What are your most treasured books?

If your house was on fire and you could only grab one book to save what would it be? Okay, unfair question. I don’t think I could answer it either. I’d probably be found by the firemen stumbling out of my apartment building coughing smoke, arms loaded with charred books and begging them to go in to save the rest. Books don't just contain their own stories, but the story of our relationship to them. I really value so many of my books, but if I were asked to pick out my favourites then these would be some at the top of the list.

This special shortened bookshelf houses most of my most treasured books. All of them are signed and many are special limited editions and many have sentimental value.

The Color Purple was the first book I ever had signed by an author. When stopping in a bookshop in Boston one day I noticed an ad for an Alice Walker reading at the Boston Public Library happening right now. I quickly bought this copy and rushed over catching Walker right before the end of her signing.

The signed Eugene Ionesco was one of the first expensive books I bought when I was earning enough to be able to afford it as he is one of my favourite authors.

The Lord John Ten anthology is signed by many prominent authors including Ray Bradbury, Raymond Carver, Derek Walcott and many others.

I bought the signed copy of Austerlitz only a couple weeks before W.G.Sebald’s tragic death. Since it was published so shortly before he died very few were signed and it’s now apparently worth hundreds of pounds.

Most of the hardback novels I’ve kept have been ones I’ve been able to get signed by the author in person when attending readings – many at the Royal Festival Hall in London. I have fond memories attached to the times I bought each of them.

Michael Downing was my first creative writing teacher when I was an undergraduate at Wheelock College in Boston. He was a tremendous inspiration and this fine novel which is a tribute to the importance of grammar was published while I was studying with him.

When I first arrived in London I noticed the Waterstones near Trafalgar Square was hosting a reading by Joseph Heller. I rushed over and listened to him speak as well as getting him to sign this copy of his novel Something Happened.

Jean Rhys is one of my favourite writers and this copy of her story My Day is part of a limited lettered edition of only 26 books.

Edmund White is a phenomenal writer and an incredibly generous human being. I’m very lucky to be able to call him a friend. His historical novel Fanny: A Fiction is one of my favourite books by him. It's a tale of two very different women from history that formed an unlikely friendship and who tried to establish a utopian community in America.

This is one of my top books in both monetary and sentimental value. It’s a proof of Joyce Carol Oates' novel Do With Me What You Will and inserted into the back is a typed revised ending from Joyce. However, both the ending printed in the proof and the new typed ending inserted within differ from the ending as it appears in the final published edition of this novel. It's a brilliant novel and well worth reading.

I’ve been lucky enough to see Joyce Carol Oates read several times. This copy of her published Journals means so much to me and is one of the few books I’ve read several times in its entirety.

As part of my own personal tribute to my former teacher, the deceased author and critic Lorna Sage, I’ve been getting several authors to sign the tops of sections in which she wrote about them in this critical book about women and literature.

So what are some of the most treasured books you own?

Black Bread White Beer by Niven Govinden

The UK Miscarriage Association notes that “Even though about one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage, there’s a lot that we still don’t know about why it happens.” This is a loss which affects a lot of couples hoping to conceive and give birth, but it is something rarely acknowledged openly or discussed except amongst the privacy of family. Negotiating how to deal with it is a strain that can threaten to break a relationship. Black Bread White Beer follows a couple who have just experienced a miscarriage and their day immediately following this trauma. They are in their mid-thirties and feel compelled to get their family started soon since the clock is ticking. “Even when it felt like they were at their closest, physically all-consuming, somewhere, in the crook of an arm, a cavity in their pumping hearts, was a final gap waiting to be filled.” The novel concentrates largely on the husband Amal’s perspective as he picks up his wife from the hospital and drives her to her parents’ house. In these high-pressure moments Niven Govinden brilliantly explores the minutia of how a couple functions and the dysfunctions which threaten to split them apart. Amidst relating the story of this particular couple he deals with larger issues of familial responsibility, faith, gender, racism and social expectation.

