My Top 10 New Films of 2014

This list may come across as if I’m trying to be a bit high brow. Believe me, I appreciate some good big budget movies like ‘Bad Neighbours’ which was utterly hilarious and the time-twisting action of ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ which was really entertaining. But when I think back on the many films I’ve watched this year these are the ten that made me think the most about them afterwards and made me want to watch them again to try to understand their meaning. They may not all be easy views - although there is much pleasure to be gained from all of them - but they are all powerful and haunting.

Gloria
I missed this film when it played at the London Film Festival last year so was thrilled to catch it upon its small release. Divorced 58-year old Gloria goes to singles bars in Santiago looking for love. She’s determined, free-minded and prone to overzealous passion. With a fantastic soundtrack following the ups and downs of her romance, this is an emotional and engaging film.

Her
Set in a future that is more recognizable than filled with sci-fi fantasies, ‘Her’ is another film about a divorced individual looking for love. But in this film he finds it with a piece of artificial intelligence – a disconnected voice that adapts and changes as the system learns more about him. Like other AI stories problems arise when the computer becomes self aware, but this is more a story about the modern perils of digital relationships and misdirected expectations in love.

Stranger by the Lake
Part suspense story, part erotic gay film and part commentary about the danger of desire, ‘Stranger by the Lake’ is a French film that works equally well on many levels. Set on a nudist beach it’s about a man named Franck who frequently attends this gay cruising ground. What at first comes across as a simple story develops into a tale filled with psychological complexity. The idyllic playground morphs into a vicious battleground.

Under the Skin
Adapted with a heavy amount of changes from the novel by Michel Faber, this film imaginatively portrays a strange being in the form of Scarlett Johansson driving a van through the streets of Glasgow hunting for men. This film conveys so much about the warped nature of desire and the complex formation of identity. It features an incredibly creepy score by Mica Levi which I was lucky enough to see performed live at the Southbank Centre alongside the film’s screening.

Pride
It’s impossible to imagine that two groups as disparate as a loose gathering of London gay activists and striking miners from a small Welsh village coming together, but this really happened in 1984. I was hesitant about seeing this movie when its trailer made it look like a hokey feel-good comedy, but the film is entirely absorbing and emotional and inspiring. It’s also been a fantastic platform to raise awareness for Gay’s the Word bookshop which features heavily as a meeting spot in the film and is still going strong today.

The Imitation Game
This film is another impossible-but-true story about Alan Turing’s instrumental contribution to cracking the enigma code which no doubt massively helped win the second world war. This central story is bookended with the sad details of Turing’s troubled personal life including his early heartbreak and later persecution as a homosexual where he was chemically castrated under government mandate and driven to suicide. It’s an incredible story that memorializes a man who should have been celebrated but was tragically vilified. It made me cry.

Ida
It’s startling how spare and simple the dialogue in Ida is, yet how powerfully complex its meaning. Set in 1960s Poland, a young nun named Anna goes in search of what became of her family during the second world war. Paired with her spirited aunt Wanda they travel in search of terrible truths where the weight of history threatens to crush them. I was utterly astonished by this beautiful movie.

Two Days One Night
Over the past decade, the Belgian Dardenne brothers have made some of the most moving films about the downtrodden and forgotten. ‘Two Days One Night’ follows Sandra played by Marion Cotillard as a wife and mother who has been struggling with mental health issues. Because of complicated politics at the factory she works at, she’s been voted out of her job and this film shows her desperate journey to try to maintain her employment. So few films deal with the real hardship ordinary people experience trying to keep afloat during challenging circumstances. This film is by no means perfect, but it makes a great impact.

The Golden Dream
This Mexican film also highlights the struggles of ordinary people – in this case young migrants from Guatemala who journey to cross the border into the US. The challenges they encounter are surprising and terrifying. Small unexpected acts of kindness are enough to make you keep faith in the goodness of humanity. At the same time, the failings of institutions show how people in situations as disadvantaged as this can be preyed upon by groups of opportunists.

The Tribe
Daring, original and like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Click on the title to read fully what an impact this Ukrainian film about a boarding school for deaf children had on me.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

In surveying a wide variety of best book lists of the year, a book that has come up again and again is this novel by Jenny Offill. I’ve been wanting to read it since the summer when I noticed it sitting on a shelf in the new Foyles bookshop with its striking jigsaw cover. But seeing how highly valued it was by a wide range of people recently convinced me I should finally read it. I did so during one long afternoon on a plane while I was flying from London to Boston. I have to say reading on a plane does have a special sort of ethereal feel to it. Invariably when I read something good while flying it feels somewhat as if I’ve just had an intense hallucination. This novel is short enough that I could read the whole book during my journey. I’m glad I had that space to devote my full attention to it without the temptation to check email or social media in between chapters. It’s an intense peculiar novel that gives a fascinating perspective on relationships and life.

We aren’t told the narrator’s name and we’re not given the names of the main characters beyond their relationship to her like “husband” or “daughter.” Flashes of experiences are recounted. Disparate quotes and references are drawn in to produce thoughtful new perspectives. Wry commentary is made about how ego comes into play in all actions and especially when gauging our passion for those we’re closest to. Although images or thoughts seem to come out of nowhere at times they often pop up again later in the book to make more of an emotional impact. For instance, when describing a phrase from a particularly popular cat meme, the quote is reconfigured to hilarious and meaningful effect to describe her own existential yearning. It’s as if all the narrator has absorbed through life comes seeping out through her consciousness when it’s emotionally prescient. This makes the story feel very natural, but also can make it frustrating because so little is pinned down in specifics.

However, it seems to be an essential part of the narrator’s identity to be deliberately obtuse. She’s prickly and prone to dangerously self-destructive ways of thinking. As a counterpoint to the cosy vision of home life, she sharply observes that “The reason to have a home is to keep certain people in and everyone else out.” There is a severity here as if it were survival which is constantly at stake and not the standard wayward passions of love. Unsurprisingly, sticking to conventions of marriage with children isn’t for her. Her relationship becomes increasingly complicated as her own ambitions clash against the demands of family life. She adamantly refuses to subsume her own desire to achieve things though she comments that “Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition off like an expensive coat that no longer fits.” She fights to maintain her independence with mixed results because she refuses to build relationships that are built upon too many compromises.

This is a striking and original book with a powerful voice which is alternately devastating and hilarious. It’s so appropriate that a puzzle features on the cover as at the end I felt in a muddle about how to fit all the narrator’s experiences and references together. The narrator herself seems to have the same dilemma. Because of this it’s effectively unsettling and thought-provoking.

Why Books Are Like Family

I’ve been back at my family’s house in Maine this week for the holidays. It’s a particularly nostalgic visit as my parents are planning on moving house next year so it will be my last time being in the house I grew up in. I’ve also (to my horror) been asked to clear out the many boxes of books I’ve stored here which won’t fit in my apartment in London – which is already chock-full of books. Of course, I’ll save a few but the rest of my carefully acquired collection I’m giving to a good bookish friend who runs an antique and ebay-selling business with her husband.

Books I'm giving away

Going through these treasures makes me consider why we develop such an emotional attachment to books. They are just paper, but they also feel like friends or family. Is this because with fiction we can feel so close to the characters found inside as we’re privy to their innermost secrets, thoughts and the events of their lives? Or because the ideas of the authors can sound so in sync with our own? There are certainly many books I’ve felt this with growing up. I’ve identified with a wide range of disparate characters over the years. I felt this early in life reading about Shea, a sole descendant of a great fighter, in the fantasy novel “The Sword of Shannara.” As a teenager I hoped I could become the thrifty, clever and enduring character of Úrsula Iguarán in Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” In college I sympathized deeply with uncertain Delia Grinstead in Anne Tyler’s “Ladder of Years.” In Eugene Ionesco’s only novel “The Hermit” the existential fears of the protagonist whose consciousness moves inwardly like a logarithmic spiral became my own. I wanted to approach life with the same determined logical process that detective-hero Xavier Kilgarvan takes in Oates’ novel “Mysteries of Winterthurn.” These are characters that became a part of me – that I both aspired to be like and learned from.

