Tools for Extinction compiled by Denise Rose Hansen

Amidst the general confusion, fear and suffering caused by the global pandemic, I've also found it worrying to see the disruption to many writers, publishers and booksellers. The financial and emotional strain was instantly palpable on their social media, newsletters and websites. The work of many writers and journalists instantly evaporated. Publishers pushed forward publication dates for many books. Bookshops still grapple with the question of when and how they can properly reopen. As an ardent reader outside of the publishing industry it's distressing to watch the people who create the new books I dearly love feeling such hardship. When economic prospects are bleak it's the arts which are typically viewed by governments as expendable. But it's these people who are best equipped to articulate, chronicle and offer an artistic form of solace amidst the extraordinary circumstances we're in the thick of struggling through. This is exemplified by the quick response of several authors from around the world who've contributed to this new anthology “Tools for Extinction”. Included are new pieces of fiction, poetry, essay and memoir which artistically respond to our current times. 

I'm greatly impressed with the speed at which this book was put together but also that it takes a global view from authors from nearly every continent and many different cultures. In a time of such extreme physical separation and when it's impossible to know when I'll be able to travel internationally again it's comforting to hear the immediacy of these voices from around the world. It's also touching to see overlapping observations between countries whether it's the experience of viewing individuals smoking on distant balconies or similar feelings of loneliness felt in very different locations. Enrique Vila-Matas notes how swiftly the pandemic changed from something distant in our screens to arriving on our doorsteps. Berlin-based Anna Zett describes the closure of a local bar and the competing points of view of a circle of friends. Patricia Portela's story is overcast with a newly ominous feel as it concerns an individual desperate to travel abroad. Days can't be measured in the same way now that the sounds of the school opposite her home have gone silent in Olivia Sudjic's piece. Michael Salu's poem describes how banal and small our personal reality has become: “There is repetition and there is routine \ my own reality \ emerges from prison.” Jakuta Alikavazovic's anxiety/insomnia drives her to count coins in a jar. Vi Khi Nao observes how the unnatural denial of physical intimacy and demarcated personal distance means “The world is a place where cruelty has all the swords.”

While some authors vividly describe the immediate impact and vivid fear caused by this virus others feel far removed from its physical effects but experience psychological disturbance. Norwegian author Jon Fosse details a nightmarish scene where the narrator is persistently chased and seeks spiritual communion. Anna Zett's 'Affinity Group' also describes how the pandemic can be a catalyst for personal revelation: “Outside of computer games, the final enemy is just the victim I used to be, projected into the future and onto another body. With the final enemy, it's just like with the apocalypse. If I refuse to let go of the past, I can easily predict what will happen if liberation fails or if love isn't found.” Other authors also consider how the current events can offer an opportunity for new perspectives. Joanna Walsh's illuminating piece 'The Dispossessed' questions how stories are formed in retrospect: “Narratives belong to those left alive. But they're told about what has ended. That's the paradox. You can never peep in on your own obituary to read about your life and what it meant.” Jean-Baptiste Del Amo considers how these circumstances can expose what should have been obvious before: “A virus can be a revelation: it can reveal the limits of economic growth, of cynical profit seeking, of mechanisms of power in a capitalist system.” Similarly Greenland-born author Naja Marie Aidt notes how recent events have made “the inequality as visible as the tiny virus is invisible”.

Some pieces make no mention of the pandemic at all reminding us that there are a multitude of concerns that are totally separate from the top news story of the past several months and how there are other local and national issues which continue to fill our lives. Mara Coson creatively blends song lyrics with descriptions of large-scale natural disasters. Danish writer Olga Ravn movingly considers the closeness or distance felt between a mother breast-feeding her child. Inger Wold Lund's piece (which can also be listened to in audio form through the publisher's website) provides instructions to the reader/listener to be grounded in the reality of their immediate surroundings. Meanwhile, Frode Grytten's poem makes a distress call to the future.

I found it comforting to meditate on these many different points of view. Together these pieces offer a refreshing range of new perspectives which reach across a globe that has become as distorted and flattened as the image on this book's cover.