Every moment of this novel is filled with emotional tension since the knowledge of the couple’s immediate loss is felt so heavily between them. Before Amal retrieves his wife from an overnight stay in the hospital it is there. “Even before she returns, he feels the disappointment, self-blame, hanging in the air, but it does not seem irreparable. It is nothing that faith cannot fix.” Amal has abandoned the faith he was raised with from his Indian heritage to convert to Christianity before marrying his white girlfriend Claud. The sense of a personal belief system is at odds with feelings of social obligation creating a complexity in how Amal (someone who sees faith largely as symbolic) expresses himself religiously and whether faith can be called upon in an emotionally intense situation such as this one. There are instances where the subtle effects of racism can be felt – not overt or malicious, but modified expectations and reactions to Amal because of his skin colour. As such Amal has a heightened awareness of his otherness amidst Claud, her parents and their largely white community and that his actions might be perceived by them as stemming from his race. “It is the immigrant’s millstone: even in the face of this smug, politically incorrect tediousness he will remain all eyes and teeth, determined never to be less than his most exemplary self.” Being a minority is something Amal is always aware of and it impacts the way he relates to those around him whether those people perceive him as other or not. This self consciousness about race is an issue which is drawn to the surface even more acutely because of the intensity of the couple’s situation.

Govinden also skilfully writes about the different ways men and women currently deal with emotions and how they conceal them from the world. Claud tries to compose herself when concealing the fact of her miscarriage from her parents and strengthen herself to deal with the world. “Her make-up, all four products of it – powder, lipstick, mascara and blush – have made a warrior of her.” Whereas Amal deals with his heartache by secretly getting drunk and eating a lot of junk food before reconnecting with his wife and dealing with his in-laws. “Maybe it is only men who have let the modern age weaken their resilience, crying into baked goods and wallowing into beer.” In this way Govinden shows the way society’s expectations about how men and women should act in public impact upon their private outlets for releasing emotional tension.

At one horrifying point Amal discovers his wife’s parents have printed up cards to invite their friends to a party in order to celebrate their becoming grandparents. The sense of expectation that the prospect of a new baby creates is something that reverberates beyond the couple actually having it. “Everyone around them is using their due date to put an end to their personal issues. They are all after a clean slate.” Prospects for a new baby are not only felt by the couple having it, but by everyone around them. It seems cruel that a couple should have to not only deal between themselves with the loss of expectation following their miscarriage, but also the emotional investment and hopes of those around them. As such, Claud retains their secret about her loss trying to maintain control and privacy about her tumultuous emotions.

Black Bread White Beer deals with the private life and daily workings of a relationship better than any book I can think of. The miscarriage is a catalyst which draws to the surface a multiplicity of issues which always existed between Amal and Claud, but were often paved over by the niceties of comfortable routines. The great test of this is whether their bond is strong enough to withstand the challenge of all this surfacing in the face of such a profound disruption and loss. Govinden sympathetically portrays how relationships can only continue if there is a process of constant renegotiation for the desires, expectations and faults of each person involved. For all the emotional turmoil raised in this novel, it conveys a tremendous sense of hope and strength to continue on despite tragic circumstances.

Angela written by Chrissy Williams and illustrated by Howard Hardiman

There have been countless in-between times I've spent watching ‘Murder, She Wrote’. Whether it was between having breakfast and getting dressed for the day, reading a book and going out for the evening or slouching on the sofa with a hang over, it seems that repeats of the show can always be found playing on some network. The preposterous plots and grandmotherly charm of Angela Lansbury never fail to make me smile and warm my heart. In this new pamphlet 'Angela' with text by Chrissy Williams and illustrations by Howard Hardiman the personality of Angela Lansbury via Jessica Fletcher is explored through a tale of love and obsession. In a confiding deeply-intense monologue stream the narrator speaks directly to Angela in an act which prises free the woman from behind the female super-slueth persona. Through poetic lines and repetition it speaks of a longing for a psychological and sexual connection with her while disentangling the mystery of amorous obsession. “Angela – you draw the dagger out, keep drawing, keep on drawing. This dagger never ends.” Angela is both the instigator and teller of the mystery tales giving her a godlike power which we mortals are enthralled by wanting her stories of small-town murder and intrigue to continue on and on.

