The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Earlier this year I read The Secret History for the first time. It’s one of those books that came attached with so much expectation from years of people saying in that whispered deep-feeling tone “one of my favourite books!” that I was almost hesitant to approach the alter of it. I took the plunge and I was engaged with the twisted blood-thickened plot and the complex ping-pong game of philosophical ideas, but I didn’t find myself swept away in that glued to the book sort of way that happens too rarely. However, after reading the first section of The Goldfinch I was totally stuck as if my legs were lodged in cement. Theo’s journey from adolescence where he survives a bomb-explosion in a NYC art gallery to the bleak deserts of Las Vegas to the forlorn wintry canals of Amsterdam is a magnificently worked out plot that includes thievery, gambling, depression, the seedy black market underworld, antique furniture restoration, high-society engagement parties and a heart-racing shoot out. All the while Theo carries with him a secret which must finally be confronted and dealt with in order for him to fully accept reality and deal with his grief.

The Goldfinch tackles many large themes with all the intellectual and time warp weight of any Dickens, Proust or Dostoevsky whose writing all inform this novel. But the ideas are always in the context of the magnificent story and connected to the book’s various and memorable characters. One of the most notable is Theo’s friend Boris – an Eastern European born citizen of the world and a totally self-invented self-made man. Boris’ fanatical indulgences and addictions are pursued with an unapologetic passion driven by the question “What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good?” Theo can’t follow the same paths without being hunkered down with guilt and a sense of life’s inevitable perils. “We can’t choose what we want and don’t want and that’s the hard lonely truth. Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us. We can’t escape who we are.” There is a pervading sense in the novel that we are led more by a sense of destiny as determined by our essential selves than by any free will we strive to impose. As much as Theo despises his father he continuously invokes common phrases and aphorisms his father said and as he grows older finds himself resembling his father both physically and in his actions. One of his father’s many addictions was gambling and it’s the element of chance which goes with this that haunts Theo’s life: “The stray chance that might, or might not, change everything.”

It’s fascinating thinking about the comparisons between this new novel and The Secret History. There are striking common themes and devices Tartt uses to engage with timeless discussions and unanswerable questions concerning art, love and life. She also has an original way of portraying masculinity, the blurred and hidden lines of sexuality and the continuous way substance abuse is used to dull the hard edges of life. Tartt has a voice so distinct that it demands to be heard and a way of entrenching you in a character’s thought process that it chimes incontestably with your own. This truly is an up-all-night reading sort of book and one that holds a plethora of dazzling surprises.

What Music to Read To?

The spare room at the back of my apartment is where I do a lot of my reading. I’ve added shelves filled with books all around the room and there is a big comfortable sofa to recline on. In general it’s a fairly quiet space, but students live above me and frequently there are planes flying overhead as it's London. So in order to avoid distractions I listen to music sometimes. I always have difficulty finding the right kind of album which will blend into the background, but still be engaging enough to flow with what I’m reading. I listen to classical music sometimes, particularly Chopin. More often though I’ve been listening to types of folk music particularly with a sensitive male voice leading.

Do you have a favourite kind of music or albums that you listen to while reading?

Here are three recent albums I listen to a lot while reading, particularly when travelling on the tube or bus.

 Spectral Dusk by Evening Hymns

Evening Hymns is really Jonas Bonnetta, a Canadian who collaborates with several different people when creating his music. Spectral Dusk is his third album. It has a real connection with nature with sounds of water sometimes in the background. There is a pervading sombre tone to the album, but it is really beautiful.  

 Palindrome Hunches by Neil Halstead

This was my favourite album from last year and it introduced me to the genius Neil Halstead. He was a founding member of the band Slowdive but has since gone on to create four albums of his own. He plays the guitar and sings with a soft voice songs of heartfelt hope and sorrow.  

 Coexist by The XX

Coexist is the second album by The XX with a really minimalist sound led by alternating male (Oliver Sim) and female (Romy Madley-Croft) vocals. The album plays upon the themes of a coming together and breaking apart of a relationship. The soft beats in the background help spur me along through the plot of a novel.  

The Tale of Raw Head & Bloody Bones by Jack Wolf

In what way is the mind connected to the body? Can thought and material substance be intertwined? Are we all just organic machines that will eventually break down or do our souls extend beyond the limitations of the body? These are some of the philosophical conundrums pondered in Jack Wolf’s bizarre and fascinatingly engrossing Polari First Book Prize Nominated novel The Tale of Raw Head & Bloody Bones. Set in mid-1700s England the story is narrated (in the language and style of the time) by Tristan Hart, a boy raised by his stoic father who is in perpetual mourning after the death of Tristan’s mother. From early on the boy is shown to have a high intelligence and analytical engagement with the world: “The World was as an open Bible; the Challenge was in learning how to read it.” Tristan develops a medical fascination for the workings of the body regularly taking specimens of rats and other dead animals to dissect and preserve their bones for display in his room. However, Tristan is prone to dark fits where his mental unbalance leads to a breakdown. In these sections the narrative becomes much more hallucinatory as his vision of the world is skewed by visions of the demonic forces of the fairy tale figures of Raw Head and Bloody Bones as described to him when he was a child. After slowly recovering from one such fit he is given the opportunity to go to London to live with his father’s acquaintance, the writer Henry Fielding. Here he comes into his own remarking “Life was become a Joy to me instead of a Chore. I even began to forget mine apparent Madness. No longer did I study Descartes and Locke with the Desperation of a condamned Man. I suffered no Delusion, no Phrenzy, no Melancholia.” He begins medical training and studying anatomy properly. Slowly he develops theories and embarks on research which makes him believe he will produce groundbreaking work which will change the medical practice forever.