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (translated by Elisabeth Jaquette)

Sometimes when I'm reading about a period of history a detail will jump out at me concerning an individual or incident which inexplicably resonates with me. It might be something small which there isn't much more information about so I can only imagine the circumstances surrounding it, but it has a way of bringing the past alive and offers an insight beyond the broader historical picture. That's what happens to the narrator in the second half of “Minor Detail” by Adania Shibli. Amidst her working day she comes across an article which describes how a young Palestinian woman was captured by Israeli soldiers in the Negev desert during the War of 1948. The woman was repeatedly raped before being killed and buried in the sand. It's only one incident in a war which led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 Palestinians. Though it only gets a brief mention in this larger article she considers how “There may in fact be nothing more important than this little detail, if one wants to arrive at the complete truth, which, by leaving out the girl's story, the article does not reveal.” The narrator was also born exactly twenty-five years after this murdered woman's death and this makes her feel an affinity towards her. She embarks on a perilous journey across hostile territory to discover more about this obscure victim. In 112 pages of spare, piercing prose Shibli evokes great emotion. She exposes the tragedy of individuals who were not only victims of war but whose loss has been trivialized or forgotten when their personal stories are buried in a larger view of history. 

It's clever and moving how Shibli chose to structure this novel. The first half of the book recounts the circumstances surrounding this 1948 incident from the point of view of an Israeli commander. His days are related in short declarative sentenced stripped of embellishment or emotion which mirrors the regimental tasks that he and his soldiers carry out patrolling the desert. Therefore the way the captured woman is handled and treated is all the more heart-wrenching because it's described as if it were any other procedure like a daily bath or cleaning a gun. The narrative leaves out any graphic information of the woman's suffering which amplifies the brutality of what's happening between the lines. Instead, evocative details like a continuously barking dog or the smell of petrol create a sensory awareness and made me feel chillingly present in the scene. These descriptions take on even more resonance in the second half of the book when the narrator comes across the same sounds and smells. This forms a poignant bond between the two women and blurs different times into one. There's also a poetic beauty to the way the environment is described or the movement of light throughout the day. So even though the writing in this novel is very straightforward it's so effective in conveying the power of its subject matter.

This is such an artfully written and poignant novel which gives a very different perspective on a region and complicated conflict than what's portrayed in the news.

A Hundred Million Years and a Day by Jean-Baptiste Andrea (translated by Sam Taylor)

Is it noble to sacrifice the security of a stable life to chase a dream or is it madness? At first it seems utterly foolish for Stan, a middle-aged palaeontologist and professor in Paris, to go searching for the bones of a dragon in a remote cave hidden within an Alpine glacier. During the Summer of 1954 he embarks on this dangerous quest after a chance meeting with a girl who describes the bones of a strange creature to him so he assembles a small eccentric group of men to journey into the mountains and excavate this unpredictable territory. He's convinced they are the remains of a dinosaur and becomes obsessed with recovering this rare prize. As we follow the group's perilous quest into the wilderness we're also given flashbacks of Stan's lonely upbringing as a sensitive, scholarly boy and life under his domineering father the Commander. It becomes evident that his drive to complete this foolhardy quest is largely motivated by his insecurity and a desire to prove his value to an absent father that disparaged him. Andrea balances an increasingly tense adventure story with melancholy reflections about the meaning of self-worth. It also pairs the lifespan of a single man against a sweeping vision of global history to offer a new perspective about time. 

I was interested in picking up this novel because of its connection with notable French-English translator Sam Taylor (who has also translated novels by Leila Slimani) and it comes with a blurb on the cover by excellent novelist Sara Taylor. I also liked the concept which is somewhat similar to the premise of Carys Davies' “West” about a man who abandons his responsibilities to chase rumours of a colossal beast in the American West. However, while Davies narrative provides a counter storyline about the repercussions from such a foolhardy journey back at his home, Andrea's novel is focused solely on an internalised look at a man's feverish willpower and the sobering result of his journey. It feels like a distinct masculine characteristic to set out on such an adventure driven more by self-determination than logic. Though Stan's psychology and descent into near madness is portrayed with a degree of complexity I didn't find him to be entirely convincing or sympathetic. I felt like Davies' novel uses more subtlety in its portrayal of such a figure. Also, though certain characters from the group are given interesting eccentricities such as Umberto's substantial size and Peter's ventriloquist doll, I didn't feel like these figures were fully developed enough to connect with or care about them.