Hardiman's illustrations recreate a cast of suspicious characters as might be found in episodes of the show as well as a trail of clues and murder scenes, but each is sharply etched out as if they were woodcuts and coloured in only three vibrant shades of red, white and black. In addition Angela herself is represented as on the hunt for answers, giving a cheeky wink to the camera or staring out at the reader with her face a mask of deep-lined horror. The familiar cartoonish aspect of the genre characters are given a darker edge as if they've been overlaid with the projection of a gothic psychological horror movie. Hardimen says on his website that he was given a brief to imagine Murder, She Wrote as directed by David Lynch. In fact, Lynch appears in the background at one point alongside a cast of characters. Subsequently the pamphlet gives a feeling of deep unease alongside a sense of psychological turmoil mired in absurdity. Shining through all this is Angela’s light-hearted personality making this comic a source of both stark beauty and subversive pleasure. Hardimen’s talent for packing complex emotions into a tenebrous landscape populated by quietly-dignified melancholy figures as was exemplified in his tremendous series ‘The Lengths’ is used to wonderful effect when set against William’s playfully lugubrious poetry. ‘Angela’ emanates with nostalgia tainted with an adult heartache.

Trailer for 'Angela'

Ammonites & Leaping Fish: A Life in Time by Penelope Lively

Do you think of your life as a narrative? Casting your mind back do you hit upon “landmark” moments that set you on a course to becoming the person you are now? Last year I started spending more time with an acquaintance who I’d casually known for years. Increasingly we discussed books and went to events together although we didn’t really know all that much about each other. So one evening while we were having dinner he suddenly looked up at me and asked “Who are you?” I had to mentally scramble around quite quickly picking up and arranging all those introductory phrases and things you say at social gatherings to present a coherent answer to this. We’re accustomed to constructing narratives, forever tweaking and refining them, to make sense of our lives. It’s not that we necessarily try to fictionalize elements of the past, but that we attempt to make our lives into a complete comprehensible story rather than a series of slapdash experiences dependent upon chance and sporadic bursts of willpower which is the existence of most people. As Lively writes, “Most of us settle for the disconcerting muddle of what we intended and what came along, and try to see it as some kind of whole.” The trouble is that giving an approximate linear shape to our lives doesn’t really convey the experience as it was lived or how that experience has been translated into the memories inside our heads. Penelope Lively is very aware of this problem. Our lives don’t play through like a grand fictional narrative on a movie screen starting at birth and ending in death. Life exists in the sensory moment and in the scattered fragments of memory flitting through our minds throughout every day. 

Lively has previously given us her fictional representation of this in her lauded novel ‘Moon Tiger’. Here a life is presented in an impressionistic way. The story doesn’t move from start to finish but leaps around settling here and there upon episodes through a variety of narrative points of view. ‘Ammonites and Flying Fish’ which Lively admits is not a traditional memoir uses a similar tactic when trying to present a picture of her own life now that she’s over eighty years old. She muses upon what old age means now and how it’s transformed her personality: “We have to get used to being the person we are, the person we have always been, but encumbered now with various indignities and disabilities, shoved as it were into some new incarnation.” In many ways Lively feels like the same person she was when she was younger, but now she has a lot of memories to mull through. “We are the same, but different, and equipped now with a comet trail of completed time, the memory trail.” She finds old age has its challenges and also its freedoms and pleasures. There are physical problems, but she’s liberated by the fact that she doesn’t feel obligated to do anything that she doesn’t want to do. Lively muses upon the social impact of people living longer and how society reacts and is transformed by this new aging portion of the population.

Memory is a troublesome issue for Lively – both the process and the way memories are used to give coherence to our lives. Throughout the book she refers back to the strange phenomenon of memory loss when it comes to names. It’s a common problem and one that is often cited by writers and psychologists, but nobody can ever answer why it is that being unable to recall the name of someone you met last week would be more difficult than remembering the capital of Indonesia. It annoys her that no one has an answer and the problem annoys me too as it’s a difficulty I’m prone to though I’m less than half Lively’s age. In addition to losing the ability to recall names as easily, Lively finds herself unable to look forward to the future so much as continuously circling back through thoughts of the past. “What is at issue, it seems to me, is a new and disturbing relationship with time.” And so she casts her mind back and tries to construct a portrait of her life.