A large part of this novel is devoted to exploring the murky areas of sexuality not often touched upon in a way that is both meaningful and philosophical. Tristan realizes early on that standard missionary sex doesn’t excite him as much as it does others although there is a girl who works at an inn who teaches him the basic mechanics of giving pleasure remarking hilariously at one point that “Every Fool knows how to fuck. You needs to learn how to make my Cunny glow.” It’s only when he gets to London and visits a whorehouse that he is able to act upon some of the darker fantasies that have been brewing in his sexual imagination. Tristan seeks connections to understand his own sadistic nature and the relationship between pain and pleasure. As he observes at one point after whipping the face of a man he looks down upon as an animal, “Pain needeth neither Language, nor Reason. It crosseth all Boundaries: betwixt Man and Beast, Monster and Angel, even between Sinner and God. Did not Christ Himself suffer the most enduring Agonies upon the Cross? ‘Tis a Species of Love, I thought.” He sees pain as a purer form of connection between one person and another that can be more tender than a gentle caress. When matters of the darker side of human desire are written about in novels it usually focuses on the more sensational side. While the sexual scenes covered in this book strike a rhythm that sometimes builds to what might be titillation for some, they are handled with style and care.

When Tristan finds a soul-mate in his closest friend’s younger sister Katherine the two discover a bond over shared sexual desires of an edgier nature. Tristan admits to Katherine that their activities and sexual compulsions are “‘terrible, and vile, and cruel. But beautifull, despiting all of that.’” The ecstasy achieved through dominating the submissive Katherine creates a strong bond between the two and helps Tristan understand his true nature as both man and monster. Katherine says to Tristan, “‘you are no Raw Head; I say you are Bloody Bones; the Fiend who collects the marrow-Bones of the Dead, and prizes them more dearly than the Living.’” His interest in medicine and building upon his intuitive understanding of the bodies’ mechanics isn’t purely scientific but inextricably linked to his sexual drive. This is demonstrated in a disturbing scene where he observes a surgery on a cancer patient. It drives him to work upon theories regarding the connection between the body, nerve stimulation and the mind. He ponders whether thoughts and memories reside in the matter of the body or in electro-chemical processes of the mind: “Where doth any ordinary Memory exist when it is not in Process of Recollection? It hath not ceased to be. Yet it is neither in Man’s Awareness, nor is he aware of its Lack.” Tristan seeks to understand the ways in which mental facility is affected by a person’s physical status and vice-versa. As he progresses in his research and through pondering with references to great thinkers like Descartes he comes to understand how language acts as the bridge between mental activity and the physical: “Thought hath, or Thought is, a material Substance. How else could it be shaped into a Word?” Questions such as these loom in the background as Tristan carries forth on his journey and succumbs again to fits of “madness.” The book eventually becomes quite fantastical. A great deal of suspense is created as the reader must decide whether the events are only occurring in Tristan’s troubled imagination or in the real world. This in itself raises the question – if we believe in our minds something to be true does it therefore make it physically true?

Tristan is a fascinating character and it’s interesting to see his transformation throughout the novel. In some cases his personal struggles reflect the larger struggles of society at the time. Tristan’s late mother is Jewish and his heritage, as is made evident in his physical characteristics, arises periodically as an issue from which he cannot escape. He becomes aware that some people make judgements about him based on this seeing him as “someone alien: my Mother. I looked like a Jew.” As described in the novel, the government at that time was debating the hot topic about whether to pass a law allowing Jewish immigrants to become citizens. Issues of class, religion and sexuality loom large in Tristan’s tale and his personal struggles. There is a great deal to ponder and enjoy in The Tale of Raw Head & Bloody Bones. Scenes are described in brilliant metaphorical language and the dark story has a powerful gripping effect. It’s very seldom that an author writes intelligently about sex. Edmund White’s fiction and Jonathan Kemp’s novel London Triptych also do this. Wolf also breaks boundaries showing how sexuality can be explored in a ways that are creative, frank and relevant to everyday life. I haven’t read any of the other books nominated for this year’s Polari First Book Prize, but I think this would make an excellent winner as Jack Wolf is clearly a talented compelling author.

Film Review: Only Lovers Left Alive

Yesterday afternoon I went to see a screening of Jim Jarmusch’s new film ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ at the London Film Festival. This is a moody but humorous story centred around vampires Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton) who have been lounging about the world – presumably since the dawn of creation. Rather than being portrayed as supreme beings they are shown to be down to earth individuals who continue to have lovers’ spats and exist in perpetual crisis of either being caught in the sunshine or not getting enough blood to subsist on. Eve resides in Tangiers reading through her favourite books and conversing with the writer Christopher Marlowe who is also a vampire. Frustrated artist Adam has a reclusive existence in Detroit making experimental music, moaning about how fed up he is with “zombies” and dodging a faithful legion of rocker fans. The two meet up after a long period of separation, have an unsettling encounter with Eve’s sister Ava and ponder the stumbling progression of the human race. Along the way there are a string of amusing literary references about writers Adam and Eve have known. Adam complains about what a horrible person Byron was and Marlowe pouts about Shakespeare taking credit for all the work which he produced after he became a vampire but couldn’t release under his own name because he was dead. The script is light-hearted and clever in a way that isn’t as pretentious as Woody Allen’s 'Midnight in Paris' which also playfully invokes a lot of literary characters from history.