Their journey into such an extreme natural environment present the group with difficult challenges and moments of peril, but these scenes pass too swiftly to register fully. I feel like such moments require a real precision of language to capture the heart-stopping terror which would accompany an experience like dangling off a cliff. Also, the group pass by amazing expansive vistas and an ancient glacier which could have used some more descriptive language to convey the sense of the majesty the characters feel from such encounters. At one point a character even remarks on what an incredible view they have but it's not actually shown in a description to the reader. A writer such as Benjamin Myers is much more accomplished at capturing the awe-inspiring beauty of such nature scenes and Robert MacFarlane gives more acute philosophical insights into the concept of 'deep time' in his recorded journeys. So, while I found this to be an engaging novel in its portrayal of loneliness and a sense of wonder, I felt there were aspects of it which could have been presented a lot stronger.

Pew by Catherine Lacey

I've always been a quiet person. Even when I feel like I'm just as present and chatty as everyone else around me, people have always remarked on how quiet I am. But one of the interesting things this has allowed me to notice is how much people reveal about themselves - not so much in the content of their speech but the way they say things shows a lot about their preoccupations, insecurities, desires and fears. The very quiet narrator at the centre of Catherine Lacey's novel “Pew” is suddenly discovered sleeping in the church of a small American town and because the narrator is found on a pew the locals call this anonymous individual Pew. Even though we the readers are privy to Pew's thoughts we don't know any details about their past or identity. Pew is an adolescent of indeterminate age, indeterminate race and indeterminate gender because their appearance is so ambiguous. No matter how much the town's inhabitants enquire Pew barely ever responds and certainly provides no answers. As the community tries to determine what to do with this mysterious young vagabond, many individuals have private one-sided conversations with Pew where they confess their emotions and unintentionally reveal many of their prejudices. We follow Pew's many encounters over the course of a week leading up to a strange ritualised local ceremony. 

This novel's simple premise grants a lot of space to ask teasing sociological and psychological questions about the nature of community and identity. What traits or qualities ensure our acceptance amongst a group of people? How far does our empathy extend to people who are unknown to us? To what degree do our unique characteristics define or inhibit who we are as individuals? Why do categorisations matter so much in our society? These all arise as the town's inhabitants either rigorously try to define exactly what Pew is or simply accept Pew for whoever they are. Within Pew's meditations there are even more overt philosophical queries raised about the nature of being: “Can only other people tell you what your body is, or is there a way that you can know something truer about it from the inside, something that cannot be seen or explained in words?” In this way, there's a fascinating tension built up over the course of the novel about the nature of subjective experience.

While I worried at first that this all might be too pondering I felt the story had a lightness to it in balancing Pew's observations with the local's italicized speeches. It's something like Alice's episodic adventures through Wonderland encountering many puzzlingly curious personalities along the way. So it gradually develops into a strangely captivatingly meditative journey. Of course, this story's construction also presents some troubling issues. Even though people are prone to saying more than they mean to when confronted with a very quiet individual, people aren't often quite as confessional as many in this novel who relate their deeply-personal histories and most intimate secrets to Pew. There's also a danger in these speeches made to Pew, some from bleeding-heart liberal types, that in laying out all their vulnerabilities and faults the author is mocking them more than taking their complex individual positions seriously. But I didn't ultimately feel that this was the case and I found myself compelled by the various connections between people in the town as we meet more and more along the way. The novel also builds larger mysteries about a wife stabbed in the eye, the racially-motivated murder of a child and other outstanding grievances/crimes which culminate in a bizarre festival. 

There are teasing, cryptic elements to this story which create an underlying tension like The Wicker Man or Midsommar. But the novel's overarching construction and premise feels more like a cross between Rachel Cusk's “Outline”, Ali Smith's “The Accidental” and Elizabeth Strout's “Anything is Possible”. It's heartening to see this creative take on overly-politicised discussions about identity politics and immigration. Harold, a popular spokesman for the community, rants at one point: “I want justice to prevail, for the good side to win. And in order for that to happen we have got to know who people are. Who they really are.” This novel splits such simplistic ideas and notions open to reveal their dangerous limitations. It's clever how Lacey subtly challenges the reader to not make their own assumptions about Pew's identity as well. I found it to be a very meaningful and ultimately liberating journey to be inside the head of narrator who remains entirely undefined but not unknown. 

Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez

Rarely have I read a debut novel that conveys the piercingly accurate immediacy of its central characters' experiences with such grace and insight. “Rainbow Milk” begins with the story of Norman Alonso, a horticulturist and former-boxer from Jamaica who moves his family to England as part of the Windrush generation. He suffers from a debilitating illness which is causing him to lose his sight and he finds working and integrating into a small British community much more challenging than he expected. His situation and character is described with poignant delicacy so I was initially thrown when the story abruptly moves on to follow Jesse McCarthy, a teenage boy from the West Midlands who moves to London at the beginning of the millennium. But I soon felt an intense affinity and affection for this character whose story comprises the bulk of the novel. The way the author captures Jesse's fierce confidence as well as his vulnerability is so sympathetic and true to life. Only much later does the tale loop back to a connection with Norman and his family in a way which is achingly beautiful.

I recognize that in many ways Jesse's experience is very different from my own. He's a black young man who grew up in a predominantly white society and he was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. But I strongly connected to him as a gay boy that moves from a small community to the city. He throws himself into the pulse of urban life engaging in the same sex experiences he could only previously fantasize about. I remember the feelings of uninhibited delight and liberating honesty of those first sexual experiences - “This was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” But I also intensely recall the subsequent fears and newfound isolation after understanding the consequences of those actions. Mendez conveys all this with great strength that makes no apologies for his character's explosive desire. As an attractive and well-hung young man Jesse meets many older men who want to use him: “he was a skinny, twenty-year-old black boy with a big dick, which was all anyone ever seemed to want him for.” Because of this, Jesse, in turn, also learns to use the men he meets rather than following his impulse to romantically settle down. The transactional nature of these encounters encourages Jesse to start working as a rent boy.

I think it's so powerful how Mendez captures the way that commerce bleeds into the emotional and sexual needs of a young man in Jesse's position and I've not read anything quite like it since the novel “What Belongs to You”. Some of his encounters are destructive, disappointing or simply dull. But others are surprisingly nurturing as there are a few individuals that see Jesse as a dynamic young man to engage with as more than an object of desire or a repository for their revenge. This forms a very accurate portrayal of the diverse and perilous social landscape which a gay man enters into where the physical body is so vulnerable. Equally, the full emotional consequences aren't often felt until much later as Jesse gradually learns what he truly wants in his relationships with men.

As someone raised by his black mother and white step-father in a predominantly white community, Jesse was prone to moments of intense self-hatred during his childhood because of the colour of his skin. Later the experience of truly inhabiting his skin begins as a form of imitation: “He actually felt like an actual black man, listening to rap, especially to the lyrics, really letting the beats get into him.” The novel skilfully moves backwards and forwards in time showing how Jesse learns to inhabit the multifaceted parts of his identity on his own terms and I particularly enjoyed how the story describes Jesse's evolving communion with music. There's an interplay between the song lyrics and the emotions of his personal experiences that form a startlingly personal view of the world through his eyes. And I have to note (as someone who was roughly Jesse's age when I moved to London at the start of the millennium) I especially loved the references to artists like Kelis and the Sugababes.

The novel so vividly describes Jesse's journey towards finding a sense of community amongst like-minded individuals and honest romantic relationships. There are some sections which describe the will and desires people place upon him in frenzied expressive bursts of italicised dialogue. These range in tone from darkly sexualized projections to the humorous and paltry demands restaurant customers make upon the staff. But there are also low key but pointed references throughout to the racist paranoias and subtly-expressed fears of people Jesse encounters in his everyday life from white men who avoid sitting next to him on public transportation to white women who cling a bit more tightly to their purses when he's around. It's moving how, in addition to forming bonds with other BAME individuals, Jesse grows to understand and articulate his experience through reading writers like James Baldwin, Bernardine Evaristo, Andrea Levy and Sam Selvon. Paul Mendez proves he's definitely a part of this tradition and also establishes a voice that is uniquely his own in this boldy heartfelt novel.

The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischvili (translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin)

There’s something so satisfying about getting immersed in a big family saga. At over 930 pages, “The Eighth Life” may look intimidating from the outside and I had a few false starts reading this novel but as soon as I got caught up in the many stories it contains I stopped noticing what page number I was on. The novel recounts the tales of multiple generations of a family in the country of Georgia over the 20th century following them through the Russian Revolution, Soviet rule and civil war. Ever since reading the novel “Soviet Milk” and finding out more about the Latvian strand of my family history I’ve been interested in the effects the Soviet Union had upon Eastern European countries. Haratischvili’s novel gives a wide-scale perspective on this time period and region paying special attention to the negative effect these political changes had on the lives of a variety of women. Comparisons have been made to “War and Peace” and “The Tin Drum” but, from my own frame of reference, I'd liken it more to “Gone with the Wind” crossed with “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. 