Hilariously, Lively remarks that “we old talk too much about the past.” In the chapter which immediately proceeds this that is exactly what she does: goes on for a hundred or so pages talking about the past in an engaging way. Personally I love hearing interesting older people talk about the past and Lively is an incredibly fascinating individual. When she describes the beginning of her life she juxtaposes her personal memories of growing up in Egypt with general historical knowledge of social and political upheaval of the time whether that be the Suez Crisis or the nuclear attack threat of the Cold War. She also supplements this knowledge with documents including her personal writing or articles and books from the time. This connection to history is very important to her. “If you have no sense of the past, no access to the historical narrative, you are afloat, untethered; you cannot see yourself as a part of the narrative, you cannot place yourself within a context. You will not have an understanding of time, and a respect for memory and its subtle victory over the remorselessness of time.”

Lively has a preoccupation with time and a desire to define the meaning of time which eerily reflects Ali Smith in her book ‘Artful’ which I read recently. Lively remarks that “linguistically, we are positively cavalier about it – we make it, we spend it, we have it, we find it, we serve it, we mark it. Last time, next time, in time, half-time – one of the most flexible words going, one of the most reached for, a concept for all purposes.” Smith also notes this flexibility and ponders our relationship with it: “Time means. Time will tell. It’s consequence, suspense, morality, mortality. Boxers fight in bouts between bells ringing time. Prisoners do time. Time’s just ‘one damn thing after another,’ Margaret Atwood says. That sounds like conventional narrative plot. And at the end of our allotted time, we’ll end up in one of those, a conventional plot I mean, unless we stipulate otherwise in our wills.” Time is the map we use to locate ourselves within whether that be recalling when we first kissed someone, arriving at work or planning to retire. We exist in time and we wouldn’t have any conception of our place in the world without it.

Lively notes some grand changes in society since the time she was young remarking specifically upon the advancement of equality for women and acceptance of homosexuality. Then she changes tact, giving an impression of her life by recounting a series of seemingly random memories and sensations. Next she presents a group of objects in her house and the personal significance of each item. Objects for her are all artefacts of the past, in some ways more reliable for recounting history than anyone’s subjective account. “It is objects, things like these scraps of pottery, that have most keenly conjured up all those elsewheres – inaccessible but eerily available to the imagination.” Finally, she ends discussing the meaning books and writing have had upon her life.

Penelope Lively discusses reading, history, fiction and nonfiction at Yale University in 2009.

Lively is someone who is passionate about literature. For her, “books are not acquisitions, they are necessities.” She feels her life is not just informed from what she has read, but literally is a part of her past and who she is: “What we have read makes us what we are – quite as much as what we have experienced and where we have been and who we have known. To read is to experience.” The books we read allow us to experience lives we can never lead bound as we are in our own particular circumstances of our own particular time period. She has found this in both fiction and non-fiction. Her dedication to literature and illuminating thoughts on what books mean to us struck an emotional chord with me. Lively is someone dedicated to not just telling stories, but constantly pushing the boundaries of narrative itself and finding new radiant ways of writing. She has a wonderful quip which is a play upon a famous TS Eliot line: “I can measure out my life in books.” This book shows a new way of measuring one individual’s life. One that is honest, artful and enlightening.

In Bed with Gore Vidal by Tim Teeman

Getting under the covers with Gore Vidal is a terrifying prospect when thinking about the last time I saw him appear live on television. It was when David Dimbleby interviewed Vidal after Obama’s election in 2008. The elderly Vidal was haughty, argumentative and made no sense. Since he was such a vocal and frequent presence on television throughout his life, Tim Teeman references this incident in the book as the nadir of Vidal’s many public appearances due to his evident mental and physical decline. The appearance was particularly embarrassing in relation to thinking about a time when I’d seen him several years before give a reading at a PEN event in London. After the event people were mingling in the corridor chatting away when Vidal’s long-term partner Howard came bursting through clearing a path with a walking stick and grumbling “Make way! Make way!” as Vidal followed behind him strutting with his nose held high like an imperial statesman while everyone looked upon him with awe. People surrounding him practically bowed in respect. Looking past his status and accomplishments, consider portraits of the tall masculine intellectual stud in his heyday and the prospect of slipping in bed with Vidal is much more enticing. I was ambiguous about wanting to go there, but now that I’ve read this insightful, entertaining and admirable biography I’m glad that I did. In this book Teeman disentangles Vidal’s complicated position on sexuality while constructing a history of his erotic life. In doing so he creates an important portrait of one of recent gay history’s most controversial figures. 'In Bed with Gore Vidal' prompts us to challenge our assumptions and ask vital questions about how we define sexuality on a personal, social and political level.