There are also many books I’ve acquired over the years which I haven’t read yet, but which seem to me to contain great potential. They are books whose meaning is more than just what’s written inside but the ideas I think it might contain. Since I haven’t actually read them yet, they exist for now as projections of the books I imagine them to be and the wiser person I hope to be once I have read them. Like relatives who you never actually speak to, you know that they are there waiting in case you want/need them.

Books are a physical presence in our lives. They sit on the shelf or piled by the bed or stay packed in a rucksack when we travel “just in case we need something to read.” They have a distinct smell. Their covers have a satisfying texture and weight. Used books sometimes have sentences underlined or old ticket stubs tucked between the pages. New books have a satisfying crispness like they are an important cultural document which will last forever. You glance at these objects and your mind connects fleetingly with what they contain. Your heart feels connected.

Of course, I’m only getting so ponderous and reflective about books because getting rid of so many (most of which I acquired in my university years) is making me sentimental. But I think it’s meaningful the way bookworms have such a precious attachment to their own personal libraries. They are more than just objects in our lives, but things we’ve spent some serious alone time with. Getting rid of them feels like sending granny to the old folks’ home when you know you’ll probably never see her again.

Have you ever had to make a painful book purge? Do you have some books you’ll refuse to ever part with?

Thunderstruck by Elizabeth McCracken

I’ve read such positive reviews of Elizabeth McCracken’s fiction and enjoy her engaging Twitter account so much, that I’ve been very eager to read her writing for quite some time. “Thunderstruck” is a collection of short stories which is vibrantly alive and demands the reader’s attention. If I were to hazard a comparison, her fiction is as inventive as AL Kennedy’s whose story collection All the Rage I reviewed earlier this year. It’s a cliché but the language and metaphors McCracken uses are really so refreshing that they make the reader re-view the world. There is also an absurdist tinge to her fiction (informed no doubt from authors like Ionesco who is referenced in one story) which is a form of writing that really thrills me. The stories are full of engaging, quirky characters who chaotically navigate through the narratives in ways which surprise and left me thinking about their meaning long after.

Many of the stories contain an unsettling edge as if chaos and violence lurks beneath the surface of ordinary physical objects. A suitcase falling over is likened to an animal collapsing in death. “Rubber bands in every drawer and braceleting every doorknob – why were old rubber bands so upsetting?” The physical world is imbued with feelings giving it a life of its own. Animals are also burdened by the sensibilities of humans who keep them. The emotional life of fish is speculated upon as thus: “if the fish were unhappy, we couldn’t tell. Maybe they wept in the terrible privacy of their tank.” In the mercenary environment of these narratives there is no subliminal desire for the characters. Everything is brought to the forefront by the narrator in a way that is both bewitching and startling. An uptight children’s librarian aggressively confronts the innocent sibling of a suspected murderer. A grandmother has an overwhelming urge to bite children. A mother wishes her daughter had died from a head injury rather than see her live incapacitated. Here the world is stripped down of façade. It’s raw and as fun-filled as it is fatal.

At the same time, there is a tremendous humour to this writing that often shades into the macabre. It celebrates the ridiculous of how strangely our desires pull us to do things we don’t understand. It assiduously points out the gravitational pull of the frivolous and petty over the profound. Often in these stories the ego feeds into people’s reactions to events – especially events that shouldn’t be about them like someone dying or helping an abandoned boy try to find his mother who has disappeared. The writing shows how we are terminally invested in narratives of our own making. McCracken delights in playing with language as well. Meaning is stretched out so metaphors sometimes become the reality in these characters' lives. The narrative voice can slide between stances of being totally objective to the collective "we" to being firmly entrenched in a character’s consciousness to speaking directly to “you” the reader. Although this sometimes jars, it shows the world view presented to be malleable and open to multiple perspectives and interpretations. Is what you’re being told the author’s perspective, a character’s or your own? It can be read in multiple ways. And this, like all great writing, makes you want to read it again and again.

The Martian by Andy Weir

To start out with, I have to make a confession that I’m a bit of an outer space geek. I’m not that into Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. What I’m more excited by are factual books and programs about space. One of my favourite before-bed activities is to read an oversized book someone bought me about the universe or watch the excellent BBC 1999 miniseries The Planets which provides a well-documented history of space travel. Ever since a holiday I took to Death Valley where I got to ride in a convertible with the top down and stare at the crystal-clear star-filled night sky I’ve been entranced by the stranger-than-fiction fact of the universe. So ever since hearing about Andy Weir’s massively popular novel “The Martian” described as a Robinson Crusoe story on Mars I’ve wanted to read it – especially since I actually read “Robinson Crusoe” earlier this summer. This novel is a true phenomenon as it was originally self-published, topped the Amazon bestseller list through a swiftly growing fan base and has since become a huge best-seller that’s edged into lots of top books of 2014 lists. It’s also being made into a film starring Matt Damon which is due to be released late in 2015. With all this hype, I was expecting a meditative story about man’s isolation in the universe as well as a riveting adventurous tale. I found the book to be entirely about the later.

The book starts in the middle of the action with astronaut Mark Watney suddenly finding himself stranded on Mars when the crew of the Ares 3 mission are forced to evacuate because of a large dust storm. He’s been slightly injured but able to secure himself in a small habitat that’s been set up on the planet. However, the other crew members of his mission assume he died from his accident so continue on their journey back to Earth and Mark has no ability to contact NASA to let them know about his predicament. All he has on this barren dusty planet is the relatively small habitat, a short supply of food, exploration equipment that’s been left behind and a few potatoes. How to get out alive? The novel is about Mark’s struggle to survive. It’s made up of alternate first person accounts by Mark logging in diary entries (Mark emphatically declares “I might die, but damn it, someone will know what I had to say.”) and passages about what’s happening on Earth and in the mission’s space ship.

There are some good, tense moments in this novel. However, after a while, it came across as a bit repetitive despite an impressive array of new obstacles that are put in Mark’s way. I got slightly bored through parts of it where the structural formula of each section starts to read like science – science – dilemma – scientific solution. It was a bit like watching an episode of Star Trek Enterprise where the viewer is presented with a seemingly impossible technical problem which is swiftly solved at the end of the show with a scientific solution that could never have been foreseen by us dumb civilians. Worried about freezing cold oxygen and nitrogen coming out of your regulator? Use the 1500 watts of heat from a buried lump of plutonium to constantly reheat the air. Duh! I’m being a bit harsh as it is all quite clever and I’m sure Weir did a massive about of research. All the science mumbo jumbo is made palatable for readers because Mark dumbs down the language and maintains a jocular tone in his diary entries. His tone gets a bit hokey at times, but is entertaining.

Less successful are the scenes between NASA technicians, publicity staff and mission crew members. Many exchanges occur with somewhat stilted dialogue and, although there was some character development between these people back on Earth, I didn’t care much about these characters. While Mark struggles with maintaining basics like eating and breathing, a media storm whips up on Earth where all of civilization wonders how Mark will survive. Although I realize NASA was under pressure because of this to help rescue Mark I did start to wonder: how much is it costing to save one man who willingly took this high-risk job? Not only is there the money which no doubt could have gone to helping thousands of lives on Earth. A Chinese scientist also remarks upon the mission to rescue Mark that “The operation is a net loss for mankind’s knowledge” as other important scientific space mission are abandoned in order to aid Mark’s retrieval. Mark himself acknowledges that attempts to save him must have cost “hundreds of millions of dollars.” I know the reader is supposed to be gripped and root for Mark’s survival, but even though he’s a nice guy I couldn’t help wondering if all that sacrifice is really worth it. It makes Weir’s overarching statement about the inherent goodness of humanity and the innate desire to help our fellow man falls a bit flat.

