd be happy for any of them to take the prize. Part of me really wants to cheer for both Eimear McBride and Audrey Magee as I think both books would benefit the most from the prize in terms of getting a bigger readership (which both books really deserve.) I haven't looked at any sales figures but I'm guessing the other four novels have sold a lot more copies than these two first time novelists. Also, thinking about which book I'd most like to read again it would be Eimear McBride's "A Girl is a Half-formed Thing" as I think I would discover a lot of things I missed the first time. However, in terms of sheer enjoyment of reading and intelligence I think Ngozi's "Americanah" is my favourite. But I've decided I'm going with McBride to win - because I think that's the way the judges will go. 

The Quick by Lauren Owen & The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman

Sometimes I start reading a book and after fifty or so pages I put it down. This could be for any number of reasons. I might not be in the mood for whatever subject or style the book is covering. Or the writing might not be very good. Or it just might not be speaking to me at that point in time. Usually I’ll put these books aside and won’t bother writing on this blog about them. They might be for someone else. I’d rather spend time writing about books that are really worthwhile and that I want to recommend. However, in the case of these two books I became very frustrated. I think both authors are good writers or have the potential to be good writers, but they make some unfortunate choices in these novels which make them unsuccessful on the whole. I also wanted to offer up a different perspective on books I’ve been reading so it doesn’t come across like I love everything I read.

In the case of “The Quick” the novel begins fantastically. It’s Victorian England and two children are practically left on their own in a dilapidated country estate. They spend their time playing games and exploring the library. It’s beautifully told completely immersing you in the strange spooky environment these curious children find themselves in. I was hooked. Then it moves further in time and takes an unexpected twisted when the boy turns into a young man first taking up residence in London. I was less convinced by this but stuck with it. Then an infamous twist comes along. I was thrown way out of the story, but kept going until half way through the book. To be clear, I’m not opposed to the supernatural. Unfortunately, the author relies on tedious genre elements and doesn’t do anything inventive enough to carry her characters through a plot that feels suspenseful or compelling. Owen is clearly a talented writer, but I think she made a major misstep and should have continued writing a whole novel about the first section.

“The Rise and Fall of Great Powers” also begins very well. Two quirky characters pass a day working in a used bookshop barely selling anything. The protagonist Tooly, who owns the bookshop, tries not to let her chatty loopy colleague get on her nerves while she attempts to read a biography about Anne Boleyn. It’s an excellent set up and I would have loved to read a novel mostly set here. The book then carries on to mine through Tooly’s past and the reasons that led her to this place. I wouldn’t have minded the author leaping around the past, but much of the language and persistent literary references come across as pretentious. Again, I think this book had a lot of potential and the author is talented, but he gets in the way of himself too often. I could only read half of the book before the style became too much for me.

I’ve read positive reviews for both of these books and it’s only because they’ve been so lauded elsewhere that I feel like they can take this kind of criticism. I would gladly try reading another book by these authors as I’m sure they are capable of great writing.

Have you read either of these books?

Did you like them? I’d love to hear arguments as to why they worked for you.

 Are there other books you’ve tried reading recently which had great potential or that have been really hyped, but didn’t work for you?

The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee

It feels fortuitous that I happened to read Lahiri’s “The Lowland” directly before beginning Neel Mukherjee’s magisterial family epic “The Lives of Others.” Before last week, to shamefully admit my ignorance, I didn’t know about the left wing/communist revolts which took place in Bengal in the late 1960s. In both these novels this movement plays a prominent role. While Lahiri deals primarily with the reverberating effects of one son’s involvement in the uprising long after the event, Mukherjee’s novel delves into the thick of it over those crucial few years at the end of that decade. These are two very different novels, but in some ways Mukerjee’s novel works as sort of an inverted mirror to Lahiri’s book when considering issues of emotional and physical proximity within families. Lahiri’s novel features a large family house which stands virtually empty after expectations that it will be passed on from progenitor to progenitor are spoiled when it’s abandoned by the two sons. Mukherjee’s novel also has a large house at its centre which is filled to the brim with a squabbling family (except one notably absent son) none of who seem able to escape from each other. There are many floors to the house which are inhabited by different generations of the Ghosh family many of whose status and socio-economic position within the family varies wildly from person to person. Over the course of this large, ambitious and brilliant novel we become very familiar with each idiosyncratic family member, the servants who dwell within the house and the idealistic son who left to join a revolution.

Personally, I love a good immersive family epic such as Marquez's “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Oates' “Bellefleur” or Ann-Marie MacDonald's “Fall on Your Knees.” I saw Mukherjee in conversation at the Southbank Centre earlier this week (he's fascinating to listen to in person and very articulate about writing) and he said that one of the greatest literary inspirations for this novel is Mann's Buddenbrooks (which is a book I sadly haven't read yet.) When I first opened the book and saw a family tree charted out I felt excited at the prospect of getting sunk into a family drama. The Ghosh family is certainly filled with drama. The great patriarch of the family Prafullanath was cut out of his own father's lucrative business and became a self-made man building a paper manufacturing empire. His imperial wife Charubala rules over her five children who grow to become very different individuals, many with children of their own. Like in many families who expect the eldest son to take the reigns of the family business, the Ghosh's son Adinath would rather pursue his own interests than fitting into a slot his father has devised for him. The second son Priyo tries to organize his father's various factories but is distracted by his own hidden sexual interests. Sister Chhaya is a fantastically bitter woman who often sees herself in opposition to the world because of her dark skin and crossed eyes. “Chhaya carried tales, not all of which were innocent. She got a thrill out of poisoning people’s minds and playing them off against each other.” She crafts ways to dominate, humiliate and control those around her. Fourth son Bholanath uses his influence at one of his father's factories to support a burgeoning literary group with devastating financial consequences. Youngest son Somnath has a wilful sadistic side and meets a surprising fate. This group of children combined with the individual wives of the sons, their children and the various servants who work in the house create a raucous symphony of conflicting aspirations and values. I could write a lot about each of these fascinating characters, but you need to dive into the intricate plot to fully understand them all. There are also many more characters, many of whom are the type to fall between the cracks of society such as a “mad” mathematics professor Ashish Ray who roams the streets overcome by a darkness in his mind. You can see why Mukherjee requires such a long novel to fully do all his characters justice.

It's Adinath and his wife Sandhya's eldest son Supratik who breaks from this over-flowing home and demands his own narrative which is written in the first person. His story is slotted between chapters which feature the rest of the family and describes his time becoming involved in the communist party, working on back-breaking jobs in rural areas and getting involved with terrorist activities. The age-old conflict of parents who want their children to establish a secure future in the family and carry their values clashes against the child's idealistic views of the world. At one point Sandhya confronts her son stating: “The rile of the world is to look after your family, your elders, your children, and see that you do the best you can for them all the time.” To which Supratik, mimicking the ideology he's read about, replies: “Has the thought ever crossed your mind that the family is the primary unit of exploitation?” Supratik believes in sacrificing oneself for the greater good over carrying on his family's legacy. It breaks Sandhya that she loses her son so totally. The mysterious process by which children grow to diverge from their parents' intimate embrace is handled so skilfully by the author. The refrain for any helpless parent who witnesses the long process of their child turning into a stranger is summed up with this question asked at one point in the narrative: “Did one ever know the mind and soul and personality of one’s child, even little segments of them?”