Teeman makes clear at the beginning: “This is a book with sexuality at its heart; it is neither a general biography nor evaluation of Vidal’s writing career.” Through rigorous research and clear analysis Teeman manages to compile a collage of opinions both about Vidal’s sexuality and what sexuality means for an individual in relation to society. Drawing on an impressive range of resources, Teeman’s references draw upon Vidal’s books, letters between Vidal and his friends, interviews with a huge variety of people Vidal knew intimately, an important unpublished interview the publisher Don Weise conducted with Vidal in 1999, research material for an unfinished biography by Walter Clemons which was largely destroyed and an interview Teeman conducted with Vidal himself a few years prior to his death. Like a review of the last century’s most influential figures names of prominent politicians, writers and Hollywood actors are listed as having not only been acquainted with Vidal but close personal friends: Jackie and JFK, Eleanor Roosevelt, Princess Margaret, Rudolf Nureyev, Allen Ginsberg, Tennessee Williams, Norman Mailer, Paul Bowles, Muriel Spark, Anais Nin, Christopher Isherwood, Edmund White, Rock Hudson, Greta Garbo, Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon and many others. Naturally all these opinions and viewpoints about Vidal are sometimes in conflict with one another and present a series of contradictions.

Even just by scratching the surface of Vidal’s life a huge variety of questions arise about what the writer did in bed especially when considering Vidal’s ability to “embellish” the facts and present a carefully monitored public persona. Did Vidal really have sexual relations with the long-dead Jimmie Trimble who Vidal always considered his great lost love and masculine ideal? Did he ever have a cock in his mouth or was he only into mutual masturbation? Was Vidal indifferent about the AIDS crisis or deeply moved by it? Was he a great lover of women or was his close relationships with them only platonic? Did he really suck off and fuck Jack Kerouac in the Chelsea Hotel? Did he ever have sex with Howard, his partner of over 50 years, or (as he claimed in interviews) never have sex with him? Can Vidal, with all these questions swirling around him, legitimately claim not to be gay?

A small part of a 2008 interview with Gore Vidal speaking about sexuality at his home in Hollywood.

By presenting these queries with an even-handed array of references and offering his own diligent clear-sighted commentary Teeman constructs what feels like an accurate reconciliation between how Vidal presented himself as someone who claimed “There is no such thing as a homosexual person” and a man who lived with another man for over fifty years while having countless sexual encounters with male prostitutes. In some ways it all seems to come down to semantics as Teeman notes: “Vidal thought ‘gay’ referred to a sexual act, rather than a sexual identity.” Since Vidal saw sexual identity as always being fluid, people can’t ever be defined as either homosexual or heterosexual in his mind. 

There is a niggling sense throughout the book that his position on sexuality is largely founded on Vidal’s own fear of having his public image diminished by being labelled as gay: “He knew his political destiny would be betrayed by his gay sexuality – this taint.” That a public image could be diminished by a queer label was something he learned well after the reception of his ground-breaking novel ‘The City and The Pillar’ upon publication in 1948. On multiple occasions Vidal tried to be elected into government and harboured a longstanding daydream wish to one day become president. With these ambitions for power and overall public approval, it’s not surprising that, as Teeman observes, “his mind never allowed that ‘gay’ could mean firm wrists, men of all kinds having sex with, and loving, one another and being open about it; even realizing the potency of its political appropriation, or something to reveal, rather than hide.” Vidal had his definition and he stuck to it without considering how it might reflect on his personal longstanding relationship with Howard or the way it might be interpreted by society as self-denial.