The film is really made by excellent performances from Hiddleston, Swinton and John Hurt who plays Marlowe. Hiddleston plays Adam like a mopey teenager perpetually moaning about things, showing a geeky fascination with electronics and collecting rare instruments. Hiddleston is a very versatile actor who can transform himself into a wide range of characters. I saw another fascinating film called ‘Exhibition’ at the Festival on Saturday which features Hiddleston in a minor but funny role of an estate agent. With her other-worldly beauty Swinton is perfect playing the bookish vampire and first woman of creation Eve. She reads through novels scanning the pages in seconds in a way that made me incredibly jealous of how much reading she can get through. She speaks to animals that pass her by and mushrooms growing out of season. Although, she is intellectual and polite she is shown at the end to be someone who is also fearsome and terrifying. This is a really amusing film that’s well worth seeing.

Shire by Ali Smith

At lunch one day while I was browsing through books at Clerkenwell Tales my eye was caught by a very attractive small book called 'Shire'. When I saw it was written by Ali Smith I immediately bought a copy as a present for my friend as her birthday was soon. However, I only just recently got a copy for myself. I'd been greatly anticipating reading it as it's a book of four new stories, the first story 'the beholder' I had heard Smith read at the Edinburgh Book Festival last year. It's a really heartfelt and funny story about someone who discovers that she's slowly turning into a tree. She has numerous problems in her life, but these become superseded by the beauty that's growing within her. The next two stories are half-fiction half-tribute to individuals. 'the poet' gives an account of the life of Olive Fraser, a Scottish poet who published a scattering of things throughout her life, but never came to great prominence as she was plagued by illness and financial troubles as Smith bluntly lists: “Bad headaches. Grey skin. Nosebleeds. Concentration lapses. Unexplained illness. Fatigue. Drifts from job to job.” Smith creates a story around this of the poet as a girl discovering music in the binding of a book she throws against a wall. 'the commission' is a much more overtly person story than I'm used to reading from Smith. Here she pays details her mentorship from a scholar named Helena Shire. The academic supports Smith during her time at university by giving her money as well as talking to her about literature and ideas. The story travels back and forth throughout scenes in Smith's life showing her development and how Helena helped shape the person she's become. The final story is a short piece called 'the wound' which relates directly to an anecdote in Smith's previous book Artful where she discusses art as an exchange that “can be a complex and wounding matter” and cites as an example a poem from the late 1500s. In this poem and Smith's story a man borrows mischievous Cupid's wings and bow and arrow. He flies up into the air filled with jubilation but accidentally shoots himself. This parable shows how art and love can transmogrify the individual by causing pain and through that pain understand the world and other people all the greater.

Like much of Smith's work Shire doesn't fit into a neat classification as it is at once literary fiction, biography, theory, philosophy and memoir. What carries us through all this fascinatingly varied terrain is Smith's engaging and innovative voice. Other authors' writing would probably become scattered and confused trying to handle so many subjects, but Smith masterfully carries us through her narratives making every story she touches upon immediate and moving. I'm continuously in awe of her daring and powerful ability to make meaningful connections.

Film Review: The Invisible Woman

Last night at the London Film Festival, I went to see The Invisible Woman, the film adaptation of Claire Tomalin’s novel about Charles Dickens’ affair with 18 year old actress Nelly Ternan. I haven’t read Tomalin’s book and I was slightly hesitant about this movie. Was it going to be a sensational costume drama along the lines of The Other Boleyn Girl? Or a vanity project for director and star Ralph Fiennes? All these fears I had were assuaged when the movie got underway and I discovered what a patient, sympathetic drama it was about a complicated love affair.

Dickens meets Nelly while in his prime as a writer. Heavily established with his wife (played by the incredibly sympathetic Joanna Scanlan) and several children he continues to produce praised serialized novels, gives popular lectures frequently and contributes to charitable events. Whenever he is recognized in public he’s treated as a celebrity surrounded by avid fans seeking to shake his hand. During a production of his friend Wilkie Collins’ play The Frozen Deep his eye is caught by actress Nelly. He increasingly seeks to spend time with Nelly alongside her two actress sisters and their mother played by the talented Kristin Scott Thomas. Thomas’ character understands that Dickens is interested in her daughter even though he makes no overt flirtation with her and takes a cautious approach to this potential affair. Nelly is a shy, intelligent girl who is a great fan of Dickens’ writing and is equally cautious towards Dickens’ evident affection for her. Felicity Jones does an amazing job playing Nelly in a way that is guarded, but full of passion. When Dickens finally decides to break from his wife Catherine the split acts like a seismic shift in the lives of Dickens, his wife and Nelly. He’s unable to marry Nelly and therefore she can’t be formally recognized as his partner. Even when the couple are travelling together on a train which crashes he can’t admit that he knows her and must treat Nelly like a stranger. Some years in the future when the two have separated, Nelly lives a beleaguered existence having remarried and given birth to a new family but she’s unable to escape the haunting memory of her affair with a powerful literary genius.