The Schiaparelli Crater on Mars

For a book that takes place on another planet and in outer space, there is very little description about what any of these extraordinary locations look like. However, Weir is good at describing Mark’s gradual physical breakdown from living on the Martian territory and the cringe-worthy smells that arise from breathing re-circulated air in a confined space that allows precious few bathing opportunities. Apart from the extremely occasional observation about the environment: “I never realized how utterly silent Mars is. It’s a desert world with practically no atmosphere to convey sound” all of Mark’s entries on Mars are about the minutiae of the science and technology he has at hand. Granted, he had already been on Mars for his mission before the book started so perhaps he was no longer awe-struck and he’s more consumed with immediate survival. However, he admits to having long periods of down time which he primarily spends watching old episodes of the show Three’s Company he found on another astronaut’s hard drive or reading pulp novels. He’s more reflective about these bits of ephemera than the condition of being stranded on another planet. Even when he has moments to appreciate the spectacular nature of his location such as this moment when he reaches a crater: “I got up to the rim, and damn, it’s a beautiful sight. From my high vantage point, I got a stunning panorama” there is no further description offered. He might as well be a tourist describing the view over the Grand Canyon. Granted, his character is a scientist not an artist, writer or philosopher. However, I would guess most scientists that pursue space travel so rigorously do so because they harbour underlying questions about the meaning of our existence in such a big empty universe. Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco is startlingly eloquent when pondering the meaning of humanity and the cosmos. Personally I would have enjoyed Mark’s narrative more if he were more than just a dry-natured, straightforward goofy guy.

This is where this novel diverges sharply from “Robinson Crusoe.” For all of Defoe’s questionable insights into human nature, at least he spends some time contemplating a man’s existential position when physically cut off from the rest of humanity. To be honest, the 1964 film Robinson Crusoe on Mars is even more intellectually searching with long passage of time devoted to Paul Mantee’s looking at wonder at the alien landscape and experiencing a piteous sense of isolation. Also, the film poster of a spaceman in a torn suit clutching a near naked man is much more appealing and enjoyably kitsch than the cover of “The Martian” but that just shows my personal taste.

Although I was expecting somewhat more of a literary novel, this book is not much more than a well-conceived straightforward thriller as it’s all about the plot rather than showing any reflective insight about life or doing anything interesting with language. Weir has a background in computer science and that very much comes across in his writing style. That’s totally fine as parts were thrilling and the novel gives a thoroughly convincing (at least from my extremely limited knowledge of science and technology) account of the logistics of trying to live on Mars as well as launching a wild NASA rescue mission. I just want a bit more from the novels I read and it felt like the author avoided any opportunities there were to bring alive the awe-inspiring fact of outer space or describe what must have been a visually spectacular place. In other words, I feel like this book is passive entertainment but in no way enriching. However, I am excited about seeing the upcoming film. With such a massive budget it will no doubt be spectacular and thrilling and actually show the beauty of space.

My short story 'Making Tea in the Dark'

Image from outside the Admiral Duncan, a gay pub in Soho on April 30, 1999 after the explosion.

I wrote a short story called 'Making Tea in the Dark' which references the 1999 London nail bombings. These were a series of three explosions targeted at minority groups which were organised by a militant neo-nazi sympathiser named David Copeland. I created a fictional victim of the attacks and the story follows his mother as she deals with conflicted feelings of isolation, anger and grief. I'm pleased this story has now been published in The Wells Street Journal. On Thursday I read the story aloud at the University of Westminster. You can read it online here: http://thewellsstreetjournalsubmit.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/making-tea-in-the-dark-by-eric-karl-anderson/

Best American Short Stories 2014 edited by Jennifer Egan

Short stories are like unwanted orphans. Some lucky ones are published in major periodicals or an author’s collection or win a prize. But even great short stories can appear in a literary review and remain largely unread except by a devout following of readers. They languish in the background waiting to be noticed. Thankfully the Best American Short Stories anthology helps to highlight some stellar examples of story telling every year. This year’s anthology holds particularly impressive examples with stories that differ wildly in form and subject matter as well as spanning many different time periods and locations. The narrator of one story is former female soldier suffering from post traumatic stress while another narrator has kidnapped her stepson and yet another narrator is a closeted macho fraternity brother. There is a story set in 1370 and a story set on Antarctica and a story with sprawling multiple endings. It’s particularly touching that this anthology includes a beautiful, unusual story about a marriage disrupted (or perhaps not) from an affair by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala who died in April of 2013. Every other author has written what might be called “added bonus material” for the end of this anthology where each of them discusses their inspiration for writing her/his story.

Virtually all the writers included are well established and have published multiple books. So these stories are like fantastic tasters from authors such as Stephen O’Connor, Lauren Groff and Karen Russell whom I haven’t read before and I’m now eager to read much more of their work. O’Connor’s ‘Next to Nothing’ is an episodic story about the lives of two unusual sisters who maintain perspectives so alarming that it’s an utterly enthralling read: “Isabel and Ivy’s natural tendency is to see human society as a pointlessly complex mechanical device of no use to anybody, and most likely broken.” The story’s ending is so shocking I was completely gripped. Groff’s ‘At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners’ manages to compress a man’s entire life into seventeen pages. It emblematizes a particular kind of solitude: “He thought of himself as an island in the middle of the ocean, with no hope of seeing another island in the distance, or even a ship passing by.” The summation of his life is handled so delicately and is told with such exquisitely precise language I found it incredibly moving. Karen Russell’s ‘Madame Bovary’s Greyhound’ focuses on the life and trial’s of Emma’s pet dog. It gives a different slant to the meaning of passion for one of literature’s most famous characters: “Love had returned, and it went spoiling through them with no outlet.” For a canine character that could be taken so whimsically, this story makes powerful statements about love, loyalty and independence. 

Then there are authors whose books I have read like Joshua Ferris, Peter Cameron and Joyce Carol Oates that show in these stories skills and an engagement with subjects which feel surprisingly fresh and demonstrate what dynamic writers they are. Ferris’ story ‘The Breeze’ considers the possibilities of how a couple might spend their NYC evening and the way thwarted intentions impacts their feelings for each other. This is an ingeniously constructed story and all the more impressive when you read at the book’s end that Ferris wrote the story entirely on his phone! The narrator of Peter Cameron’s story ‘After the Flood’ sees an older Christian couple cajoled into taking an impoverished family into their home. The story eloquently explores issues of self-denial, the deleterious effects of grief on a relationship, economic disparity and ethical complications. The narrator is one of those tough-to-like characters who has learned through adversity to keep an arm’s length from being emotionally present in life. She notes how “my presence – or if not presence, for I rarely feel present anywhere these days, my existence” as if the experience of being fully present is too painful. This story artfully demonstrates how memories can haunt an individual through finding parallels in the present. Where the couple in this story attempts to shore themselves up against death through a life of habit and stasis, the couple in Joyce Carol Oates’ story ‘Mastiff’ are more cavalier in embracing adventure when they are unexpectedly confronted by an agent of death in the form of a rabid dog during a hike. This chilling story is a reminder of the inevitability of death no matter the hard-won love and tender companionship two people may find together. The dog is like an anamorphic symbol hanging in the foreground of this skilfully written narrative like the skull in Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors. 