Vidal always became very disgruntled if anyone tried to fix these labels on him. It’s humorous to think how the author, so deeply concerned about his self image, would have hated that this book exists. Now that Vidal is dead riffling around the sacred bed to discover his dirty underclothes gives the reader a giddy feeling of transgression – like when Colm Tóibín depicted the inner life of the deeply private Henry James in his novel 'The Master'. Such audacity can seemingly only occur after the subject’s passing. Vidal reveals himself as a hypocrite when he affixed the label of homosexual on Henry James even though this is something no one can know for sure. Teeman points out the “irony in Vidal freely casting James as a homosexual and homosexual writer, whereas he strenuously resisted any such definitions being applied to himself.” This is another indication of Vidal’s tremendous arrogance, but also what made him so enthralling to listen to as he was clearly a great gossip. He knew almost everyone worth knowing so could either recite accounts based on experience or spin believable fables to suit his purpose.

This is the well known incident between William Buckley and Gore Vidal that occurred during ABC's coverage of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.

This resistance to embrace terms like “homosexual” and “gay” in relation to himself often led to feelings of animosity between the gay community and Vidal – something Vidal was never that bothered about as he felt “There is no fellow feeling particularly.” In addition, as can be seen in many recorded interviews with Vidal, he enjoyed a good scrap and enjoyed stirring heated debate. However, Teeman records how through some clear-intentioned writing, sporadic acts of charity and support for gay activism Vidal backed his claim when he once said to someone “I am on your team. After all, I’ve been there all along.” Maybe he didn’t do everything he could, but he played a part. Perhaps even by standing alone with his radical opinions he progressed ideas in society in ways that aren’t so clear-cut. As Teeman wryly notes: “He was a renegade, not a crusader.” And, after all, this raises one of the questions central to the heart of this book: was Vidal a sexual pioneer creating a level playing field or an old-fashioned relic who was too worried what people would think? There is no clear answer to this question or any of the other many questions raised by the fascinating and frustrating figure of Vidal. The fact that we’re forced to question and challenge our own beliefs and assumptions when considering him is what makes him so interesting to study. For that reason, Tim Teeman has produced a valuable biography and study that takes sex seriously while also providing a fantastically titillating read.

The Frost Fairs by John McCullough

After reading a couple books on this year’s Polari First Book Prize shortlist, I decided to go back and reread the 2012 winner John McCullough’s book of poetry The Frost Fairs. It’s only fitting McCullough received recognition for this book by a LGBT prize because several of the poems describe ambiguous lines of gender and sexuality. In fact the very first poem is from the perspective of someone whose bits are “a mishmash of harbour and ship.” Later a character is vividly brought to life when described trying to apply makeup and contemplating “the logistics of masking your beard shadow in a jerking patrol car when you’ve only one eye.” More than describing the multifarious perspectives of queer and trans people McCullough’s poetry also seeks an idealised space where gender is levelled out and identity blurred. In one later poem which contemplates the sky he writes “Cloud sex – or merging and changing – complicates matters because it makes it hard to remember who they are or were.” With the act of transformation identity is destabilised and is shown to be something that is constantly being recreated.

This also demonstrates another skill of McCullough’s writing which is to reflect the personal and particular in the larger elements like a sky of clouds or a galaxy of stars. Although we often feel bound in our own circumstances and might feel our lives are stationary, McCullough’s poetry reminds us that we are inextricably bound to nature and the movement of the planet through an expansive ever-changing universe. My favourite poem in the book ‘The Light of Venus’ juxtaposes a pairing of Earth and Venus with a separated couple and the memory of when they were together. There is an incredible tenderness described with the couple’s meeting and the energy created from it is set against the proliferation of lightning storms on Venus hidden under the serene haze which covers the planet. There is a sense of threat, but also a tender union borne out of a need for survival. 

Other poems in the book also evoke a beautiful sensual connection: “I picture your long fingers caressing the rims of improbable fountains, grasping mangoes from Assam, the sides of a bed that turns into a life-raft” His use of language creates a playful interplay between the erotic and fantastical. Again there is the sense of urgency – that romantic liaisons are both desired and necessary. The more sombre poem “Islands” sees a transformation similar to the above bed/life-raft where a bathtub turns into the sinister image of a boat filling with water. It feels as if these images aren’t only metaphorical but stand for the emotional reality of the narrator.