One of the difficult duties of any great writer is to describe the way in which language itself isn't able to sufficiently serve the characters he portrays. There are intricacies of emotion experienced which can't be expressed other than in the actions of the character and their surrounding environment. Through the spaces between sentences we glean an understanding about truth which can't be described with words, but which is most definitely there. At one point in the narrative a character “felt himself fall into the gap between feelings and their articulation in language.” Mukherjee captures his characters moving through their particular time and space grappling with sensations which can't be expressed, but which impact upon the way they negotiate with the world and each other. One quote I love in particular is from a scene where Chhaya confronts her mother Charubala about the fact of her own ugliness.

“Were love, compassion, pity expressible? How? Charubala certainly did not know. Love and affection were not particular instances of their manifestations, but rather the entire world one moved around in, an atmosphere. How could you isolate something so brutally flat and one-dimensional, such as words, from a kind of sky, which was intangible, both there and not there?”

Charubala finds herself unable to console her child the way she wishes because the complexity of her feeling and love cannot be so simply conveyed. Language has a way of sometimes failing when we most need it. That Mukherjee is able to show this while also conveying a density of emotion that draws you into the character's experience is a powerful accomplishment.

“The Lives of Others” contains a wealth of detail that resurrects a very specific time and place where huge swaths of people found themselves in desperate circumstances and their way of life in upheaval. Mukherjee elucidates the complex political movements of the time by framing them within one particular family's story in a way that challenges the way you think but is fully accessible, informative and beautifully written. The startling and brutal opening section of the novel acts as a bleak reminder of what's really at stake throughout the rest of the book. The fortunes of families can fall so drastically that they can be obliterated completely. The Ghosh family's dramatic downfall captures the complexity of these few years of life in Bengal and makes for an enthralling richly-layered story that I fully sank into.

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

What is it that holds families together? A string of individuals tied to one another through the happenstance of being blood relations. For many the bond and ability to rely on one another is assumed. Yet there are disruptions in life and personal tragedies which can create schisms in the family tree - the reverberations of which can be felt for generations. This is the break in relations that Jhumpa Lahiri traces in her novel “The Lowland” where a family is followed over a period of some fifty years. Relations are held so tentatively over time, some bonding and forming unexpectedly close ties while other wither and become so distant as to make their connection virtually non-existent. So much so that at one point it’s remarked in regards to one nomadic family member that “They were a family of solitaries. They had collided and dispersed. This was her legacy. If nothing else, she had inherited that impulse from them.” Beginning with the story of two brothers in Calcutta, the novel follows how they grow to be very different individuals. After a tragic occurrence associated with the Naxalite movement (guerrilla groups of Communists formed in 1960s India) the family is split apart by grief and secrecy. The novel is set both in India and America where different family members settle. Time is shown to corrode the family bonds for some who feel its painful length creating irrevocable emotional division while others are held in a kind of limbo of feeling unable to break out of the fragility of a suspended moment.

It took me some time to get to this much-lauded novel which has been nominated for multiple prestigious prizes. Something about reading the summary of it and hearing the author give a reading didn’t capture my imagination. But I’m really glad to have read it now as it’s a highly intelligent, well-constructed novel that has stirred a lot of emotions in me. It took some time to get into it as for some time it felt as if the author were only reeling off information rather than weaving the details of a particular time and place into the lives of her original characters. But as I grew to understand the distinct lives she evoked and their points of view the book took hold of me. It carried me on this family’s journey as their relations splinter apart.

Lahiri raises questions about our sense of place and belonging. Quite often when we don’t feel at home we set out into the world to make a home of our own. Such is the case for one character who moves to a small, sparsely-populated part of America and feels “He didn’t belong, but perhaps it didn’t matter. He wanted to tell her that he had been waiting all his life to find Rhode Island. That it was here, in this minute but majestic corner of the world, that he could breathe.” Finding a space in the world where we can assert our own individuality can release us from the constraints and expectations of family life. Lahiri elegantly describes this process is necessary for a person to fully come into themselves, but also creates a loss felt from breaking a lineage of tradition and sours the expectations of parents.

There is a complex portrait of the way time and expectation filter into the next generation in this novel. For a new mother “there was an acute awareness of time, of the future looming, accelerating. The baby’s lifetime, so scant, already outdistancing and outpacing her own. This was the logic of parenthood.” Children can give an individual a sense of possibility, especially for a future that’s been marred by the entanglements of personal disappointment. However, rather than emboldening someone to charge forth and clear a safe path for their progeny “The Lowland” shows that children can sometimes only serve as unwanted and empty vessels of hope for a parent. Lahiri observes that “Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold. Blindly planning for it, envisioning things that weren’t the case. This was the working of the will. This was what gave the world purpose and direction. Not what was there but what was not.” What the author goes on to show in her story is that loss and tragedy can create a scupper in the desire for time’s progression and a family’s continuation. When this is the case it can lead to nothing more than total self-reliance and isolation. Throughout the novel a large family home in India built to serve a residence for multiple generations gradually is left empty of those it was built for – a potent symbol of a failed vision of the future.

Interestingly, Lahiri notes the way the internet has drastically altered the way we relate to each other and creates a virtual level playing field. “A revolutionary concept, already taken for granted. Citizens of the Internet dwell free from hierarchy.” Yet, she is mindful of the way it’s another plain that can be a mental projection for all our expectations and can fall short of these. “Too much information, and yet, in her case, not enough. In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists.” The internet can kindle and re-forge personal connections and eagerly yield swaths of data. But it’s always through a particular perspective and will always have limitations.

“The Lowland” had the unusual ability of pulling me into its story and making me care deeply about the fate of its characters without my even realizing it. This is an effect caused from finely polished prose that draw you through the day to day details of characters’ lives while providing brief glimmers of deep emotion. This forms a bond to the protagonists which sneaks up on you. The book builds to a scene from a particular character’s perspective which was left out of the beginning to create a heart-breaking effect. Lahiri is a novelist with such an assured sense of style, clear thinking and far-reaching sympathy.

Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent

It’s been a long time since a novel’s beginning has arrested my attention as instantly as “Unravelling Oliver.” The opening scene is narrated by a man named Oliver who is standing over his wife Alice. He’s just punched her. It’s terrifying being immediately thrown into the consciousness of a man that’s committed such a violent, cowardly act. His motives remain mysterious and the rest of this short, powerful novel goes on to explain who Oliver is, what he’s hiding and why he has beaten his wife. The chapters flip between the perspectives of Oliver and a group of people who have been associated with him throughout his life to compose a portrait of a man who has committed monstrous acts. While it at no point suggests he should be forgiven for his crimes, the novel conveys a logical path that has led to his selfish acts. The story is skilfully arranged to reveal information slowly with the limited perspective of characters relating different pieces of the puzzle. They don’t always fully appreciate the gravity of the information they hold. I love it when books so cleverly help the reader to understand a story better than the characters involved. It makes for a really gripping read.