What’s most effective about this movie is the balanced and sympathetic attention it gives to all the characters involved. Charles and Catherine have grown apart and are shown to be somewhat trapped in their established lifestyle. Catherine seems to know she can’t hope to hold onto the affections of her incredibly active and busy husband. While Dickens could be condemned as despicable for turning his back on his longstanding wife (and the way he goes about breaking up with her and declaring his favour for Nelly is atrocious) it’s not understandable that his affections have transformed. Fiennes plays Dickens as someone who cares about people deeply, but someone who is also attached to his public persona. As Catherine remarks in an amazing scene between her and Nelly, Dickens affections will always be torn between the woman he loves and the public. Love is difficult. There is always a conflict between ego and giving yourself fully to the person you love. The true passion we feel for those we love is often sublimated and inexpressible. Through the subtle performances of Fiennes, Jones and Scanlan we see the quiet introspective moments of these three people’s lives and how their desire was largely swallowed due the circumstances they found themselves in. It’s a powerful, haunting film.

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler

I was interested to read this fictionalized version of Zelda Fitzgerald’s life as I know so little about her. My only impressions about her from talking to friends and reading about F Scott Fitzgerald’s life was that she spent some time in a mental hospital, had her own literary ambitions and possibly derailed her husband from producing as much work as he might have. These are the kind of brief biographical details that we sometimes lazily cling onto to rather than taking time to investigate the full complexity of the person and that we are prone to believe because we are always handed a subjective view of history. As the author notes in her afterward: “Where the Fitzgeralds are concerned, there is so much material with so many differing views and biases that I often felt as if I’d dropped into a raging argument between what I came to call Team Zelda and Team Scott.” We can’t ever know what really happened in this long and tumultuous relationship. However, what is clear is that Zelda was a passionate, troubled and highly artistic individual. Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald sheds light upon the inner life of this fascinating woman and the sexist attitudes of the time which often stifled her own artistic endeavours.

The novel takes us from the time Zelda is a teenager first meeting Scott through to the disintegration of their marriage and the end of Scott’s life. At the start Zelda comes across as quite an ordinary girl from a distinguished family who goes to parties and flirts with young men. When someone asks Zelda “There’s more to life than fellas, right?” Zelda replies: “‘Not really,’ I said. My smile felt weak, but it was a start.” Her whirlwind romance with the charming and ambitious Scott takes her to NYC and eventually Europe where the pair lead lives filled with drink, parties and endless socializing. One is suspicious of the simple elated excitement and wonder Zelda exhibits without showing a trace of fear or uncertainty or sadness, but this throwing herself headlong into the giddy rush of it all serves as a hidden warning for the tricky times ahead.

When the party wanes Zelda becomes a much more interesting character because of her own greater appreciation for and engagement with the world. At one point she observes, “For the first time, I had a glimmer of the immensity of the planet, of lives being lived as routinely or as vividly as my own had been at any given moment.” She also grows from someone who is complacent in the subjugation of women: “I ended up with a black eye. I was of the mind that I deserved what I got.” to someone who understands it’s necessary to stand up for herself as she comments later in the novel “It was so much easier to be led, to be pampered and powdered and petted for being an agreeable wife. Easier, I thought, but boring. And not only boring, but plain wrong.” However, standing up for herself and expressing her own voice is difficult given Scott’s own misogynistic attitude toward Zelda and his attitudes about women in general. The vision of liberated free-acting women portrayed in his novels turns out to be a sham. Scott says at one point “All of that flapper business was just to sell books.” This attitude most likely partly stems from Scott’s own fears that Zelda’s artistic powers might compete with his own. Unfortunately, this oppressive nature is reinforced institutionally at the psychiatric clinics she enters into where she’s told to write about the correct role of women in the household and by her own family and many of their social circles. At Gertrude Stein’s literary salons the wives (Zelda included) must sit apart drinking tea while Stein herself and the men talk art. Also, the powerful and threatening figure of Hemmingway looms large in the novel. Initially he is a kind of protégé of Scott, but then becomes a well known author himself who drives a wedge between the couple by continuously making Scott believe that Zelda is hobbling his artistic abilities and holding him back. Meanwhile, Zelda suspects Hemmingway might be a “fairy” and have designs on her husband that involve more than literary kinship. Generally in this book Zelda’s viewpoint seems to be a trustworthy one. However, when it comes to her perspective on Hemmingway one wonders if her opinion isn’t skewed due to jealousy and personal bias after a disturbing encounter where Hemmingway propositions her. What is clear is that Hemmingway is a calculating social climber who works too hard to prove his machismo. He is accustomed to using people especially for his own sexual gratification and to advance his literary career.

When the glitzy cloak of success starts fraying at the edges and the endless parties and boozing take their inevitable toll Zelda and Scott’s relationship really starts to feel the strain. Scott is shown to be someone convinced of his own literary genius, but also harbours a tremendous amount of insecurity. Often he prefers drinking, socializing and whoring over getting down to the tedious business with pen and paper. As money troubles mount he even starts to let short stories written by Zelda be published under his own name in order to receive greater payments and to enhance his own literary standing. Zelda grudgingly accepts this, but it adds to her increasing mental strain. Throughout much of the novel it’s as if Zelda is viewing her life by looking through a cracked window making wry comments about her relationship with Scott, artist-packed soirees and stuttered attempts to make a career as a writer or painter or dancer. Towards the end of the novel, her viewpoint becomes more fragmented as she mentally breaks down from the ever towering strains of her physical problems, misdiagnosed psychological problems, tumultuous relationship with Scott, lack of recognition for her own achievements and the weariness which comes from partying hard like a true woman of the Jazz age.