There are plenty of other striking stories in this anthology including Charles Baxter’s story ‘Charity’ which is a sensitive, heart-breaking tale that makes the reader reconsider individuals many could easily vilify or dismiss. T.C. Boyle’s ‘The Night of the Satellite’ shows the way others’ emotions and lives affect us and our own relationships. The protagonist of Nicole Cullen’s ‘Long tom Lookout’ tries to retreat from the world by stealing her estranged husband’s step child and living in a national forest’s fire look-out station with devastating consequences. Craig Davidson’s writing frequently portrays the cunning way damaged individuals can survive despite adversity and his story ‘Medium Tough’ sees him ingeniously reconfigure this theme in his tale of a surgeon born with a defect which causes his body to be disproportionate. This is an example of this story’s mesmerising, determined voice: “I wanted to tell him: Life is all technique. The world is full of us, Aaron. The mildly broken, the factory recalls and misfit toys. And we must work a lot harder. Out-hustle, out-think… out-technique.” In Brendan Mathews’ ‘This Is Not a Love Song’ he touchingly describes a how people idealistically strive for artistic expression before they so frequently become bogged down by life’s responsibilities. Laura Van Den Berg story ‘Antarctica’ is a sustained meditation on grief and what we choose not to know.

Of course, there are some stories which didn’t chime so well with me. David Gates’ ‘A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me’ seemed to me to contain a lot of superfluous detail when short stories ought to be more streamlined. The central metaphor of Nell Freudenberger’s ‘Hover’ about a mother who imagines she can levitate didn’t quite hit the mark for me although the story touchingly describes the psychological discomfort a child experiences in the face of his parents’ separation. Will Mackin gives an interesting take on the frontlines of battle in Afghanistan with some striking descriptions, but the narrative voice in ‘Kattekoppen’ felt to me to be too scattered. As always with the experience of reading, maybe it was just my mood at the time of reading them or maybe the style doesn’t jell with my sensibility. Whatever the reason, these few haven't left as lasting an impression as many of the others. 

It’s been an absolute pleasure taking my time reading through the stories in this anthology. I made a daily habit of reading a single story every morning and felt the effect of each distinctive voice hover in the back of my mind throughout the rest of the day. Series editor Heidi Pitlor gives an impassioned and inspiring statement about what a lively presence the short story maintains in the minds of readers and in the marketplace. While Jennifer Egan acknowledges in her well-reasoned introduction that no such anthology can be truly authoritative despite the 120 stories she considered in total. But nevertheless the “excellent” mission of such a book respectably stands as a celebration of the short story and she gives intelligent reasons for the inclusion of each one she selected. More crucially, she hopes the stories will initiate a conversation. Having read all of these diverse and entertaining stories I now eagerly want to discuss all of them.

Best Books of 2014 – LISTS!

Lists! Lists! Everywhere end of year lists! Newspapers, websites and blogs are awash with enthusiastic declarations of their best books of the year. Wonderful to see familiar books like The Things About December, Station Eleven, H is for Hawk, The Paying Guests and The Blazing World on some lists. Even though I devote a lot of time to reading, I’m always struck with remorse I haven’t got to many of the books that appear on these lists. So I’ve done a survey of these sites to come up with a group of the books I’m most interested in reading but haven’t yet. Which should I read first? Will I get to them all before the ball drops on the 31st? Hmm, probably not. Also, what titles from these lists do you want to read the most?

It’s not surprising that many of the same titles appear repeatedly on these lists meaning lots of small-press titles and worthy unnoticed books have been left off. As such, I’ve also included links below to some author-recommended and alternative sources giving their lists. Do you know of more lists or have you created your own? Please leave a comment and link to them.

I’m going to wait to make my own until the end of December. Yes (I keep telling myself) wait! Seeing these lists I keep itching with a geeky desire to make my own, but I will hold on. Trust me in that it will look very different from some of the lists linked to below.

This is the full list of major publications I’ve looked at:

NPR’s Best Books of 2014 - Their site has a rather fun feature where you can organize their picks by reading subject: http://apps.npr.org/best-books-2014/#/_

Maureen Corrigan at NPR also gives an audio list of her top 12 books of the year: http://www.npr.org/2014/12/15/370338890/sometimes-you-cant-pick-just-10-maureen-corrigans-favorite-books-of-2014

Irish Times – Eileen Battersby’s Books of 2014 - Notable for including a lot of translated books! http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/eileen-battersby-s-books-of-2014-1.2018927

Electric Literature’s 25 best novels of 2014: http://electricliterature.com/electric-literatures-25-best-novels-of-2014/

Goodreads 2014 Choice Awards chosen through reader votes: https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-fiction-books-2014

The Telegraph Best novels and fiction books of 2014: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/10846223/Best-novels-and-fiction-books-of-2014.html

Publishers Weekly’s best 10 books of 2014: http://best-books.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-books/2014

Huffington Post’s Best Books of 2014: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/02/best-books-2014_n_6248016.html

Stylist’s Gallery of Best Books of 2014: http://www.stylist.co.uk/books/best-books-of-2014

The Bustle’s The 25 Best Novels of 2014: http://www.bustle.com/articles/52950-the-25-best-books-of-2014

The Wall Street Journal’s Best Books of 2014 A Compilation: http://graphics.wsj.com/best-books-2014/

The Economist’s Books of the Year Page Turners: http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21635446-best-books-2014-were-about-south-china-sea-fall-berlin-wall-kaiser

Buzzfeed’s Books We Loved in 2014: http://www.buzzfeed.com/isaacfitzgerald/books-we-loved-in-2014

CBC gives a refreshingly Canadian take on the Best Books of 2014: http://www.cbc.ca/books/bestbooks2014/

The Independent’s Books of the year 2014 best fiction: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/books-of-the-year-2014-the-best-fiction-9903446.html

The New York Times gives an exhausting list of 100 Notable Books of 2014: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/books/review/100-notable-books-of-2014.html

Authors recommend their favourite titles of 2014:

Writer Nikesh Shukla gives an entertaining breakdown of his top books of the year.

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/books/review/whats-the-best-book-new-or-old-you-read-this-year.html

The Asian Writer: http://theasianwriter.co.uk/2014/12/writers-pick-the-best-books-of-2014/

The Guardian (in two parts):

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/29/-sp-writers-pick-best-books-2014

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/01/-sp-writers-pick-best-books-2014-part-2

The Sydney Morning Herald has Australian authors choose their books of 2014: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/australian-writers-pick-the-best-books-of-2014-20141126-11u9m7.html

Bustle Books Writers Pick Their Best Books of 2014: http://www.bustle.com/articles/48177-bustle-books-writers-pick-their-best-books-of-2014-because-rumor-round-here-is-we-read

Interesting Alternative Sources for Books of 2014:

Excellent & articulate book reviewer William Rycroft's Best Books of 2014

Best Translated Book Award Fiction Longlist by University of Rochester’s Three Percent:  http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=9922

Book blogger Thom chooses his top five from the impressive 121 books he's read over the year: http://workshyfop.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/2014-year-in-reading.html

On Scott Pack’s blog he chooses the “big guns” books which he feels are the year’s biggest failures: http://meandmybigmouth.typepad.com/scottpack/2014/12/books-of-the-year-big-guns-misfiring.html

Reviewer John Self lists his 12 books of the year, not all of which he published reviews of: http://theasylum.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/twelve-from-the-shelves-my-books-of-2014/

Bill Gates picks his top books of 2014 in a fun Lego inspired list. Unsurprisingly, many are business/technology books, but it’s a cute video.