There is something almost Dickensian about the story here of a man born in difficult circumstances and emotionally neglected. Through his cunning he achieves fame and fortune, but experiences a downfall from grace when confronted with the truth of his past. Where this novel deviates from that kind of Dickensian structure is that the main protagonist commits an act so heinous it’s excruciatingly hard to feel empathy for him – whereas we can do nothing but feel totally on the side of Great Expectation’s poor little Pip. Because of Oliver’s hard upbringing and fear of being rejected, he feels it necessary to always hide himself and maintain a certain emotion distance from everyone. He remarks at one point: “Friends are just people who remind you of your failings.” The novel conveys that when this man became emotionally isolated from those around him his sympathy floundered and he becomes prone to acting out of total selfishness. This is borne out of a legacy of shame.

Something that really impressed me was how this novel dealt with many kinds of unconventional relationships. There is the fascinating regal French character named Veronique who bears a son in unusual circumstances. A rather self centred actress named Moya thinks herself rather coy in the way she pursues multiple men, but whose motives are much more obvious than she realizes. A repressed gay man named Michael establishes a kinship with Veronique who helps him on the path to self-acceptance and finding a flourishing relationship. Also Oliver and his wife Alice don’t have a traditional partnership. It’s commented that “You don’t have to love a person. You can love the idea of a person.” Of course, this makes for an unstable foundation on which to build a long term relationship. Loving a person for being the person they really are is very different from loving someone as you’d like them to be.

It is striking that although the novel ventures into narrating the point of view of many different characters (in one chapter it even daringly invokes the voice of Alice’s mentally disabled brother Eugene) it never represents the perspective of Alice herself. This is somewhat out of practicality. After Alice is severely beaten she enters into a coma so has no voice to comment. However, I did at some times yearn for her point of view. It’s only natural to want to hear the perspective of the abused over the abuser. But, as I neared the end of the book, it struck me as right that Oliver’s confession coupled with the accounts of people associated with him was necessary for accomplishing the powerful effect that Nugent makes. The novel wouldn’t have worked otherwise.

Despite the seriousness and sadness of many scenes in this novel, it is handled with a light touch so it doesn’t become too grim or ponderous. There are lots of endearingly human and humorous moments. At one point there is even a funny instance of the author poking fun at her own heritage when French Veronique remarks “Always with the Irish, there is the drama!” Nugent also has quite a thought-provoking take on issues of race and heritage in the story she’s constructed. The issues raised left me pondering the meaning of the ending and wishing I had someone to discuss it with immediately. The book is effectively a series of monologues which isn’t surprising given the author’s theatre background; the different dramatic voices form a complete complex narrative. This is an extremely compelling and accomplished first novel and I hope Nugent continues to write more in the future.

Watch a chilling trailer for the book with the opening chapter being read here:

12 "Classics" I'm ashamed I haven't read

The other day I was talking with someone about "classic" books and I couldn't help feeling guilty at some books that I still haven't read. Yes, there will always be books considered "must reads" that I haven't yet got to, but that doesn't stop me from feeling bad about missing some. Here are some great books I haven't yet read. Some authors like Shirley Jackson, Thomas Mann and Agatha Christie I haven't read anything by. Should any become a really urgent reading priority because my life can't possibly be complete without having experienced it?

Do you have any "classics" you feel guilty to have missed?

Little Reef by Michael Carroll

"Little Reef" is a book of short stories split into two parts. The first half ‘After Dallas’ contains stories that largely have to do with artistic ambition and mentorship. A couple researching a biography interview a prickly editor about his deceased ex-wife who was an esteemed author, a woman who feels like a failure in life finds an empty sense of accomplishment in her NYC social circle, an elderly mother waits for her sensitive son in a bar filled with colourful characters, the wife of a writer and teacher negotiates boundaries of intimacy with one of his students, an ambitious young writer wins a story contest and makes his first introductions into an established literary social milieu, and a man revisits memories of his best friend from childhood who is dying and harbours a dark inclination.

The second half ‘After Memphis’ is a sequence of stories with a pair of recurring characters who have achieved a level of artistic achievement. An older well-regarded writer Perry and a younger writer Scott are a couple living in New York City who deal over a sequence of stories with family, failing health, the social dynamics of a writing program, working to complete a novel while achieving better health in Maine and losing oneself in Key West. The stories in the first section deal with a wide variety of topics and situations, but many feature characters striving for a grander life of fame and accomplishment. The stories in the second half seem to work as a kind of counterpoint or expansion out of those initial characters. Here Perry and Scott have established themselves in the literary circles they've always dreamed of inhabiting. Over the course of their stories they come to terms with the real meaning of success and achieving one’s own ambitions.

The plot of many of these stories hangs upon the potential for forging relationships that could drastically alter the fate of the characters involved. As desperately as some characters are looking to make connections and align themselves with people they aspire to be, there are others who are wary of the danger that comes from courting admirers. In the poignant story 'Referred Pain' it’s observed that “young people always needed extra attention. They’d lavish it on you to get a tiny part of it back.” There is a neediness here which the admired are right to be wary of. In order to avoid following well-worn tracks which lead nowhere some potential relationships are abruptly cut off leading to inevitable disappointments and scuppered dreams. In another story “Barracuda” it’s observed that “Life got you in its ticking reaches and laughed.”

A tension exists in many of the characters who find it difficult to assimilate the hard nature of adult realities with the dusty dreams of young adulthood. In a strikingly resonant way, Carroll writes “Adolescence had been just an embarrassment and it locked you into making too many romantic, silly statements you lived with forever if you thought about it. You couldn’t overthink it. That way you’d go crazy.” Many of the characters in these stories are in the process of learning to adjust their worldview to a more sensible state of existence that doesn’t stubbornly insist on making wild aspirations a reality. Sensibly, the tone of many stories in this collection suggest snubbing self-flagellation over one's inevitable failings in favour of forging ahead with aspirations that adjust in tandem with how the world responds to you for a more calm and measured life.

There is an economy of language used in these stories which make them expand out in the reader’s imagination to encompass much more than what is on the page. For instance, personalities can be conjured and swiftly dispensed with in the space of a short memory: “Poor Corporal Maynard. Funny thing, he got killed in a silly accident. Some requisitions being craned off a transport dropped on him and crushed him, but the last memory of him was of the kid digging into Leo's armpit and bawling, soaking his undershirt. Had a screw loose, maybe was queer. Or the mother messed him up, smothering him. Unresolved conflicts. Shitty shame.” The power of this lies not only in the succinct descriptive terms chosen but in the skewed perspective of the character's voice recollecting the dead corporal. The assumptions and dismissive attitude suggest a conflicted relationship which didn’t fully appreciate the complexity of the corporal’s personality. However, it makes an attentive reader’s ears prick up and prompts him to envision what has been left out.

One of the great accomplishments of these stories is the vibrancy of dialogue that breathes life into a large cast of characters making them lift off the page and lodge themselves in your memory. Carroll has the ability to convey a rich amount of detail about a character’s position in life through their speech rather than needing to give lengthy background descriptions. He is also able to establish an intellectual and social hierarchy between his characters through pointed exchanges.

Take, for instance, this line: “‘One compromises in every situation in life,’ said Taylor, an Edith Wharton matron now.” Here the gravity of the character’s feeling is conveyed in her earnest statement while simultaneously slightly poking fun at the pretension of this precocious student. The young rattle off prepared deep thoughts which slide into ostentation and which the older characters wryly observe from a distance. Bold ambition-laden statements vie against world-weary experience.