In a poem that draws the most direct connections between micro and macro worlds ‘On Galileo’s Birthday’ the universe is reflected in a bowl of cacti. Here there is the sense that casting our gaze outwards whether it be up to the stars or to lines of poetry we won’t discover any definitive answers. We can only marvel at the mystery and majesty of the world. This poem also seems to reveal McCullough’s primary mission in his incredibly moving and intelligent writing which is “plotting outer and earthly and inner space”

Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma by Kerry Hudson

From the first magnificently shocking line of this long-titled novel, I was instantly gripped by the powerful and original voice of the narrator. Like David Copperfield the book starts with the narrator Janie’s birth and the story continues on following her till the brink of adulthood. Janie Ryan is raised by her fascinating strong-willed filthy-mouthed mother who has returned to her mother’s house in Scotland after becoming pregnant after a short spate of living in London. The pair move all over the UK through a variety of social housing and exist on the perilous knife-edge between Monday benefit cheques and total poverty. Along the way Janie witnesses horrific scenes of abuse against her mother from a drug dealer she takes up with named Tony Hogan. Far from being something out of the ordinary amongst Janie and her friends it’s simply acknowledged “That’s what das do.” Although her mother finally escapes abusive Tony he eventually turns up again disrupting the modest peace and comfort Janie and her mother have been able to find on their own: “Tony smothered the life that me and Ma had built, a furry mould growing over a sweating slab of cheese.” With Janie’s mother dealing with problems of abusive men, poverty, substance abuse and depression she is forced into taking on a more adult role to protect their fragile existence: “We were a glass family, she was a glass ma and I needed to wrap us up, handle her gently.” Through a lot of strife and hardship Janie gradually grows to become as fiercely independently-minded as her mother: “Ryan Women, with filthy tempers, filthy mouths and big bruised muscles for hearts.” While dealing with a lot of difficult and painful subject matter, Hudson is able to maintain a lot of hilarity and genuine warmth in the story through her incredible array of characters and an inventive use of language.

One of the great things this book does is expose the inherent sexism of society especially when discussing pregnancy amongst people from poor backgrounds: “People thought it was an epidemic or something to do with the tides, ‘so many careless girls in one year’. Not one word about the careless lads.” Equally it exposes a troubling attitude towards women who drink, dress provocatively and stay out late at night: “they’d say it again, ‘You see? Hammered. Asking for it.’” Not only is physical and sexual violence overlooked by those around them, it’s passively condoned as something normal and that women of a certain “type” seek out. While the world may gasp in shock when someone of the upper classes like Nigella Lawson is shown with a man’s hand gripped around her neck, they’d be more likely to roll their eyes or turn away in embarrassment and fear when seeing an intoxicated woman on benefits being similarly abused by a man. This is a sick fact of inequality based on social and economic status. Hudson also shows how difficult it is to work towards a better life once you’ve been pigeonholed as coming from a certain class. In one scene at school Janie meets with a jobs advisor who rebuffs her aspirations to study law with the claim that his “job is managing expectations” rather than helping her to realize these dreams.

A great joy of reading this novel is the powerful way Hudson uses language to evoke her characters through dialogue in a way that makes them instantly familiar and understandable. The voice of the narrator also beautifully evokes the sense of time and place making it feel immediate and real. This is particularly effective in the way she frequently references the smells around her as in one scene in a cramped car travelling across the UK: “The car stank, layer upon later of reek, my feet stewing in my Docs (hormones Ma said), Doug’s ‘silent but violents’, though he delicately lifted one arse cheek when he let one off so it was hardly a secret, onions, lard and our unbrushed teeth thick with stale sugar.” This instantly takes the reader there and grounds them in Janie’s reality. I admire how Kerry Hudson has been able to cast light upon a part of British society not often seen or discussed. It’s a tremendously accomplished work of fiction.

This is the second book I’ve read which is nominated for this year’s Polari First Book Prize. It’s totally different from The Tale of Raw Head & Bloody Bones. I don’t think there is a useful way to compare them and I don’t think I could choose which should win the prize over the other so I’m more eager than ever to hear what the result will be on November 13th. However, Hudson’s novel is also nominated for the Scottish Book Awards which can be voted on by the public here: http://www.scottishbookawards.com/vote/

While I haven’t read any of the other books listed for this prize I’d strongly suggest you support Hudson’s book by voting for her to encourage an innovative and very promising author.