There have been many other books which fictionalize the lives of writers to give insight into their personality and the circumstances which went into creating their body of work. Some of the most accomplished I’ve read are CK Stead’s novel Mansfield, the Virginia Woolf portion of Cunningham’s The Hours and my favourite of all Colm Toibin’s novels The Master (about the life of Henry James). It’s difficult to resist peering through the window into what the lives of these authors might have been like – a strange impulse given how writers often lead reclusive and quiet (ie dull on the surface) lives. Of course, great writing speaks to our souls and, while we might like to believe we’d have a spiritual kinship with the author of such great thoughts, the actual person might turn out to be deeply flawed and disappointing. After reading Fowler’s novel I can’t help but feel suspicious about Scott Fitzgerald and Hemmingway knowing that their personalities probably in some ways mirror their fictional versions. Not that I won’t still be able to appreciate their work, but I’ll be more guarded when approaching it. What’s particularly excellent about Z is that it establishes Zelda was an artist in her own right (albeit, one who is little read now and usually only by fervent fans of her husband) and a woman who is largely misunderstood (as is shown by my own vague prior impressions of Zelda.) So this novel has given me much greater appreciation for the complexity of her life and understanding of how lives of terrific excess can fuel and finally extinguish the flames of creativity.

Marriage at Cana by Zelda Fitzgerald

Artful by Ali Smith

'Artful' is probably unlike any book you've ever read or will read again. It is a heartfelt account by a narrator who spends his/her time reading through a battered copy of Oliver Twist and speaking to a deceased lover who haunts him/her by sitting at a desk, speaking a strange language and stealing little things. The gender of both the narrator and the deceased lover who the narrator refers to as "you" are never specified. The narrator recognizes that this must be a manifestation that's part of his/her grieving process so goes to see a therapist but finds little comfort past confirming that the deceased lover is speaking Greek rather than a completely made up language. Interspersed with this are contemplations on the meaning of particular concepts like 'time', 'form', 'edge' and 'offering' in relation to art. Taking examples from such disparate sources as the poetry of William Carlos Williams, Dylan Thomas & Sylvia Plath, novels by Jose Saramago, WG Sebald and Elizabeth Hardwick, Shakespeare, quotes by Katherine Mansfield and Margaret Atwood, the art of Yayoi Kusama, Herzog's documentary 'The Cave of Forgotten Dreams' and a Beyonce song. These references bring great weight to Smith’s arguments and observations as well as providing an eclectic list I could be thrilled by when I recognized the source or become very intrigued by if I didn’t know it. If it all sounds too cerebral to you, it isn’t. Smith incorporates all these references in a way that make them feel so meaningful to your own life and the life of the narrator grieving over a lost lover.

Smith uses second person narration in a lot of her fiction. This doesn't constrain the gender of the characters to one thing or another, but gives us a sort of utopian vision of social interaction where matters of male/female don't play any part. By writing "you" the voice of the narrator always feels very direct and intimate like being told a bedtime story. It also allows multiple meanings to blosom depending on who you think might be the recipient "you." It might be the narrator speaking to a particular character or the author speaking directly to the reader or, by speaking the words in your own mind, the reader directing the text out to someone in their own imagination. This is one of the most pioneering and powerful things about Smith's fiction and shows how she's someone that can break down boundaries and open up possibilities through a creative use of language. 

Smith unpacks words’ meanings by citing phrases that include the word such as this excerpt on time: “Time means. Time will tell. It’s consequence, suspense, morality, mortality. Boxers fight in bouts between bells ringing time. Prisoners do time.” Through these examples time can take on both an exhilarating meaning as well as a terrifying one or contain a whole slew of emotions at once. She shows that language is always about context. Language twists and bends through repetition. She could have easily referenced different dramatic plays from the branch of theatre known as “Absurd” as practiced by Ionesco, Pinter and Albee. In their plays words are sometimes repeated until they are flattened out to mean nothing and everything. The same sort of dissection takes place when reading books with special attention. Smith notes at one point “Books themselves take time, more time than most of us are used to giving them. Books demand time.” If we’re to let ourselves be moved and transformed by writing it’s necessary to surrender an adequate amount of time to fully understand what the writer is trying to say. We also literally lose ourselves in the book by surrendering our own time to it. The process allows us to subordinate ourselves to the power of our own imagination. As Smith describes, “it knows us inside out, the imagination. It knows us better than we know ourselves.” By giving space for the imagination in art we discover, not just more about the world, but about ourselves. Imagination also allows us to know, understand and love one another. At one point Smith observes “To be known so well by someone is an unimaginable gift. But to be imagined so well by someone is even better.” This admits the fact that we can’t ever really know each other as we are all trapped inside our own heads. All we can do is imagine each other. To truly be loved someone must think the world of you, to stand in their imagination as someone who is probably even greater than you think yourself to be.