Through representations of cross-generational characters many of the stories convey a sense of the way people’s changing ontological positions throughout different times in their lives maintain equal validity, but jostle against one another. The hopes and desires of youth are treated with equal sincerity when paired against the inevitable compromises and disappointments of advanced age. What emerges is a fraternity of sentiment that all our drive in life is wrapped up in the conflict of our present circumstances. There is something comforting in the notion left after reading these stories that moments of true contentment can be found when the hectares of life can be confidently straddled with a foot planted firmly at each end.

I was particularly struck with some details in this book which create a real emotional resonance for the simple way they pull you into the moment of the story. When Scott brings Perry into the hospital after he has a stroke it becomes a recurring question in the couple’s minds whether what Perry is lying on is called a cot or a gurney. It’s the sort of trivial detail which nags at the mind in a moment of real crisis when there are so many more important things at stake. Also, in this same story it’s observed that “They were both so bored, waiting. Healing was waiting.” The sheer tedium experienced by anyone who has been in a hospital dealing with a critical situation grates so excruciatingly up against the panic one feels at the many possible outcomes.

This collection is also a highly pleasurable read for bookworms and aspiring writers. There are a multitude of sharp-witted funny observations about the state of literature and those with bookish tendencies. Take these lines: “Literature is a sop to the lazies. It makes you feel good about doing nothing but reading, sitting around committing no compassionate acts, watching your surroundings get dirty and disorderly, getting more and more useless as a ‘mind.’” There’s a lot of loving cynicism and knowing nudges in these stories to all us book fiends. When life becomes all about books it becomes increasingly difficult to see what real-life correlation there is between the exterior world and an interior existence lived between the pages.

Personally, I love the way Carroll writes about my home state of Maine in the story 'Avenging Angel' with its early evenings, country trail walks with unexpected encounters and organic food markets. Most of the stories evoke the environments of New York City or Florida, but I can say from experience that he captures Maine particularly well here. 

Carroll's stories show a true depth of experience. Although the characters vary widely they are written with a generous compassion and an acute awareness of their particular foibles. The author clearly knows them well. It's being in the hands of such a skilled storyteller that makes these stories such compulsive reads. “Little Reef” is a brave debut book of stories that demonstrate considerable talent.

Here is an interview with Michael Carroll about the book: https://www.glreview.org/article/michael-carrolls-characters-tell-their-stories/

Above by Isla Morley

Our society finds it incredibly attention-catching and chilling when news stories about women who are abducted and held captive for many years come out. I think this is because these cases often involve normal middle-class girls who are then taken and held in a confined structure which is often amidst ordinary communities. The realization that next door someone might be held prisoner in a secret room for many years while you’ve gone about living your life is horrifying. Therefore getting into the psychology of such unusual cases makes very compelling fictional material. Isla Morley has taken on this subject matter in her new novel “Above” where teenager Blythe Hallowell is abducted by a man from her own community named Dobbs and imprisoned in a customized hiding space for many years. With gripping detail and vivid descriptions the author describes how Blythe must adjust to her captivity where she feels like “a convict – except I can’t figure out my crime.”

The terrifying truth about why Dobbs has chosen to kidnap her is gradually revealed. Her abductor believes he is justified and right in having taken Blythe away as she explains: “To define the terms by which I am here, he uses words like delivered and rescued and saved.” The author truly gets inside the twisted psychology of the abductor by laying out the language of his logic and how he tells himself and Blythe that what he has done is for a good cause. It’s part of his masculine pride that he believes he knows what’s better for a woman than she knows herself. Equally, the portrayal of Blythe’s struggle to maintain her sanity is portrayed in eerily believable detail.

The account of Blythe’s imprisonment is told in such a compelling manner that I was curious where the story would go when halfway through the novel the narrative takes an abrupt suspenseful turn. I don’t want to give any spoilers but suddenly it becomes another kind of story completely and one which is equally gripping in its delineation of horrifying events. This progression shows how Morley is working with larger and more widely relatable issues.

Comparisons will naturally be made with Emma Donoghue’s immersive novel “Room”. However, in Morley’s novel the protagonist wasn’t born in captivity but was brought there. This gives her a rich amount of memories to call upon and it also makes her hope for escape all the more persistent. She develops coping mechanisms for maintaining her sanity such as creating stories inside her head: “Stories keep the fire burning inside us, stories keep us from dashing our heads against the wall.” The same could be said (on a much less dramatic level) about why we are so drawn to reading and telling ourselves stories to deal with the larger challenges and inhibiting nature of life. This novel also puts one in mind of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” and PD James’ novel “Children of Men” in their portrayal of hideous possible realities and pondering the meaning of survival. 

It feels that the challenge a reader can take away from “Above” is summed up in a line of dialogue from a character named Pops: “None of us are to be spared suffering. The better question is, are we being defined by our afflictions? Are we to live with them or live above them?” Throughout our lives we will all encounter suffering whether it be of large or small proportions. The difficulty is how to work through this adversity and not only survive but thrive. Morley’s novel gives a challenging point of view to this conundrum by creating a thought-provoking and compulsively-readable tale.

Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Sometimes I wonder what the point of it all is. Why am I writing this? Why are you reading it? Does writing books or blogs or reading any of it really contribute to either our own understanding of the world or humanity’s evolution? No, it doesn't always have to be that serious and it shouldn't be. However, sometimes I can fall into slothful habits achieving nothing but my own temporary amusement or stare at the wall for an entire morning feeling disillusioned about life. But I always come back to books and reading seeking a connection, understanding and engagement with life. The kind of immediate voice and cavalier spirit that’s expressed in the pages of “Wind, Sand and Stars” is exactly what draws me back into living.

It’s not often that books can make you stand still and look at your life to reassess your goals and values. But that’s what Antoine de Saint-Exupery seeks to do in this memoir and philosophical investigation into life’s meaning. The book ends with a veritable battle-cry against all our self-centred ennui and the mediocrities in life we settle for in favour of a soulful engagement with the betterment of humanity. He was someone with a feverish passion for life although, at a glance, you wouldn’t guess it at first from his seemingly daredevil lifestyle. During the early 20th century he flew commercial planes over airmail routes in Europe, Africa and South America. These were journeys fraught with danger as was demonstrated by the near death of him and his colleagues on a number of different occasions where their planes unknowingly went off course or they were forced to make crash landings.

Saint-Exupery describes one such experience from 1935 in lengthy detail. He and his mechanic survived a crash into the Sahara desert. Utterly lost and with barely any supplies, they rapidly began to dehydrate and suffer hallucinations until they were discovered by a Bedouin man. Through his musings on life and critique of society, Saint-Exupery explains why this risky profession isn’t for thrills. “It isn’t a matter of living dangerously. Such a pretentious phrase. Toreadors don’t thrill me. Danger is not what I love. I know what I love. It is life.” He sees his labour as a pilot as a way of adding (if only with nearly invisible blocks) to the escalation of humanity and an expression of engaging in the pulse of living.