Foyles' Jonathan Ruppin makes an impassioned statement about the positive state of fiction and can't choose less than 15 top books: http://www.foyles.co.uk/Public/Biblio/Detail.aspx?blogId=1297

Anna James at A Case for Books also could pick no less than 15 choices: http://acaseforbooks.com/post/105192438613/my-books-of-the-year-2014

Well-read blogger David Hebblethwaite picks his top 12 books of the year: https://davidhblog.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/my-favourite-books-read-in-2014/

Can't wait to see what's coming in 2015? Hannah Beckerman highlights some of the most anticipated fiction for the new year: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/hannah-beckerman/the-highlights-best-of-fi_b_6325138.html

If you like spending a lot of time longingly looking at covers you may do well in this competition to name books by small details on their jackets. The winner gets book tokens! Enter by Dec 31st! http://www.welovethisbook.com/got-it-covered-2014

Academy Street by Mary Costello

I’ve written before about my overwhelming admiration for Virginia Woolf’s novel “The Waves.” One thing which makes this novel so extraordinary is the grace with which Woolf captures the full lifespan of her characters and compresses the warm core of them into tightly-knit, terse chapters. Mary Costello does something similar in her short, poignant novel “Academy Street” which follows the life of an Irish girl named Tess from an early age being raised at a farm till her much later years living in New York City. Each stage is presented with the unique quirks which accompany any individual’s life – yet the sentiment found there acquires a universal meaning and becomes familiar. During the journey the reader is held so close to Tess’ point of view it’s as if you are living it fully alongside her witnessing her most crucial moments while being privy to her innermost thoughts. Carried along by Costello’s delicately handled compressed narrative, I was moved by this story particularly for the way it meaningfully represents the plight of a person who feels in her innermost being so quintessentially alone.

The narrative is so deeply couched in Tess’ mind it’s as if anything else in the external world is only seen through the window of a fast moving train. Now and then it alights upon some solid physical objects and the connection Tess makes then is so deeply profound it is almost spiritual. As Tess grows into adolescence it’s observes “Lately the thought that all the things around her, the things that matter, and move her – the trees and fields and animals – have their own lives, their own thoughts, has planted itself in her. If a thing has a life, she thinks, then it has a memory.” It’s an extraordinary way to present the concept of projecting feeling outward into the world so that objects are granted consciousness and memory.

Tess is highly sensitised to her environment but she also feels as disconnected and essentially unknown to the objects around her as she is to the people in her life. Later it’s acknowledged that “She had always felt separate from people, and lately she had the sense that when she was out of view she disappeared entirely from the minds of others. At such moments she siphoned off images from the past and used them to imagine herself back into existence.” The labour of consciously trying to gather a sense of self through the imagined perceptions of others is something we all try to do in the hope that we are seen and remembered. But Tess is aware that individuals exist fundamentally as singular beings – no matter the amount of friends or family one might have.

The smallest details can take on a much larger meaning. Imagery as starkly simple and powerful like any described set piece in a J.M. Synge play fills this novel such as a moment when Tess sees “her mother’s apron is hanging on a nail at the end of the dresser.” The fact of its existence is wrapped with all the memories of the past as well as what could have been and what will not be in the future. It is in perceiving these objects that we are taken out of our minds. At one point it’s observed that “She looked around the ward – at the chair by the wall, the sink in the corner, the man in the bed, people passing in the corridor. It is this, all of these things, she thought, that confer reality.” Particularly in moments of high emotional tension we become aware of the physical world around us. These things make us recall that we are still only biological creatures that exist in a particular environment which is always shifting and changing.

Time takes on a forceful meaning in the novel as great portions of Tess’ life are skipped over, but the narrative holds true to her emotional centre. A sense of loss can accompany every second as it’s observed that “She listens to the clock ticking. Everything is changing.” Especially in moments when we become aware that we have forever lost something or someone we love, time cruelly continues forward and creates change. Just as some passages in the novel are highly attuned to particular moments, in other sections there is a rapid expansion of time to expand voluminously out into a grand overview. It’s as if history surges up out of objects and into the mind before subsiding back into a distantly felt darkness. This rapid compression and decompression of time has a dizzying effect.

So moving to me and to any lover of literature, is the profound connection Tess feels to reading and books later in life. What great reader can’t connect with a line like: “The mere sighting of a book on her hall table or night stand as she walked by, the author’s name or title on the spine, the remembrance of the character – his trials, his adversity – took her out of ordinary time and induced in her an intensity of feeling, a sense of union with that writer.” It’s as if in these passages Mary Costello beautifully articulates the great connection we can have with books as a better way of being in touch with ourselves: “She became herself, her most true self, in those hours among books.” Literature as a great endeavour of the humanities seeks to affix some permanence to the ephemeral reality which causes Tess such existential anguish. But, she is careful to point out, that it’s not for edification that one should turn to literature: “It was not that she found in novels answers or consolations but a degree of fellow-feeling that she had not encountered elsewhere, one which left her feeling less alone. Or more strongly alone, as if something of herself – her solitary self – was at hand, waiting to be incarnated.” This summarizes so perfectly my feeling for the divine purpose of reading and the profound way it can encourage a communion with the self. The “lonesome” aspect of my blog’s title does not necessarily connotate being lonely, but being both alone and in touch with humanity.

“Academy Street” is a careful, deeply thoughtful and powerful novel. It recalls most immediately Toibin’s novel “Brooklyn” for the way it also represents a sense of split national identity. Yet, the author has a particular power of her own for writing about consciousness. It’s bewitching the way Costello represents how in moment to moment existence there is a sloshing back and forth between the deeply-felt internal with the external world. It made me sink deeply into Tess’ experience and read with all my attention – which is what you always ideally want with a good book.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Why are we fascinated by our own destruction? There have always been tales of dystopia where civilization is levelled out with only a few lucky survivors left with the mission of rebuilding it. It feels that there has been a proliferation of these stories recently represented in films and literature. Part of it is to do with fear about the environment, political instability, biological warfare and the fragility of the world economy – all valid concerns! It’d be idealistic to consider that by fictionally playing out these potential horrors it will have a galvanizing effect to motivate us to prevent their happening. Maybe sometimes they do. I think they more likely work as good entertainment because it stirs within us that instinctual physiological reaction where the sympathetic nervous system is stimulated and drives us to a state of survivalist excitement. We all want to believe that we would be clever and lucky enough to overcome the adversities which can bring civilization to its knees. Most tales that imagine civilization’s downfall are inspired by our society’s failings. However, “Station Eleven” - which envisions a particularly nasty strain of a flu virus causing global calamity - differs from these other tales in a crucial way. The focus is not exclusively on society’s shortcomings, but our own personal loss of self and consequent loss of what’s most important to us in life.

The story begins in a Canadian theatre where a famous actor named Arthur is performing as King Lear on stage and suffers a heart attack mid-show. From this evening forward, society crumbles at an alarmingly fast rate as a virus ravages through and decimates the majority of the world’s population. This is no spoiler. Amidst the action of this specific scene the authorial voice makes us bluntly aware of what’s to come and the limited lifespan of the peripheral characters as we’re reading about them. The rest of the novel follows a select few individuals throughout the oncoming calamity – particularly Kirsten who was a girl acting alongside Arthur on stage and grows into a tough survivor who travels between camps of survivors in the far future with a group of Shakespearian actors and musicians. “Station Eleven” shifts back and forth between the past and twenty years after this event to make connections to do with the character’s relationships and how memories are imprinted, changed over time or lost. The author is clever in the way she gradually releases information and keeps the reader guessing what the fate of her major characters will be and how their stories interconnect. The novel gives equal weight to the development of Arthur’s pre-apocalypse story (a man not even personally affected by the virus) as it does to the heart-racing spread of the killer flu and the struggle for survival.