The novel does an impressive job at balancing an overview of large-scale political and social changes over the past century alongside recounting the personal fortunes and failures of a particular family. Starting as a family of confectioners whose speciality is an irresistible secret recipe for hot chocolate, the descendants become involved in all levels of society from a commander in Trotsky's Red Army to the mistress of a fearsome leader to a defector fighting for Georgian independence to a singer that becomes a symbol of political resistance. At the heart of the book is Stasia who possesses superstitious beliefs about the cursed nature of the family's chocolate recipe and believes she can see the ghosts of dead relatives. The novel is truly epic in showing how family stories are built upon the tales of past generations and shows that radical transitions in society result in innumerable tales of personal strife.

A great pleasure that comes from reading a long novel like this is seeing how characters will change and reemerge over many years. A character that appears only briefly as a girl trapped in a perilous situation appears many pages later as an old woman who has achieved great success. We also follow the evolution of certain characters who may begin with certain personalities and values but who, in response to political events and personal strife, find themselves irreparably altered in their convictions and outlook. I felt like I truly lived alongside many of these characters who undergo so many changes over the years. But it also takes on a great poignancy following the subsequent generations who may repeat certain patterns of their ancestors' behaviour or might wildly rebel against what was expected of them.

There's a difficulty in the way political discourse and the history books have set up this dichotomy of East (Soviet Communism) vs West (Democracy) and how this shaped the way the populations of these geographical regions relate to and conceptualize one another. Of course it was a real ideological battle that brought us to the brink of nuclear war. But I also feel like this has set up an oppositional mentality which produces a lot of stereotypes and barriers. For instance, when Kitty leaves Georgia and eventually settles in England to become a successful singer the media and general public want her to be a victim of the Soviet Union: “She allowed customers to engage her in conversation, and played the part of the Soviet sensation to the hilt. She played up to people’s fears and projections, and accentuated them with more horrific details.” While she did suffer terribly under Soviet rule and while the Soviet Union's practices were horrific, I feel like the West often demonizes the entire region and its people. So it's enriching how this novel humanizes a family caught up in this time period, showing how they have to make difficult choices and choose certain allegiances in order to survive.

A way this novel spoke to me is in its portrayal of Kitty, a woman who leaves her homeland to settle in England. She makes a successful career there but feels a strong longing for her place of birth and family yet she can't return for political reasons. In reflecting about her mentality the narrator states: “Perhaps the most tragic thing about exile, both mental and geographical, was that you began to see through everything, you could no longer beautify anything; you had to accept yourself for who you were. Neither who you had been in the past, nor the idea of who you might be in the future, mattered.” This made me think about displacement as a radical confrontation with oneself. Although I'm much more privileged and fortunate than Kitty I can relate to her as someone who has spent a long period of my adult life away from my homeland. And I think at the moment, in this state of global lockdown where we are in a sense exiles within our own homes, many of us are forced to confront ourselves and what matters to us in a way we didn't have to when we were caught in the busyness of daily life.

I had the great pleasure of sitting down for a cup of hot chocolate with author Nino Haratischvili and translators Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin for a live discussion about their tremendous novel.

A common criticism I've seen made about this novel is that there's not much differentiation between characters later on in the novel, especially between the men who are often portrayed as villainous. Personally, I didn't feel this way except perhaps about the characters of Miqa and Miro who did feel very similar to me. And, though there are several male characters who act in a horrendous way, there are many prominent men from this period of history whose actions resulted in the torture and death of many people so the novel is merely reflecting that fact. I could also cite many men in the novel such as David or Severin who are more positive characters. Also, one of the many interesting things which emerged from speaking from the author is that she didn't see the character of Kostya as simply a villain despite the many terrible things he does. All the characters have strengths as well as flaws which makes them more fully rounded. But I think it's also right that the novel focuses more on female characters as these women’s stories haven't been as frequently documented in history books. 

It feels like a cliché to say that a novel contains a lot of heartache but ultimately has a hopeful message. But that's exactly what “The Eighth Life” does in its construct because the entire novel is narrated from the point of view of a descendant named Niza who recounts these many varied and dramatic stories of their family for her adolescent niece Daria. In honouring these lives from the past she both informs and makes space for the next generation. It's a way of reckoning with the tragedies of the past century and paving a way for the future through the ingenuity and resilience of the family who survives and can carry on that legacy. The novel poignantly demonstrates how what's to come hasn't been written yet.