“Flying is not the point. The aeroplane is a means, not an end. It is not for the plane that we risk our lives. Nor is it for the sake of his plough that the farmer ploughs. But through the plane we can leave the cities and their accountants, and find a truth that farmers know.” Throughout the book Saint-Exupery describes a reverence for a pastoral conception of life over what he contemptuously perceives as people caught in bourgeois lifestyles that are concerned only with the frivolous details of their own circumscribed existence and toeing the line.

While Saint-Exupery was lost in the Sahara desert after his plane crashed he followed the tracks of a fennec fox

Crucially, he sees our labour and active engagement in community as the means to living fully and liberating ourselves from a miserly existence. “We want to be set free. The man driving a pickaxe into the ground wants to know the meaning of his pickaxe blow. The pickaxe blow of the convict, a humiliation for the convict, is not the same as the pickaxe blow of the prospector, which gives stature to the prospector. Prison is not in the place where the pickaxe blows fall. The horror is not physical. Prison is where pickaxe blows fall without purpose, fall without bonding the man to the community of men. And we yearn to escape from that prison.” Saint-Exupery makes a philosophical distinction between action whose meaning has no thoughtful purpose and action which seeks to forge forward the path of humanity. He also expresses a stalwart resolve that life shouldn’t be lived because that’s the way you’ve been directed to live it. Rather, it must be lived mindfully if we are to live as fully actualized and happy human beings. As he writes: “To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.”

Saint-Exupery is dismissive of cowardly approaches to life and nowhere does he see an action more cowardly and wasteful than in suicide. “I once knew a young suicide. Some disappointment in love had driven him to fire a bullet carefully into his heart. I have no notion of the literary temptation to which he had succumbed as he drew on a pair of white gloves, but I remember having felt in the face of this sorry spectacle an impression not of nobility but of wretchedness. Behind that pleasant face, then, under that human skull, there had been nothing, nothing at all. Except perhaps the image of some silly girl no different from the rest.” What a sweeping refusal to engage with the romanticism of ending one’s life for love! He would make Romeo and Juliet feel quite silly. Of course, many suicides are performed out of a deeper disillusionment with life and persistent feelings of failure. There are graveyards filled with artists like Virginia Woolf and Stefan Zweig who produced large bodies of admirable writing, but who still felt compelled to end their own lives for these reasons. That doesn’t grant their escape from life any more nobility, but does more closely align them to Saint-Exupery and his own demise when he disappeared flying on a reconnaissance mission in 1944. He continued flying at his own insistence although his colleagues didn’t think he was entirely fit for duty. Surely he knew the increased risks and that flying in such perilous circumstances was tantamount to suicide, but presumably he thought to settle into a life of inaction would be the equivalent of death anyway. He concludes that any one individual death means little in the scope of what that life has contributed to furthering humanity. “In the rural lineage death is only half a death. Each existence cracks in its turn like a pod, and gives up its seeds.”

Of course, it’s not necessary for us all to participate in the kind of high-risk endeavour which accompanies being a pilot in the author’s time (when the technology of flying was so much more primitive than it is today). Saint-Exupery sees great nobility in the gardener who digs not out of a necessity to grow crops to sell or eat, but to engage in creation. We come together as a civilization when we work towards the common goal of our own species continuation and betterment over being consumed only with ourselves or improving our social media stature. As the author writes: “Experience teaches us that to love is not to gaze at one another but to gaze together in the same direction.” Creating and passing on books is an act of love. My admiration and respect goes to people like booksellers, teachers and writers who clearly do what they do out of a desire to carry the torch and lead us all a little bit further no matter how fruitless their efforts sometimes seem in the face of lazy indifference. It’s why I revere authors like Joyce Carol Oates and Nadeem Aslam who produce book after book in an act of faith, in an effort to connect. I think they are in many ways quite like pilots bravely flying into cloud-filled skies again and again. The danger might not be as palpable, but it is definitely there.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I could write a review of “Americanah” as I do for many books by giving my own synopsis and then highlighting what I think are its major themes and qualities. But I don’t feel like I can. What I’d like to do first is discuss how reading this book has influenced my reaction to the recent horrific news of the abduction of around 200 female teenage students from a school in Borno, Nigeria. At about midnight on April 14th/15th these girls were taken from their dormitories and their school was burnt out by what is suspected to be a group of Islamic extremists who are against Western education. Some escaped before the lorries full of girls (it's not clear exactly how many) and their captors who posed as soldiers disappeared. Now, after two weeks, the girls are still missing. What some people and commentators are asking is why isn’t this bigger news?

Looking on the BBC news site today, this story appeared nowhere in the world news section. When I clicked on the African section I only saw this article at the very bottom of the feed which was last updated four days ago. Anne Perkins has notably written this article questioning and giving practical thoughts as to why the recent South Korean ferry tragedy has been given so much more news coverage than the abduction of schoolgirls in Borno. She reasonably surmises that the primary reason for one tragedy taking so much more attention than the other is one of economic disparity with South Korea being considered a “first world” country and Nigeria a “third world” country. One could argue that there is only so much space in the news and preferences must be given to some issues over others. Of course, this is true. But consider if this incident had occurred in France? The news would be at the top of the list every day in both Britain and America until the girls are found. However, since it’s in Nigeria I think the knee-jerk reaction to this story from most of the public would sound something like: How awful! What a politically unstable country. I guess you expect this sort of thing from there and there’s not much to be done. I hope they are found. Our empathy for the individuals involved is tempered by our understanding of the economic and political disparities between our countries. It's interesting to question why this would influence the amount to which the media and public allows these girls’ plight to infiltrate our awareness.

This desire to challenge my own and others’ assumptions regarding gender, class, nationality and race is what the experience of reading Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie does to you. She has prompted this response in all of her four published books (three novels and one book of short stories) which I’ve read and greatly admired. But it’s here in “Americanah” that the provocation to question is crystallized in the central character of Ifemelu, a bluntly honest and inquisitive Nigerian girl who moves to America to study. She continues living there for over a decade and creates an extremely popular blog “Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black.” Included in the text are various posts about Americans of many different races who Ifemelu encounters and where she makes sly, humorous and challenging statements about racial politics in America today. However, running alongside Ifemelu’s narrative is the story of Obinze, a man Ifemelu was in love with before she immigrated to the US. Obinze’s story takes a different slant as he travels to England where he works illegally and seeks residency through a sham marriage. Both characters eventually return to Nigeria where they rediscover their country through eyes that have been informed by a Western sensibility. The duo stories form a complex social portrait of these three countries and the way national and racial politics form identity.

The first three quarters of the book take place in the present during a simple trip to a hair salon for Ifemelu. Her backstory is recounted during the some six hours it takes to get her hair braided. Personally, I find getting my hair cut a very awkward necessary chore so to think of having my hair done for so many hours every few months is terrifying. However, as Adichie explores there is nothing simple when it comes to the way black hair is worn in America. The majority of white Americans assume that Michelle Obama's hair is naturally straight and if a black person allows their hair to be naturally kinky it's consciously or unconsciously viewed by many as a political statement. Ifemelu is told when applying for jobs: “If you have braids, they will think you are unprofessional.” This is just one example of the ways racism expresses itself subtly in American culture – not necessarily through vociferous cries of hatred but through dominant ideologies which pressure people of different races to correct their appearance, accent and attitudes to conform to a more tolerable idea of how that race is generally perceived. Despite liberal-minded views which wish to believe that we're now a colour-blind society she comes to the conclusion that “race is not biology; race is sociology.”