In focusing on the rise of a celebrity, Emily St John Mandel shows how the underlying meaning of the novel isn’t so much about the possibilities for disastrous failings in our society but the way we lose touch with ourselves. Arthur’s drive to succeed causes him to lose connections to the people who have been most dear to him in life and he even begins to delude himself about his own motivations. Arthur goes through a series of marriages and wonders at one point “Did he actually date those women because he liked them, or was his career in the back of his mind the whole time? The question is unexpectedly haunting.” His ambitions meld with his personal intentions and he feels that he loses touch with his essential self. He asks himself: “Did this happen to all actors, this blurring of borders between performance and life?” When he meets up with his oldest friend during the height of his career his friend Clark observes “He was performing” rather than communicating with him on a genuine level. The loss of personal values and the people most important to him are tantamount to the end of Arthur’s world. The survivors of the population-destroying virus are, in a sense, the survivors of this one man’s fractured identity. Having made both positive and negative effects upon them, they scramble to unite and understand the past through the fog of memory.

Still from a 2007 production of King Lear  directed by James Lapine at the Public Theater in NYC where three little girls portrayed early versions Lear's daughters. A version of this production is fictionalized in Station Eleven. Photo by Michal Daniel.

This has a subtle, cumulative effect over the course of the novel which builds to a poignancy not often found in most disaster narratives. Added to this are parallels drawn between the characters’ lives and two other different examples of artistically rendered realities. One example this novel’s continuous references back to the play of King Lear which is Shakespeare’s great parable about how our great accomplishments in life can be decimated by greed, arrogance and delusions of self-importance. The other is based on the novel’s title “Station Eleven” which is a comic book created by a character named Miranda about a group of survivors who scramble to live on a man-made exoplanet which has slipped through a worm hole. Copies of this comic disappear and resurface throughout so that this more fantastical story adds a cryptic under-layer to the apocalypse occurring in the primary story of this novel.

The only trouble I had with this novel is that the story of Arthur’s rise to fame isn’t especially compelling. It takes some time to develop real relevancy alongside the grander narrative about the aftermath of the virus. But once I learned more about Arthur’s wives and the people closest to them it became a very important part of the story – both for the larger point the book makes and drawing connections between the characters in pre and post apocalyptic times. There is also a slightly cringe-worthy scene set in London where a cab driver delivers a dubious line of cockney dialogue. But I only felt this way because I’ve lived in London so long myself and it came across more like a cultural stereotype. However, overall this novel is compelling and impressively told.

“Station Eleven” is an adventurous read as well as a highly-poignant one. There are multiple arresting glimpses of apocalyptic horrors and moving existential moments of solitude. It extends the meaning of Jean-Paul Sartre’s great aphorism by positing the chilling question “If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it?” The disappearance of others happens quite literally over the course of this novel’s dramatic story, but also applies to the individual’s personal reality when he/she becomes alienated from everyone who means the most to them. It makes you reassess the things and people in your life that you may take for granted – which is always a useful reality check.

Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans

Sometimes it seems like so such WWII fiction has been published that even stories set during the London Blitz all start to feel too familiar. Then a story comes along like Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans and I see things from an entirely new perspective. True, this is another tale about a London boy sent to live in the safety of the countryside, but the characters are unlike any others I’ve read about. Noel is a quiet and precocious child who is living with his feisty former-Suffragette godmother Mattie in London until she begins suffering severely from the onset of dementia. With only the most tangential relations left to care for him, he sets out for a rural town where he is paraded through the streets with other children by a billeting officer until he’s spotted by a woman named Vee. She takes him into her home, not for the good of the cause, but for the ten and sixpence a week she’ll get for housing him. Vee has many responsibilities caring for her partially-invalid mother, who spends her days writing amusingly earnest letters to Churchill and son in his young adulthood, who escaped the draft due to a heart condition. At first she is perplexed by Noel’s oddities, remarking “he was like one of those fancy knots, all loops, no ends.” But gradually she comes to respect his intelligence and emotionally-guarded manner. Vee and Noel make a curious pair who form an unscrupulous alliance that leads them on an emotional journey.

The author also has a refreshing way of conjuring the time period through evocative sensory experiences. I particularly appreciate how Evans creates particularly strong feelings for the besieged city through the sense of taste. With descriptions of unseasoned boiled potatoes being consumed in an air raid shelter or a handful of London water which tastes of pennies or the red grit of brick dust which crusts a character’s tongue, the reader is drawn into the civilian experience of war-time. So when a line as short and abrupt as “This fog had been a house” comes, it’s made to feel all the more tragic because the imagined sensations of those flavours are still on your tongue. It makes the devastation feel immediately real. My only criticism of the writing style is that in certain scenes set in public spaces the arrangement of characters becomes somewhat disorientating so it’s difficult to follow the action that’s happening. However, the novel overall moves in well arranged segments that build tension and draw you into the dramatic experiences of the protagonists.

What’s particularly successful is the different slant Evans takes on the attitudes of her characters in this time period. Whether its homes left unattended because of bomb scares, citizens too eager to donate money for good causes or young men desperate to avoid being taken into the armed forces, the war unintentionally opened up opportunities for people with morally-dubious sensibilities to take advantage and profit. What’s more is that there is a sense from the response by the police and authorities in the novel that they are so overwhelmed by the dramatic societal shift caused from the war that they don’t have the time or resources to deal with non-life-threatening incidents of crime. Far from alienating them from the reader, the sometimes selfish attitudes of the characters portrayed makes them more human and relatable. It’s very different from the purely virtuous or outrageously hateful WWII characters that you find in many war novels. The characters in Crooked Heart are endearingly flawed with emotionally-damaged pasts which impinge upon their judgement and actions.

The way in which the central characters come to rely and care for each other seems particularly relevant for this time period. Although neither Noel nor Vee’s families are affected by the current war they are left isolated like many people during this time when society was being shaken down by the strain of conflict and restrictions of rationing. Driven out of their normal circumscribed existence, chance encounters brought people together out of necessity. While Noel and Vee form a relationship at first out of need they soon discover a kinship which redefines the traditional meaning of family. Crooked Heart delves into the private lives of people living through the horrors of war showing you a refreshingly different perspective. At one point it’s remarked that “There were bombs outside, but inside was worse.” This novel confronts people who aren’t invested with the cause of the war so much as their own personal survival and overcoming private difficulties. It’s exciting reading how Evans incorporates elements of the Blitz to draw their priorities into focus.

This review of Crooked Heart also appeared on Shiny New Books

The Issue of Translation

Last night I went to an event at the SouthBank Centre organized by the Writers Centre Norwich on “Living Translation.” It's one of those special evenings with a room full of people all passionate about an important literary subject where it felt like the discussion could go on and on all night with no one getting tired. The conversation between (genius author of Artful & How to be Both which I can't stop talking about) Ali Smith, (esteemed Jose Saramago translator) Margaret Jull Costa and (documentary filmmaker & author of I Am China which I really admired when I read it earlier this summer) Xiaolu Guo moderated by Daniel Hahn touched upon many aspects of cultural, economical and political issues to do with translation. Ali Smith delivered an impassioned “provocative” speech about the origins of words to do with translation, her personal connection to it and how she believes children should be taught not only other languages from a young age but how to translate one text into another. Their lively discussion covered many areas to do with translation and “bad translation” (which some argued was a “good” thing).

I was really struck when Xiaolu Guo talked about the duality of her political and cultural identity as Chinese/Western and how that feeds into and informs her writing. She spoke about the embarrassing fact that approximately only 2% of books published in English are translated books whereas in most other countries the percentage of books in translation are much higher. It's terrifying to think how insulated this makes English-speaking nations from the rest of the world. How can we begin to understand and be part of the greater civilization without reading what they are writing? Even when writing is translated it tends to be because of the economic motivation behind it – the boom in Scandinavian detective/crime fiction, for instance. Of course, there are some small, inspirational presses like Peirene Press who publish important new literary translated works from around the world.