The title of the book is taken from Dickens’ character of the Artful Dodger – a figure Smith herself seems to inhabit in her writing - someone who is crafty, intelligent and a great survivor. I can’t recommend this book highly enough as well as Smith’s books of short fiction. I love Smith’s passionate engagement with art as something that is not just a luxury of life, but essential to it. Art flows through us. Art unmakes and makes us. Art gives us back to ourselves. And, as 'Artful' proves, Ali is a supreme artist!

Ali Smith will be discussing 'Artful' at Gay’s the Word bookshop in London on Sunday, October 20th at 1pm: https://www.facebook.com/events/1405649822998955/

Man Booker Prize Reading at the Southbank

At the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the Southbank Centre this evening the six shortlisted authors for the Man Booker Prize read sections of their novels and answered questions from able presenter Mark Lawson. It was excellent to see Lawson chairing the event as in some past years the reading has been run by less knowledgeable people who didn't actively engage the authors. Jim Crace arrived fashionably late (due to traffic he complained) and just in time to read a section of his novel. Bulawayo spoke beautifully of the sense of seeing American culture from an outsider's perspective and the way in which imagination can't be suppressed no matter where you are writing. Catton explained the incredibly ambitious structure she laid out for her novel based on astrological signs and ever decreasing lengths moving through the sections of the novel. Crace remarked on how it's only in recent times that historical fiction has felt obligated to remain true to fact and how he is enthused by inventing historical information as he sees fit. This seems particularly fair in the way he writes historical fiction which doesn't specifically demarcate itself from any particular date or location. Lahiri spoke of the way she felt growing up in America with an Indian family that she felt a strong connection to both cultures, but at the same time not belonging to either. Ozeki talked about her hesitation of including a character called Ruth who is much like herself in the novel when she began it in 2006, but after significant world events felt it fair to include those events using her own name and personal perspective. Toibin talked about how the politics in Ireland has changed so that he didn't feel any great danger of negative retaliation or censorship because of the re-imagination of religious subject matter he uses in his novella. He remarked though that he's received some very angry messages from feverish religious Americans which he's printed and saved for posterity.

When Lawson opened the floor up to questions I was able to get the second question in from the audience. I asked Eleanor Catton about a male character who featured in the section she read (I won't say who to avoid spoilers). He's a really fascinating character who I wish we had more of in the book but he only appears very late on. She replied that she felt the reason she made him so interesting was that he'd been talked about quite a lot earlier on in the book so she felt he needed to make a grand impressionable entrance. After several more questions (including an embarrassing one where the audience member got Ruth's name wrong) the event ended and the authors signed copies. Sadly as my copy of The Luminaries is a Kindle version I couldn't get Eleanor to sign it, but I had my copies of Harvest, We Need New Names and A Tale for the Time Being signed. All three authors were very engaging and nice to talk to as they were signing my books. I must say that Lahiri seemed rather bored by the whole proceedings. Maybe she just has a subdued personality or maybe she feels rather passive towards the hoopla of book events given all the awards and attention she's received.

As to who will win the Booker, I think it's really open although Crace does have the best chance. But I think Catton's book is so strong it might well win and I hope it does. Responding to Lawson's final question about what winning the prize would mean to them most authors agreed with the sentiment that just being shortlisted and alongside such great authors was winning enough. All fair enough. Equally, just having a prize in order to get excited about books and discuss various reactions to them seems to me a justified reason for it all.

The reading was streamed live and can be viewed here (my question is at 1:21:50):

An evening of readings from the books written by the six short-listed authors. Hear the work that could win one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, in an evening chaired by renowned journalist and author Mark Lawson.

Film Review: Violette Leduc

Last night at the BFI London Film Festival I saw Violette, the new movie from Martin Provost that explores the life of groundbreaking feminist writer Violette Leduc. Played with passion and charm by actress Emmanuelle Devos, the film is structured in chapters. Each one explores her relationship with various people and how they helped her on her way to discovering her writer’s voice. Moving on from trading on the black market and pining for the love of a gay man, she starts writing as an outlet for all her energy and emotion. She introduces herself to Simone de Beauvoir by thrusting a book she’s written in her hands and Beauvoir responds encouragingly to Leduc’s brutally honest female perspective and poetic talent. Acting as mentor to Leduc, Beauvoir introduces her to a publisher as well as influential writers and artists of the time like Jean Genet. It’s a fascinating look at an intellectual relationship which transforms slowly over the time with Leduc falling passionately in love with Beauvoir – which is unrequited. Gradually they develop a mutual respect for each other and have a guarded companionship based on a shared desire to progress feminist ideas. Leduc is portrayed so sympathetically as someone pining desperately for love and validation. It’s admirable that Beauvoir didn’t just dismiss these turbulent emotions, but helped direct Leduc into pouring her passion into writing. Actress Sandrine Kiberlain beautifully plays Beauvoir as a woman with austere grace and intelligent determination.

Martin Provost’s equally brilliant previous film Seraphine also focused on the life of a marginal visionary artist who is not now as well known as she was at one time. Both films are excellent and well worth seeking out. I only briefly remember Violette Leduc being referenced from reading I’ve done in the past, but I’d now love to seek out translations of her work and explore this fascinating original voice.