In some ways, moving to a foreign country is a necessary process for Ifemelu to better understand herself and find her own voice. As an opinionated person who can't hold her tongue she was always somewhat an outsider growing up in Nigeria. While she was popular and academically gifted “she felt sheathed in a translucent haze of difference.” However, it's only when she moves to America that her difference takes on a more evident form in a self-consciousness about her race. In America she discovers the projection of idealized states of existence: “it was the commercials that captivated her. She ached for the lives they showed, lives full of bliss, where all problems had sparkling solutions in shampoos and cars and packaged foods, and in her mind they became the real America” She also is informed about the culture through reading classic America literature: “as she read, America’s mythologies begin to take on meaning, America’s tribalisms – race, ideology and region – became clear.” There is also a funny, damning perspective of the new books being written by young novelists: “they were like cotton candy that so easily evaporated from her tongue’s memory.” These influences formulate Ifemelu's background understanding of the culture that “the manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not” and provoke her to challenge the way attitudes towards race and national differences are expressed by the people she encounters.

Chimamanda Adichie in conversation with readings from Americanah.

Alongside a host of these and many more sharp cultural observations, the primary drive of “Americanah” is that of a love story. Ifemelu and Obinze are split apart for a long period of time by circumstances. As they grow to change there are multiple ways communication between the two breaks down. This is a dynamic tough love which gradually transforms over time while each individuals develops and grows. After Obinze returns to Nigeria he establishes himself as an influential and prosperous figure in society who marries and has a child. His reunion with Ifemelu when she returns from America is not a simple affair. In a situation reminiscent of Wharton's “The Age of Innocence” the two find themselves in a romantically painful state where Obinze concludes that if they don't take a leap of faith “they would all die after trudging through lives in which they were neither happy nor unhappy.” Hounded by obligations and repressed by their own pride the question of whether the two can come together hangs heavily over the story. I found their dynamic complex relationship very moving.

Adichie is a tremendous writer. Through clear-sighted views of different levels and kinds of society she makes clear the contradictions, humour and flaws which should be so obvious but which most of us are blind to. It's a mark of true intelligence when a writer assiduously pursues meaning and provokes so many questions to challenge you into rethinking your views of the world. Her ability to create a layered story which straddles so much physical and emotional territory is extraordinary. This novel is truly transformative.  

The Walk Home by Rachel Seiffert

Rachel Seiffert made an impactful debut when she published her first novel “The Dark Room” in 2001. Not only did the three novellas in this book set in Germany exhibit precise writing and memorable characters, but the book as a whole artfully handled social and political issues across a large span of time. This is a writer who is ardently engaged in the history of the society around her, how the past impacts upon the present and ways in which individuals survive under the pressures of domineering persuasive ideologies. It’s writing which makes me want to learn more about the subjects she references and engage with the issues raised. In Seiffert’s latest novel “The Walk Home” she shifts her focus to the Irish community living in the city of Glasgow. Graham is a character who joins the Orange Order, a Protestant fraternal organisation that is strongly linked to English/Irish unionism, where he is a drummer participating in the Orange walks that march through the city. This is a subject I knew virtually nothing about before reading this novel. I’ve since read up on it to better understand the context of the story. These parades or demonstrations are highly contentious within Glasgow as there have been at times skirmishes between the Orange Order members and Irish Catholics as well as the native Scottish population. To this day, there have been attempts to have the walks banned by some of the residents. Graham finds a strong sense of fraternity in the Orange Order and continues to participate in the walks despite the divide it causes to form between him and his family. The novel raises questions about the ways personal beliefs can estrange people from their families and the way time gradually transforms the meaning of these distant relationships.

The novel tells the story of how Graham grows to join the Order and fall in love with Lindsey, an Irish girl newly immigrated to Glasgow who is estranged from her father. Lindsey forms strong bonds with Graham’s mother Brenda as well as Eric, the black sheep of the family who remained estranged from his own father up until his death because Eric married an Irish Catholic woman. Alongside this story is the present day tale of teenage Stevie who has newly returned to Glasgow after a mysterious period of absence. Stevie is hired as a builder by Polish Jozef who is struggling to earn enough money to establish a better life for him and his wife, an endeavour which has led their relationship to devolve into a tense distant union. Although Stevie clearly comes from the city and should feel a part of it, he hides himself within it. Gradually the reader discovers what led to Stevie’s intense and vividly-portrayed sense of isolation.

This is a short novel and Seiffert skilfully covers a lot of ground, but still made me feel like I closely knew the characters. Brenda is the hard-working glue of the family who struggles to keep everyone in line and together although her relations splinter apart. Eric is an artistic melancholic who casts his family’s personal struggles against the back drop of biblical parables in finely detailed drawings. Malky is a stalwart patriarch who wisely keeps in the background and dispenses sage cautious wisdom: “if you loved, you learned to make allowances.” However, the character that most captivated me is Stevie. Despite being a quiet, almost silent boy whose emotions are also largely clipped out of the narrative, I felt his loneliness and spurred sense of hurt which has led him to break from his family. By portraying his measured deliberate actions, hollowed-out motivation and small tender gestures, Seiffert evokes a personality which feels the heavy burden of a family that’s been shattered by blistering internal strife.

The novel is filled with a lot of ambiguity and sides with no politics in particular. Rather, it opens up an understanding of the way families can be torn apart and the impact of the isolation this causes. When Eric commiserates with Lindsey about the difficulty she’s encountered with her father he observes: “Terrible tae be on your ain. Terrible tae feel that way.” Prolonged loneliness and tightly-held resentment leads to really deep-running grief – not only for the loss of a relationship which was once dear but the loss of time together if things had been different. Seiffert is a writer that gives tremendous nobility to characters caught by both difficult circumstances beyond their control and their own stubbornness. This novel shows how reconciliation and forgiveness are not guaranteed, but they are always a possibility. As she observes in this powerful line: “Hard to be hopeful, but not too much; keeping faith, over the long haul.”

High Crime Area by Joyce Carol Oates

The eight stories which form the new collection “High Crime Area” from Joyce Carol Oates are daring and provocative. She creates a wide range of vividly-written memorable characters including a pot-smoking widow, an arrogant famous author, a terrifyingly vicious nun, a neglected bi-racial baby, a mysterious dishevelled bookseller, a love-hungry subway passenger and a civic-minded dropout student. By creating tense and emotional tales about these individuals’ lives the author touches upon deep fears which run through American society. The depictions of heightened emotion and sensational violence are dramatic visions of our culture’s broader underlying feelings. Looming behind the particulars of these isolated struggles are institutions such as prisons, churches, orphanages and universities whose ideologies reverberate through the consciousness of the characters and create conflicts in each story. Racial tension, drug abuse, gambling addiction, sexual violence and floundering education are particular issues which run through multiple stories. It’s an admirable skill when short stories can present both micro and macro pictures of society in such a condensed amount of space. This allows a wider vision of the world to unfold out in the reader’s imagination.