While I'd obviously advocate that more writing should be translated and made available to the English speaking world, the motivation to publish only certain kinds of translated books raises a worrying question for me. If the primary motivation behind translating books is financial for big publishing houses, do those decisions reinforce cultural stereotypes about that country? If the thirst for Scandi crime drama provokes a burst of translation for those languages in that genre is it only because we want to see that culture in a more simplified way? Or does this eventually help encourage translation of more diverse books from those countries as well? Certainly the sensation of Knausgaard's memoirs have opened up the possibilities for other Norwegian writers – as the phenomenon of Haruki Murakami did for more Japanese writing to be translated.

It's really interesting how the political becomes tied with the economic motivations in translation. The word “banned” can be used by some publishers as a marketing tool trying to stir a sensation so that a translated book from China or the Middle East, for instance, which has been deemed controversial for it's parent country is made more “palatable” for Western countries. The intention is to get people to think 'If they don't want their own people to read it, I want to read it!' I remember once hearing Ahdaf Soueif speak about how publishers tried to emphasize and exaggerate the controversy surrounding her books' publication in Egypt as a marketing tactic. I hasten to add many of these books are worth reading and should be read. But I think this is something we need to be mindful of because if we only read because of these political differences it can foster more of a cultural divide rather than a real unification of humanity.

The great hope is that more books - of all varieties - can be translated and published, particularly here in the West where we see such a small percentage of the world's literature. This conversation between languages and culture is necessary for bridging divides between nations. I wonder what great books we're missing out on because they haven't been translated yet. Last night really motivated me to read more books in translation. 

What are some of your favourite books in translation? Have you ever read a book both in its original language and the translated language? Are there books you've read multiple translations of and prefer one translation over another? 

The Rental Heart and Other Stories by Kirsty Logan

When trying to show how most of our lives are lived on the surface while all sorts of wild desires and fantasies remain hidden inside us, traditional fiction usually only shows tiny hints of this multi-layered reality in the thoughts of characters and their dramatic actions. In fairy tales this sublimated fear and lust explodes like a geyser. Although the more traditional kinds of these tales are usually sugared for children, Kirsty Logan has written stories which are decidedly for adults due to their frankness of feeling and the complexity of their ideas.

Some stories in this short, powerful book play upon tales we’re already familiar with giving a different perspective or reconfiguring their limited morality. In ‘Matryoshka’ when the “villain” sister ends up alone while the maid she ardently desires ultimately gets to wear the pretty shoes and win the prince it feels like the most devastating kind of romantic tragedy. When the narrator of ‘Witch’ stumbles upon the notorious feared woman who lives in a hut in the woods she discovers that her ostracism from society is of her own making and her alternative lifestyle is far preferable from living with the mainstream. In ‘All the Better to Eat You With’ which is a very short tale told all in dialogue the meaning stretches out to encompass more universal philosophical ideas about the survival struggle of all species which are divided between hunters and the hunted. Characters speaking collectively in the story ‘Underskirts’ emphatically declare themselves as outside of traditional time-honoured stories “We were not the stepmothers from fairy tales” as they sell their daughters into a salacious wealthy household out of financial necessity. The title character of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is cast in a present day starkly realistic setting. In this story the unfolding narrative of a girl who suffered sexual assault after being drugged at a party is ingeniously told backwards so that the hard realism of the event strikes the reader like a hammer. It also meaningfully shows the psychology of a young woman who is trying to forget the event rather than go through the difficulty of reporting it. Far from frivolous, these twists on familiar fantasies are serious stuff.

These imaginative stories are also very playful, funny and sexy. Some are set in grand, old-world settings like a country estate where the lady of the house is known to take in select local country girls for indulgent happenings. Still others take place in the recognizable gritty reality of the present where couples are separated through the necessity of keeping self-sustaining work or struggle with the difficulty of pregnancy. Take for instance, this line from ‘A Skull of Saints’: “People are more than DNA, she knows, but if she could feel their child from her insides, know him with her own flesh the way that Hope does, it would be better. It would make sense. He would feel more like her own; he would be more than just an idea.” This story explores what the real significance of empathy and familial relationships in the way people relate to and think about each other. Yet these stories cleverly bend what’s real and stretch into the fantastic so that children grow antlers or tiger tails in ‘Una and Coll are not Friends.’ The story is told in their voices which sound like any adolescent you might overhear on the street. But the physical imposition of animal appendages makes a powerful statement about the meaning of diversity and divisions which can occur within minority groups. In the story ‘Origami’ a woman waits for her husband who is ceaselessly delayed by work and spends her time making a man out of folded paper. With this oddball detail it makes a powerful comment on the sense of complex isolation one can feel within a committed relationship: “She wasn’t lonely, she was victorious.”

Most of these stories squeeze at the prickly heart of love to make fresh revelatory statements about the meaning of relationships. The title story includes a woman who must rent a heart to begin new romances. In another story a woman takes a companion of a coin operated boy. These aren’t just conceptual ideas in the story, but have a physical impact upon the characters. As is vital in the best absurdist fiction, these weird details are treated in the narratives as completely natural so the meaning of their inclusion adds a forceful complicated layer to the progression of the unfurling story. The diversity of love is demonstrated in different stories involving romance that is lesbian, gay, straight and in-between. Female sexuality in particular is assiduously explored over a range of stories. The story ‘Momma Grows a Diamond’ is one of the most beautifully crafted stories about a girl’s coming of age that I’ve ever read. Girls are initially given the names of flowers, but as they blossom into adulthood they take on the names of jewels. Logan writes at one point: “Aren’t you tired of being a flower, Violet? Momma says to me one morning from the depths of her bed. Flowers crush so easy, baby, but nothing breaks a jewel.” This description of a necessary toughening of character in women is a meaningful and different way to see how personalities change with adulthood out of a need to deal with a new kind of social environment. There is also a particular kind of masculine aggression ingeniously represented in the story ‘The Broken West.” I’ve heard it said before that when two men look each other in the eyes they only ever think one of two things ‘I want to fuck you’ or ‘I want to kill you.’ This idea is demonstrated in the line “Daniel can’t tell if he’s been fighting or fucking, and it doesn’t really matter. Faces look different close up, and the only way to get that close to a stranger is to kiss them or choke them.” These stories cleverly play with gender to show how it sometimes determines or heedlessly defies the ways in which sex plays out or how love manifests.

An Altered Book: Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen - by artist Susan Hoerth

Logan also displays a diverse range of narrative techniques throughout so that some stories are told in short bursts of revolving first person narration while others like ‘Tiger Palace’ has a commanding narrator who leads you manipulatively through the tale and makes you question the meaning of “stories” themselves. Some tales are whimsical and retain elusive meanings. Others are slotted more firmly in particular kinds of genre, but draw into them innovative subject matter. In the haunting, melancholy story ‘Feeding’ a man prepares a nursery while his female partner becomes increasingly obsessed with tending to her garden at night. The creepy tone and continuous image of a trowel hitting dirt makes this story as eerily tense as any psychologically-rich horror story. In a completely different style the story ‘The Man From the Circus’ uses a girl’s newfound profession as a trapeze artist as a significant metaphor for taking a necessary chance in life by plunging dangerously into the unknown world.

As you can tell from my enthusiastic attempt to untangle the meaning of these stories, despite their relative brevity they contain a wealth of ideas. Kirsty Logan is very clever in the way she uses a range of writer’s tools to create the most effect style of storytelling to fit the diverse subject matters she covers. Having been a teenage lover of absurdist drama, I'm thrilled by the way she warps reality in her prose to stimulate the imagination. She crafts disarming images that are imbued with unusual meaning. “The Rental Heart and Other Stories” is a fantastically refreshing read and leaves you thinking about things in a new way. These stories have picked up awards and been included on prize lists both individually and as a collection itself which is a testament to their good quality.