The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get around to reading this book. It’s barely over a hundred pages. I’m a great fan of Tóibín’s writing. I love “The Story of the Night” and “The Master.” Plus “Brooklyn” was a total revelation to me. As I was reading it I kept thinking ‘this is all very nice, but where is it going?’ Then, suddenly, two-thirds of the way through the book the protagonist must make a huge decision as if she’s balancing on a knife-edge and it is so incredibly gripping and emotional I couldn’t put the book down. So I’m always ready to cut Tóibín a lot of slack and follow through to the end of any book he writes. This doesn’t always pay off. His non-fiction book “Love in a Dark Time” starts off beautifully, but by the time he gets into his experiences with Almodovar it tails off into something much less substantial. However, the prospect of reading Mary’s perspective of her son’s crucifixion had so much promise I couldn’t wait to get stuck into this novella.

Here’s the trouble now that I’ve finished it: I don’t have very strong feelings about it one way or the other. It’s beautifully written and I admire the stoic dignity he gives to Mary as she refuses to capitulate to the disciples who harangue her and ask her threateningly to validate and endorse their accounts/interpretation of her son’s life. The story follows faithfully along the other accounts giving us Mary’s own unique perspective on Lazarus coming back from the dead, water being turned into wine at a wedding and the political machinations which led to the crucifixion. The book grabbed me most when Mary confesses how she really acted upon seeing her son being tortured, nailed to the cross and left for dead. Also, her painful remembrance of her lost husband is striking. However, the book moved too quickly for me to really become involved with Mary and her story. Maybe if I was a believer I’d feel more passionately involved as it might raise feelings of anger or love towards Mary’s controversial version of the story. Above all it’s a tremendously sympathetic account of how Mary might have felt about being the mother of a man hailed as the messiah. I enjoyed the beauty of Tóibín’s prose, but it hasn’t made much of an impression on me. Perhaps when I reread this book it will strike more of an emotional chord. It seems to me to be a book that would be better read in one sitting when it’s quiet and very late at night.

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

We Need New Names questions the meaning of home and what our relationship to that is as we grow older. It's a coming of age story of a girl named Darling growing up in a make-shift town in Africa after her family were expelled from their home. She and her friends spend their days stealing guavas. They have a fierce sense of loyalty to each other and know who they are. Then Darling goes to live with her aunt in Michigan and must adapt into a new American identity. She has a sly sense of humour often having to stifle giggles and laughs while in her head she makes acute observations of those around her from a patronizing old white woman at a wedding to her vain aunt who walks endlessly on a treadmill to a bulimic girl who can't appreciate what she has. At the same time she loses touch with her friends back home and finds she can't connect with them anymore because she's left them and her country behind. Since she doesn't have a visa to legally remain in America she can't leave to visit Africa because she'd never be able to return to the US.

The way this novel is structured reminds me of one of my favourite books that I read last year – “We the Animals” by Justin Torres. [It's nice to read in this interview on the Caine Prize blog with Bulawayo that she's a fan of Torres] The narrator of that novel also speaks in the collective “we” for parts of the book as he and his brothers form a close pack. This closely mimics the psychology of an adolescent who finds a strong sense of identity in the collective of their close friends. But, of course, as the individual grows older they develop differently from those in their group and must find their own sense of self. Bulawayo is doing something slightly different in this novel, particularly later on in the book where in some chapters she speaks for a whole group of new immigrants who find themselves alienated from their native country in an alien land. In a merciless chapter called 'How They Lived' she bluntly lays out the perspective of immigrants who have come to America for economic opportunity and political stability. Strong emotions spill out onto the pages in a way that cannot be contained and is entirely justifiable. As she writes at one point: “What is rage when it is kept in like a heart, like blood, when you do not do anything with it, when you do not use it to hit, or even yell? Such rage is nothing, it does not count. It is just a big, terrible dog with no teeth.”

Identity is explored in other ways in the novel such as in a devastating chapter called 'Shhhh' where Darling is still living in Africa and her estranged father returns. He is concealed in her home as he's suffering from AIDS and her mother doesn't want the rest of the community to know. Staring at her father's face she observes “I know then that what really makes a person's face is the meat; once that melts away, you are left with something nobody can even recognize.” His illness has caused him to lose the strong, fired, hard-working man he once was so that he's become a stranger to his own daughter, someone she comes to resent and hopes will die so she can go out and play with her friends. In another chapter while concealed in tree branches Darling and her friends view a wealthy white couple's home as it's raided by armed revolutionaries. During an argument between the white man and the invaders, the white man objects that he was born in this country so it's as much his home as theirs. The philosophical questions linger in the background - What entitles a person to call a place home? Is a person's identity necessarily entwined with the land they live on?

Bulawayo has a sharp sense of observation and a merciless sense of humour. The book got me thinking about my own sense of split national identity since I grew up in America but have spent my whole adult life (since the year 2000) living in the UK. Of course, it's an entirely different situation given Darling has to contend with racial, linguistic, economic and political divisions. But I'm aware that there are parts of myself that have been lost since living for so long in an entirely different culture and there is also no way for me to ever really go home without arriving back as someone who is now in certain ways a foreigner. Even if you don't cross national boundaries the journey from adolescence to adulthood necessarily includes compromising parts of yourself to the idealized person you'd like to become. Our ability to adapt and change to new environments and societies allows us to survive, but it also makes us strangers to ourselves.  

Almost Tall by Vestal McIntyre

There are some short story writers who are so skilful I grin from ear to ear when I see they’ve published something new. Vestal McIntyre became one of them after I read his stunning debut – a collection of stories titled You Are Not The One. So when I saw he’d published this stand alone story Almost Tall I quickly bought it for my Kindle.

Dinah is an adolescent girl who travels from a provincial town in the American Midwest to her uncle’s New York City penthouse in order to attend a summer ballet school. Since her uncle Rick is often away at his job she is mostly left in the care of Rick’s partner Eddie – a monstrous socialite and pillow designer. Although naïve, she’s naturally suspicious and critical of the opinions and practices the colourful characters she meets in the city. She’s someone who has a great amount of desire but doesn’t quite know what she really wants. McIntyre is brilliant at portraying characters who stumble through social circles learning what they really want and, more importantly, what they really don’t want through careful observation and tentative interactions. His novel Lake Overturn was one of my favourite books of 2010. Almost Tall is an excellent short story particularly in the way it portrays Eddie’s shallow self-centeredness and Dinah’s friend Sunny with her burgeoning sexuality. It’s published by DailyLit who have the commendable and fantastic mission of delivering quality short stories to busy people.   

Can literary fiction increase your social skills?

This blog article in the NY Times cites a recent study by social psychologists which found people who read literary fiction are shown to have more empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence. Pam Belluck concludes that this will naturally lead people who read literary fiction as opposed to popular fiction to have better social skills. I wouldn’t necessarily make this leap. In my experience most people who read literary fiction are fairly socially withdrawn and awkward interacting with people in real life (myself especially). Whereas people I meet who read popular fiction tend to be more vibrantly social and at ease in crowds. It’s more of a division in personality types I think. Though I agree that literary fiction is more likely to increase your empathy because, as the article says, it literally puts you in someone else’s shoes to see the world from a different perspective. Also, literary books tend to present the world as a more complex nuanced place whereas popular literature tends to present the world from one point of view where people are quite clearly split into good or bad.

By the way, I love Louise Erdrich’s funny reactions to the study. The lady clearly has a good sense of humor.

Harvest by Jim Crace

Have you ever finished a book and you know it’s affected you on some deep subliminal level because you have very vivid dreams that evening? This has happened to me before when I read the fantastic nightmarish graphic novel Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie. I think with that book the dreams were instigated by Gebbie’s powerful drawings. It’s happened again with Harvest and in this case I think it’s because of Crace’s masterful use of language and his subject matter.

This tale is narrated by Walter Thirsk, a long-time resident of a very small and isolated agricultural community. Crace uses almost lyrical language to describe the pastoral pleasures and hardships of farming wheat. There’s a tremendous unity felt for the small group of residents in their annual harvest with its hard work and traditional ceremonies. He doesn’t over-romanticise or shirk from the gritty realism of this rural life describing how there is also domestic strife, meagre eating when crops go bad and terminal disease due to lack of medical care. Nevertheless, the residents labour and subsist in a way that is largely harmonious and connected to the land. Then intruders arrive. There are two types. The first is a small group of three wanderers whose motives are unknown. The community seizes them when they seem threatening and subject them to punishments. The second is the cousin of the lord of the community who has come to claim the land as his own and transform it into a pasture for sheep. The residents react to these intruders in very different ways. The actions of intruders and residents ultimately lead to the disintegration of the community altogether.

While Thirsk has lived in the community for a long time, having married and lost his wife who is a local resident, he is still an outsider and this viewpoint gives Crace the advantageous position of describing village life from both an intimate and a more objective perspective. Walter bears witness to the unravelling of the age-old life in the community over the course of little more than a week. The story speaks to how we are both bound to each other through necessity in order to subsist and the ways in which we are inevitably in opposition with one another through greed and the desire to dominate – the land, resources, each other. I connected with this on a really personal level having wanted for many years to live in an intentional community called Twin Oaks in Virginia which seeks to, as much as possible, live in a way that is self-sustaining within the larger society. The book speaks of the pleasures and perils of living in a way that is so removed.

So now about my dream. I was being held captive by a small group of people in a bleak fortress with many rooms. I tried to escape from my captors running through multiple corridors and climbing over a high fence studded with barbed wire. I woke up feeling very unsettled so to calm myself I watched a film before getting back to sleep. The movie I randomly picked to watch was ‘You’ve Been Trumped’, the story of Donald Trump’s ambition to build a world-class golf course in Aberdeen despite the Scottish residents’ objections and environmentalists’ protests. The politicians and police force are influenced by Trump and leave the residents helpless to stop their land from being bulldozed and developed with most of Trump’s promises of enhancing local life going unmet. Watching this it struck me that this is the same story of Harvest. Rural residents get bullied out of the homes they’ve lived in for generations due to the strategic plans and despotic nature of more powerful outside individuals/groups. By grabbing land, stripping resources and oppressing vulnerable residents, “progress” continues to march on and the weak are winnowed out. After finishing watching the documentary I fell back asleep and this time I was the oppressor. I dreamed I was working to force people out of their homes pushing old women aside and brutalizing the inhabitants. I woke up shaken and disgusted with the thought that I could be an oppressor as well. It’s in all of our natures to dominate and destroy in order to enhance the possibility of our own survival. It’s impressive how Crace deals with this subject matter with such style and power that he can speak of universal truths through the lens of one small lost community.