In ‘The Home at CraigMillnar’ a formidable nun is found dead in her bed by an orderly who works for the elderly care facility. Her face is covered in a mysterious thin shroud. Many of the women at this home are former sisters who still attend mass and I was particularly struck by a creepy description of how “the old women’s tongues lapped eagerly at the little white wafer.” The orderly narrates the story giving an account of his experience of caring for the cantankerous woman before her death and the controversy surrounding her time administering a home for orphaned children.

A sense of deep mourning fills the story ‘High’ where late in life a woman named Agnes takes up drugs for the first time and lets her niece and her friends ransack her house. This seems to be a resigned reaction to what is perceived to be a futile existence that carries on regardless. “I am a widow, my heart has been broken. But I am still alive.” Agnes finds herself longing to re-establish a connection with a prison inmate she tutored and who she made an impact upon as if this slighted man could give meaning to her drifting life.

The very short story ‘Toad-Baby’ is a haunting family snap-shot narrated by a girl whose unbalanced single mother unleashes a torrent of abuse. The mixed race of the girl’s very young step brother is transformed into a mark of disgust by the mother and daughter. Witnessing the baby’s pain is something which permanently imprints itself upon the girl’s consciousness.

The short, darkly hallucinatory story 'Demon' appeared in another version in an earlier very short collection by Oates published in 1996. This new version has some slight changes: he's given the name Jethro, he's 19 instead of 26, there are more details about the boy's parents and, most striking of all, an extended scene is added in a bus station public lavatory which is referred to only briefly in the first version. In this location he still experiences a crisis of the self confronting his image in the mirror (the denial of the self which he attempted to suppress with prayer made unavoidably clear in the eyes staring back at him in the dirty mirror), but he also has a violent sexual encounter with a minister which is interrupted by someone who enters the lavatory. Part of his subsequent scorn by those around him is tinged with homophobia. In this new version its made more explicit that physical signs which demarcate him as other or “cursed” and “demon-like” (the prominent birth mark, red hair, stunted-growth) as well as social stigmas which have been attached to him are differences used as excuses by external social forces to ostracise and demonise him. Because, of course, there is nothing essentially evil about him or anyone; there are only the strictures people impose upon each other borne out of their own fear and dogmatic principles. Tellingly in this new version his physical reaction to a shocking attempt to rid himself of what he's come to believe is an inherent demon-curse has changed. What was described as resulting in “no pain” in the first version is now a “pain so colossal it could not be measured – like the sky.” This doesn't so accurately describe the physical sensation of his misguidedly destructive self-ameliorating act, but reflects the pain which results from continuous self-punishment for not living up to the idealized standards we create for ourselves and that are formed out of social pressures to conform. The story prompts us to question why we do this to ourselves. Tragically Jethro’s act represents a definitive decision to never look at his true self again. 

In the story ‘Lorelei’ a provocatively dressed young woman rides the subway in search of a specific unknown and unnamed “you” or someone to love her. The claustrophobic environment of the train carriages with their jostling passengers all making mental judgments upon each other and guarding their own personal space is vividly and accurately described. Like a darker “glossy black” haired mirror version of Marilyn Monroe’s character from ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’, Lorelei flirts and yearns so fiercely to find that special one and aches with such yearning for someone to complete her. It’s a quest destined to destroy her.

One of the stories which particularly moved me is the complex sombre story ‘The Rescuer.’ Here a young university student named Lydia is called upon by her parents to visit her troubled brother Harvy. Once he was a promising pupil at a seminary school, but dropped out and moved to a dilapidated apartment in a depressed neighbourhood of Trenton, New Jersey. At first she is reluctant to take on the responsibility of visiting him, but once she’s there her life becomes irretrievably intertwined with his own. The siblings retreat from the institutions for higher learning that supported them and instead turn inward, Harvy working on intensely-laboured poetry and Lydia on unpicking the meaning and possible translations of ancient text about infanticide. Because of her brother’s drug and gambling habits their lives become entangled with an intimidating local man named Leander with a Maori facial tattoo and long dreadlocks and his mischievous sister who has a penchant for going to casinos. Lydia is seduced by the prospect of abandoning the torturous mental effort of her studies: “I thought how easy life is for those who merely live it without hoping to understand it; without hoping to ‘decode,’ classify and analyze it; without hoping to acquire a quasi-invulnerable meta-life which is the life of the mind and not the triumphant life of the body” The story presents a kind of crisis about the real value of an intellectual life and how the quest for knowledge can be rendered meaningless in the ruthless decimation of the weak over the strong in the human species’ quest for survival.  “Individuals die, life endures. A copy of a text is destroyed but another takes its place – just like us.” Writers and scholars scribble away in faith that their contribution will provide a further piece to assist in the evolution of humanity. The story asks what happens if that faith peters out. Even without it the narrator finds that “working diligently and even obsessively without faith did not seem to me a terrible fate, when the alternative was yet more terrible.” Although the brother and sister’s preoccupations are wholly their own they find the compulsion to articulate meaning (even if it doesn’t contribute to a greater whole) is better than a life of total resignation.

In ‘The Last Man of Letters’ an extremely famous male author only referred to as X goes on a European book tour. He takes perverse pleasure in humiliating the women who praise him and his work. His perpetually macho antagonistic stance goes unchallenged due to his awestruck admirers’ reverence for a man that has been bombastically proclaimed to be the “last man of letters.” Parades of anonymous unnamed women populate his imagination and marital bed, so many that “the effort of trying to make sense of it exhausted him, and disgusted him.” As an asthmatic he sometimes chokes for breath with the sense that he’s fighting for his life. The vile hatred he spews at the women around him is like the chilling sound of a man gasping for air. In what might be an oxygen-starved hallucination the women he’s shamed visit him in his hotel room. A breathlessly narrated scene of orgiastic excess ensues where X is plied with rich food and eager flesh by the rapacious ladies which results in a judiciously horrific conclusion.

A young white teacher who moves to Detroit asks herself “Why am I so preoccupied with racial identities, skin ‘colours’?” It’s the Spring before the Detroit riots of 1967 and this woman, Mz Mc’tyre, senses the mounting racial tension in the collection’s title story ‘High Crime Area.’ She’s witnessed the dwindling white population moving from the city into the suburbs and has a mounting fear of being attacked which escalates after reading a paper from a female student about her imprisoned cousin who has converted to “Black Islam” and expresses extremist ideas. While walking to her car she senses a man following her. She has a gun concealed in her bag. The story is incredibly suspenseful and the conclusion is utterly surprising.

The book “High Crime Area” is a seductive read with its entrancing array of voices and innovative forms of narrative. The stories draw us into danger to provide a thrilling read which challenges our assumptions.

Read a short interview with Oates at Mystery Center: http://www.mysterycenter.com/2014/04/01/Interview-with-Joyce-Carol-Oates

The Bear by Claire Cameron

Narrating a novel in the first person using a child’s voice is tricky business. Unless a poetic route is taken, the author must necessarily “dumb down” their language for it to be believable yet make it compelling and insightful enough for readers to still get something out of it. The book which always immediately springs to mind when this topic comes up is Emma Donoghue’s break-through novel “Room” about a five year old boy raised his whole life in a single room. Here the voice feels authentic and tender, drawing you to fully see the world through the boy’s eyes while getting hints of the darker machinations at work beyond the child’s limited understanding. Cameron takes on the daunting task of also giving a straight-forward narrative told from the perspective of a five year old named Anna. She and her two year old brother who she nicknames “Stick” are suddenly thrown into a perilous situation where Anna is responsible for their survival.