Watch a video of Kirsty Logan discussing the nature of fairytales here: http://vimeo.com/104486851

Polari Literary Salon's 7th Birthday

Last night the Polari Literary Salon celebrated it's 7th birthday in the Royal Festival Hall. This is an event which I first began going to during it's humble beginnings upstairs in a pub in Soho where people packed in tightly together. Authors stood precariously amongst us while drinks were passed around. Now it's expanded into a monthly event in a large room on the South Bank with a spectacular view over Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. But it still retains that sense of a tight-knit friendly group hungry for culture and a fun evening. The salon has also recently embarked on an ambitious tour over the UK and hosts a lucrative annual first book prize. It's admirable the dedication and passion which author/journalist Paul Burston has shown in creating and sustaining Polari which consistently showcases some of the best new and established writing talent in the country.

The authors who read this evening were particularly special. Starting with Ben Fergusson reading from his novel "The Spring of Kasper Meier" (which I reviewed earlier this year here). He described a scene in a post-WWII Berlin bar where information was slyly exchanged and tentative relationships formed. What struck me hearing this passage was the sense of endurance and wry humour of the voices which came alive as he read them. There is a real survival sense to these German natives who have come through the war and seen their community fragmented and now find their lives ruled by desperation, longing and suspicion. Next Alex Marwood read a hilarious piece which made parallels between iconic characters in literature and the types of people you find in the city today. She also read a chilling extract from her new novel "The Killer Next Door" which draws you to empathize with the central character only to twist you around and realize you are relating to a serial killer. Niven Govinden read from his profoundly moving novel "All the Days and Nights" (which I reviewed earlier this year here) about the relation between artist and muse/ art and viewer. His voice had a hushed intense quality which was utterly arresting and intimate and particularly appropriate for this story narrated in the second person. It really brought alive the intensity of feeling the artist has for her subject and lover as he journeys out to reclaim his sense of identity and search for meaning. After an interval Sarah Westwood read from her book which is a collection of personal journalism "The Rubbish Lesbian." Here the 'love that dares not speak its name' is that which a woman feels for her cat, a passion more intense and fully-realized than that which she feels for her own lover. Her observations about the way popular straight culture relates to the queer community were insightful and utterly hilariously. Finally, Neil Bartlett came on speaking with authority and sincerity about the importance of remembering the transformation of queer culture and the way that society doesn't change – but it is changed bit by bit by individuals who make it change. He draws an important distinction between passive acceptance and activism. He read a piece called 'That's what friends are for' which he wrote in 1988 about a conversation between father and son. The situation and characters were disconnected from any specific time or place, but in this abstraction they came more meaningfully alive in the formations of their relationships. Then he read from his new novel "The Disappearance Boy" (which I reviewed earlier this week here). As a veteran of the theatre, Bartlett has an impeccable sense of timing in his dramatic reading which related the opening scene where a mysterious boy faces the possibility of death. In the hushed tones of his oration it felt as if this boy became a universal figure standing bare and confronting a fate which might either destroy or recreate him. The individual's will is desirous not so much for self-immolation but a sense of contact with a god-less divinity.

Me with author Niven Govinden (photo by Justin David)

It was a pleasure and honour to be able to hear these authors read. I have a great respect for the effort Paul Burston goes to rallying together talented authors in a showcase that is lively, fun and community-binding. Hopefully Polari will have many more birthdays to come.

The Disappearance Boy by Neil Bartlett

There is a confidential and intimate quality to “The Disappearance Boy” that makes it feel as if you’re in a smoke-filled pub late at night listening to an enthralling tale from the strangest man you’ve ever met. Bartlett uses his considerable experience of working in the theatre to inform both the subject of this new novel and the direct, dramatic way he tells his story. When describing a bizarre, but touching habit of one of his characters he writes “It’s a strange business, talking to the dead – but if you’ve ever done it, then you won’t need me to tell you that.” This friendly intriguing tone carries throughout the book making it an engrossing and fascinating read.

As in a cinematic opening scene, we’re introduced to the “boy” in question with the novel’s vivid first chapter where he comes close to death standing on train tracks in a stance of surrender. Some years later, we meet up with this boy Reggie who is now a young man working for an illusionist named Mr Brookes. Having suffered from polio, Reggie has a misshapen walk. It’s wryly remarked that “Every human step is a fall from which we save ourselves, they say, but in Reggie’s case that’s even more true than normal.” He has an endearing closed-mouthed grin due to his bad teeth and an introverted personality borne no doubt out of his disability and his hidden homosexuality. He makes for a submissive assistant who quietly serves to make the magic happen behind the scenes. He’s in every sense the opposite of Mr Brookes who is confident, handsome and a highly-sexed cad. Together they tour around the country with Brookes’ magic act in which he makes a glamorous female assistant disappear. Although it’s only part of the act, the women in the equation frequently soon leave for good as Mr Brookes has a habit of bedding and abusing them in a cycle Reggie has witnessed with contempt. When a particularly beautiful and savvy woman named Pamela joins the act for a gig in Brighton, Mr Brookes declares her to be special. But it’s Reg who realizes how special she really is and the two form a bond which will change their circumstances for good.

Bartlett has a masterful way of describing an environment that hits all the senses and makes the reader feel as if they are actually experiencing being in a bygone era. Take, for instance, this description of the theatre in which the act takes place: “They’re almost all gone now, these buildings, but if you’re trying to imagine what one of them would have been like to live and work in, then I suggest you start with the smell. It never quite goes away, in a theatre: breath, sweat, chocolate, clothing – and cigarettes, lots of them, in those days.” These descriptions rouse the senses to ground the reader in the gritty reality of the place. It’s particularly special how he gives an informed feeling for the way an experience of a place has changed over time.

The characters also express in their actions and dialogue the different restrictions people experienced in the 1950s. This includes Reg’s longing to find a man to share his bed; his search is limited to longing stares at men on the street or hurried clandestine fumbling with men in notorious meeting spots down by the sea in the darkness of night. It’s also shown in the way Pam expresses the difficulty of obtaining an abortion during those times where there was a complicated, expensive and demeaning charade to get the procedure done: “at least four of us must have borrowed her certificate for that all-important little interview at the clinic.” Giving an informed understanding of the social conditions of the period adds great poignancy to the clearly described physical representation of this era where life was very different from the circumstances we experience today.

Ad for the Princes News Theatre screening of the Coronation from the Herald 13th June 1953

As in so much of Angela Carter’s writing, the overarching story of theatre life is the perfect vehicle for exploring deeper issues to do with identity. Reg is specially positioned both in his profession as a behind-the-scenes trickster and as an introverted shy man to observe how so much about people’s social identities are only an act. Yet, he sees people continually falling for the illusions wondering in frustration “Why do people never spot how the world actually works?” The answer is that like the audience of these shows people are lulled into believing what they see is real when in actuality they are only witnessing an act. All that is needed to make people believe you are something you are not is to authentically believe and act like it yourself as Pam considers at one point: “Bringing off a character was all to do with how you considered yourself, she thought. How you felt inside when you looked in the mirror.” The story presents the complex way fantasy informs the way we perceive other people and how that perception can be strategically manipulated by playing upon those fantasies.

“The Disappearance Boy” feels like a very personal novel which is beautifully tender at times. I developed a strong emotional connection with both Reg and Pam so I was carried along through to the climactic ending which occurs amidst the queen’s coronation day.  Bartlett has a particularly evocative menacing quality to his writing which hints at the potential for danger. It raises a seductive sort of fear which prickles with suspense and has a heavy hint of sexual desire. He demonstrated this masterfully in his previous novel “Skin Lane” which is a book that has stuck with me since I read it in 2008. Bartlett has only produced a small group of distinctive well-regarded novels since he began publishing in the 80s. I hope that he continues to publish more.

Read an excellent interview with Bartlett where he discusses his work on a project called Letter to an Unknown Soldier and his thoughts on "The Disappearance Boy" here: http://dontdoitmag.co.uk/issue-five/telling-stories-an-interview-with-neil-bartlett/