Claire Cameron opens her novel “The Bear” with a note summarizing a factual incident which occurred in October 1991 on an island in a national park in Central Ontario. A couple on a camping trip experienced a fatal bear attack which left the public baffled and nervous because it is very rare for bears to attack without provocation. Her fictional re-imagining of this event throws two children into the mix who don’t understand the full horror of the situation. The real drive of this novel is whether the extremely young children will survive having suddenly found themselves alone and isolated in nature. The gravity of the violence and peril happening around them is experienced as if fuzzily in a side view mirror as the protagonist is entrenched in the minutiae of her suffering and tumultuous emotions.

For me, the build up and resolution are the high points of this short quick novel as these contain the most thrilling aspects. The rest is somewhat treading water as Anna and her brother stumble around grasping for sustenance from a tin of cookies or dodgy berries found in the woods and dealing with a seemingly never-ending amount of excrement from Stick. Of course, this is realistic but doesn’t make for the most interesting read. Anna’s narration veers from the mostly mundane to somewhat improbable leaps of language and metaphors: “A mosquito stuck a straw into my skin to drink from me like a juice box.” In instances like this the narrative feels too laboured and like a grown woman is creatively presenting how a child might view the world rather than believably inhabiting it. However, the majority of the text bumps along at a steady pace with flashes of real horror as the children alternatively have encounters with the predator and stumble across severed limbs.

The most touching aspects of the novel is the way the relationship is portrayed between Anna and Stick. Since the two year old boy has such little grasp of language he has his own words and sounds for things which only Anna can understand. The bond between them believably veers from lovingly close to fierce antagonism. The possibility that Stick might meet his end through his sister’s exasperation with him rather than the natural elements creates a heightened tension. Abandoned on her own Anna discovers she must quickly adopt a much more adult sensibility if they are going to survive. The representation of this unnaturally rapid development and the resounding consequences of it are handled well making “The Bear” a moving (if still somewhat frustrating) read.

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride

Eimear McBride has that rare writer’s talent for breaking language and grammar down to use them for her own purposes. The story of an Irish girl coming of age in a strict Catholic setting is a familiar one, but the way the author tells it gives a fresh visceral understanding of the experience. The narrative is compact and clustered together with a bare minimum given to setting the scene so thoughts and dialogue are balled up as tightly as a clenched fist. However, the words sound out sharp and clear so that if you read it carefully you always know exactly where you are located, who is speaking and what is happening. The writing in “A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing” is unlike any that has come before. At times it feels like a Beckett play with disconsolate Irish voices ringing out in a tumultuous stream. It can also at points invoke the kind of subterranean speech used in Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves” where dialogue is neither what’s being said in reality nor is it what is consciously going through the characters’ minds, but it’s impressionistic and poetic thought welling up from the inside. However, the experience of reading this striking, accomplished first novel isn’t wholly like either of these examples. McBride establishes her own unique voice which adheres to a particular set of rules and logic set by the author.

It takes time to get into the rhythm of the story as sentences come across as so fractured and disjointed. “We are bad her. She and me. My friend I’d call.” Yet, once you get into the rhythm of the unnamed narrator’s voice it takes on a special complex meaning which would be impossible to get from a traditionally narrated novel. When I was reading this book home alone I found it helpful to read it out aloud. Maybe it’s a quality of Irish writing that when the words are spoken aloud the musicality and intent of it comes through in a way that is so much more meaningful and different from simply silently reading the text. Or perhaps there are such powerful character voices cutting through the text that they can be naturally transformed into a theatrical monologue. For instance try reading these few lines silently and then say them out loud: “And my head is good for secrets. I can bang it on the wall. It takes the nervous out and no one bothers for it at all.” Doesn’t the meaning subtly develop and change? If nothing else, it allows you to appreciate how unusually beautiful the writing is. Whether you choose to read part or all of this book aloud yourself is up to you, but I’d recommend trying it.

McBride’s narrator describes her intense close relationship with her sick brother, the traumatic experience of living through puberty and becoming sexually aware through her first adolescent experience with an uncle and later with boys at school. I was particularly struck by this unapologetically blunt passage where she asserts that her sexual promiscuity gives her control: “And in a car the best. Warm and parked away. They’ll do what they can to me in here. On my knees I learn plenty – there’s a lot I’ll do and they are all shame when they think their flesh desired. Offer up to me and disconcerted by my lack of saying no. Saying yes is the best of powers. It’s no big thing the things they do.” This at once asserts her right to express her sexual attraction to boys/men and cuts them down for not being particularly imaginative in their physical abilities. Later her opinion on this is modified as she matures and develops more complex sexual relationships.

Unsurprisingly, the narrator establishes herself as fiercely intelligent and unique from those around her in her provincial Irish town. The people here mark her out as different. For instance they mock her passion for reading: “God how can you read books at all? Look at that three hundred pages an awful lot to read.” She moves on to higher education and establishes her independence away from her family. “Look around. What if. I could. I could make. A whole other world a whole civilisation in this this city that is not home? The heresy of it. But I can. And I can choose this. Shafts of sun. Life that is this. And I can. Laugh at it because the world goes on. And no one cares. And no one’s falling into hell.” This beautifully sums up asserting ones own place in the world and breaking out of the rules (Catholic, social and otherwise) that one has been governed by in life thus far. She cuts herself off from her past and the people she’s known with a terrifying severity: “I will not think of your feelings anymore. For it’s a bit too much to know.” For a time it seems as if she will leave behind her town and family for good, but when there are developments in her family she must return. Here the mettle of her new identity is tested against the strictures of her upbringing. She must piece herself together anew and reconcile the multifaceted aspects of her life.

This novel is at times deadly serious as the narrator is defiant, but wracked with guilt and grief. “I am. Such a mess of blood and shame.” However, it is also fantastically funny and witty. Certain passages ring out as wickedly hilarious especially when she sticks two fingers up in the face of religion. “We heard of you and know you’ll want to hear the good good news. Oh whatsit? Jesus loves you. Right enough and so and is there some more better news than that?” Her blunt dismissal and anger about religion comes naturally out of being raised in such a restrictive environment that hasn’t allowed her to develop openly in the way she’d like. This raises a lot of humour and intensely personal emotion. As the novel progresses and the narrator reaches an emotionally intense point the text cripples under the weight of her life and becomes increasingly fragmented. The tension reached a point where I felt like I could barely breathe.

McBride has written a novel so fresh and individual it will be fascinating to see what she might produce next. I’m sure some people will find it tough to get into the highly stylized narrative, but once I got into the flow of it I was engulfed in and fell in love with the voice. It apparently took the author nine years to find a publisher for the book. I can only be thankful she persevered in getting it published and that Galley Beggar Press realized that this is a fantastically original voice which needs to be heard.

Listen to a brilliant interview with the author from You Wrote the Book: